Ghosts of Gettysburg II Read online

  Ghosts of Gettysburg II

  Spirits, Apparitions and Haunted Places on the Battlefield

  by

  Mark Nesbitt

  Published by Second Chance Publications at Smashwords

  Copyright 2012 Mark V. Nesbitt

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  ISBN 13: 978-0-9849063-4-5

  Discover other titles by Mark V. Nesbitt at SecondChancePublications.com.

  This book is available in print at most online retailers.

  Photos by Mark and Carol Nesbitt unless otherwise credited.

  Original cover design by Ryan C. Stouch

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  To Dani

  A kindred spirit...

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  Map of Ghost Story Venues

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  In great deeds something abides. On great fields something stays. Forms change and pass; bodies disappear; but spirits linger, to consecrate ground for the vision-place of souls. And reverent men and women from afar, and generations that know us not and that we know not of, heart-drawn to see where and by whom great things were suffered and done for them, shall come to this deathless field, to ponder and dream; and lo! the shadows of a mighty presence shall wrap them in its bosom, and the power of the vision pass into their souls.

  —Major General Joshua Chamberlain

  Gettysburg, October 3,1889

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  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1 - Foreword

  Chapter 2 - Acknowledgments

  Chapter 3 - On Interludes With The Other World

  Chapter 4 - A Wrinkle In Time

  Chapter 5 - Slaying Days In Eden

  Chapter 6 - Twice Hallowed Ground

  Chapter 7 - A Cavalryman’s Revenge

  Chapter 8 - Lower Than Angels

  Chapter 9 - Castaway Souls

  Chapter 10 - Off-Off Broadway

  Chapter 11 - Townsmen Of A Stiller Town

  Chapter 12 - Fall Of The Sparrow

  Chapter 13 - Death’s Feast

  Chapter 14 - Pirouettes In Quicksand

  Chapter 15 - Somewhere Between Worlds

  Chapter 16 - End Notes

  Chapter 17 - About the Author

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  Chapter 1: Foreword

  More than a decade before the Civil War, Nathaniel Hawthorne, in his introduction to the novel The Scarlet Letter, observed: “There is a fatality, a feeling so irresistible and inevitable that it has the force of doom, which almost invariably compels human beings to linger around and haunt, ghostlike, the spot where some great and marked event has given the color to their lifetime.” While Hawthorne was writing of Salem, Massachusetts, his recognition of the power of the “spirit of place” is no less true of Gettysburg. And if this spirit can compel so many thousands of visitors to Gettysburg annually—a visit many choose to make again and again—is it enough merely to attribute that power to a creative imagination or sense of history? Or is there more?

  The author of this book, Mark Nesbitt, believes there is. And as someone who has had the pleasure of knowing him for many years, I can say with certainty that he is not the kind of person given to “all kinds of marvelous beliefs, trances, visions or strange sights.” But, as Washington Irving did with the old Dutch villages along the Hudson River in such stories as “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle,” Mark has clearly established that Gettysburg is indeed a neighborhood that “abounds with local tales, haunted spots, and twilight superstitions.”

  Dr. Walter L. Powell

  Gettysburg

  August 28, 1992

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  Chapter 2: Acknowledgments

  Meeting and speaking with people has always been the most interesting part of this job of writing. Though writing has been described as a solitary profession, and it is true that much of it is done in solitude, the occasional contact with others is not only enjoyable, but vital to the production of any book. People have helped me in innumerable ways; from the obvious, of relating their paranormal experiences on the battlefield, to the subtle, of lending encouragement when they saw I needed it. To each and every one, I say thanks.

  But I must say an especially heartfelt “thank you” to the following people who helped with this book in very special ways: Roscoe Barnes, III; Beth Bestrom; Elwood Christ; Gregory A. Coco; Jim Cooke & Davey Crockett; Sue U. Currens; Dr. Charles Emmons and the researchers and writers of term papers including Jose Pimienta, Kurt Hettler, Raymond L. Carpenter, Charles M. Shively; Dorothea Fasig and her son Mike; D. Scott Hartwig; David T. Hedrick of Special Collections, Gettysburg College, Musselman Library; Mary J. Hinish; Ray Hock; Corporal Michael Hofe; Karyol Kirkpatrick; Elaine McManness; Stephanie Lower McSherry; Georgette Myers; Manuel Otero of the American Print Shoppe in Gettysburg; Winona Peterson; Greg Platzer; Dr. Walter Powell; Robert Prosperi; Colonel Jacob M. Sheads; Don and Bev Stivers; Danette Taylor; Jeane Thomas; Marsha Taylor-Tyree; Bob & Jane Wright.

  To those with whom I spoke who are not included in these acknowledgments, my sincerest apologies. Notes get lost or misplaced very easily in the mental and physical whirlwind my life becomes when writing a book.

  And to all those of you who called and wrote to relate your own paranormal experiences on the battlefield, thanks. If your story is not included in this volume it doesn’t mean I didn’t believe you. Time and space constraints are very real to a writer and must be strictly adhered to. Besides, as the supernatural experiences continue to occur out on this great battlefield, you may someday find your own story included in Ghosts of Gettysburg III!

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  Chapter 3: On Interludes With The Other World

  I balanced all, brought all to mind,

  The years to come seemed waste of breath,

  A waste of breath the years behind

  In balance with this life, this death.

  —William Butler Yeats

  Before I moved to Gettysburg twenty years ago, I lived in northern Ohio near Cleveland in a town with a population of over 80,000 people. Having a number of industries in the city, the area was a melting pot of races and nationalities, politics and religions. Surely, with as large a population and with as many pious, God-fearing, and superstitious souls as there were, in twenty years I should have heard some ghost stories.

  But I remember only two in twenty years. One was about an orphanage—appropriately named “Gore Orphanage”—which burned to the ground several decades before I or any one of my friends was born. They said on certain crisp autumn nights you could hear the children who died in the fire screaming for help. Needless to say, as soon as any one of us got his driver’s license, a nocturnal trip past Gore Orphanage with a carload of pals was obligatory. The charred ruins were indeed visible from the roadway. But, no one that I knew, sad to say, ever heard a thing.

  The other story—which can’t even be classified as a ghost story—was that ancient hack about the couple out parking after a date. They had heard on the radio of an escaped lunatic from a local asylum. There was a rustle in the bushes. The young man goes out to investigate and tells his girl to lock all the doors and, no matter what happens, not to open them. Five minutes pass. Then ten. After fifteen minutes she begins to hear a quiet tapping and slow scraping on the roo
f of the car. It continues for an hour and longer. Heeding her boyfriend’s command, she curls up, covering her head in fear. The tapping goes on all night until the sun rises, when finally it ceases. Nearly mad with fear, she starts at the sound of a knock at the window. It is the local constable, sent by her frantic parents to find her and her boyfriend. “What ever you do,” he says, helping her out of the car to a waiting ambulance, “don’t look back.” As she sits down in the ambulance, she cannot help herself. She takes a quick look back at the car. There, hanging upside down over the roof of the car, his blood dripping rhythmically and his fingernails barely able to scrape the roof, was her boyfriend who had died only moments before.

  Thrilling, but how many communities have had that same lover's lane lunatic prowling about committing mayhem?

  Two stories in twenty years.

  But when I moved to Gettysburg, in a quarter of that time I’d heard enough stories—augmented by some contemporary research—to collect into Ghosts of Gettysburg. In fact, there were more than enough. Hence this second volume, Ghosts of Gettysburg II.

  When Ghosts of Gettysburg first came out I had expected more than a few skeptics to accuse me of either: a) making the stories up; or, b) being completely crazy, along with my sources, for believing in these sightings.

  Those are two comments I have yet to hear. Perhaps it is because I usually preface my talks to various groups about the book with a comment about my methodology: I tried to include only the stories which I had heard from at least two different sources who experienced the event at different times or from two different sources who themselves had heard it from different unrelated people at different times.

  Another thing I like to say to those skeptical of people who see visions of spirits in the night, is that people are normally not likely to report something that will expose them to ridicule...unless they are so convinced by the undeniability of the experience, that they are compelled to tell about it.

  The two types of comments I did receive after the book came out were surprising. First, there were people calling me on the phone, writing to me, and coming up to me to tell me about their own paranormal experiences at Gettysburg. I received letters, calls and comments from people in Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Montana, California—and Gettysburg—who had had strange experiences on the Gettysburg Battlefield. It seems as if the publication of a book chronicling other peoples’ interludes with the other world somehow validated their unbelievable experiences on the fields where so much energy dissipated.

  The other comment I received was even more astounding: “You know that ghost you wrote about at Devil’s Den? Some friends and I saw him and he looks just the way you described him!”

  * * *

  So, just what is still going on out there where the fire of youth and patriotic passion was doused thousands and thousands of times over in three short days?

  I think some people want me to explain why the apparitions have occurred, and continue to occur, and why seemingly unexplainable and illogical visions pop up out of nowhere and just as suddenly and inexplicably return to wherever it was they came from. I cannot fully explain it. Some people look toward the existence of ghosts as a sort of proof, a validation that there is another life after this one, that death is not the final Victor, but merely the Great Imposter.

  I am aware that some sociologists and paranormalists who have studied numerous events have attempted to classify the visions. I suppose it is their desire to study them scientifically. Yet, since the apparitions cannot be repeated under controlled conditions whenever we want to repeat them, they cannot be literally classified as scientific. But collected as they have been in this and the previous book, they can be studied.

  It seems though that many people who have never seen an apparition are resolute: To them there are no such things as ghosts. It also seems that those who have seen or experienced something paranormal are just as adamant: They may not want to call it a ghost, but they are absolutely certain of what they saw.

  Yet whether we’ve seen some unexplainable vision or not, there is something to those odd feelings we sometimes get. We’ve all been sitting and have had the feeling that someone behind is looking at us. The “feeling” that we are being stared at is so strong that we are often compelled to look in that direction, and are normally greeted by a face which quickly looks away. Why do we not want to believe it when the feeling is the same and strong enough to make us turn and look and there happens to be no one there?

  We also acknowledge that there are certain people who are more sensitive than others to the presence of these as yet unexplainable sightings. Truly, some of us have a little extra perception into that unseen realm. And then there are those people who have never had a paranormal experience in their lives and have come to Gettysburg and experienced one for the first time.

  So the feelings extend to certain places as well. Most people, at one time or another have experienced an uncomfortable feeling walking at night in certain areas or in certain buildings. The heart begins to pump faster, the scalp tingles, and the walking pace picks up. Walking through a cemetery (as I often did when I lived in the National Cemetery at Gettysburg) most people will feel uncomfortable. Is it merely the power of suggestion, or is it the place itself?

  Most of history has been written in human blood with a bayonet for a quill. We’ve warred for land, for love, for lord, for riches, for royalty, for rape. We’ve killed and suffered for peace, for God, for country. Certainly, of all places on this earth, a battlefield would hold for many years the strong emotional remnants—like a lingering scent or a fingerprint in the soft dust of time—of those who fought and died there.

  Battlefields where Americans have struggled and were slain are special places because of one singular attitude Americans historically have had. We’ve always been known for our savvy as tradesmen. Furs, foodstuffs, precious minerals, land, weapons, baseball cards, used cars. We’ve always liked to think of ourselves as honest in a trade, and shrewd—getting what we want for what we no longer need. Americans always like to think they’ve traded one thing for something better. The battlefield fouls that all up.

  A man’s dying is a very precious thing. You’d like to be certain that somehow you’ve traded life for something more important. But on a battlefield, there are no good bargains. A soldier trades his life for a few feet of terrain, for a little bit of higher ground, or a few yards of seawall or rock fence. No wonder there are disgruntled spirits lingering on American battlefields.

  And, as long as Americans continue to fight, there will be those broken, wandering, souls in rebellion, and the cries of the doomed will fade into mere whispers softly echoing on those battlefields from beyond, perhaps forever. Gettysburg is now, and certainly will continue to be, one of those places where the echoes can be heard.

  To those who are analytical, several truly scientific theories, when looked at broadly, hint at being able to explain the existence of life after death, even if in another form and in another world.

  Three theories have emerged from the science of physics that might apply to answering the question whether there is existence in some form after death. One of the laws of thermodynamics states that the total sum of energy in the universe cannot be added to or reduced, that it remains constant, but merely changes forms.

  Ever since Einstein’s formula of E = MC2 was confirmed, we have realized that matter and energy are indeed interchangeable, and that time—using the speed of light as an absolute—is an inescapable part of the equation as well. Now if matter and energy are the same thing in different forms, and if, according to the laws of thermodynamics, energy is constant, then the only kicker in trying to apply some real physical laws to prove the existence of life after death, is time. Since we are convinced death is irreversible and time cannot be made to go back, it would seem impossible for someone once dead to appear alive again.

  Some recent theories are beginning to explain even this. Parallel universes—invisible
to one another yet existing side by side and simultaneously—may help us understand how, while changing form, energy can continue to exist irrespective of time constraints. It is a theory that is gaining more followers all the time to help explain some physical anomalies scientists are discovering throughout the universe. Could death be just a door to that other, simultaneously existing universe? Could the laws of our strictly forward-moving time be meaningless there? Could the energy from our own dissolving or dying matter—since energy cannot be destroyed—merely change locations as it changes form? Could the sightings described in this and other books be tiny tears in this reality’s fabric providing a brief glimpse into the usually invisible, but also very real, parallel-existing world? Could the parallel universe—this world’s counterfeit—be the place we’ve heard described in literature as “heaven” or “paradise,” the place of the Great Light from which those individuals who have had near-death experiences return and talk about? And is there a limbo place where perturbed spirits dwell that is in this parallel universe whose door is sometimes thick and sometimes thin, sometimes opaque and sometimes glassine?

  Two things we know for sure: We don’t know all there is to know about energy and our generation is not at the end of all knowledge. It was only in 1927, after having lived with the most abundant and universal energy source for millions of years that scientists realized that it was nuclear fusion that energized our own sun. Suddenly, after all those millennia, we understood.