Ghosts of Gettysburg II

by Mark Nesbitt

  One of the finest of these artists now painting was researching here in Gettysburg and staying with his wife in a modern motel just on the edge of the battlefield. In fact, his room was located only a couple of hundred yards from where Pickett’s Charge passed to find itself wasted on the gentle, fire-ringed slopes of Cemetery Ridge. Some of the Northern soldiers who died defending the Union line were buried even closer to where he and his wife slept that night, in the National Cemetery just a hundred or so yards away, enjoying sleep’s viler sister, death.

  It was about two in the morning when the artist started to hear it. A soft movement of what initially sounded like some of the jewelry he and his wife left on the dresser as they prepared for bed. At first he was a little disgusted to think that a fine modern motel like the one they had rented had mice. His wife was awakened by the rattling as well and quietly mentioned it to him. Slowly, silently he raised himself from the bed and flipped on the light to catch the little critters in the act and call the night desk clerk to report them.

  No rodent was on the desk. The jewelry appeared to be in the same place where his wife had left it. Nothing appeared to have been moved. He went over to the window to see if anyone was out in the parking lot trying to break into their car. But it was the off-season in Gettysburg and there was only one other car in the lot, and no one was near it. Perplexed, but not hearing the noises anymore, he turned the light back out and reclined. Apparently, whatever it was, it was gone.

  Modern Steinwehr Avenue and motels.

  Then it started again. This time it came from a corner of the room. In a recent conversation, asked what it sounded like, he said that, more than anything it was like the chain of an old-fashioned pocket watch being rattled. Again the lights were flipped on and their attention concentrated on the corner from where the odd rattling emanated. Again, there was no mouse, or watch chain, or anything else to visually confirm the strange sounds they both heard.

  Out went the lights again. It was quiet in the darkened room. Both were about to fall off to sleep, when again the rattling began, this time across the room from where they’d heard it before. Again, the lights were turned on, but nothing was seen.

  For another hour the unexplainable jingling that sounded like a pocket watch being handled went on, first on this side of the room, then on that side of the room in the motel that was built on the one corner of earth where a great nation’s destiny was decided and its beloved boys were hideously harvested for death’s abundant feast.

  Though it wasn’t the most restful night they ever spent, they finally got some sleep. Yet one must wonder what could have happened on that very spot during the fire and fury of battle that was so important that it demanded continual attention to the hands of the watch; and who could it have been that was so concerned with temporal time as to keep removing a pocket watch and replacing it over and over; and why would the sound so much associated with timekeeping in the 19th Century continue in this particular space through almost thirteen decades?

  ***************

  Chapter 14: Pirouettes In Quicksand

  There are things belonging to the eternities of which you’ve but lately heard:

  Things of the past; things of the present; things yet to be.

  Oh, break these worldly wings so I may finally fly…

  —Anonymous

  Probably the best-known psychic in this area is Karyol Kirkpatrick of Lancaster. I first met her when we both visited two Gettysburg “haunted houses” on Halloween morning in 1991 for a live broadcast for a local radio station.

  While she has helped several police departments solve murders that had them stumped by finding incriminating hidden evidence psychically, she doesn’t like to mention who the murderers are or where they are incarcerated. As it was explained to me by a mutual friend, many murderers are themselves psychic, but use their remarkable powers to tap into the evil energies which co-exist along side of the good.

  Her amazing observations in the Gettysburg “haunted houses” are chronicled in this book. My experience with her was so interesting that I asked her if she would like to visit some areas on the Gettysburg Battlefield to see what she could pick up from them. Her one and only trip to Gettysburg had been when she visited the two houses on Halloween. She had never been out on the battlefield before in her life—or at least, in this life. Needless to say we were both looking forward to the visit.

  On July 27, 1992, she had a radio broadcast to do in Hanover, so we met afterwards for breakfast and then drove to Gettysburg with her “designated driver,” Dorothea Fasig and Dorothea’s son Mike. (Karyol never drives. When engaged in psychic activity, she sometimes lapses into a trance and is fearful that it could happen sometime when she is driving.) Jeane Thomas was our chauffeur around the battlefield.

  Because of temperament and training, I’ve always felt as if I’ve been on the fringe of many things in life; it is the proper place for a writer to exist. I’m close enough to experience life, but far enough removed to write about it, if not objectively, then certainly with a universality. So when I say I approached my battlefield experience with Karyol as a skeptic, I don’t mean it in a pejorative sense. I have approached all the ghost stories in this book and the last with the same healthy skepticism, which is actually more of a “show me and I’ll believe you” attitude than denial.

  The Triangular Field.

  So our first stop was the Triangular Field where so many cameramen (and camerawomen) have had such bad luck with their equipment.1

  What is now known as the Triangular Field was once owned by Mr. George W. Weikert, and was a field separate from the fields surrounding Weikert’s farmhouse located about 1000 feet to the west and rented by the Timbers family. The Triangular Field held a bloody past born within a few dreadful hours on a hot July day for Georgians and Texans, New Yorkers and Pennsylvanians.

  On the afternoon of July 2,1863, the men of General James Longstreet’s Confederate Corps—specifically Major General John Bell Hood’s Division—were launched in an assault from their positions on the southern end of Seminary Ridge toward the left flank of the Union line near a large, wooded hill called Round Top. As the four lines of infantry descended the slope of southern Seminary Ridge and entered the valley of the small creek called Rose Run, they were perfect targets for artillery fire from the four cannon of Smith’s 4th New York Battery. After two years of drill and battle, Smith’s New Yorkers were excellent artillerists. They were cutting fuses for five and six seconds in an attempt to explode the projectiles over the heads of the Southerners, showering them with hot, jagged pieces of iron. The men of the 1st Texas Regiment along with the 3rd Arkansas continued to advance courageously down the slope as Smith’s men ran out of case shot and shell and changed to canister.

  Man’s creativity is never so twisted nor as inventive as when it is engaged in finding new ways to kill in battle. Canister consisted of what was virtually a tin can filled with scores of lead or iron balls. Though the range was short, when the gun was fired the tin can disintegrated and the balls spewed out in a horrifying hail of pain and death. One eyewitness recalled that the change in ammunition tore “gap after gap through the ranks of the advancing foe.”2 That’s a nice way of saying that human beings were literally blown apart by the force of the impact of several canister balls in a relatively small area on the body.

  The 3rd Arkansas had their left flank turned and thus were forced to retire and leave the Texans to their own fate. The Texans alone charged Smith’s battery but were driven back by canister from the battery and an impetuous charge by the 124th New York led by Major Cromwell. Just as they victoriously drove the Texans down the slope of the Triangular Field, down went Cromwell tumbling backward out of the saddle, a southern minie ball through his heart. Along with the major, the volley from the recently arrived 15th Georgia knocked down nearly a quarter of the Orange Blossoms. Orange County, New York’s beloved sons were being torn to pieces in that three-sided cinerary. Yet another casualty in t
he seething hell was Colonel Ellis of the 124th. Lifting his sword to give a command that would only be heard echoing in another world, he took rebel lead through his forehead and fell a tangled heap of quivering flesh amongst the stained rocks and sickening crimson harvest of this day’s work in Mr. Weikert’s field.

  Nor was it over in the odd, three-cornered field. Georgians of General Benning’s Brigade would try three more times to assault the slope of the weird field and be met by the hot, horrid breath of musketry from the 99th Pennsylvania as well as artillery fire from Little Round Top. A participant described it:

  The conflict at this point defied description. Roaring cannon, crashing rifles, screeching shots, bursting shells, hissing bullets, cheers, shouts, shrieks and groans were the notes of the song of death which greeted the grim reaper, as with mighty sweeps he leveled down the richest field of grain ever garnered on this continent.3

  And so it is that in human combat on the glorious field of battle, man’s (and now soon woman’s) mortal experience is reduced to the basest of all primary elements, and those reduced even further: earth, fire, water, air, rock, blood, dust, smoke, life, death.

  Karyol Kirkpatrick took my tape recorder to the top edge of the Triangular Field and began recording her feelings. She entered a mental state where all her energy is focused upon what she feels from her surroundings, from the trees, the earth, the grass, the rocks. Our group was nowhere near her for about ten minutes while she spoke into the recorder. Those familiar with earlier stories of the Triangular Field will have no problem understanding that when Karyol returned with the modern machine, though she was familiar with that type of recorder, it had failed to work while she was anywhere near the field.

  I fiddled with the machine, got it running again, and, from a safe distance away on the road, Karyol began recording her impressions again.

  Some excerpts, verbatim, from the tape: “A lot of conflict and confusion as to what was going on. I felt as though…there was something of a sheltered area that I could hear like lots of hollering and crying out. I felt as though there were some people bound and I felt as though there were some people injured…It showed as though that there was…I could feel a man having his leg blown off right about the knee coming up the hill….” And more of the same.

  She said she felt two feelings coming together here, as she pointed to the northwest corner of the field: A crying of victory and a crying of loss. To her, the momentum was the same for the two feelings, meaning that nobody had won and nobody had lost; the loss of life had been the greatest sacrifice.

  The feeling I got from the overall was as though the trees could not absorb the spiritual energies and the fires and the weepings of the spirits, and it’s like there wasn’t enough angelic force to guide the spirits and souls and the weepings and the cryings as they were trying to leave their bodies. I felt as though much death and much blood to this area to this comer, [pointing again to the uppermost comer where the Texans charged and were driven back by the New Yorkers and later the Georgians charged] but I felt that it started over there and came this way [indicating the far bottom comer and lower wall of the field] as you come more this way it seemed as though that there were greater horrors that went on into and through the night.

  Listening to the tape again, I realized that she was describing in non-historian terms, in general what went on in that once horrid field. The 1st Texas, combined with the 15th Georgia and the 20th Georgia, made their assault from the wall (now a remnant) at the bottom of the Triangular Field up the hill to the wall at the top of the field where Smith’s Battery and the 99th Pennsylvania waited for them. The Georgia and Texas regiments straddled the wall and so were funneled right to the upper comer. The 20th hit the upper wall a little obliquely, and they, too, sidled a little to their left, toward the corner where Karyol was certain there was “much death and much blood.”

  For a non-historian who had never read anything about the battle other than who won, and who was visiting a rather out-of-the-way battlesite, she picked up something from the field itself which helped her describe the movements of troops across the battlesite very accurately. But that was nothing compared to what she said next.

  She paused on the tape, seemingly exhausting what she could get from the area. She asked if I had picked up any key phrase in what she said and I replied that I would need to review the tape. I asked her if she wanted to know what happened here and she replied, “No, it doesn’t matter.” Precisely. Thanks to her gift she had just “seen” what had happened there; why would she need an historian to tell her!

  She talked about a traitor and someone named Johnny being hanged, which didn’t make any historical sense to me, at least as far as my knowledge of the battle-related history of the area was concerned. She also mentioned that she felt there were animals, water and the smell of food as she gestured toward the area of Rose Run and the Confederate main battle lines.

  She continued: “There were animals deeper in here and there was some type of a shelter, a hospital and there were also people tied that they didn’t want to get away and didn’t want them to get hurt either.” Again listening to the tape afterwards, I remember that the Timbers Farm once stood over in the direction Karyol pointed, and was, no doubt, used as a temporary hospital where men were taken. The tying up of people could possibly be a description of the men with head wounds who could still walk but had lost their very essences to the sloppy work of an ounce of flattened lead. What awful things a hot .58 caliber minie ball does once it is let loose inside a human skull to do its hideous dance.

  She spoke again about that once horrifying corner, and that she felt that the trees were actually weeping because there was more than they could absorb.

  She pointed to one of the larger rocks and said she felt a conversation between two people over the games that men play and the power over one another as well as the power to succeed. All it brought was death.

  A few more comments and she wondered why the monuments were in one place and not another where she felt they should be. She was dead right about that. Historians at the park think that Smith’s Battery now rests several yards behind where it may have been during the battle—at the wall. As well, the monument to the Orange Blossoms is at the top of the crest and not down in the oddly-shaped field where they paid so dearly for their moment of glory.

  Another pause in the tape, and I asked a wild question of the woman who had never studied the battle and had never been on the site before: “Do you get any names of states, or anything?”

  A long pause, then: “I wanted to say clay; Georgia clay.” Another pause. “And they’re not used to the brown earth….” Some more about traveling on water and communications, and another pause.

  Then: “I question even if there could have been some people out of or from close around Texas come through this area or region or was a part of this in some way or some manner.”

  A very long pause: “I wanted to feel that there were also people out of Philadelphia and maybe southern New York area and region here because they had a different accent.” A short pause: “I can hear their voices….”

  By now in awe, I asked her to record it on the tape to affirm that this was her first visit to this area. She confirmed that except for her visit to the two haunted houses within the town in October, this was, indeed, her only visit to the battlefield. She also added that she has only been interested in ancient history and not American History.

  It was at that point I told her that the name of this area was the Triangular Field and that Benning’s Georgians and the 1st Texas attacked and were driven back. I said at that point I didn’t know about Philadelphia, but the troops that fought them initially were members of the 124th New York and pointed to the monument. I asked her if she had seen the monument before. (I was certain that she hadn’t even looked in that direction, but I had to be sure.) She said no, she didn’t even have her glasses on, which she would need to see anything that far away.

  Looking at a ma
p later, I discovered that Orange County is indeed in southern New York, along the New Jersey border.

  Walking back to the van I looked up and saw the monument to the 99th Pennsylvania. Jeane asked Mike, the youngest of us, to run up to the monument and see where they were recruited.

  “Philadelphia,” he called down.

  Our visit to the Wheatfield revealed that psychic time doesn’t necessarily follow the same pattern of flow that real time does. Our visit to the battlefield reminded me of a visit to a hall with many windows and doors. Some of the doors were open and some of them shut; some of the windows were clear or open and some were closed or fogged over. You could not always pick which part of the great past you would be able to see.

  In the Wheatfield, despite the incredible tumult which occurred there on July 2, 1863, Karyol had tapped into an earlier period. Mostly, she felt Native American spirits on that spot, standing, in fact, on one spot, she thought one important warrior had died. (Historians know only by oral accounts of a great Indian battle which occurred on the site where late-coming combatants would later shed their blood. Accounts place it somewhere in the vicinity of Big Round Top, perhaps to the south or west of it, close to where we were standing.) She also felt a lot of female energy in the area, nurses perhaps, helping with casualties, seeking to help the wounded from either era.

  She did hear the clashing of metal, wood, and sticks and a great deal of hollering, but much of what she picked up was from several eras and somewhat disjointed. There are more stories to our ancient earth than we can ever know.

  We began to move on to our next site. We drove along West Confederate Avenue toward the first day’s battle site and, in particular, Reynolds Woods.

  Major General John F. Reynolds was a native of Lancaster, Pennsylvania and had arrived upon the battlefield of Gettysburg just as it was becoming a battlefield, in the morning of July 1,1863. He was here barely long enough to make sure his Union Army First Corps was headed in the right direction as he sat his horse upon McPherson Ridge, when a rebel marksman sent a minie ball smashing into the back of his neck.