Civil War Ghost Trails Read online

  CIVIL WAR

  GHOST

  TRAILS

  Stories from

  America’s Most

  Haunted Battlefields

  MARK NESBITT

  STACKPOLE

  BOOKS

  Copyright ©2012 by Mark Nesbitt

  Published by

  STACKPOLE BOOKS

  5067 Ritter Road

  Mechanicsburg, PA 17055

  www.stackpolebooks.com

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. All inquiries should be addressed to Stackpole Books.

  Printed in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  FIRST EDITION

  Cover design by Caroline Stover

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Nesbitt, Mark.

  Civil War ghost trails : stories from America’s most haunted battlefields / Mark Nesbitt. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.

  ISBN 978-0-8117-1061-9 (pbk.)

  1. Ghosts—United States. 2. United States—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Battlefields—Miscellanea. 3. Historic sites—United States —Miscellanea. I. Title.

  BF1472.U6N46 2012

  133.1’22—dc23

  2012006395

  eBook ISBN: 978-0-8117-4858-2

  Contents

  A Note About EVP

  Introduction

  First and Second Manassas

  Shiloh

  The Peninsula

  Antietam

  Fredericksburg

  Chancellorsville

  Gettysburg

  Vicksburg

  Chickamauga

  Chattanooga

  Richmond

  The Wilderness

  Spotsylvania Court House

  Cold Harbor

  Kennesaw Mountain

  Franklin

  Prisons

  Savannah

  Petersburg and Appomattox

  Washington, D.C.

  Bibliography

  Acknowledgments

  Index

  A Note About EVP

  Electronic Voice Phenomena, also known as EVP, is one of the more interesting aspects of investigating the paranormal. EVP is thought by many to be the voices of the dead recorded on audio devices. In the past, writing a book and including examples of EVP has been problematic: Without including some kind of storage device—a tape or a compact disc—how does the reader get to examine EVP?

  The now-ubiquitous presence of the personal computer and the Internet has solved this problem. This book has been written with the realization that most will be reading it within arm’s length of a device with access to the Internet.

  Examples of EVP gathered at the Civil War sites are mentioned in many of the chapters, along with my subjective interpretation of what is being recorded. The reader may access these recordings by going to .

  The recordings are listed under the name of the historic site where they were gathered.

  Introduction

  When all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all “We died at such a place”; some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left. I am afeared there are few die well that die in battle.

  —King Henry V,4.1

  What is a ghost? By the age-old definition, a ghost is a disembodied soul that after the life of its body is over goes on to live an existence apart from the visible world. That particular definition says a lot: That we are more than just physical, flesh-and-blood bodies, that we also contain an intangible soul; that after the death of the physical body, the soul lives on and may be immortal; that it lives on in a place invisible to us, another world, another plane, another dimension, that may exist alongside the one in which we exist.

  A more sinister twist is found in the famous ghost hunter Hans Holzer’s definition: “Ghosts are the surviving mental faculties of people who died traumatically.” So, according to Holzer’s studies, if you want to come back as a ghost, it’s going to hurt.

  But it is Holzer’s definition that would seem to apply to just about every soldier who died in the American Civil War, whether by bullet or shell, or slow, painful, wasting disease. And it may at least partially explain why the battlefields of the Civil War are such fertile ground for hauntings.

  Why would ghosts be associated with the Civil War? Like most wars, the Civil War began with naїve expectations of a quick victory—on both sides. Men enlisted for ninety days and prayed that the war wouldn’t end before their enlistment. Parties and celebrations sent young men off to glorious war, and girlfriends could not really be serious when they told their beaux to bring home their uniforms without any holes in them.

  Tragically, after four years, more than 620,000 of those young men would never come home. Half of that number would die wasted from disease. Hundreds of thousands more would return missing a limb. These figures, however, are slightly misleading. America in the nineteenth century had less than one-tenth the population it does today. So we need to multiply those figures by ten to get the same impact they would have today. Imagine if, in just four years of war today, America lost more than 6 million young men and millions more came home missing an arm or leg or both. The outcry would be overwhelming.

  Analyzing just a few of the major battles gives insight into how horrifying the fighting really was. At Gettysburg, for example, while the battle lasted three days and cost 51,000 casualties, the actual fighting only consumed about twenty-four hours. Simple division tells us that in that time, 2,125 men were struck by hot lead or jagged iron every hour. That divides down to 35 men struck per minute. This means that every two seconds a man was being struck by a projectile.

  Near Fredericksburg, Virginia, four of the Civil War’s bloodiest battles consumed 100,000 casualties. In December 1862, the town itself was the scene of savage street fighting; a dozen Federal assaults upon Marye’s Heights made the grass slippery with blood. Four thousand men fell in one hour in those charges.

  Many of the casualties from Chancellorsville in 1863 and the Wilderness and Spotsylvania in 1864 were brought back to Fredericksburg, again filling the same churches, public buildings, and homes with wounded and dying as during the first combat there. If the Wilderness and Spotsylvania were counted as one battle (and they logically could since there was only one day of maneuvering between them), the 60,000 casualties would make it the bloodiest battle in all of American history.

  The dubious distinction of being the bloodiest single day falls to the Battle of Antietam (or Sharpsburg) in Maryland. Some 23,000 men were killed, wounded, or missing in the hours between the sunrise and sunset of September 17, 1862.

  The Western Theater of the war produced as much agony as the Eastern Theater. Chickamauga, in Georgia, became the second-bloodiest battle of the war. During the siege of Vicksburg, Mississippi, civilians resorted to living in caves to avoid the Union cannon fire. Sherman’s March to the Sea across Georgia brought the war to the doorsteps of the Southern civilian population; when Sherman turned north, his march across South Carolina was even worse.

  The last year of the war brought horror upon horror while prison pens, like Johnson’s Island in Ohio, Point Lookout in Maryland, Elmira in New York, and Andersonville in Georgia filled to overflowing with malnourished, sick, and poorly dressed prisoners who were forced, in some cases, to provide their ow
n shelter from the elements.

  The explosion of raw human emotions as men were shot, bayoneted, clubbed to death, or liquefied in the burst of an artillery shell (which may account for those listed as “missing”) may not be the only reason our Civil War battlefields remain haunted. Many of the fields themselves have been preserved as national parks, and the houses, farms, and barns where the wounded suffered and “shuffled off this mortal coil” are still in existence. Many of the towns have kept and restored the Civil War–era buildings that once saw horrors beyond belief. Of the 400 buildings in 1863 Gettysburg, 200 remain; Fredericksburg retains 350 of its original 500 Civil War–era structures.

  Even when structures are burned to the ground, spirits may still abide. Sherman’s March to the Sea stripped that section of Georgia. Why would it be haunted? According to Valerie V. Hunt in her book Infinite Mind,raw human emotions exude a force: “Emotion is aroused energy.” Certainly, the experience of a people watching their homes and possessions stolen or consumed by fire elicits strong emotions that linger to new generations; mention to virtually any Georgian today the name “Sherman” and listen to the reaction. Some paranormalists believe that emotional energy can remain embedded in certain elements of the environment and result in a particular kind of haunting called “residual.”

  Scientific Explanations for Ghosts

  In the search for a cogent analogy for just what reality is, physicists have theorized many models to attempt to illustrate how things happen in the universe. Originally, it was thought that the very nugget of matter, the atom, looked like a tiny planet with electrons whirling around a nucleus.

  Since then, dozens of theories about the nature of reality have emerged and been discarded. Others seem to have a longer shelf life. Whatever the theory, it would have to take in all realities: the macrocosm and microcosm; the visible and the invisible; the potential that several realities exist simultaneously on different planes or in different dimensions; that time does not move in just one direction; that life and the finality of death is an illusion. Physics has become more akin to philosophy than science.

  One theory in physics that may apply to the intertwining of dimensions is the concept of multiverses (as opposed to one universe). Numerous universes exist side-by-side upon malleable membranes (or “branes”). These branes can flex and bend and bulge so that, periodically, they intersect and information is passed between them. Perhaps we exist on a brane that occasionally intersects and passes information (in the form of energy—light, sound, heat) with another brane upon which exists the spirit energy of former living humans. When they intersect, we experience what we call ghosts, the vision or voice or touch of someone who has passed over to that other brane.

  Perhaps a simpler explanation for why the physical energy remnants remain attached to a specific site is a geological one. Joe Farrell, a paranormal investigator from the Gettysburg area, was the first to bring this idea to my attention. Paranormal investigator Richard Felix, from England, also had the same thought, and we tossed it around on a recent visit of his to Gettysburg. It seems that a great many paranormal encounters occur where there is a lot of granite. Granite is one of the most plentiful types of rock on earth and contains quartz crystal. Quartz (or silicon) is known to capture or resonate to electricity in its environment. We have been keeping time using quartz watches for close to half a century, and silicon quartz is what the main operating systems in computers use. We also know that when humans die, they release an explosion of photons, or a “light shout,” as Polish physicist Janusz Slawinski called it in the Journal of Near-Death Studies.While studying the Shroud of Turin, Slawinski discovered that a dying organism emits photons more than a thousand times greater than the electromagnetic field it gives off during its usual resting state. As cells die and genetic material begins to unravel, as it does at death, a powerful charge of electromagnetic energy is released. As well, when bones are broken (as when struck by a bullet), it creates a piezoelectric effect, releasing electricity into the surroundings. This occurs, of course, thousands of times during a battle and during its surgical aftermath. Perhaps this electromagnetic energy is captured in the quartz, then released under certain environmental conditions—conditions that may include an interface with living humans.

  Types of Hauntings at Civil War Battlefields

  Paranormalists classify hauntings into several types.

  • Intelligent, or interactive. In this type of haunting, the ghost acknowledges the presence of the living percipient and sometimes attempts to communicate. One story from Devil’s Den at Gettysburg is of a female photographer who, early one morning, was out at the site alone, standing on top of one of the rocks about to take a picture. Suddenly she got the feeling she was being watched. She turned and saw a man behind her. “What you’re looking for is over there,” he said, and then pointed past her head. She looked where he was pointing, but then turned immediately back to him and he was gone. The fact that he acknowledged and spoke to her classifies this as an intelligent haunting.

  • Residual. These sightings are scenes that play out over and over, much like a video. The phantom battalion at Gettysburg, which marches out, does a few maneuvers, and then disappears without ever acknowledging the observer, is an example of a residual haunting. Another is the Woman in White at Chatham Manor in Fredericksburg; she wanders the grounds apparently without seeing anyone from the present. Closely related is a warp, which is a rip in the fabric of time, a vision into the past. There is a story of a woman in Fredericksburg who hanged herself at the top of some stairs. Periodically, someone will glance up and see a misty figure swinging back and forth, a vision of what once occurred in that space many years before.

  • Poltergeist. Poltergeist means “noisy ghost.” The activity is manifested in slamming doors, lights flickering on and off, levitation, and generally disruptive behavior. Silverware flying off tables in some of the restaurants in Fredericksburg is an example of poltergeist activity.

  • Ghost lights. These are unexplained illuminations. Phantom campfires have been seen near the Wilderness Battlefield and in the Wheatfield at Gettysburg; when they are investigated, there’s no evidence of a fire. The mysterious orbs caught on digital cameras at haunted sites are also examples.

  • Crisis apparitions. These occur only during emergencies, apparently to inform the living. They seem to happen at night when most people are sound asleep. The typical crisis apparition awakes you in the middle of the night. For instance, you would recognize the figure standing by your bed and ask, “Uncle Joe, what are you doing here?” He answers, “I just came to say goodbye,” and vanishes. You look at the clock: it is 2:00 A.M. and you figure you just had a strange dream and so you go back to sleep. The next morning Aunt Mary calls to tell you that your Uncle Joe died this morning at about 2:00 A.M.

  So what should you expect from a battlefield haunting? Most people never see a ghost. Only about 10 percent of all ghost manifestations are visual. A good 60 percent are auditory. So you are more likely to hear a ghost than see one. But all the senses can be involved—smell, touch, and taste, as well as sound and sight. There is also that intangible sense, the feeling that something is different or something is there.

  On battlefields people have smelled rotten eggs. Why? Sulfur was a main component of black powder, the main propellant used during the nineteenth century—and sulfur smells like rotten eggs when it burns.

  People have been touched—caressed or pushed—on Civil War battlefields and in buildings that were in existence on or near those sites. Others have experienced cold spots. The reenactors who played in the movie Gettysburg felt them when they were marching across the field of Pickett’s Charge. It was a warm summer day, in the high 80s, but when the men descended into one of the swales in the field, it became immediately icy cold. They claimed they could see each other’s breath condensing in the cold. When they went up and out of the swale into the summer heat, they were totally confused about what happened.

 
People have heard things on Civil War battlefields that hearken back to the most famous moments in history: cannons firing, musketry, cheers of large bodies of men, orders being shouted, drums, fifes, and cries and screams of the wounded.

  Why Do Spirits Linger?

  Paranormalists have listed a number of reasons why they believe spirits remain or return to visit the living. The conditions below are all present during a battle-related death. In many cases, several are present for any one individual killed in combat. In other words, battles are the “perfect storm” for creating ghosts.

  • Abrupt death. Death didn’t get any more abrupt than when a soldier was charging artillery loaded with double or triple canister, the anti-personnel projectile that turned the cannon into a giant shotgun. In an instant, a man was blown to atoms.

  • Youthful death. Most of the soldiers in the Civil War were in their early twenties, perhaps younger if a large number of them lied about their age in the heady early days of the war in order to enlist. Most of those who died in the Civil War were young and perished far too soon.

  • Unexpected death. This is closely related to an abrupt death. Men and women enter combat hoping, praying, and fighting to live through the experience. That’s why suicide soldiers are so rare and horrifying to the normal person’s mind. Although the thought of death in battle can never be far from the average soldier’s thoughts, actually seeking death is not the norm. Therefore, when death comes to the soldier, it is usually unexpected.

  • Drawn to the living. Ghosts seem to be attracted to people. Some mediums I know tell me that when asked by people if their house is haunted they reply, “No, but you are.” Each year, tourists visit the battlefields where thousands died. The attraction to humans may be a reason why ghosts are seen so often at places of mass death like the Civil War fields of conflict.