Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me—
The Carriage held but just Ourselves
And Immortality.
—Emily Dickinson, 1863
The National Park Service estimates that approximately 1.7 million people visit Gettysburg during the year, most of them during the summer months. Visitation is especially high during the traditional holidays: Memorial Day, Fourth of July (which coincides with the anniversary of the battle) and Labor Day. The question is often asked, Are there particular times when there seem to be more paranormal events than others? The answer is yes: there seems to be more activity around the anniversary of the battle than at other times. But one must wonder: Is that a function of the activity of the spirits during that particularly traumatic (for them in their previous incarnations) time period—the time of their own wounding or death; or is it because there are more people around to witness anything paranormal that would occur “normally” anyway? In other words, are the spirits just as active all year round, out in the darkened fields of battle, but there is just no one there to witness their cavortings?
Everyone expects to see ghosts out on the “battlefield”—meaning what the National Park Service owns. Remember that the government owns only a fraction of the “battlefield,” and that the real battlefield encompasses the town of Gettysburg, the Pennsylvania (now Gettysburg) College campus, the Lutheran Theological Seminary grounds, the Evergreen Cemetery, as well as numerous privately owned in-holdings and the hundreds of properties adjacent to the park boundary where troops lounged, bled, ate, slept and died in agony.
Imagine, (or perhaps actually witness!) on some sultry summer night out along the dark road from Baltimore, the heaving, panting, undulating column of men, (or what appears to be the entity of a column) known once in this world as the Union Army’s Sixth Corps, in a ghostly reenactment of their terrible thirty-four mile forced march.1 Eighteen thousand souls under arms stretching ten miles along the roads, marching the quickstep and taking three hours to pass a given point.
And what is that we hear wafting through the summer night? The bands keep playing through the long night march and the march of the next day: “John Brown’s Body,” and its refrain by Mrs. Stowe, “Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! His Soul is Marching On,” taken up by a hundred, then a thousand, then the entire corps, through this last night on earth for many. And another song: It is the haunting melody of “Home Sweet Home,” sung most heartily by the boys of the 93rd Pennsylvania as they cross the Mason Dixon line.2 Many are indeed going home, home to the Father and His mansion with many rooms. Are they forced to repeat this horrible march—again and again and again—as reparation for their participation in the world’s most ancient sin—brother killing brother—committed those three days in July 1863?
Or, if we are in the right place on the road to Taneytown, Maryland, at the right time, will we see an apparitional rider dismount in front of a hazy tent to deliver, yet again after all these decades, the order to Maj. Gen. George Gordon Meade informing him that he has been given the command, virtually within sight of the enemy on its most threatening invasion, of the Union Army? Will we see on the pale wraith’s face, the look of anguish as the fate of the souls of 97,000 men is placed in his hand? If his ghostly face could look into the future, would he change his mind if he could see the 51,000 casualties his decisions will cause?
And out the road to Cashtown, at the old inn there, if the conditions are just right, can we see through the hazy mist that gathers in the South Mountain passes, the curious faces that sometimes peer out the windows at those taking photos of the ancient building? When we enter the structure that Robert E. Lee once entered along with dozens of others wearing stars on their gray collars, can we hear the clinking bottles as they re-filled the officers’ flasks to fortify them for the butcher’s work of the morrow?
If we want to see the entire “battlefield” we must certainly include those sites fought over by the far-ranging cavalry. For the infantry and the artillery, Gettysburg was basically a three-day battle, July 1, 2, and 3. But for the cavalry, there were battles that started on June 9 and lasted until the Confederate Army re-crossed the Potomac at Falling Waters on July 14, 1863. To appreciate the scope of the Battle of Gettysburg we must visit the area around Emmitsburg, Maryland, and also the Pipe Creek area where Meade had designed his fall-back position. Remember to see East Cavalry Field, Hunterstown, Hanover, and Carlisle. Journey to Maryland and visit Union Mills, Westminster and Rockville. And do not forget the mountain passes below Thurmont and the battlefields near Hagerstown, Williamsport and Falling Waters.
So indeed the killing fields are wide and long and numerous, right up to the very doorsteps in the little town of Gettysburg.
In June 1994, Ghosts of Gettysburg Candlelight Walking Tours began. In addition to telling the ghost stories of the town and adjacent fields, the guides tell a good bit of history too. Some of our guides are Licensed Battlefield Guides and enjoy the status that particular honor brings. Over the years the tours have been a source of entertainment for visitors and guides. Having guides walking the streets of Gettysburg leading groups of interested seekers of the paranormal has given them more exposure to any spirits that may still be roaming the town.
One of our guides, who has been a reenactor for a number of years and is quite an expert on women’s clothing of the Civil War period, had an eerie experience at the Jennie Wade House. She had related the sad story of the fate of Jennie Wade, the only civilian to be killed in the three-day maelstrom that was the battle, many times over the past two summers. Although she had studied the history of Jennie Wade and had led tours past the house of her death, she had never been through the house on the self-guided tour. Of course, Jennie’s sad and ironic tale is well known: Her boyfriend, lying mortally wounded, is visited by his boyhood chum from Gettysburg, Wesley Culp, now wearing a Confederate uniform. He gives Culp a dying message for Jennie; the message remains unknown to this day, for Fate cuts down Wesley before he gets a chance to deliver it, cuts him down on Culp’s Hill on the family-owned farm practically within sight of the house where Jennie dies.
What a surprising meeting it must have been on the Other Shore, when the least expected of all, Jennie, showed up to meet her friend Wes and her dearest love Jack….3
One evening after the guide and her male friend had volunteered their time as reenactors at a historic site in Maryland, they returned to Gettysburg. Still in their Civil War period dress, they went to dinner, then decided to cap off the evening with a tour through the Jennie Wade House.
They listened to the taped narration in the kitchen area where 20-year-old Jennie was killed; they walked upstairs, through the hole blown through the wall by a shell, through which Union soldiers had carried the lifeless body of Jennie Wade some thirteen decades before; they moved through the rest of the house and down into the cellar. She tells the tale best from this point:
We sat down on the first row of benches and looked at the mannequin laid out to represent Jennie’s body and listened to the tape that continued the story. The others on our tour began to leave when Brian noticed the chain that separates the display from the visitors was beginning to move. It did not swing; it was slowly vibrating up and down. Knowing that the “ghost” was supposed to be that of Jennie’s father, I started to think in my head, not saying anything out loud, it was a shame that Jennie died so young, and while we didn’t know her, we were there to pay our respects and in no way meant anything disrespectful. As I finished these thoughts, the chain stopped vibrating.
Brian and I turned toward each other and began to discuss what had just happened and what each of us was thinking at the time. We ruled out the possibility the chain moved due to vibrations from the street or the upstairs traffic as the chain is anchored to two solid field stone pillars. As I turned back to face forward, my parasol bumped into the chain causing it to swing back and forth. I put out my hand to steady the chain and as I did so, I could feel a strong “current” going through it. I asked Brian to touch the chain to see if he felt what I did.
As he put his hand on the chain, within a few seconds a very visible change occurred in his appearance. His face drained of color, he looked gray, sad and depressed. His shoulders caved forward slightly and I would have to say he “drooped.” He began to talk about Jennie almost as if he had known her. He talked about how young she was and what her plans would have been for the future. He talked about how much of life she had missed; her wedding; unborn children; family gatherings; and celebrations.
By now, I was concerned about what was happening to Brian. He had heard me tell the story of Jennie, he knew of the stories about her himself, but he had never reacted like this before. I asked him if he was all right, but he didn’t seem to hear me and went on lamenting Jennie. I suggested we leave the cellar and go outside. I helped him to his feet and guided him to the stairs. As we reached the ground level, Brian shuddered, shivered a little and let out a strong sigh then asked, “What in the world was that?”
He told me it was as though someone had come to sit beside him and placed a hand on his shoulder. His shoulder and right side went cold and stayed that way until we were outside. He was visibly upset and concerned about what had just happened. As an explanation, I suggested perhaps Mr. Wade had sat next to Brian, touched his shoulder and put the thoughts into Brian’s head to be spoken out loud. Brian then said, “Jennie’s father is not the only one down there. They’re all there! There’s more than one.”
We went to the museum office and reported what had occurred. The young ladies on duty told us they worked there for a couple of years and never had anything happen to them. They never saw the chain move or felt a presence in the cellar, although one young lady admitted she was afraid of the cellar and would never go down there.
Brian would like to go back and take flowers for Jennie. It’s a very strong feeling he has to do so. Perhaps his is a thought presented by Mr. Wade. After all, he never got the chance to take Jennie flowers. I’ve asked Brian to wait before we go back. Right now I’m not sure I’m ready to take part in this experience a second time. Just the thought that Mr. Wade waits for us to return…for Brian to return…is more than I want to consider.
A number of visitors to the Jennie Wade House have experienced other strange phenomena. The chain in the cellar, of course, has been a constant source of evidence for some sort of unexplained presence. Cameras have a tendency to act strangely—or not act at all—in and near the house. While working on the story of the moving chain in the Jennie Wade House for Ghosts of Gettysburg II, my very expensive Minolta SLR camera went “on the blink” and I had to finish shooting the photos for the book with my publisher’s camera. Visitors to the Jennie Wade House have reported their cameras jamming, or, stranger yet, showing odd, spectral images, verified by some experts from the Pennsylvania Ghost Hunters Society as those of “ectoplasm,” or the odd shapes spirit-energy takes on: globes of light floating surreally, or swirling vortices.
The guides’ experiences were limited to concrete occurrences.
Wanting to videotape our guides for training purposes (so that they could watch themselves give their tours) I brought in my RCA video camera. Diana Loski, one of the off-duty guides (who is also an author) was kind enough to offer to tape the other guides. She came back halfway through the tour disappointed.
“I think your battery is dead,” she said.
“That’s impossible. I charged it for two hours just before I brought the camera down here.”
The battery was the original one to the camera, only about a year old.
“How much of the tour did you get?” I asked.
She kind of smiled. “Well,” she said, knowing the story of cameras failing in the vicinity of the house. “I got about half—until we got to the Jennie Wade House. All of a sudden the low battery light indicator came on. Then the camera just died.”
“Died?” The battery was supposed to give at least a half hour or so more recording time after the low battery indicator came on.
“Well,” I said. “I’m sorry you came in for nothing. I’ll buy a new battery. Can you try it again next week?” We arranged for her to follow another tour later.
I bought a brand new battery and charged it right up to the time I was to take it in for her next tour taping session. Out went the camera with Diana. Forty-five minutes later Diana was back again. This time she was more excited than the last.
“What happened?” I asked.
“You won’t believe this. Everything was taping just fine…until I got to the Jennie Wade House again. I got the weak battery symbol in the viewfinder again. Then the battery died again.”
By now I was getting angry. Something—either of this world or out of it—was interfering with my business. Diana and I just looked at each other and shook our heads.
We arranged for her to try and tape the tour one more time. This time I figured I would eliminate the possibility that it was that particular camera. I had just purchased an 8 mm Sharp Viewcam. I charged the battery fully before taking it out to give to Diana. Although the camera was not as sophisticated as the larger one, it did not take quite as much energy to run it. I remember Diana smiling at me and shaking her head as she left the office to follow the tour.
A little over a half hour later she was back. The camera had failed. The battery had failed. Where? In front of the Jennie Wade House.
Three tries. Two different cameras. Still no tape of our tour beyond the Jennie Wade House. It was the last time we tried. In the meantime, the Sharp Viewcam has worked well ever since. But the brand new battery on the RCA Camcorder still will not hold a charge for more than 15 minutes.
Other guides have had strange things happen to their candle lanterns in front of the house. The lanterns that they use are all hand made. Very fine craftsmanship goes into each one. At least three of our guides have been startled, as they stood in front of the Jennie Wade House giving their talk, by the sudden popping of glass. As they look down at their lanterns they see one strangely fascinating phenomenon: one of the glass panes in the lantern is broken. Not shattered, mind you; but holed. One guide described it as looking like a bullet hole through the glass…then he realized what he had said and where he had been standing: at the Jennie Wade House, right between what was formerly the Union battle line near the top of Cemetery Hill, and the Confederate battle line in town, near Breckenridge Street, where the tour headquarters is located.
* * *
It was July 4, 1997. I was in the National Civil War Wax Museum in Gettysburg signing my books and Diana Loski and her children came in. She was dressed in her Civil War era clothing and was immediately recognized by a family that was having their books signed: “Oh look, there’s our guide from last night!”
The night before was July 3, of course, the anniversary of the last day of the Battle of Gettysburg. It was also the anniversary of the death of one James McCleary, killed on East Cemetery Hill and buried in the Evergreen Cemetery, just a few hundred yards from where the Confederate shell exploded that took off McCleary’s legs and one hand. The hand, by war’s strange coincidence, landed upon the artillery lunette—a semi-circular mound built up in front of the cannons as meager protection for the gunners. Legend has it that on certain nights, through the summer night’s mist, there can be seen the shadowy figure of a lone soldier hunting around the lunettes for…something beloved and missing now…forever.
Diana told me later that while she was telling the story of James McCleary, she noticed that the people on her left were listening, but those on her right were not paying attention at all. Instead they were looking into the dusky fields of East Cemetery Hill, pointing and whispering to each other.
I said “Diana, I hear from these people that you had an experience on your tour last night.” She looked at me quizzically and said, “What do you mean?” She seemed unaware that anything had happened.
The family chimed in to relate a story that was almost too fantastic to believe. “While you were talking about the guy who got blown up”—meaning James McCleary, wounded by artillery— “above the man on the horse”—meaning the equestrian statue of O. O. Howard, “there was a pillar of blue light, like blue sunlight. It lit up the statue,” the family spokesman said. “You could see him plain as day, you could see the grass was green at the base of the statue; you could see the cannons. It was like broad daylight right in that little column.” Diana then realized why the people on her tour were looking around. They had been trying to see where the light had come from.
They were looking to see if it was perhaps the moon just coming from behind a cloud—but this was the early evening tour—the moon was not out yet. They said it lasted for several seconds and then vanished. They thought it was a trick or a hoax. They went back to the statue the next day to see if there was a light at the base of the statue that someone could have turned on. “The strange thing was, that it didn’t seem to come from any source—it seemed to be its own source.” According to Diana, those were their exact words.
Diana, whose back was toward the monument, had missed the whole thing. The family had never said anything to her because they thought she had planned it. It was not until the confrontation at my book signing that the family and Diana realized that they had been involved in a paranormal experience.
In an aside, Diana told me that she wonders if perhaps McCleary likes her because she spent time at his grave in the Evergreen Cemetery.
Diana had another strange experience with blue lights in the same vicinity of the Jennie Wade House. During one tour, she stopped near the Jennie Wade House to tell the tale of historic irony of friends’ and lovers’ best laid plans torn asunder by Fate. She had just finished telling the sad tale, when one of the visitors asked, “What are those blue lights coming from the cellar of the Jennie Wade House?” Diana had taken dozens of tours past the house and had never seen blue lights—or any lights for that matter—coming from the cellar of the house after the house was closed. Puzzled, she merely responded that she did not know.
The entire tour took turns looking through the crack in the cellar door. They saw a blinding blue light—like blue sunlight.
One of the visitors wondered out loud if perhaps a ghostly presence was manifesting itself in the strange cellar. Another visitor—obviously the more skeptical type—guffawed, and said that someone must have left a light on by accident. He bent low to peer through the windows into the subterranean space, and tried to see through the crack in the cellar doors down into the space adjacent to the makeshift mausoleum that once contained the mortal remains of one Mary Virginia Wade. Indeed he saw the blue light pulsing from the depths—but as to its source, even this most scientific of minds could find none.
Diana too, had her doubts. So the next day she called the owners of the Jennie Wade House. Did anyone ever forget and leave the lights on in the house after the place is closed? The manager replied, yes, every once in a while one of the help forgets and leaves the lights on. Has anyone left the lights on recently, like the other night? No, he replied. He did not think anyone had left the lights on in a while. Does the cellar have blue lights in it? There was a pause by the manager. No, he said. No blue lights in the cellar. It is dark down there. They need all the light they can get, so they use white lights.
To Diana’s knowledge, whether forgetful help has been working or not, no blue lights have been seen since in the cellar that once witnessed the flight from her body of the spirit that on earth was called Jennie Wade.
When Ghosts of Gettysburg Candlelight Walking Tours moved its headquarters and offices to the Civil War era house at 271 Baltimore Street, it shortly became evident that we had inadvertently moved into the neighborhood of an old—and long gone—friend.
In recent years, more and more people have been strolling the streets of Gettysburg. Visitors—who never seemed to walk much of Gettysburg in the past—have been taking the time to walk out of the Steinwehr Avenue area of Gettysburg into the residential area of Baltimore Street. It can be a very pleasant experience, for Gettysburg—especially in the warm sorcery of night—retains much of its quaint 19th century allure.
It has been documented that at least one veteran of the Civil War lived on the next block of Baltimore Street. He has been seen before—although only in shadow form—and has been associated with his incessant pipe smoking. Just as more recent visitors to Gettysburg have discovered the joys of walking the streets of the town, it would be most common for someone living in the era after the Civil War to take an evening stroll along the street where they lived. From evidence gathered quite inadvertently by some of the guides for Ghosts of Gettysburg Candlelight Walking Tours, at least one of our strollers is definitely not of the current era, and is visiting from a place much farther away than that from which modern visitors come.
Several of our guides during their tours have experienced the heavy, sweet scent of pipe tobacco when no smoker is around. Sometimes the guides smell nothing, but notice several of their customers looking around and sniffing. When asked what they smell, the answer is, “pipe smoke,” but no one is smoking a pipe. Other times, a few people will come up after their tour and tell the guide about smelling pipe tobacco smoke somewhere in the vicinity of Baltimore Street, and that it followed them through some of the tour. Two young people following Mollie thought the scent was following her. They could stand it no longer. They finally asked her if perhaps she was carrying a lit pipe. Of course she was not. First, she does not smoke; second, it would be foolish to carry a lit pipe in the folds or pocket of her hoopskirt.
More often than not, when the pipe tobacco smell is around, only part of the tour will smell it and the rest will not, which is odd, because the strong, distinctive scent of a pipe is usually omnipresent. But if odd, it is also indicative of a paranormal experience wherein just those sensitive enough to pick up the sensory elements of the entity will do so, and others, though standing right next to them, will not.
Mollie has asked some of the people who have detected the pipe’s fragrance to smell the candle in her lantern—no, no, they say, that is not the aroma. One man identified the odor as a particular type of tobacco his great-great grandfather enjoyed: black cavendish.
Once, she had a group behind the large sign in the Alumni Park, when suddenly a large cloud of blue-gray smoke rose from the opposite side of the sign. Nearly all the guests on her tour saw it, along with Mollie, rising slowly into the scented night air. One curious (and courageous) tour customer trotted to the opposite side of the sign, expecting to see someone smoking a pipe. To his—and everyone’s—astonishment, not a soul…let me re-phrase that: no person was there.
Finally, one night—apparently when everything needed was in perfect alignment—the ultimate unexplainable event occurred. Mollie had just finished her tour and was back at the offices. Standing near the sign at the front of the building giving her conclusion to the tour, she noticed the eyes of some of her tour participants looking to her side and growing wider. Suddenly one of them shouted, “Your dress! It’s on fire!” Mollie turned as another guest screamed, checked her hoop skirt, which was not on fire, then turned back to the guests in confusion. In panicked tones, she heard them chattering, “It was smoke!” “No, mist!” “It was right there, standing behind you. It collapsed when we screamed!” “What in the world was it?” Mollie calmed them down enough to gather their impressions. It was, as one guest described it, and the others agreed, a “pillar of smoke.” At first the guests thought that Mollie’s lantern, which she had put on the ground next to her, had caught her dress on fire. The pillar of smoke seemed to be coming from near or behind her lantern, and when the people screamed, the pillar “collapsed,” into a much smaller entity. Some thought they saw it move rapidly, down Breckenridge Street, retreating toward the west.
Statistics show that only about ten to twelve percent of all paranormal experiences are visual; about sixty percent are auditory; but all the senses can be affected, including, of course, the sense of smell.
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