Visual information entering our brains is edited and modified by our temporal lobes before it is passed on to our visual cortices. Some studies suggest that less than 50 percent of what we ‘see’ is actually based on information entering our eyes.
–Michael Talbot, The Holographic Universe.
Culp’s Hill was the scene of some of the longest, most intense, and most horrifying of all the fighting at Gettysburg. An initial Confederate assault on the Union lines there began late in the evening of July 2. Confederates in Johnson’s Division, starting from their positions on the Daniel Lady Farm on the Hanover Road, found the going tougher than they expected: Rock Creek was a serious impediment as the Rebels were peppered by stubborn Yankee skirmishers as they crossed; the terrain on that side of the hill was, in some places, precipitous cliffs fifteen to twenty feet high; the Yankees had cleared fields of fire and built formidable breastworks; and worst of all, darkness had fallen and they were virtually groping in the dark, firing at musket flashes, never being able to identify them as friend or foe.
As it was, they almost met with incredible success. Their opponent, Union Brigadier General George S. Greene—63 years old at the time of the battle—was forced to spread his 1400 men dangerously thin along the breastworks. In fact, during the attack, Confederates actually gained possession of the right of the Union works and were within a few minutes march of the Baltimore Pike and the rear of the Union line.
As one Union participant put it: “The left of our brigade was only about eighty rods [one-quarter of a mile] from the Baltimore turnpike, while the right was somewhat nearer. There were no supports. All the force that there was to stay the onset was that one thin line. Had the breastworks not been built, and had there been only the thin line of our unprotected brigade, that line must have been swept away like leaves before the wind.”1
The fighting would die down late at night on July 2, only to start up again as soon as it was light enough on July 3, and last until about 11:00 a.m.—some of the longest continuous fighting during the three days of battle. When it was over, the dead and dying were scattered about.
When wounded, the first thing men usually cry for is water. With the battle having been fought in the heat of July, the nervousness of going into battle, and the immediate dehydration a wound brings, they were deathly thirsty. As the realization settled in that they were hurt badly, some—officers particularly—would ask those around them to pass on a message to loved ones back home: “Tell Father I died with my face to the foe,” was typical. If alone, they’d call for help so that comrades, or even the enemy, might find them. Some, even the older soldiers, as they died, regressing to their first childhood memories, would be heard crying like children for their mothers.
Their cries for help, for water, for their comrades, for their mothers, were pitiful and unnerving. Long throughout the night of July 2 and even into the dark morning of July 3, men continued their heart-rending pleas that could be heard echoing everywhere in the darkened and forbidding woods of Culp’s Hill: Water…Help…Help me…Water…Mother…Oh, God….
In December 2001 I received a letter from an M.D. who admitted having been attracted to the battlefield of Gettysburg since he was 4-years-old. (This is not uncommon in serious battlefield buffs and historians. William Frassanito, esteemed Gettysburg scholar and author recalls his first fascination with Gettysburg began at age eight; I too was enchanted by the fabled name “Gettysburg” when I was only seven. Some go so far as to hint that this early attraction stems from a “past-life” experience at Gettysburg. Reenactors in particular, often feel this way…).
In 1987, the doctor and his family and a friend were staying at the old “Welcome Traveler” Campground on the Baltimore Pike. Spangler’s Spring and Culp’s Hill are only a hundred or so yards from the campground. He recalled that it was the first week in July, the week of the 124th Anniversary of the battle. One night, they had gathered around their nightly campfire to relax and talk. It was about 11:15 p.m. He had gone into the trailer when he was called back out by his family. All they said was, “Listen.”
From the dank, darkened woods of Culp’s Hill, once carpeted with the horribly mangled victims of our national fratricide, echoed a pitiful and disturbing cry:
Help me….
They stood in shocked silence. A minute passed. Then, again, rising mournfully from the woods:
Help…me…. Then silence.
He was just about to relegate it to the collective active imaginations of the family. But then, once more, emerging from the darkness of that shadowed hill it came:
Help…me….
And, as they stood disbelieving, twice more the agonized pleading rolled from the woods: Help…me….Help…me….
The doctor reasoned that someone must have gone out on the battlefield after dark illegally, perhaps with a metal detector, had fallen and was lying helpless. As a doctor, his first instinct was to help. He got the campsite owner. As they strained their ears toward the distant, grim woods, it came again, pleading,
Help…me….
Although the National Park is closed after 10:00 p.m., they realized that this might be an emergency. They got into the camp owner’s car and rushed up the road that led from the Baltimore Pike to Culp’s Hill. They passed Spangler’s Spring and proceeded several hundred feet up the hill towards the summit of Culp’s Hill. They stopped the car and turned it off. There, from the woods just a few hundred feet ahead and above them on the hill, the voice: Help…me….
On up the slope they drove, stopped the car again, shut it off and listened. There, just ahead of them, the anguished cry: Help…help…me….
And so it went. Again and again the pleading, Help…me…. Always, just a few yards ahead of them, the wretched cry: Help…help…me….
Several times they stopped the car when they were certain the voice was just inside the woods that edge the road, and got out into the lowering darkness. Just when they thought they were heading in the right direction, when they thought they were right on top of it, a voice would be heard in another direction. Always, the haunting appeal, Help…me….
They continued their methodical but frustrating search along the onyx hillside for about 35 to 40 minutes, always thinking they were just about to stumble over the injured person, only to hear the voice, a few yards in the distance. It was as if someone were purposefully leading them deeper and deeper into the Culp’s Hill woods.
One can only stay on the battlefield after it is closed for a short time before the inevitable occurs. They soon saw the flashing red and blue lights of a Park Ranger vehicle. The ranger got out of his patrol car and asked them what they were doing there after the park had closed. They explained to the skeptical ranger who was, no doubt, prepared to write them a ticket. “Just listen,” they asked.
Two or three minutes had gone by. The ranger’s patience was wearing thin. Then, as before, from the oppressive woods in the distance, the pitiful, tormented cry: Help…me….
Convinced now that there might be someone accidentally injured on the hill where once hundreds were purposefully hurt by their fellow men, the ranger radioed for assistance. Soon, another ranger came to help find the apparently injured man, or perhaps several injured men, since the cry seemed to come from so many places.
Again, as the four stood there on the darkened hillside, came the cry for assistance. Again the pinpointing of the location, now by four sets of ears and the powerful flashlights of the rangers. And again his location not found. And again the call from somewhere else up on the hill. For a while it must have seemed as if there was not one man injured on Culp’s Hill that night, but scores.
Finally, at about 1:30 a.m., the search was called off. As they walked to their cars, the mournful wails faded behind them, as if mocking their efforts. They returned to the campground. All were frustrated and agreed that even though they had scoured the hill, the voice—or voices—were unable to be located. It was as if there were too many to find, too many to help. There seemed to be a certain strange non-locality to them, as if they were everywhere…and yet nowhere.
The doctor asked the rangers what the next step was. They responded that it was just another unknown they would put into the log.
The next day the doctor and his party went back to the site where they had heard the cries so vivid and so numerous the night before. There was nothing. No tracks, other than their own, at the several spots where the doctor, the campground owner, and the rangers had investigated, the spots where they were convinced they had surrounded the injured man, only to be called off in another direction by another cry for help.
Part of the reason paranormal encounters often go unreported is because the common inquiry is “Have you ever seen a ghost?” Honest people will usually have to admit, no, they’ve never seen a ghost, and so they themselves figure they haven’t had a true paranormal experience. But that doesn’t mean they haven’t had a paranormal experience. According to researchers, only about 10 percent to 11 percent of all paranormal experiences are visual; a good 60 percent are auditory, and the rest are spread out between tactile, olfactory, and just plain odd, unexplainable feelings. You don’t have to see a ghost to have one present, and yet the most eerie, most unexplainable, and often the most frightening reports are of the sighting of a spirit entity….
A letter I received from a military historian for the Kentucky National Guard caught my attention, first because of the source. Historians I consider to be very skeptical professionals who are some of the last to believe in the paranormal events occurring on a battlefield where some of the documented events are frightening enough. And secondly, because the story he told was of the rare version of paranormal encounters: the actual sighting of an apparition.
On July 7, 2000—again around the anniversary of the battle—he brought his family to Gettysburg. They took one of the Licensed Battlefield Guided Tours then walked the battlefield in chronological order to understand the fighting a little better. They purchased the Ghosts of Gettysburg books and took a Ghosts of Gettysburg Candlelight Walking Tour. On the second day of their visit they toured the Culp’s Hill area. They noticed the marker for the 66th Ohio Infantry that fought upon the slopes and a path leading to the monument where Major Joshua Palmer was killed.
Path to the Marker for Major Palmer.
The battle of Gettysburg had raged for two days now. On the morning of July 3, it was still dark when Major Palmer and the men of the 66th were ordered over the crest of Culp’s Hill and told to place themselves perpendicular to the rest of the Union line. Even the general officer in charge was incredulous, telling the commander of the 66th that the enemy was right upon them and would “simply swallow” the regiment if they went out to their assigned position. Yet the men from the Buckeye State moved themselves into harm’s way. Immediately they were fired upon; immediately they took casualties, but managed to drive the Virginians who were before them. Throughout the morning they held, perhaps because of the courageous example of a small-town dentist who apparently turned down the safety of a rear-echelon medical corps position for the oak leafed shoulder boards of a line officer. Major Joshua G. Palmer of Urbana, Ohio, was mortally wounded and fell and bled out his life near a large rock on the side of the hill. If he had been a good dentist, he must have been a far better soldier for there is a monument to him placed on the rock that commemorates his mortal wounding on the field of battle.2
At 8:30 p.m. the historian and his family returned to Culp’s Hill. They were disappointed to see that someone was on the tower, and so decided to go down into the woods to visit the Ohio monument again.
As they descended the hill, the virtually impenetrable woods on Culp’s Hill closed in on them creating an eerie, oppressive darkness, much like that experienced by struggling Confederate troops who assaulted the well-defended Union positions at the summit of Culp’s Hill then were driven back down the hill into the murk of the woods and oncoming night.
No doubt as they descended into the darkness they trod on spots where brave men bled their last, dying, screaming in agony or silent as lambs, calmly awaiting the transmigration of their soul, or fearfully dreading their encounter with either their Benevolent Creator or the Great Imposter, whichever their lives would compel them to spend eternity with.
About halfway down the path, the military historian was disappointed again at seeing someone standing at the bottom of the hill looking at the dead Ohio Major’s marker. Peering into the growing darkness, his wife saw the vague shadow of a man as well. The man took his two children by the hand and stepped off to the side of the narrow trail as his wife stepped to the other side, to allow room for the stranger to pass.
They waited a few moments, but as no one passed, they looked back down the trail. The man was still standing, staring eerily at the marker, but now appeared merely as the ill-defined, fuzzy outline of a man. The historian blamed the fading vision on the failing light, yet one is compelled to think perhaps something else was at work. As the historian wrote, “It was obviously a man because of the large size, and he appeared to be wearing a Civil War fashion forage cap.” This came as no surprise since he knew the caps were sold locally and that there were a number of reenactors about the battlefield. The family decided to continue down the path even though someone was there.
As they started down the hill, the individual turned to face them. Again they started to step aside to allow him to pass, but as they did, the historian witnessed the impossible: the figure simply vanished, fading like a wisp into the eerie Otherworldliness of that once horrid hillside. Shocked, but attempting to reason out the disappearance, he tried to rationalize that the man had just gone down the trail. As they continued the few steps to the Major’s death marker, the historian was surprised when he felt the temperature drop at least 20 to 25 degrees. While his family looked at the marker, the historian attempted to find the man in the Civil War kepi that seemed to have vanished. He began to follow the pathway down the hill but realized that the woods opened up just a few feet from the Major’s marker. Anyone moving down the hill would have been seen. He looked in all directions, but saw no one.
When he returned to the marker, his children had in their hands a fresh white rose that they had found lying at the foot of the marker. It had not been there a couple of hours before when they visited. His wife said nothing about the hazy, indistinct form of a soldier who was there, then was not there.
They paid their respects to the fallen officer and began to ascend the hill to the parking area. As they did the temperature rose rapidly. They visited the tower, took some pictures, and his wife remembered that she hadn’t taken a snapshot of the Major’s memorial. As they hurried back down the hill to the marker, the historian expected to feel the cold of the woods cloak them again. Instead, as they descended, the temperature grew hotter and the humidity became foul and choking. By the time they reached the marker, they were all sweating profusely, when just moments before they had shivered in a dry, icy, unnatural cold.
On their drive back to the hotel, his wife hesitantly inquired, when he noticed the soldier at the bottom of the hill, if he seemed to just disappear. When her husband answered in the affirmative, it was then he found out that his wife had experienced the same things he had: the icy cold, then the humid heat, and, of course, the soldier who simply dematerialized before their eyes.
One is left to ponder this: Was the apparition one of Major Palmer’s loyal men making sure no one had defiled the monument to courage, tenacity and sacrifice made to hold the rocky hillside?
Or could it have been the Major, himself, standing there again, questioning the decision he once made to leave the comfortable, mundane world of repairing people’s teeth, to unknowingly seek the early death he found when the rock-strewn slope of Culp’s Hill became his personal dying-place?
George Armstrong Custer was one of the heroes of the Battle of Gettysburg. Thirteen years later he was on the way to a fated rendezvous with his end at a creek called the Little Big Horn. One of his Crow scouts, like the other Native American scouts who rode with Custer, had a fearful premonition of what lay ahead. “You and I,” he told Custer, “are both going home today by a road that we do not know.”3 It is a road the soldier on Culp’s Hill traveled at one time…and is apparently still traveling. It is a lonesome—and common—road we all are doomed to travel…sooner or later.
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