Ghost Soldiers of Gettysburg Page 7

  A natural spring that flows at the southern end of Culp’s Hill, Spangler’s Spring was a focal point for the wounded men, on both sides, during the Battle of Gettysburg (see chapter 8: First Sighting). Drinking from the spring’s refreshing water was, in some cases, the last pleasurable act many of these men experienced before dying. The fierce fighting that occurred on this area of the battlefield remains vastly underestimated, but many soldiers’ recollections of the combat around Spangler’s Spring vividly capture its true devastation. Union Col. George Cobham of the 111th Pennsylvania Infantry described the carnage in a letter he wrote to his brother on July 4, 1863. “We have just concluded the most severe battle of the War, which has resulted in a complete victory on the Union side. The fighting has lasted two days and been desperate on both sides. All round me as I write, our men are busy burying the dead. The ground is literally covered with them and the blood is standing in pools all around me; it is a sickening sight.”

  Henry Hunt, Chief of Artillery in the Army of the Potomac, remembered the thick forest of hardwoods on Culp’s Hill that bore the scars of the battle for many years afterward. “The scene of this conflict was covered by a forest of dead trees,” he wrote in the 1880s, “leaden bullets proving as fatal to them as the soldiers whose bodies were thickly strewn beneath them.”

  Should you have the chance to visit, imagine what it would look like with hundreds of wounded men moaning and crying out for help. Imagine also the dead lying all around, their sightless eyes staring into the sky. If I had to choose one area on the battlefield that could provide witnesses with the best chance of experiencing a paranormal event, I would argue that Spangler’s Spring is a good place to observe due to the immense suffering and bloodletting that occurred there in a relatively short period of time.

  I set the camcorder on a tripod and selected a spot just in front of the spring, filming a small band of Confederate reenactors who set up a small camp behind the boulders and tree’s across from Spangler’s Spring and the base of Culp’s Hill. My daughter Emily was with me at the time, and I filmed her hiding, jumping, and playing soldier for about three minutes. The camcorder worked great in the infrared mode at dusk. The picture possessed a slightly green tint, but otherwise the quality was excellent. Emily went over to talk with my wife Jean, who was waiting in the car, so I again focused on the reenactors. After several minutes of filming them going about their campsite routine, I moved the camera approximately ten feet to my right and began shooting the area from a different angle.

  As I always do when using cameras, I noted the activity in front of the camcorder. Emily was the only person in the frame’s foreground, and four or five reenactors were in the background moving around the campsite. I had a feeling that something unusual was going to happen around them. In fact, I’ve found that reenactors can help facilitate paranormal events, and I’ve used them on a number of occasions when doing experiments during investigations. When I arrived back at our hotel room, I reviewed the tape and found what I expected (and hoped) I might capture—the full apparition of a gut shot soldier!

  When we replayed the footage, the form of a soldier with his back to a forked tree and his body covering the bottom front of a large boulder could be clearly defined. It remained in view for almost three minutes. It appeared as if his feet were bootless and a dark mass covered his abdomen. I intuitively believed the dark mass indicated the area of his fatal injury.

  Did a ghost soldier honor me with a glimpse of how he died at Gettysburg? Did his comrades make him as comfortable as possible before heading back into the fight? The footage still has a profound impact on me. It makes me wonder what were this soldier’s last thoughts. Did he think about his wife, who waited nervously for him to return home? Did his thoughts drift to his children, who had probably grown so much since he left home to fight for the cause? Or, like so many of the very young boys who died on this battlefield and never got the chance to marry and have children, perhaps he thought about his mother and the sense of comfort and safety she always provided him.

  I returned the next day and took some notes at the specific location where I captured the paranormal event. I noticed in the exact spot where the apparition appeared that no dark masses were present. No large concentration of moss or leaves existed, certainly nothing the size of the dark mass in the video. And there were no logs, bushes, or tree branches in front of the boulder that could be mistaken for a person.

  I knew what I captured was real and that this soldier “allowed” me to capture him on videotape, but how can I explain and make sense of it? Often on battlefields, when you visit with an open mind and heart and respect the sacrifices of the soldiers who fought there, you begin to establish a connection of sorts with the energies that remain behind. I can’t describe why this happens, but I can say it represents the most fulfilling part of what I do. I’m capturing moments in history. I’m like a bard of old, a traveling storyteller who is privileged to have experienced special connections and who shares the stories of the fallen brave in their own words.

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  Chapter Eight

  First Sighting

  — By Jack Roth —

  On May 8, 2004, I experienced what I believe to have been my first apparitional sighting as a field investigator. It occurred at a prominent location on the Gettysburg battlefield known as Spangler’s Spring, where Union troops of the Twelfth Corps constructed defensive earthworks, and heavy fighting took place as both armies attempted to occupy Culp’s Hill. After the war, many veterans conveyed how temporary truces were called between the sides so that men from both armies could fill their canteens with water from the spring. This particular part of the battlefield has become popular as a result of both the soldiers’ anecdotes and ongoing reports of paranormal activity.

  Our investigative team recorded the following testimony immediately after our strange encounter. Four individuals, including myself, who were either witness to the apparition itself or some other related phenomena share their thoughts here. Others present during the encounter are also mentioned throughout our conversation.

  Many people have reported seeing both flashes and balls of light in Spangler’s Spring. Photo by Jack Roth.

  “I definitely saw something moving by the tree line at the edge of the woods,” I said. “It was a glowing, white object. At first, I thought it was a rock. You know how some of the rocks have a lot of white moss or bacteria covering them, so at first I thought it was a rock, but then it started moving. It was almost like it moved out from behind one of the rocks and moved back in.”

  “Exactly,” said Sarah. “It went back in. Donna was over there and she had the same experience, and as we were all moving forward toward the object, she was moving sideways with the object. And so there was clearly, clearly something at the tree line.”

  “Then again it was hard because it was the gloaming time of day … dusk … and you know your eyes can play tricks on you with that type of light,” I suggested. “But I really did see a glowing figure moving back and forth. And then five minutes later I saw something move again, and I went running over there because I wanted to make sure there wasn’t a guy in a bright white shirt walking by or a white-tailed deer hopping along the tree line. But there was nothing like that there, so it was definitely odd.”

  “I was on top of the hill, and my EMF meter was going crazy,” added Milo. “I was getting lots of spikes. It was funny because I thought Scott was with me. At the beginning, we were walking up the hill and I thought Scott was still next to me while we were up there. I thought he was over in the woods filming me, but I realized, ‘No, there’s nobody over there.’ But my meter was spiking, and I felt there was somebody behind me. I got a pretty good-sized orb picture.”

  “The area was in between Spangler’s Spring and the trail leading up to Culp’s Hill, and Eric had walked that way as well,” said Jon. “He said he kept feeling like there was someone behind him,
and he kept looking behind his shoulder … and he kept looking like there was something up there. I felt the exact same thing. I had walked up and basically everyone else was at the bottom of the hill. I wasn’t planning on going up to the top of the hill; I was planning on going about four or five turns and just standing up there because a lot of times things happen to me when there’s nobody else anywhere around to verify it. So it’s just my word against everyone else’s. So I went up there and kept looking around. I had this feeling like I had to keep looking out, and keep on looking out because I had to make sure that you know … they weren’t behind me. Eric went up just a few minutes later, and he got the same feeling.”

  “Right,” added Milo. “I walked up the trail because Jon had just come down from there and he said that he felt like there was something up there. So I went up with my meter to see if there was something going on.”

  “And the interesting thing is I never told him,” said Jon. “I said, ‘You may want to check out further up the hill; there seems to be an electric charge or something up there.’ I actually told some other people the exact same thing because I really felt like something was going to happen. I never told Milo how I felt, and then one of the first things he said when he came down was, ‘I kind of feel like there’s somebody back there.’ It’s just one of those strange things. When we first got to Gettysburg we were exhausted, but none of us had ever been here before and Jack mentioned how he felt extremely emotional for no particular reason. Melissa felt sad, and I felt like there was a drumming of energy across the entire battlefield. I’ve been to many active haunted houses, but this is the first time I’ve ever felt like an entire town and battlefield feel like one huge haunted house. It feels like there’s always something going on right beneath the surface or just past the range of our senses. It’s just strange … very strange to actually be walking through a large environment like that, and just not being able to feel alone at any point.”

  “I agree completely,” I said. “This place is amazing. We may not be able to prove there was an apparition near those woods tonight, but we can certainly corroborate some pretty compelling evidence that suggests ‘something’ paranormal did occur. We should go back there later tonight or tomorrow morning and set up some infrared cameras.”

  In order to fully appreciate this account, one must first understand the spontaneous nature of apparitions. The late Andrew McKenzie, a paranormal researcher for the Society for Psychical Research (SPR), said that although members of the general public regard apparitions (or ghosts) as the spirits of the dead returning to manifest themselves to the living, it is far too simple a view of the phenomena. F. W. H. Myers, a founder of the SPR, agreed, saying that “Whatever else, indeed, a ‘ghost’ may be, it is probably one of the most complex phenomena in nature.”

  With this in mind, people must allow for the possibility that some sort of shift in consciousness occurs when experiencing a “visual” manifestation of a ghost. During most apparitional experiences, for example, the act of looking away from the apparition, even for a moment, causes the figure to disappear. McKenzie reasoned that the act of looking away might trigger a change of consciousness. In fact, most researchers generally accept that people experience apparitions in “altered states of consciousness.”

  Andrew Nichols, noted parapsychologist and founder of the American Institute of Parapsychology, stresses that most apparitional encounters fall into the category of “crisis apparitions,” a phenomena during which people see the apparitions of friends or relatives appear before them at the very moment of the loved one’s death. Such apparitions, he adds, are isolated psychic events and are usually never seen again, but if the apparition appears again and again over a long period of time, then the house (or battlefield) is considered genuinely haunted.

  Regarding our experience at Spangler’s Spring, we might lean toward the explanation of a genuine haunting as opposed to a crisis apparition, especially considering the location and its history. This represents a particularly compelling encounter because multiple witnesses saw the same apparition, which is very rare. Other corroborative evidence also exists, as Jon and Milo felt an electrically charged atmosphere on the path just above where and at approximately the same time the apparition was seen. Milo also recorded electromagnetic spikes on his EMF meter, which validates that some type of atmospheric anomaly was taking place.

  Personally, it was a watershed moment. I never believed I would ever actually see an apparition, as years of field research had yielded many profound experiences but never an actual ghost sighting. Did we witness the genuine haunting of a restless soldier’s spirit still wandering the grounds on which he experienced a violent, sudden and premature death? Or was it a replay of a battlefield moment forever etched into the environment—perhaps of a soldier cautiously emerging from the tree line in order to quench his thirst?

  Either way, it seems fitting the experience occurred at Gettysburg, a place where, as Jon acutely noted, “ it feels like there’s always something going on right beneath the surface or just past the range of our senses.”

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  Chapter Nine

  Serenity

  — By Patrick Burke —

  Most paranormal experiences at Gettysburg are actually emotional in nature. Despite what many people believe, not all ghostly phenomena require audible sounds, physical manifestations, or the capture of photographic evidence in order to represent a profound or noteworthy event. In fact, simply being affected emotionally by Gettysburg’s energies—whether imprinted or spirit-triggered—tends to have a more-lasting impact on people. One can only imagine the intensity and range of emotions felt by more than 150,000 soldiers and 2,400 residents both during and after the battle. As such, it isn’t difficult to understand how people can be “touched” emotionally while there.

  While visiting Gettysburg with my wife Jean and my oldest daughter, Emily, we took a driving tour of Culp’s Hill, a fairly sizable knoll with heavily wooded slopes. Culp’s Hill was occupied by Union troops for just about the entire battle despite the best efforts of the Confederates to dislodge them. This area represented the point of the famous “fishhook” in the Union line often described by historians.

  Union Earthworks on Culp’s Hill, where Union troops dug in against relentless Confederate attacks. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

  Jean has a degree in art history and has always been fascinated with history in general. Emily is much like her dad and finds military history to be fascinating. Jean is a sensitive, loosely defined as a person who has a high degree of proficiency in extrasensory perception or can sense or feel paranormal events beyond the range of their five human senses. Although she possesses these abilities, she doesn’t actively seek to exercise them. Regardless of her wishes, sometimes the ghost soldiers just don’t care. Apparently, during our visit to Culp’s Hill, a young soldier wanted her to know—and feel—what happened to him, and she had no choice in the matter.

  As you start up Culp’s Hill, the first stone wall you come to is where the First Maryland stood its ground for the Union during a ferocious Confederate attack on the second day of fighting. Right beyond this area on Slocum Avenue is where the first Maryland monument is located. As Maryland residents, we were very interested in checking out this site. I pulled the car over. Jean stayed in the car while Emily and I got out and approached the monument. We read each and every side of it, and I told Emily what it must have been like at this exact location on the day of the battle. We walked over to the earthworks that Union forces built to protect their strategic position on the hill.

  When we got back to the car, Jean was very quiet and seemed taken aback. I asked what was wrong, and she told me the following story:

  I was just sitting here watching you and Emily walk around the monument and go over to the earthworks, and I couldn’t help but think how awful it must have been. Men shooting, screaming, and dying—it was quite ove
rwhelming. Suddenly I felt all of that chaos leave my head, and a sense of peace came over me. I looked down at the ground and saw a young soldier lying between a small rock and a tree.

  He was bandaged, but I knew he was dying … yet he was at peace with this fact. All of the fighting seemed to melt away from him, leaving him in this small oasis of serenity. I said a silent prayer for him and then he was gone. Then I heard you and Emily coming back to the car.

  After Jean related her experience to me, I handed her my camcorder and she filmed the area in which she had the vision. There are times when a spirit wants to give you a glimpse of their life, a personal gift just for you. This was without a doubt one of those moments for Jean.

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  Day Two

  July 2, 1863

  The second day of fighting at the Battle of Gettysburg was a scorcher. The July sun beat down on the combatants and proved to be a pivotal factor in the outcome of the day’s events. The actual fighting didn’t start as General Lee had planned. He requested that Gen. James Longstreet and his First Corps start his attack on the Union left flank in the morning, but Longstreet decided to wait for his final brigade to arrive. Adding to the delay was the approach to his jump-off point, the point from which the attack would start. Longstreet realized halfway through the marching of his corps that the final approach would be visible to any enemy on the heights, so he turned his men around and took a different route. By the time Longstreet was in place, it was almost four p.m.

  Lee intended to launch the Army of Northern Virginia in multiple attacks against the flanks of the Army of the Potomac and shear the Union defenses. Coordinated correctly, these “en echelon” attacks would force confusion in the Union lines and eventually breach it at its weakest point. Lee’s plan was solid, but his lines were stretched out over a long distance, and coordinating attack would become more difficult than he anticipated. Nevertheless, the day’s fighting was fierce, inflicting catastrophic casualties on both sides.