Some of the most vicious hand-to-hand fighting that took place during the Battle of Gettysburg occurred at East Cemetery Hill. It was a cold night and the wind was picking up as we headed down toward the base of the hill to stand on Wainwright Avenue, formerly known as Brickyard Road. Patrick stood just to the left of the Seventh West Virginia Infantry marker. John, his brother, stood against the guardrail looking down where the Confederates from Hokes Brigade would have formed lines for their charge up the hill to silence and seize the guns that had been blasting away at them for hours. Jack was standing behind Patrick, where one of the Union rifle pits would have been. Jack, a Floridian, commented on the cold and worried that the wind was killing any chance of capturing quality electronic voice phenomena (EVP). Suddenly … “They’re here,” said John. He coughed and asked the Confederate boys to give us a rebel yell.
With the wind whipping around us, we knew we would be able to capture video with the infrared camcorder Patrick was holding, but audio was going to be worthless … and that’s when it happened. John laughed and pointed towards the thin woods at the base of Cemetery Hill. “Here they come,” he said. As a sensitive, John was good at seeing the shadows of the ghost soldiers, so when he said “over here,” we inevitably rushed to the location he was referring to with great results. Patrick turned his head to look down into the area where John was pointing and saw a flash of light. Then he felt a wave of emotion wash over him. Jack, sensing something strange was happening, whispered, “Here we go.”
Suddenly, the wind stopped, as if all sound had frozen in time. Patrick saw a mass of blackness surging up to his left. He focused his camera on the area the anomaly would pass through in hopes of capturing the event. And then it was over. The ambient sound came back, and the wind started blowing even more fiercely than before the phenomenon took place.
Afterward we tried to describe what we had felt. The consensus was that the mass of black energy had carried with it every emotion one could imagine when men are gripped in mortal combat. Patrick described it as fury, tinged with the fear of knowing you were most likely going to die, but you push forward anyway. John described it as a madness that consumed the human soul, and Jack described it as fear and hopelessness all rolled up into one.
Upon reviewing the infrared tape, we were amazed at what we captured. At the very moment the wind died down, a shadow passed between the camera and the tree it was focused on. And then one of the most incredible sounds we have ever heard on a battlefield became clearly audible … the death wail. It can only be described as a soul screaming out in rage at the inevitability of its bodily death. It sounded as if a whole chorus of voices was crying out in frustration as they faced the moment of their violent demise. Incredible. But this was Gettysburg, so we weren’t surprised in the least.