Ghost Soldiers of Gettysburg

by Patrick Burke

  Battle sites are conducive to residual hauntings. Fear, rage, despair, sorrow, and other highly charged emotions flood an environment during the course of a battle. The battle ends, but these energies linger on, providing startling and sometimes life-changing experiences to those who are present when the replay occurs. Residual hauntings can be visual, auditory, olfactory, and even gustatory in nature. The smell of sulfur, the sound of cannon fire, and even the taste of blood represent fairly common types of aberrant battlefield experiences one might have on any given day.

  The major difference between a genuine haunt and a residual haunt, besides the fact that a residual haunting doesn’t involve the actual spirit of a deceased person, is that during an imprint playback, the same phenomenon occurs repeatedly with no changes in the action being witnessed. For example, you’re visiting Gettysburg and see a bunch of reenactors performing regimental maneuvers near the Wheatfield. They march into the Rose Woods and seem to vanish into thin air. You track down a park ranger and describe to him what happened, and he informs you no reenactors were given permits to be on the battlefield that day. He also grins as if to say, “You’re not the first person to see the ‘phantom regiment,’” and you walk away shaking your head. If this exemplifies a residual haunting, your description of the incident should mirror other accounts given by different witnesses, regardless of when the encounter occurred.

  Another brand of high strangeness is known as an object haunting. Let’s imagine you go to an antique store and buy an old locket. You bring it home, and within a week strange things start happening around your house. One of two possibilities exist in this scenario: 1. The intelligent consciousness of a deceased person, who was very attached to this locket while alive, follows you home with it. One day you see the ghostly image of an elderly woman walking down your staircase. It startles the heck out of you. Guess what? Your house is now genuinely haunted because of the presence of this locket. You bring the locket back to the antique store, and the sightings cease; or 2. The emotional energies imprinted in the locket start to affect your mood. Unbeknownst to you, the person who wore this locket in 1926 was brutally murdered. You start feeling unnaturally sad or morose whenever you wear or are near the object. You begin to experience feelings of dread and even become more prone to violence. You’re now experiencing a residual energy force directly related to the locket, and you learn the hard way that you’re clairvoyant. You discard the locket and start to feel better immediately.

  Combat zone object hauntings are usually associated with the personal objects that belonged to soldiers who died during a battle (e.g., diaries, photos, Bibles, guns, knives, lucky charms). The presence of these objects, now buried somewhere on the field or housed in the visitor center museum, can facilitate a psi experience (a spontaneous paranormal event that occurs the moment a persons steps into an actively haunted area) and elicit strong emotional responses from visitors. The strong bonds associated with these objects can also enhance the prevalence of intelligent haunts. Let’s suppose a soldier who fought at Little Round Top carried a tintype of his wife in his pocket. He was very suddenly and violently shot and killed in action. From time to time, his spirit is seen wandering around the base of Little Round Top, as if searching for something. He seems unaware of either time or his unfortunate circumstance (remember the phrases “fragment of consciousness” and “condition of emotional shock” used to define a ghost on page 12). The tintype actually was found and taken from the battlefield in 1867 by a looter, but the ghost soldier’s strong connection to the photograph compels what’s left of his consciousness to keep searching for it.

  Although its existence is even more speculative than the more common aberrations mentioned above, portal hauntings represent another type of mysterious phenomenon that deserves mention here. Sometimes called energy vortices, portal hauntings are thought to be doorways to another world or dimension through which spirits can travel. Certain places seem to encompass a wide array of bizarre activity, including glowing balls of light, odd energy fields, strange shapes, and unexplained mists or fog. Some researchers believe these anomalies are traveling back and forth through a portal. The only evidence to support this comes in the form of high electromagnetic energy readings sometimes accompanied by a visual ripple or fluctuation in the surrounding atmosphere. The hypothetical existence of ley lines, or the alignment of a number of sacred ancient sites stretching across the planet, suggests that the Earth’s natural electromagnetic energy fields often intersect at certain locations, making them prone to certain anomalies. In truth, we have experienced possible portal phenomena at Gettysburg more than once, and it appears the presence of these strong electromagnetic fields acts as a catalyst for preternatural occurrences. Timing these events, however, is difficult, and validation of the existence of these vortices isn’t likely forthcoming anytime soon.

  The hauntings described here represent those most commonly experienced on battlefields. Other ghostly aspects such as poltergeists, doppel-

  gangers, shadow people, and elementals are all supported by various existential theories, but for the purposes of this book, they aren’t often associated with battlefields and therefore won’t be described in detail.

  Attempting to quantify these experiences, regardless of their nature, represents an important, yet difficult, endeavor. If we’re ever going to gain a better understanding of the human mind and spirit, we need to diligently document witness testimony and carefully measure tangible evidence in the form of electromagnetic energy spikes, ion fluctuations, temperature changes, and other anomalous readings in the environment. Capturing and documenting audio and visual phenomena in the form of photographs, video footage, and tape/digital recordings greatly enhances the possibility of turning a large body of evidence into compelling proof of the existence of ghosts. And along the way, we can honor those who came before us and, if possible, help the ghost soldiers who are stuck within their own emotional quagmire to finally move on.

  We assay to document our experiences in an attempt to capture what we call “living history,” or the historic moment from the perspective of the participants. In the pages that follow, you’ll share in these experiences and gain a better understanding of what it may have been like to fight in the Battle of Gettysburg, where thousands of brave individuals gave the last full measure of devotion.

  [contents]

  Chapter Two

  Gettysburg’s

  Residual Hauntings

  An important part of the paranormal research process is the documentation of experiencer testimony. In the world of parapsychology, “experiencer” is a fancy word for “eyewitness,” or a person who has a firsthand encounter with the paranormal. During a group weekend investigation of Gettysburg, we interviewed several people who came along to learn how to conduct field investigations. As is almost always the case, many of them were there because they had experienced paranormal phenomena in the past and were hoping to learn more about what may have happened to them. One such gentleman, Brad, was fascinated with the paranormal, but particularly as it applied to battlefields. We soon learned he had experienced a life-changing encounter at Gettysburg. He provided us with the following documentation of his experience:

  In the summer of 1990 when I was seventeen years old, my parents took me on a three-week summer vacation. We drove all over the eastern half of the country, and since Civil War history was one of my passions, we spent three days in Gettysburg. I also have a passion for ghosts and the supernatural, but I had no idea these two interests were going to come together during our visit.

  Ironically, we arrived at Gettysburg on July 1 and left on July 3, the actual dates of the battle in 1863. Perhaps the timing was perfect to be able to experience the encounters I had, but whatever the reason, the following event occurred in front of my own eyes.

  My encounter occurred on July 3 as we were leaving the battlefield. It was about 11 o’clock on a clear, very hot morning. As my paren
ts and I drove through the battlefield park, I looked off to the area of a wheat field, where a particularly bloody skirmish took place during the battle. I noticed a regiment of about 30 Union soldiers marching in formation approximately 100 yards off the road, heading toward a ridge. I told my dad to stop the car; I grabbed my video camera and started sprinting across the field to catch up with them.

  This Confederate sharpshooter met his violent end in Devil’s Den. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

  Many researchers believe that the manner in which these men died factors in to why the battlefield is so haunted. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

  Since we were there on the anniversary of the battle, I thought it was a reenactment group practicing some formation maneuvers. It seemed like I couldn’t catch up no matter how fast I ran. I stopped on occasion and got some pretty good shots of them, but I noticed how silent they seemed to be. All you could hear was the wind rustling through the wheat. They headed over a ridge and out of site. I got to the top of the ridge about a minute later, looked around, and saw nothing for miles over an empty valley. There wasn’t a single soldier in sight. There’s no way they could have gone anywhere else. Beyond the ridge is a vast, open countryside, and I was less than a minute behind them.

  When I got to a VCR, I popped in the tape, and sure enough, there were the soldiers as clear as day. I just knew I had videotape with ghosts on it. Every time I show it to people, they don’t believe me because the soldiers are as solid as real people on video, but I know what I saw (or didn’t see) when I looked over the ridge. Several years later, I saw a TV show on the ghosts of Gettysburg, and one of the stories was about visiting Japanese dignitaries who pulled their limousine over to the side of the road and watched a regiment of Union soldiers march in formation several feet in front of them. They called the park rangers and thanked them for arranging the demonstration for them, but alas, there was no demonstration arranged or scheduled.

  Several other people have seen a similar phantom regiment on the battlefield, and this particular phenomenon has come to be known as the Ghost Regiment of Gettysburg. I honestly believe this is what I saw; whether people believe me or not, I know what I videotaped is the real thing.

  Brad’s encounter, and many other documented paranormal experiences at Gettysburg, may represent what was described in chapter 1 as residual hauntings, which theoretically occur when past events are somehow “imprinted” on environments and then experienced by eyewitnesses (via retrocognition, the ability to see past events) at a later time—sometimes decades or centuries later. The imprint theory, as you may recall, proposes that environments with traumatic emotional histories—and specifically the physical elements that make them up such as rocks, trees, water sources, man-made dwellings, etc.—act as recording devices, somehow absorbing and then replaying events that those with a sixth sense or keen intuition—or who just happen to be in the right place at the right time—can experience via visual, auditory, olfactory, and/or other sensory perceptions. Gettysburg would appear to be the perfect conduit for such activity because of its traumatic emotional history and the large scale of such trauma (51,000 + casualties in three days). Brad may have witnessed a recording of a Union regiment marching in formation 127 years prior to his visual encounter. It appears more plausible than him seeing the actual spirits of thirty separate individuals still marching in formation. This event likely constitutes an activity that occurred when these soldiers were still alive, but that was replayed more than a century later.

  Loyd Auerbach, director of the Office of Paranormal Investigations and author of numerous books on the paranormal, emphasizes that residual hauntings involve the recorded activity of the living, not the dead. “Although the subject(s) of the recording may be long dead, the activity was impressed upon the environment when they were alive,” he explains. “This is analogous to videotaping a person doing something—you can’t really do that when the person is dead. They kind of just lie there.”

  Residual hauntings are most commonly referred to as “place memory” by parapsychologists and academic researchers. In less formal circles it is called “cinema of time” and is often associated with Stone Tape Theory. Andrew Nichols, PhD, professor, author, and founder of the American Institute of Parapsychology (AIP), points out that paranormal phenomena often share similar characteristics, which makes it difficult to create clear lines of distinction. For example, he says, a probable relationship exists between retrocognitive experiences and psychometry, or object reading, which is the ability to perceive information about the history and owners of an object as practiced by psychics. “In fact,” he adds, “they are very likely to be very similar, if not identical, phenomenon.”

  Auerbach agrees that place memory seems to be an extension of psychometry. One interpretation is that the object—and what is a house but a big object—becomes a focal point for retrocognition. However, an alternative interpretation is that something about the object, building, battlefield, etc., essentially “records” information as it exists. “Human beings are capable of picking up on these environmental recordings and essentially play back bits of the information in their own perceptions/consciousness,” he explains. “Most often, emotional events (or emotions themselves) are behind the more likely perceptions/recordings, although on occasion the recordings seem to be of very mundane activity.”

  To muddy the waters further, similar phenomena are also referred to as time slips or time warps, depending on the specific characteristics associated with them. It remains a highly debated topic within the paranormal research community, yet one that offers an incredible opportunity to learn a great deal not only about paranormal mysteries, but history itself. For example, in Brad’s case, greater detail of the soldiers’ uniforms may have provided researchers with an opportunity to corroborate the encounter from a historical standpoint.

  Brad’s Gettysburg account isn’t an isolated incident, as encounters with phantom ghost armies, discarnate soldiers, and other elements from the past have been documented at length thanks to the dedication of paranormal researchers such as the late Andrew McKenzie. McKenzie, who was vice president of the Society for Psychical Research and author of many books on the paranormal, was a serious student of spontaneous cases in which protagonists found themselves in surroundings that no longer existed. His task was not a easy one. Alan Gould, a colleague of McKenzie and former professor of psychology at the University of Nottingham, professed that such cases are “fascinating, exceedingly rare, and very hard to evaluate.”

  One thing McKenzie learned from his research was that characteristics associated with these phenomena are similar but not always the same, which raises the question of whether a past event has been imprinted on the environment for those with psychic sensitivities to experience at a later date, or whether some type of time slip has occurred, where a person, or group of people, travel through time via supernatural means.

  Two schoolteachers, Charlotte Anne Elizabeth Moberly and Eleanor Frances Jourdain, had perhaps the most famous time slip experience ever recorded. While visiting the Palace at Versailles in 1901, they decided to go in search of the Petit Trianon, a small chateau located on the grounds of the palace. While walking through the grounds, they both were impressed by a feeling of oppressive gloom. They claimed to have encountered—and interacted with—a number of people in old-fashioned attire whom they later assumed to have been members of the court of Marie Antoinette.

  In a widely publicized case from 1979, two English couples driving through France claimed to have stayed overnight at an old-fashioned hotel and decided on their return journey to stay at the same hotel but were unable to find it. Photographs taken during their stay, which were in the middle of the roll of film, were missing, even from the negative strips, when the pictures were developed.

  One telling characteristic of these phenomena has to do with whether those experiencing them can take an active part in the event—interact
ing with the people and places being “visited.” In the Versailles case, the two women were apparently seen, and spoken to, by people they saw. The English couples on holiday in France went further, staying in a hotel and eating dinner and breakfast in the course of their experience. Both of these incidents represent unusually prolonged events, taking place over at least several hours. These cases are more likely associated with some sort of time slip as opposed to a residual haunting, where the subject (e.g. Brad) is merely a passive observer of the past scene—one that plays out like a movie, imprinted on paranormal celluloid.

  An interesting element associated with these cases is an “altered state of reality” that’s very difficult for the witnesses to describe. For example, many people report that at the start of their experiences, their immediate surroundings take on an “oddly flat, underlit, and lifeless appearance, and normal sounds seem muffled.” This surreal environment is sometimes accompanied by feelings of depression and unease.

  Another account includes an equally odd description of the environment, in which “the street seemed unusually quiet; there were sounds but they appeared quite muted.” The witness also noticed that when she sat down, “the sun didn’t seem as bright as it had been moments before.” In fact, looking back years later, she described the light as similar to when the area had a partial solar eclipse.