by Leslie Rule
www.esbnyc.com
This 1930s postcard depicts the Empire State Building, where many suicide victims are stuck indefinitely. (author’s collection)
Ghosts in the News
Closing Time
SUICIDE DID NOT END the sad saga of a woman on North Dixie Drive in Dayton, Ohio, according to the October 28, 1999, issue of the Dayton Daily News. The specter, known as the “lady in red,” appeared in the Odd Lots store on North Dixie Drive and liked to handle the merchandise.
Employee Lorna Boggs told reporter Martha Hardcastle that toys sometimes flew off of shelves when no living person was near them.
Store employees believed the ghost may be that of a woman who allegedly hung herself in the warehouse portion of the building when it was operated as Liberal Market.
One evening after hours, Lorna Boggs was doing her paperwork when she saw a woman lingering in the store. She was about to open her mouth to announce that the store was closed when she stopped herself.
It was not a shopper; it was a ghost.
“She had a red dress hanging out from a black coat, and she was wearing black shoes and a black straw hat,” Lorna told the reporter.
The “lady in red” may not be aware she has already checked out.
six
Victims of War
When it comes to killing, there is one instance where many consider it to be a noble deed.
War.
Millions of people have killed each other for things such as honor and land and have been heralded as heroes. Indeed, these folks may very well be selfless and brave with nothing but the best intentions in their hearts. But that fact does not diminish the ugliness of violent death or the grief of those who lose loved ones in battle.
War has probably produced more earthbound spirits than any other type of death. The sheer number of war victims and the fact that most dead soldiers were cut down in the prime of their lives result in a mind-boggling number of stuck souls. Here are a few cases of mortally wounded warriors who remain.
Reporting for Duty
One location that may harbor the ghosts of war victims is a forty-five-minute ferry ride from Seattle. The naval shipyard in Bremerton, Washington, is a place where old submarines go to die. The following are excerpts of a correspondence from a witness to strange goings on there.
Hello Leslie,
I guess that one would classify me as a “sensitive guy,” in that I always felt a deep closeness to religious and spiritual matters and could somehow feel things about certain people, houses, and situations.
Two of my experiences that involve the paranormal occurred while I was employed with the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton, Washington. Both occurred in Dry-dock #3, aboard nuclear submarines that were undergoing inactivation and recycling.
The first happened on the SSN-665 Guitarro on 8/16/94. I worked blowing down the engine room section of the submarine, following abrasive blast operations to remove surface contaminants. The metal had to be cleaned prior to being cut and sold for scrap.
On this warm August day, there were only two people in the area. No sooner had I started blowing down with the blast hose when I heard my name called. …
So began the letter from Roger Maggert, who went on to explain that though the equipment produced noise louder than a jet engine, the voice was clear. He climbed off the submarine and asked his puzzled coworker if he had called to him.
Roger went back to work but heard his name called several more times. Sure that someone was playing a trick on him, he checked to see if someone was hiding atop the submarine. When he found no one there, he returned to work, shaken. As I continued with the blow-down, he wrote, I became aware of fifteen to twenty voices all talking at once. It was as if a party were happening inside that sub. …
The voices escalated until Roger became so rattled that he finally grabbed his gear and left. His second encounter was four years later on October 10, 1998. Again, he was working with just one other man in the recycling area of the Bremerton shipyard, this time on the SSN-660 Sand Lance. Roger wrote:
I caught movement from the corner of my eye through my MSA full-fæc respirator. I turned to witness a full-figure ghost staring directly at me for at least fifteen seconds! This man was about ten feet from me, wore dark blue navy coveralls and was about five feet ten inches. He was balding and held what appeared to be a flashlight. He seemed to be in his late forties, and was possibly of Slavic descent. Without saying a word, he implanted the following statements in my mind. “Why are you doing away with my home?” and, “It’s not polite to stare.”
It was clear that this man did not know he was dead. …
Roger obligingly glanced at the ground, and when he looked back, the ghost had vanished before his eyes. His letter continues: I marveled that I had truly seen a ghost. In fact, I was so excited that I called a trusted friend who worked with me and confided that something weird had happened. …
Before he could explain, his friend told him that he had seen an apparition when he was sandblasting the night before Roger’s encounter. The two men were incredulous. The shared encounter created a special tie between them, said Roger.
When he asked around, he learned that a chief had died of a heart attack on the Sand Lance. He could not find documentation of the death but suspects the ghost he encountered was the chief.
It is also possible that the specter who stalks the Bremerton shipyard is tied to one of the many deaths connected with the site. Perhaps he was one of the crew of the USS Saratoga, an aircraft carrier launched in 1925. Its wartime résumé included carrying planes that brought death and destruction to the Japanese.
The ship was attacked on February 21, 1945, near Iwo Jima. Six Japanese planes scored five hits within a three-minute span. The surviving crew, though stunned by the sight of their dead shipmates, scrambled to extinguish the fires raging on the hangar deck. They were heartbroken to find that 123 of their own were killed or missing.
Less than four weeks later, the Saratoga arrived at the Bremerton shipyard for repairs.
Could it have brought a few ghosts along? Perhaps the dead men followed their shipmates off of the Saratoga and took refuge in the shipyard.
Could a few of them have found their way into the old submarine that Roger prepared for recycling? Maybe. Most likely the noisy party that Roger heard was a place memory, imprinted upon the submarine by the men who had once lived there.
When it comes to speculating on the identities of those who haunt the shipyard, we have many from which to choose. In addition to those killed in battle, there are other deaths connected with the place.
The Bremerton shipyard is notorious as the site that launched the 1918 pandemic in the state of Washington, the fatal flu that wiped out 20 percent of America’s population. With one out of five folks succumbing, nearly every family lost someone.
According to William Dietrich’s article, “The Enemy Within,” in the October 24, 2004, issue of the Seattle Times, “The most virulent pandemic in world history probably slipped into Washington on September 17, 1918, when feverish naval recruits from Philadelphia docked at Bremerton’s Puget Sound Naval Shipyard.”
This vintage photograph shows the Bremerton shipyard where the ghosts of war victims come and go in the big gray ships. (author’s collection)
Dietrich goes on to say that despite the fact that nearly two hundred Washington servicemen were stricken by the flu that was already amassing fatalities on the East Coast, the army refused to cancel an event where ten thousand civilians would be exposed to the flu as they watched a review of the National Guard infantry. As a result, the deadly bug soon “began flashing through the civilian population like wildfire.”
The flu. Heart attacks. Torpedoes, courtesy of past enemies.
They’ve all snatched precious life from those who have moved through Bremerton’s historic shipyard. And most likely, a variety of deaths have left ghosts behind there. The majority would be those enlisted in the navy, pr
oud to serve America. They may be so proud that they are not yet ready to leave their time and place of perceived glory and are simply clinging to the site where the giant gray ships still come and go.
Where Is My Head?
Dan Gallagher and his family will never forget the unusual roommate who shared their home in Watertown, Massachusetts. Built in 1750, the house has been remodeled many times over the years, but the basement has remained in original condition, Dan explained in the beginning of a letter to me. He continued:
We had a number of incidents take place while we were living there. The toaster oven in the kitchen would turn on by itself, and unseen hands snatched the headphones off of my daughter’s head while she was riding her exercise bicycle in the downstairs area near our kitchen.
I’ve seen shadows pass along the wall during the evening hours when all the lighting was steady. And my wife saw a headless soldier!
The headless figure, in uniform, walked with a limp through the gate to the backyard. He walked around to our back door and paused, as if he was asking for help. After a few moments, the figure walked through the back door and into the house.
After hearing my wife’s description of the soldier’s uniform, I did a little research and discovered he was more than likely a Hessian soldier. We theorize that he must have been wounded and looking for medical help when he appeared at the back door of the house. The occupant of the house must have taken him in and helped him. The soldier would obviously have had his head at the time, so I figure that perhaps he was later killed and lost his head. The help he received at the house must have imprinted itself upon him so that his ghost returned to that spot.
The kitchen is located directly above the basement, and my wife always said she felt as if the energy from the manifestations was coming from down there. I know that we rarely went into the basement, except to do the laundry. Even then, we headed back upstairs as quickly as we could! There was a boarded-up recessed area in the basement, and I was unable to figure out its purpose. Perhaps there is a connection between that area and the haunting.
While Dan Gallagher makes an interesting point about a possible injury that caused the soldier to lose his head, the ghost’s presentation may have nothing to do with his appearance upon death.
Ghosts often appear with missing parts. One theory says that they are simply unable to exert the energy necessary to present a full image.
When it comes to apparitions with missing parts, witnesses most commonly report that the apparitions are missing their lower extremities.
Ghosts in the News
Graveyard Party
IN WILLISTON, TENNESSEE, an antebellum home that was once part of the historic Walker Plantation is today home to a small family and to the ghosts of Civil War soldiers buried on the grounds. The lovely home with its columned front porch was built in 1857 and was home to the slave-owning Walker family, one of the first families to settle in Williston.
Phantom conversations were first heard by a painter who was working during remodeling. Before long, the family, too, heard the jumbled voices, always sounding as if they came from the next room. “It sounds like someone is having a party,” one family member told a reporter at the Fayette County Review.
It was common in the area for Confederate soldiers to be buried in shallow graves and under houses during the Civil War, and some believe it is the restless spirits of fatally wounded soldiers who haunt the home.
Where the Dead Wander
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, is home to one of the most famous haunted battle sites in America. It was the biggest and bloodiest battle of the Civil War with over 51,000 soldiers killed. The horror filled the first three days of July 1863 and ended with the Union Army claiming victory over the Confederate troops.
What was once just a small town fifty miles northwest of Baltimore is today a major tourist magnet. Two million people visit the Gettysburg National Military Park each year to explore the twenty-six miles of park roads and scrutinize the fourteen hundred monuments. Whether they are looking for ghosts or not, countless visitors come away with inexplicable images on their photos and thrilling accounts of spirit encounters.
Apparitions of soldiers are most frequently witnessed. Sometimes the images are filmy and transparent. Other times they appear so solid that they are assumed to be live people dressed in period costume—until they vanish before astonished viewers’ eyes!
Sometimes the soldiers float by without legs. A headless soldier on a ghostly horse is among the specters seen.
Downtown Gettysburg, about a mile north of the park, is also swarming with ghosts.
Built as the Hotel Gettysburg in 1890, one old inn took over the site of a 1797 tavern. Despite the newer structure, spirits of the Civil War seem rooted to the spot, for they are often seen at the hotel.
Hotel staff has named one ghost Rachel. Several times each year, guests report an eerie visit from the specter of a nurse who appears with a whoosh of cool air.
Some insist that she has communicated with them. She is distraught, they say, because of her inability to treat the many wounded soldiers with such horribly damaged limbs.
Nurse Rachel recently visited the same room twice, encountering a different startled guest each time. Both guests reported that their dresser drawers mysteriously popped open, and their clothing was yanked out.
Maybe Rachel simply wanted something to rip up into bandages. Like so many visitors to Gettysburg, Rachel, too, may see the bloodied apparitions of the wounded. It’s only natural that she wants to help.
————
GETTYSBURG NATIONAL MILITARY PARK
91 Taneytown Road
Gettysburg, PA 17325
(717) 334-1124
————
THE BEST WESTERN GETTYSBURG HOTEL
One Lincoln Square
Gettysburg, PA 17325
(717) 337-2000
Friendly Fire
When employees of the museum in Fort Monroe, Virginia, are asked about the ghosts, they reply, “We are not supposed to talk about it.”
The fort, named for United States President James Monroe, was completed in 1834 and is surrounded by a moat. Still an active army post, the stone fort is situated on the tip of the Virginia Peninsula on the Chesapeake Bay.
Despite the authorities’ orders to keep the ghost stories quiet, the accounts still circulate. Some say that the tall, thin specter of Abraham Lincoln has been spotted in the officers’ quarters. Others claim to have seen a woman in a gauzy white dress floating through part of the fort so haunted that it is known as “Ghost Alley.”
Throughout the area, mysterious laughter is sometimes heard, and objects inexplicably vanish.
This vintage image of Fort Monroe, Virginia, was photographed around 1913. (author’s collection)
An antique postcard depicts the entry to haunted Fort Monroe, Virginia. (author’s collection)
It is possible that some of the fort’s ghosts remain earthbound because of a tragedy a century ago. It was July 22, 1910, when the wives and children of artillerymen were invited to watch target practice. The men were instructed to pretend an imaginary fleet was passing the fort on the way to Washington.
It was to be the grandest target practice to date, but fate had an ugly plan.
As family members looked on, a powder charge exploded, blowing a few of the men to bits. Eleven were killed, and many others injured.
After such a devastating accident, it is no wonder that Fort Monroe is haunted.
This rare postcard shows a group of men shortly before many were killed in a horrific accident at Fort Monroe, Virginia, in 1910. (author’s collection)
Ghosts in the News
No Bones about It
THE DISCOVERY OF a Civil War skeleton sheds light on the spooky happenings at a Texas library, according to the August 21, 2004, issue of the El Paso Times.
Employees of the El Paso Library have seen two specters: a tall man they call “the captain” and a woman dubb
ed “the nurse.” The apparitions materialize in a storage area in the library’s sub-basement, twenty feet underground.
While digging in a site behind the library, workers recently unearthed an old skeleton believed to be a soldier, because the area was a military graveyard in the 1860s. Though the cemetery was later relocated, a few skeletons—and perhaps their ghosts—were left behind. Another skeleton was dug up during work on sewer lines in 1998.
Items move on their own, odd noises interrupt the peace, and water faucets turn themselves on at the library, according to the report. Longtime employee Terri Grant told reporter Daniel Borunda that an invisible presence once shoved her while she was investigating a noisy ruckus in a vacant section of the library. “I was not scared enough to quit,” she said.
seven
Afraid of the Light
“When killers die, they never remain as ghosts.”
When the speaker made that bold statement, no one in the audience challenged him. I, however, wanted to leap from my chair and protest. But I had already finished giving my talk, and it was his turn to speak.
We were at a paranormal conference, and I was listening to the session taught by one of my peers, a man well-respected in the field.
I bit my lip, wondering how he could know such a thing. He possesses no special powers. He can’t know any more about the other side than the rest of us. He confirmed my contention that the term “ghost expert” is an oxymoron.
By their very nature, ghosts are mysterious and elusive beings. Out of reach and seldom seen, their secrets are hidden in the fleeting shadows.
We can collect witness accounts, measure energy levels in haunted sites, record ethereal voices on tape, and capture images on film.