Ghosts of Gettysburg

I’ve neglected this blog through August but have good reason. I’ve been vacationing. 🙂

My family had much to celebrate this summer. My fifteen year old graduated high school and was about to celebrate her Sweet 16. As a combination gift, as opposed to a party, she asked to visit the Harry Potter attraction at Universal Studios in Florida and to go ghost-hunting in Gettysburg. We did both (and more) and had a phenomenal time. So phenomenal, that I couldn’t bring myself to break up the action by posting here. My bad… but oh so good. 😆

I’d love to share all the details of Disney’s Magic Kingdom and Universal’s Harry Potter, and maybe I will. Eventually. But our trip to Gettysburg was so incredible I must share that first.

We arrived in the Historic area of Gettysburg around 4pm on Monday August 29th and we left on Thursday, September 1st, around 1pm. In that short time, we had one spirit experience after another. Some of our experiences were physical – feeling pressure, like being submerged. Feeling intense fear or complete peace. Feeling cold – freezing cold. And even feeling as though we’d walked through spider webs. None of that can be proven. Each event was a personal experience we will always remember but cannot document.

However… we have photographs and voice recordings that prove, to me at least, that what we saw, heard and felt was indeed something from another realm.

Wednesday was our biggest day, the day with the most activity. It started in the early evening when we visited an area of the Dobbin House that had been part of the Underground Railroad.

As we climbed the dark, narrow stairs to the attic, we saw a cupboard cut into the wall which once held pottery and stoneware. Behind that cupboard, in the attic crawl space – no higher than four feet, no wider than 20 and with no windows – runaway slaves were hidden. We walked up a few more stairs and entered the main attic – with 8-foot ceilings, windows… and another door. To another level. I opened that door to peer in and immediately jumped back in fear. I cannot tell you why. I didn’t see anything and I didn’t hear anything. I simply felt an unbearable dread that left me wanting to crumble to my knees and sob.

It took all my strength and resolve to go back to that door and slip my digital recorder into the opening. I felt a strong cool breeze on my hand, but heard nothing until I played back the recording. I am convinced the breeze was simply an attic breeze and nothing more. However, I cannot explain the voices captured on my recorder.

Listen for yourself… there is talking that can be explained. I was with my daughter and a friend. It is their voices you hear ‘mumbling’ in the background. But listen closer. At 14 seconds in, see if you can hear a whimper/cry of fear. Then at 21 seconds, listen carefully for a child’s voice “I don’t like this.” and another child’s voice picking up on the ‘s’ saying, “See it open?”, immediately after that, at 24 seconds, is the whimper/cry again. THAT was not from us.

And yes, the voice at 3 seconds saying, “I can do this. I can’t do this. Alright, I can do this.” is Gemini me working up the nerve to open the attic door again. 🙂

Dobbin House

After we left the Dobbin House, we went back to finish an auto tour of the battlefield that we had started the day before. It was nearly 5pm when we reached Culp’s Hill. A short trek into the woods gave each of us a feeling of being watched. It wasn’t a good feeling. I didn’t feel it as strongly as the others. At first. Then suddenly, I couldn’t get out of their fast enough. At one point, before I high-tailed it out of there, my daughter, who had walked ahead of us, started heading back toward us. I knew she was behind me but heard footsteps coming from somewhere on my right. We were in the woods. Could be rabbits, chipmunks, snakes or any other animal. I shrugged it off. THEN, from the same spot, I heard what sounded like the hammer of a rifle being pulled back. It wasn’t loud but I heard it. On playback, that sound is right against the recorder – which was in my hand. A few seconds after that, before I acknowledge hearing the sound, my daughter starts to speak and a ‘voice’ says, “whisper”. We did not hear that voice until playback later that night.

It’s all in this recording – “rifle hammer” at 10 seconds and “whisper” at 18 seconds – see if you can hear it:

Culp’s Hill – Gun and Voice

We spent about an hour at Culp’s Hill and moved on to the next Battlefield location – The Wheatfield. The Wheatfield was the scene of a horrific battle – not that all battles aren’t horrific. It is said that more than 4,000 men died in the Wheatfield and that if a person wanted to cross the field, they could walk across without their feet ever touching the ground. That’s how many bodies of men and horses covered the area. Heartbreaking.

We had an experience at the Wheatfields that we cannot prove – though I haven’t listened to all of the recordings yet and there are still more photos to look through. However, my daughter went to one area as if drawn to it, and set out all of her equipment – Camera, EVP Device, EMF Meter, Ambient Temperature gauge – and then she stood up, moving back and to her left. Only thing is, as she moved, she raised her right foot as if stepping back and over something. We asked why she did that and she said she didn’t know. I took her temperature gauge and did some readings. The air around us was about 80 degrees. The air in the spot she stepped over was 25.

We spent a solid amount of time in the Wheatfield then moved on to the next stop – the site of Picket’s Charge. As we listened to the audio CD for the auto tour, I gazed out at the sky. The sun was setting and it looked beautiful. I took a couple of pictures then noticed a sliver of moon to my left. As I was about to photograph it, I saw movement in the brush. Like someone popping their head up to get a quick look around. That scared the begeebers out of me but I quickly aimed my camera and fired off two shots. One of them, to my eyes anyway, shows a group of Union Officers having a pow-wow. Can you see them?

How about now…

We left the battlefield soon after this because once the sun set, it was too easy to lose our way along the unlit paths.

We had several more experiences that night but if I write about all of them here, this post will go on for pages. For now, I’ll leave you with a few more photographs and a promise to post more about our experiences next time.

Can you see the soldier walking along the path – straight toward the camera? Or the soldier kneeling in the left hand bushes?

See them now?

You’d have to look REALLY hard to see the ghostly images in this picture. Trust me, I know, because I did just that. I saw not only a couple of soldiers walking, but one in the woods (possibly) and a closer image – in color no less – of a Union soldier’s face. They’re all boxed so you can find them easily:

And one more for today and that’s it, I promise:

No. No ghosts in that last one. Just me playing dress-up. 🙂