Fight or Flight
Just behind the Peach Orchard lies the Trostle Farm, one of the areas where Confederate Gen. James Longstreet’s forces clashed with Union Gen. Daniel Sickles’s Third Corps on the second day of the battle. The fighting in this area was vicious, and it was the result of a bold salient—a maneuver that projects into the position of the enemy—made by Sickles that almost jeopardized the entire Union army. Sickles—a controversial, flamboyant, and charismatic officer—didn’t like the unfavorable nature of his original position on Cemetery Ridge and decided to move his troops forward toward the Peach Orchard to meet the enemy head-on. Not only did Sickles disobey Maj. Gen. George Gordon Meade’s direct order to hold his ground, Sickles exposed both sides of the Third Corps to enfilading fire and overextended the Union line.
As Sickles directed his forces in front of the Trostle Farm on a slight rise in the landscape, he could see the battle developing, but before he could meet the incoming Rebels, he was struck in the right leg by shrapnel. Being an old warhorse, Sickles told his aides to place a tourniquet on his leg and continued to direct his troops for several more minutes before being carried off the field. His leg was later amputated; a result that many officers believed saved him from being court-martialed for his rash and perilous action.
Confederate dead in the Peach Orchard, where heavy fighting occurred on the second day of the battle. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.
As the Confederate juggernaut pressed forward and Sickles’s troops began to crumble, Union forces continued to rush men in to fill the gaps in their lines. The fighting around Trostle Farm was intense, and many visitors to the battlefield have reported paranormal activity in that area. On a July night in 2006, a group of us made plans to meet at Gettysburg for an investigation. Ed Dubil Jr. (Little Ed) and his dad (Big Ed) wanted to do some ghost hunting around Trostle Farm and the Peach Orchard, so we met there. We were all happy to have Brutus, Little Ed’s ghost hunting dog, with us. This was the first time I had the chance to work with Brutus, and it turned out to be an incredible experience.
Union General Daniel Sickles, who disobeyed orders and exposed the Union Third Corps to a battering of enemy fire. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.
As a sensitive, I usually get a feel for the presence of ghost soldiers before most other people. My brother John and Big Ed were at the front and to the left of the barn as you face it from the Peach Orchard. Along the shoulder of the road, they set up two tripods with Sony “night-shot” camcorders as they talked about the various places they had investigated. Little Ed, Brutus, and two close friends of mine, Chris Carouthers (a talented sensitive) and Karen Mitchell-Carouthers (a rocket scientist … seriously!) joined me on the backside of the barn, standing near the area where wounded soldiers were cared for during and after the battle.
Little Ed and I were talking about some of the experiences he had with Brutus and his father on the battlefield, and he recounted this story for me:
We were at the Eleventh Pennsylvania Infantry monument on Oaks Hill. The Eleventh had a mascot, a dog named Sally. Dad and I had been there before and never got any evidence, but on this overcast morning we decided to make another visit. Brutus did what all dogs do, checked out the area and then lay down near the statue of Sally. Dad wandered off videotaping while I began taking random pictures with my camera and turned on my digital recorder, placing it on the monument near the statue of Sally. No one else was there, just Dad, Brutus, and me. As I normally do when on the battlefield, I thought about what it must have been like during the fighting, and also about the men who survived and went back to search, not only for their fallen comrades, but for Sally too. She had been missing since they retreated on July 1st. I imagined the relief they must have felt when they saw Sally, looking a bit sickly but alive, guarding their dead comrades. Suddenly Brutus sat up, his ears perked and his breathing very still, and then he trotted over to me. Later that night as Dad and I were going through the photos and videos, I played the recorder, and all was quiet. All you could hear was my camera taking a few shots, that is, until we heard a whistle and a man’s voice calling out, “Here boy!”
As we walked toward the paved road that cuts through the Peach Orchard and past the barn, we could see John and Big Ed about 175 feet away, near their stationary cameras. I felt a sense of urgency as I watched Brutus stop, raise his ears and seem to hold his breath. I asked Little Ed what Brutus was doing, and his response was, “It’s called fight or flight. He is deciding if what he hears is a threat and, if so, can he win.” Little Ed squatted down behind Brutus and took a photo between the dog’s ears. The photograph revealed an orb about a foot away from where Brutus was standing.
As we walked around the barn to the spot where Sickles lost his leg, Chris (the sensitive) began to feel nauseated and confused. There was definitely a sense of dread around us, which I associated with the Union soldiers as they struggled to hold their position against overwhelming odds.
And then, suddenly, I heard the rebel yell. All around me it seemed like men were running, “Dear God,” I thought. “This is how it felt to be on the receiving end of that howl!” Brutus’s ears were up and his body was tense. Chris, Karen, and Little Ed had moved about fifty feet away from me, and they showed no signs of hearing anything at all … and then the moment was gone.
A few days later my brother John called me and said he believed he had captured a mass of men rushing past the barn toward the Peach Orchard. When we reviewed the footage together, we could see (although the quality of the video is lacking) a mass of shadows crossing between the fence rails and the barn, and we could even see the shadow of a flag waving. Brutus, who has since passed away, was able to experience this paranormal activity before any of us became aware of anything out of the ordinary. Like most animals, he had a keen sense of such things. Brutus was a great field investigator in his own right, and he will be missed.