The Body of John Wilkes Booth

By Crusader1307

 Although not a "Ghost Story" or "Monster", this tale is still bizarre....and somewhat unexplained. As we have seen, Presidential Assassin John Wilkes Booth was shot and killed by Federal Cavalry in 1865. His body was claimed by a Brother and buried in a Family Plot (much to his Brothers embarrassment and shame). But our story takes a strange twist. Booth may not have died as we are told. As late as the 1880s, people claimed to be Booth. One claimant living in Canada, stated the Cavalry killed the wrong man, a deserter from the War. Another, named David George stated on his deathbed in 1909, was Booth.

An autopsy revealed that George did suffer from a healed broken leg, and had a scar on the neck (from Booths childhood), as well as a malformed thumb. So convinced, Showman Barney Hawkins purchased George's "mummified" corpse in the 1930's, displaying it as Booth! People happily paid a small fee to see. The "mummy" was examined (it was finally buried in the 1960s), again in the 1990s, with requests to descendants of Booth, for either a DNA sample or permission to exhume the "body" reputedly in his grave. His descendants have thus far refused any cooperation.