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.”