Ghosts of Gettysburg Haunted Daytrips: Ball’s Bluff

After the Battle of First Manassas in July 1861, the North and the South realized that this might not be the quick easy war each had predicted. The two armies settled in Northern Virginia with the Potomac River as their demarcation line.

At Leesburg, Virginia, some thirty-five miles up the Potomac from Washington, was a small Confederate force. Northern leaders believed that a minor demonstration was needed to push the Confederates back from the river and secure a large part of Northern Virginia for the Union.

Across the Potomac from Leesburg, three Union infantry brigades under Brig. Gen. Charles Stone, which he somewhat pretentiously named “The Corps of Observation,” watched the Confederates.

In 19^th Century battles, terrain had as much to do with military success or failure as anything else. At the edge of the Potomac River near Leesburg was a “bluff” or steep cliff, between eighty and a hundred feet high, leading down to the water. At the top was an eight-acre open field, with only single-file dirt pathways down to the river. In the middle of the river was 500-acre Harrison’s Island, extending for three miles, impeding direct access from the Maryland shore to the Virginia shore.

On the night of October 20, 1861, twenty scouts from the 15^th Massachusetts crossed the Potomac to determine Confederate positions near the bluff named for the Ball family. Because of the sheer ruggedness of Ball’s Bluff, it was thought to be unguarded by the Confederates.

The scouts’ advance across the river involved not one, but two amphibious landings. It was complicated, and the scouting party took several hours to reached Ball’s Bluff. Once atop the cliffs, they moved to within two miles of Leesburg. Ahead, in the dim moonlight, they saw what they thought were about thirty tents of an encampment. Receiving the intelligence, Stone ordered Col. Charles Devens and his 300 troops to cross the river and destroy the Confederate camp.

Even though they started for the Virginia shore at midnight, it was about 4:30 a.m. when they all shuttled to below the Bluff. When they arrived at the spot where the tents were reported, it turned out to be a line of trees on the ridge.

Col. Edward Baker—Lincoln’s good friend “Ned”—was in command of the entire force across the river in Virginia. Lincoln and Baker’s friendship went back to 1835, when Baker moved to Springfield, Illinois, to practice law. They renewed their friendship when Baker was serving in the Senate, while Lincoln was President.

When the Civil War broke out, at fifty years old, Baker volunteered. In time he commanded the 71^st Pennsylvania Regiment from Philadelphia.

On the morning of October 21, 1861, Baker found himself in command of a large reconnaissance force moving into rebel territory at Ball’s Bluff.

Before Baker even arrived on the Virginia Side of the Potomac, fighting had suddenly flared in the field at the top of Ball’s Bluff. A panicked courier ran into Col. Baker on the towpath of the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal and shared his concern of potential military catastrophe on the bluff above the Potomac. Baker responded by galloping off toward the battle saying he was taking his entire force across.

More Confederates arrived upon the small battlefield, pressing the Union troops toward the Potomac. Baker, who was supposed to be in command, was still on Harrison’s Island. Chaos and confusion began to creep into the Union battle plan.

Now the battle seemed to take on a life of its own. Confederates called in reserve troops while Federal forces were still crossing the river. By 12:30 p.m., Confederates had beaten up the Union force, which withdrew closer to the Bluff. There was a lull in the fighting as even more troops from both sides arrived on the field and fell into formation. Still, Col. Baker was still nowhere to be seen.

But the Confederates were also having organizational problems. At least one regiment was running out of ammunition. Others were close.

By 2:15 p.m., Baker finally made it to the battlefield and, without personal reconnaissance, began to orchestrate his troops into strange formations, some of them into an “L” shape line. But the real problem was that his formation had no depth; there was no room with the Bluff only 15 feet behind them. Baker seemed happy with the disposition of his troops, even taking time to quote poetry. Only one officer suggested that the line was vulnerable at a certain point. He was ignored by Baker. Firing broke out and the folly of Baker’s tactical arrangements would soon become reality.

The Confederate line eventually formed a semi-circle around the Federals, naturally flanking them. With their back to the Bluff, Union commanders were hampered by the lack of space in which to maneuver. As the rebels pressed them, some of the officers realized their predicament: there was nowhere to go except over the cliff to their rear, then where? It took hours to shuttle the men across from Harrison’s Island on the seven boats that could be found. In an emergency, a full-scale retreat, how could they get back?

Around 4:30 p.m., Col. Baker was walking in front of his lines, observing the battle, when a body of Confederates rushed out of the woods to his front. According to eyewitnesses, a large redheaded Confederate emptied his revolver into Baker, killing him instantly. There was a heated battle between the two sides over Baker’s lifeless body, which the Federals won. The redhead was killed in the fight and Baker’s body was carried from the field, down a cow path along Ball’s Bluff, and into a flatboat filled with wounded being evacuated. Now things for the Federals began falling apart fast.

On the battlefield, no one knew who was now in command. Strategy as to extricating the men from this battle differed. One officer wanted them to fight their way through the Confederate lines to safety. Their charge was broken up by Confederate fire. Weird stories began to circulate that the charge was led by a Confederate as a ruse to bring the Federals into a trap; since no one was able to identify the officer, others believed a bizarre rumor that it was a phantom from the spirit world leading the invading Yankees to their doom. Later, a Federal officer admitted he led the charge, but good ghost stories die hard: the battlefield is allegedly still haunted by the phantom officer, as well as the disgruntled spirits of those sacrificed there.

The sun was setting and the battlefield of Ball’s Bluff was indeed beginning to take on an eerie demeanor, which is why when one officer ordered his men to withdraw to the “ferry,” the order was quickly passed along and repeated. With the river so close, albeit a hundred feet down, it didn’t take long for the retreat to turn into a rout.

Men ignored evacuating single-file down the cow path and began rushing headlong down the bluff. Some stumbled and fell, cart-wheeling down the slope. Others leapt into the growing darkness and landed upon their comrades, breaking limbs and crushing skulls on the jagged rocks below. Once they got to the riverbank, there was no place to go. The few boats they had overflowed with the wounded. As the boats left the bank, men waded into the water and tried to climb in, capsizing the already overloaded vessels and sending the helpless wounded into the swift current to drown. Some decided they could swim the fifty feet to Harrison’s Island. They took off their coats, but their wool pants and jackets soon absorbed enough of the Potomac River water to drag them down.

Confederates were now at the top of the bluff and began firing down at the Federal masses huddled on the shore—easy targets. As well, they plinked away at the hundreds of heads bobbing in the river.

The few small boats were ferried back and forth across the river numerous times through the growing darkness, but many of the Union soldiers left on the Virginia side for too long were captured and sent to Confederate prisons. Other than rounding up prisoners, the Confederates apparently had had enough fighting for one day. They retreated back to Leesburg leaving a handful of pickets to watch the river.

Word of Baker’s death reached Lincoln and the message hit him like a blow. He staggered unsteadily for a moment, his large hands clutching his chest.

The Battle of Ball’s Bluff involved about 3,300 men, evenly split between sides. Casualties as reported in the Official Records were a little higher on the Union side, with 49 killed to 36 killed for the Confederates, and 158 wounded to 117 wounded for the Confederates. Other sources place the Union dead at 119 and higher. The real discrepancy comes in the figures for the missing. According to the Official Records, the Confederates had only 2 men missing; the Union reported 714 missing, many of which were captured.

The battle was over, but the horror was about to begin.

Within two weeks, bodies began to arrive in Washington via the muddy waters of the Potomac. Five bodies were pulled from the water near the Chain Bridge, mutilated by their journey; others were caught in the rocks near Great Falls; another at the wharf at 6^th Street. At Long Bridge, Georgetown, and as far as opposite Fort Washington, bodies, some without wounds, obviously drowned, continued to appear.

When the full extent of the debacle was evident (although the casualties would soon seem miniscule next to later battles) fingers began to be pointed. The most obvious person to blame was Col. Edward Baker, due to his tactical arrangements (which would have included plans for withdrawal, if needed) on the battlefield. But this did not sit well with his fellow Congressmen, many of whom thought their volunteer army should be commanded by volunteers, (perhaps Congressmen) not West Pointers.

A brand new committee, the Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, was formed to get to the bottom of the Ball’s Bluff catastrophe. According to one historian it became “the most influential, meddlesome, mischievous and baneful committee in the legislative history of the United States.”

Today, one of the smallest National Cemeteries in the nation sits atop Ball’s Bluff and holds the mostly unidentified dead from the ill-conceived battle.

The Battle at Ball’s Bluff

The battle was over, but tales of the unquiet dead were about to begin.

Less than a year after the battle, a Maine soldier, in the area of Harrison’s Island, wrote in his diary that comrades on picket duty reported hearing unsettling noises from the woods and river shore: “unearthly” he called them. Boatmen on the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal, which ran alongside the Potomac on the Maryland shore, began calling this section of the canal “Haunted House Bend.” They reported screams and moans emanating from the area. Mules towing the barges became spooked; perhaps they saw the red-bearded man and African-American woman appear…then disappear, as reported by those who traveled this section of the C & O Canal. (“Ranger Geoff” https://www.canaltrust.org/discoveryarea/edwards-ferry-and-haunted-house-bend/, accessed, 9/22/2020, 4:18 pm.)

Reports from the 1860s record the ghostly plodding of hooves from unseen horses and the unmistakable rattle of cavalry sabers. Perhaps they were just the pre-cursor to the phantom Union cavalry that manifested itself, to the horror of early visitors to the battlefield.

At least some of the sightings are attributed to Abraham Lincoln’s friend Col. Edward Baker. He not only botched the battle, but may have brought something onto himself when he bragged on the eve of the battle, “On the morrow I’ll be in Leesburg, or hell.”

Other stories that have come from the area: people walking their dogs notice the canines will whimper and try to avoid certain parts of the area; strange animated mists will appear before visitors, grow to the height of a man, then quickly dissipate; a soldier, running across the road in a crouch has caused accidents; cold spots are felt, as well as feelings of being watched; phantom footsteps and voices are heard coming from the woods.

L. B. Taylor, Jr., the “dean of Virginia ghost stories,” recounts many tales in his book, Civil War Ghosts of Virginia. In the early 1950s, some thrill-seeking teenagers drove out to the Bluff, but were forced to quickly retreat at the sounds of “terrible screams” from a source no one could pin-point. They ran back to their car, started it, put it in gear…but it wouldn’t move, as if something unseen and otherworldly were holding it hostage. The event lasted for several minutes. Then, as if suddenly released, the car lurched forward and they were able to speed off. Once home, they inspected the car. To their horror they found two huge muddy handprints from gloved hands in recently dried clay on each side of the rear of the car. Evidence, perhaps, of something more sinister than ghostly soldiers residing at the Bluff?

Ghosts of Gettysburg Haunted Daytrips: Manassas

There are a number of Civil War sites in America that were unfortunate—or cursed—enough to have more than one massive battle rage across their landscapes. Manassas was one of them.

The reason Manassas Junction was important would not have mattered to the earlier armies of the American Revolution or of the Napoleonic Era. It wasn’t until the first half of the 19^th Century that a relatively new invention appeared upon the scene and changed warfare: the steam locomotive. Miles and miles of track had been laid, and the railroad’s worth in peacetime as a carrier of goods and people had been proven. Naturally, when war broke out, railroads were looked to as an expedient extension to the supply lines of an army. They added a relatively fast-moving vehicle to bring food, supplies, arms and ammunition to the soldiers in the field, compared to the plodding wagon trains that were limited to the walking speed of mules or horses. Occasionally, as would be seen at the first Battle of Manassas, they were helpful in bringing reinforcement troops to the battlefield.

The Battle of First Manassas

The Manassas junction of the Orange & Alexandria and Manassas Gap Railroads and its location just a couple of days march from Washington made the northern leaders extremely nervous when, in the early summer of the first year of the war, Confederates began to converge on the junction near the flowing waters of Bull Run.

Lincoln directed General Irvin McDowell to come up with a plan to take his 35,000 freshly recruited, enthusiastic, Union volunteers, and oust the 21,000 Confederates established around the junction. The “rebels” were commanded by General P. G. T. Beauregard, the conquering hero of Fort Sumter. Some 11,000 Confederates, under General Joseph E. Johnston, were in the Shenandoah Valley waiting to reinforce their comrades at Manassas should they be needed. A large Union force was placed, so as to prevent that from happening.

The green Federal recruits began their march from their camps near Washington to Manassas on July 16, 1861. Unaccustomed to disciplined marching, it took them days to cover the thirty or so miles to the future battlefield. They would fall out to pick blackberries or fill canteens when they felt like it. A large contingent of politicians, and their ladies, buggied out from Washington to watch the first battle, and the predicted easy Union victory over the hayseed rebels.

Sadly, shockingly, their impressions of a battle and its aftermath were woefully mistaken. Soldiers were actually hurt, some even killed, in much larger numbers than any of the politicians, whose rashness got them into this war, had expected. Death, in all the ghastly, hideous forms that can be brought on by mortal combat, took them by complete, horrifying surprise.

Part of the problem was that McDowell’s elaborate battle plan was far too complicated for the raw troops and junior officers he commanded. Feinting attacks and wide sweeps around the flank would be accomplished eventually in this war, but not until the armies and their commanders had more experience.

The Confederates were, for the most part, on the defense and parrying attacks—counter-punching—was easier for green troops. Just when the Yankees were about to defeat their southern counterparts, Johnston’s men came riding in on the railroad cars, fresh troops to turn the tide. When Confederates found themselves on the attack, at the end of the battle, they were aided by two things: the inability of their enemy to withdraw in an orderly fashion under fire, and their commanders’ mistake of not allowing for several avenues of retreat. When a lucky shot overturned a wagon on a bridge on the road back to Washington, it clogged the retreat for the Union Army and their political observers. The ensuing panic was overwhelming. The same march that took days to get to the battlefield was covered in hours on the hurried, panicked retreat back to Washington.

Stone Bridge to Washington

Casualties seemed horrendous to a country not yet accustomed to war. The final toll for killed, wounded and missing was higher than in any other battle fought by an American army to date. Confederates suffered 1,750; the Union army, 2950.

Yet the casualties that horrified the nation from the first battle near Manassas Junction would be dwarfed a little over a year later when the two opposing armies fought there again.

The Battle of Second Manassas

After McClellan’s unsuccessful Peninsula Campaign in the spring of 1862, in which the Confederates drove the Union army from the doorstep of Richmond, Lincoln brought General John Pope from the western theater of the war to command in the east.

The wounding of General Joseph E. Johnston on the Peninsula brought in Robert E. Lee to command the Army of Northern Virginia, the largest army in the Confederacy.

On August 12, Lee received intelligence that McClellan was heading from the Peninsula to reinforce Pope. Lee planned to attack before Pope could be reinforced by McClellan. Fortunes of war would dictate otherwise.

General J. E. B. Stuart, Lee’s renowned cavalry commander, was nearly captured by Yankee troopers at Verdiersville on the morning of August 18. Stuart got away, but the Federals captured some of Stuart’s personal items, including his haversack with Lee’s orders in it. Now Pope knew some of Lee’s aggressive plans and withdrew his army to north of the Rappahannock River.

Heavy rains swelled the river so that it was impossible for Lee to get to Pope. Stuart missed capturing Pope in a raid of his own, but in an ironic twist got Pope’s dispatch book with marching orders and troop strengths. Now Lee had some valuable information of his own.

Though the tactics manuals of the day frowned upon a commander splitting his army in the presence of the enemy, it was to become one of Lee’s tactical trademarks. On August 25, he sent Jackson, his 27,000 men and 80 pieces of artillery on a 50-mile march around Pope’s right flank. In just two days of marching, Jackson struck behind Pope’s lines and seized his supply depot at Manassas Junction. Hungry Confederates ate everything they could then burned the rest of Pope’s supplies and went into position behind a crossroads called Groveton near Manassas Junction.

When Pope realized that Confederates had turned his flank and attacked his base of supplies, his response was to march on Jackson’s men at Manassas. He hoped to hold them up until McClellan arrived and before Lee and Longstreet could cross the mountains to the west. It was what Lee feared.

As part of Pope’s army marched along the Warrenton Turnpike through Groveton late in the afternoon, August 28, 1862, his officers saw a lone Confederate horseman brazenly ride out to within rifle-range and observe the column. The lone rider returned to the woods near the Brawner Farm and told his subordinate officers, “You may bring up your men, gentlemen.” The single horseman making a personal reconnaissance was Stonewall Jackson, himself.

What ensued was the large-scale equivalent of an old-fashioned duel. Two of the most vaunted units in either army were involved: Jackson’s own Stonewall Brigade and some tough Midwesterners who would soon earn the nom de guerre, The Iron Brigade. The Northerners first volley was fired at 150 yards, yet the Confederates continued to advance to within 80 yards before they fired their first volley. For twenty minutes the first units in the battle volleyed toe-to-toe, suffering horrendous casualties.

As the sun slowly sank, more units were thrown into the fight by both sides. They blasted away at each other from point-blank range: one Union colonel called the participants “crowds” of men firing at each other from 50 yards. Neither side wanted to withdraw. Finally, darkness forced an end to one of the most intense battles—for its duration—in the war to date.

Jackson pulled his men back to an abandoned railroad bed—embankments and cuts but no ties or rails—which made for “pre-fab” entrenchments and defensive breastworks. He placed his artillery behind his 20,000 infantry and secured his flanks with Stuart’s cavalrymen. Now, all he had to do was hold off twice as many Yankees until Longstreet and Lee arrived.

Unfinished Railroad Bed

At 5:30 a.m., August 29, the Federals advanced. Pushing their way through dense woods, they engaged the Confederates along the railroad bed. By mid-morning, more Federals began advancing, bent on Jackson’s destruction. Suddenly they were confronted by a large number of the enemy right before them: Longstreet had arrived.

Longstreet’s line hooked up with Jackson’s right flank completing an “L” shaped line.

Pope sent confusing orders to one of his commanders and 10,000 men of the Fifth Corps stood idle just a few miles away.

If Pope was having trouble with subordinates attacking, so was Lee. A third time Lee requested Longstreet attack, but was disappointed. Nightfall ended the ferocious fighting of August 29.

Before noon on August 30, Pope began to receive erroneous reports that Jackson was in retreat. By early afternoon he had convinced himself that all he needed to do was pursue and destroy a retreating column of Confederates. As his troops advanced toward the railroad bed, they were met by volleys from the enemy, obviously not in retreat, as determined as ever to hold their position.

 Fighting was particularly fierce in the lowest section of the railroad embankment known as “Deep Cut.” The Federals nearly broke through a gap in the Confederate line at a place called “The Dump,” where the defenders ran out of ammunition and hurled rocks at the Union troops. So close were their battle lines that one Confederate officer recalled the opposing flags “were almost flapping together.”

While Jackson’s men doggedly resisted Pope’s onslaught, Longstreet still held off on his attack. Meantime, a portion of the Union troops in front of Longstreet were mistakenly withdrawn, leaving one lone unsupported battery of artillery to defend the Federal flank.

The commander of the battery realized the extreme danger and sent an aide to find some troops. Two infantry regiments—Zouaves from New York—dressed in their gaudy uniforms of red pantaloons, white gaiters, and tasseled fezzes, hurried literally to their doom. They arrived in position just in time to face Longstreet’s massive assault.

Twenty-eight thousand Confederates bore down on the New Yorkers, approximately 1,000 strong.  In five minutes the 5^th New York lost 123 men killed. After all the horror and slaughter of the Civil War was finally tallied, the Zouaves, according to some historians, held a grisly record: They lost the highest number of killed in any infantry regiment and any battle of the entire war.

Longstreet’s men pushed on toward Henry Hill, landmark for the first battle of Manassas in 1861. Atop the hill were two brigades of the Pennsylvania Reserve Division, which were ordered forward.

The opposing lines met at the Sudley Road where Yankees seized the washed-out depressions as cover. More troops from both sides arrived and the Union troops, after having stalled Longstreet’s attack, began to withdraw. Finally, sunset brought an end to the fighting.

Casualties were high. Of the 70,000 Union troops present, 1,750 were killed, 8,450 wounded, and 4,250 missing; the 55,000 Confederates engaged lost 1,550 killed in action, 7,750 wounded, but only 100 missing in action.

Undeterred by the 9,400 casualties, Robert E. Lee turned his army’s marching columns northwards and began his first invasion of the enemy’s territory.

(For expanded accounts of the Battles of First and Second Manassas, see Civil War Ghost Trails and Cursed in Virginia by Mark Nesbitt.)

Directions to Manassas, Virginia: Take Route 15 South from Gettysburg. At Frederick, continue on I-270 South to I-495 South to I-66 West to VA-234 North (Exit 47B) in Gainesville, Virginia. The Manassas Visitor Center address is 6511 Sudley Road, Manassas, Virginia, 20109.

For an alternate route, the next blog will be on Ball’s Bluff Battlefield, which is on the way to Manassas if you prefer back roads!

Ghost Stories of First Manassas

The Stone House is a battlefield landmark closely related to the first Battle of Manassas. It has a sordid past and mysterious happenings associated with it. Built in 1848, the pre-Civil War history of the house is checkered. It was once a wagon-stand, tavern and inn at a toll stop for travelers on their way to and from Washington. According the Park Service’s brochure, it catered to rough-and-tumble, liquor-drinking cattlemen and teamsters. Park historians have documented that in addition to once being a private home, the building was used as a hospital during both battles. Witnesses after the first battle recalled seeing wounded men in the mud of the dirt-floored cellar, as well as throughout the rest of the house. One witness counted 32 wounded in the house at one time, many “mangled” by artillery fire. Some of the dead had not been removed. The same scenes revisited the house during the second battle. At least two wounded men from the 5^th New York Infantry—Privates Charles E. Brehm, age 21, and Eugene P. Geer, age 17—left their names carved in the woodwork of the house. Brehm survived; Geer died.

The Stone House at the time of the battle and The Stone House today

Paranormal references to the Stone House go back to 1866 when Confederate veteran and novelist John Esten Cooke referred to it in his book Surry of Eagle’s Nest. He called it “The Old Stone House of Manassas,” or, more ominously, “The Haunted House.” Early in the 20^th Century a story emerged of a curse placed on the house and the family that lived there after the war. Henry Ayres owned the house in 1902 and upon his death bequeathed it to his son George who, perhaps in an effort to attract tourists, placed artillery shells in the walls where some had struck during the battle. Legend states that the family lost more than six of its members to death in a relatively short time. No more is known about the alleged curse.

David Roth, in “Blue & Gray Magazine’s” Guide to Haunted Places of the Civil War in 1986 wrote about the negative energy in the house that is felt by many. Visitors sometimes feel a distinct pressure from invisible hands pushing them down the stairs from the second floor.

In July 1994, I received a letter from a gentleman who wrote of his experience with pushy ghosts at the Stone House. He mentioned he had heard about the house’s history as a tavern with heavy drinkers and altercations. Though the day was hot, walking through the house he suddenly passed through one of those inexplicable cold spots. Just as he was leaving the house he was “hit hard” from behind and fell out of the house to the ground injuring his knee. In physical pain, he was also unnerved: coming from the house he heard laughter, as if a group of people were gloating over his being thrown out. He turned to ask for help only to find that no one was inside or outside of the house. He was alone.

A friend and former park ranger told me the story of a couple of rangers who were working in the basement of the Stone House. In my training as a ranger I was told that when I entered a building to always lock the door behind me so that no one could come in. This the Manassas rangers did. As they paused from their work, they heard footsteps on the floor above their heads. Thinking that somehow a visitor had gotten into the house, they went upstairs to find no visitor and all the doors still locked.

In his book Civil War Ghosts of Virginia, L. B. Taylor, Jr., quoted a ranger as saying that people driving through the park at night report seeing lights where houses once stood. A similar story was told to me in 2010 by a woman who lived near Manassas, and was thus knowledgeable about her “neighborhood.” She was driving to an appointment and needed to drive past where the Stone House is located. She was astounded. The house wasn’t there. She was confused. Did the Park Service tear the historic building down? Had there been a recent calamity that she hadn’t heard about? Before she could fully understand what could have happened to the famous building she was past it. After her appointment, she returned the same way, perhaps thinking she might be able to stop and examine whatever remained of the structure for a clue as to what had happened to the beloved old house. As she approached the site, she was struck by one incredible thing: the house was there.

Later she told the story to friends. They were silent just a little too long. When she asked if they thought she was crazy, they answered that the same thing had happened to them. The old Stone House had vanished only to reappear a while later.

There is a phenomenon in paranormal studies known as a “warp.” It can be defined as a “rip” in the fabric of time. Is there a rip in time in the area of the Stone House that opens and closes according to some as yet unknown natural—or should I say, un-natural—law?

I can’t remember the first time I heard the story about the headless Zouave who has been seen near where the unfinished railroad crosses the battlefield of Manassas. It may have been in the mid-1970s, which would coincide with the dates I was employed by the National Park Service at Gettysburg.

First, a little historical background: In the mid-19^th Century—the so-called Victorian Era—anything and everything French was popular in America, from women’s garments to military tactics. The common kepi headgear, used by both sides, was a French design. Napoleonic tactics—although outdated—were the basis for army maneuver. Captain Minié, of the French Army, improved the shoulder arms projectile—the famous “Minie ball”—to fire farther and more accurately than its predecessor (much to the dismay of those struck by it).

Some military units took the fashion statement to extremes and outfitted themselves, head-to-toe, with the uniform of the French forces in northern Africa known as the Zouaves. With middle-eastern influence, the uniforms featured ballooning pantaloons tucked into gaiters, short waist-length jackets, with looping embroidery, waistbands that were yards long, and, to complete the outfit in the most impractical way, turbaned fezzes replete with tassels swinging from the top. The unintended consequence was that worst part was that the uniforms were brightly colored—red sashes or jackets, yellow piping, bright blue, striped pantaloons—making them perfect targets when fighting in the woods and fields of America.

Some have claimed to see the ghost of a Zouave near the New York Monument, close to the site of their near-annihilation. But the Zouave I had always heard about had been seen near the unfinished railroad. Perhaps there are two, because the one I’d heard of is very conspicuously missing his head.

Along with sightings of this wraith are also out-of-place sounds, intense cold spots and weird smells like rotten eggs and a smoky or charred smell, as well as the sighting of a Confederate soldier in a butternut uniform.

According to paranormalists, cold spots are relatively common and universal during a haunting. The smell of rotten eggs—sulfur—seems to be common at Civil War battlefields and needs some explanation. The propellant for firearms during the Civil War was black powder, made up of charcoal, saltpeter and sulfur. When burned, it gives off the smell of rotten eggs.

L. B. Taylor, Jr., in his Civil War Ghosts of Virginia may have the explanation for the “charred” smell. Taylor writes of a story printed in the Washington Magazine in the early 1990s. Apparently, people on the battlefield reported localized cold spots and the smell of black powder, typical of paranormal phenomena on battlefields. But they also reported smelling burning flesh. A park ranger confirmed that visitors have randomly reported the weird, out-of-reality smells and Taylor wrote about the ranger’s “rationalization” of the smells.

Ken Burns’ classic series on the Civil War portrayed one of the more moving moments early in the war when a letter from Major Sullivan Ballou to his wife in Rhode Island was read. In flowery, Victorian prose he assures her that, should he die in the coming battle near Manassas, he will return to her as a gentle, loving spirit—his ghost—to watch over her. The sentiment is beautiful, but reality was far more brutal.

After his wounding, Ballou and a colonel were transported to the hospital at Sudley Church. There they died and were buried in shallow graves nearby. In early1862, after the Confederate army abandoned the area, the governor of Rhode Island sent emissaries to recover the remains of the two officers. As the parties dug near the church, a local girl approached and said the Confederates had already emptied the graves. They took the body of the highest ranking officer to a nearby ravine, mutilated it for ghastly souvenirs, including, apparently, the head, and burned it. The exhumation party, thanks to the girl, located the decapitated remains. But she was incorrect about the identity of the body: it wasn’t the Colonel but Major Ballou whose body had been mutilated and burned. Could this be the source for the strange reports of a “charred” smell?

A brief visit I made to the unfinished railroad in September of 2011, yielded several recordings of EVP. In the first I asked if the highest-ranking officer would speak with me and what is your name? At 4 seconds I heard the word “DeHeiser” or “DePeyster.” (Interestingly enough, there was a Union officer, a Major J. Watts De Peyster, Jr., on the staff of Major General Phil Kearny. Kearny’s Division made an attack on the Confederate line at the unfinished railroad on August 29, 1862.)

A second recording was made at 2:49 p.m. First, there’s some loud noise that cannot be recognized as words; then, at 10 seconds, a voice says, “Most definitely.” At 14 seconds there is a strange “clink” (sounding like a rail road spike being hit with a sledge hammer) that could not have come from any piece of equipment or clothing I had with me. With EVP this is not unusual: clinks, raps, clicks (like fingers snapping), bits of song, roars and whispers are often heard in the background. Where the “clink” in this recording came from is a mystery. Finally, at 16 seconds, very quietly, as if they do not want me to hear, a voice says, “you can’t talk to him.”

A final recording was made that day at 2:57 p.m. I say “Men of the 63^rd you can talk to me.” At 10 seconds a quiet voice says, “He can hear us.”

Ghosts of Gettysburg Haunted Daytrips: Harpers Ferry

Out of the highlands of Maryland, from the north and west, flows the Potomac River, past Williamsport, Falling Waters, Sharpsburg and Shepherdstown. From the south, out of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia, runs the Shenandoah River, given the same name as the lush valley it helped carve, once criss-crossed by belligerent armies hundreds of times. The tongue of land that is formed where these two great American rivers meet in West Virginia is called Harpers Ferry.

By 1763, Robert Harper had established a ferry business to transport people, animals and goods across the confluence of the Shenandoah and Potomac Rivers. The site was chosen by George Washington for an armory to supply weapons for the nation. Meriwether Lewis, half of the leadership of the Lewis and Clark exploratory expedition, procured weapons for his company of explorers from the Harpers Ferry armory. Over half-a-million shoulder arms were produced at the armory from the turn of the 19^th Century through the beginning of the Civil War.

During the early part of the 19^th Century, sectional differences between the states fomented numerous crises. Unequal tariffs, expansion into the west, representation in Congress, all plagued the growing nation. But the most tortuous—socially, economically and morally—was the issue of slavery.

Numerous political compromises were struck every few years between slave holding and non-slave holding states. However, they only served to postpone a solution to black slavery that was economically, philosophically and ethically right: the emancipation from slavery for African-Americans.

The snail’s-pace of politics was not rapid enough for some. While compromises were initiated and an uneasy peace was maintained, the radical abolitionists in the northeastern section of the country felt that such an abhorrent institution as human bondage had to go, and had to go immediately. One of them—John Brown—finally took matters into his own hands.

Brown had demonstrated a propensity for violence in the mid-1850s in Kansas, slaughtering pro-slavery men. (To be fair, the violence extended to both sides.) In October 1859, he planned to execute an attack on Harpers Ferry, to capture the arms in the United States arsenal and arm the tens of thousands of slaves he expected to join him in their rebellion for freedom.

His planning for the raid took place in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, where he tried to recruit the famous African-American anti-slavery orator Frederick Douglass. Douglass turned him down, expressing his belief that it was a suicide mission that would only help to inflame sensibilities on both sides of the slavery question.

For three months before the raid, Brown gathered men, arms and intelligence about his target. He rented the Kennedy Farmhouse, not far from Harpers Ferry. Finally, under cover of darkness, on October 16, 1859, Brown and his “army” of less than twenty men, marching alongside a wagon, entered Harpers Ferry.

A scouting party Brown sent out returned with Colonel Lewis Washington, great-grandnephew of George Washington, captured at his nearby estate along with a few other prominent citizens, to be held as hostages.

At first the raid went well, with the raiders cutting telegraph wires out of the town to keep their actions a secret from authorities in Washington. A train arrived, but for some unknown reason Brown allowed it to pass, perhaps thinking that, by the time it got to Washington, he would have captured the armory, gathered the weapons, and armed the thousands of slaves he felt would be clamoring to fight for their freedom under his banner. The train stopped at the next station and used the telegraph there to warn Washington of the raid.

Slaves from surrounding farms began to gather in the Ferry. But instead of the tens of thousands Brown expected to lead to freedom, only a handful showed up.

As word spread through the town, the taverns began to empty and men pulled muskets off their parlor walls to see what they could do against this individual who had invaded their town for some unsavory reason. Four of them, including the mayor, paid with their lives.

Ironically, the first man killed in the raid was Heyward Shepherd, a baggage handler at the railroad station, and a free black man.

By the morning of October 17, a company of local militia had captured the Potomac River Bridge, cutting off any escape for the raiders. Brown moved his small band from the large armory building to the much more easily defended smaller fire engine house across from it. It was quickly surrounded by townsfolk and militia from the surrounding area. President James Buchanan received word of the raid and potential slave insurrection led by a man named “Smith” with some Kansas Border Ruffians, and decided to take military action.

The closest troops were U. S. Marines at the Washington Navy Yard. Buchanan ordered them to Harpers Ferry under the command of Lieutenant Israel Green. He also sent a Lieutenant Colonel on leave from his U. S. Cavalry unit in Texas, whose name—because of the conflagration Brown’s raid would ignite—would soon become famous. Robert E. Lee was to take overall command of the government troops. A young officer, who had known Lee from his days at West Point, volunteered to accompany him as his aide. His name would also echo through the halls of American Military History in the upcoming war: James Ewell Brown (“Jeb”) Stuart. Lee and Stuart arrived by special train late that night.

Earlier Brown, seeing that his raid to free the slaves was essentially over, had attempted to negotiate with the townspeople who were, to say the least, agitated and taking potshots at any movement in or near the engine house. Brown sent out one of his sons and another raider, Aaron Stevens, under a white flag to parley. They were shot down by the Harper’s Ferry civilians who didn’t honor the flag of truce coming from someone who had just invaded their town for nefarious purposes.

Lee, still in civilian clothes, Stuart and the Marine detachment walked across the bridge in the dark and decided to wait until daylight to launch an attack. But first Lee would give the insurrectionists a chance to surrender.

At 7:00 a.m., Stuart, under another flag of truce, approached the large wooden doors of the engine house. He immediately recognized the older bearded leader as “Osawatomie” Brown, whom he had known about from his days serving on the frontier. Brown wanted to negotiate his way out using the hostages for barter. Stuart told him he wasn’t authorized to negotiate Brown’s escape, but if the U. S. troops had to be used, he couldn’t guarantee anyone’s safety. Brown wanted to keep talking, but seeing no use to it, Stuart leapt aside from the doors and waved his hat, a pre-arranged signal to Lee.

The Marines’ assault began. Sledgehammers were used on the stout doors to no avail. A heavy ladder was found and used as a battering ram splintering an opening at the bottom through which Lt. Green crawled. Two other Marines who followed were shot. In the smoke and haze, Colonel Washington had to point out John Brown to Green who landed a glancing blow with his saber to the back of Brown’s neck. An attempt to run him through was thwarted by something in Brown’s coat and Green’s light dress blade simply bent double. Marines poured through the gap in the door and, under orders not to fire, bayoneted several of the insurrectionists. The fighting ended in less than three minutes.

Ten of Brown’s “army” were killed, including two of his sons. The hordes of slaves he expected to lead to freedom never materialized. Terrorized by previous attempted slave insurrections, the State of Virginia’s reaction was swift and uncompromising: by December Brown was tried and executed by hanging in Charles Town, Virginia (now West Virginia) for murder, insurrection and treason against the state.

His death transfigured him. To the Abolitionists in the north and slaves in the south he became a martyr to the cause of emancipation; to southerners he was a terrorist, fomenting the reality of their worst nightmares: slaves who lived and worked side by side with them turning to slaughter them in their own homes. The difference to each side was plain and stark.

Harpers Ferry During the Civil War

During the Civil War sparked in part by Brown’s Raid, Harpers Ferry would play a role, changing hands several times during the conflict. Historians refer to the surrender of the Harpers Ferry garrison of 12,700 troops before the Battle of Antietam to Confederate forces as the largest wholesale capture of Union soldiers during the entire war. Depending upon U. S. Army figures from the surrender of Bataan in World War II, the Harpers Ferry capitulation might be the largest in U. S. History.

Several other historic sites are just a few minutes from Harpers Ferry. Antietam National Battlefield is only 16 miles (about 35 minutes) from Harpers Ferry and travelers pass Monocacy Battlefield near Frederick on the way from Gettysburg. The famed Appalachian Trail, a walking path that runs from Maine to Georgia passes through Harpers Ferry, and the historic Chesapeake and Ohio Canal and its bicycle-friendly towpath is just across the bridge.

Directions to Harpers Ferry, West Virginia: From Gettysburg, take Route 15 South to Frederick, Maryland. At Frederick, take the exit for Route 340 South. Follow Route 340 to Harpers Ferry. The National Park Service maintains Harpers Ferry much the way it appeared in the mid-19^th Century. Also, Harpers Ferry is close enough to Antietam to be part of that Daytrip.

The Ghosts of Harpers Ferry

Harper Cemetery

The spark struck at Harpers Ferry grew into a great conflagration that eventually took the lives of over 800,000 young men over the four years of the American Civil War. Needless to say, with so much human energy expended because of the events at Harpers Ferry, there tends to be a good number of ghost stories associated with the place.

One ghost has been identified as one of Brown’s raiders. Dangerfield Newby, a freed slave, had joined Brown’s band after saving the money to buy his enslaved family’s freedom, only to have their owner raise the price. His hopes shattered, Newby determined the only way to free his family was by destroying the institution of slavery with John Brown. He was one of the first to fall, killed by a six-inch spike fired from a townsperson’s musket that ripped open his throat. His body was dismembered, mutilated, and left for the hogs of Harpers Ferry to finish off. His ghost periodically appears wearing baggy pants and an old-fashioned slouch hat and is identified by its 6’2” height and the wicked slash across its throat.

Railroaders dislike passing through Harpers Ferry at night. According to Shirley Dougherty, author of A Ghostly Tour of Harpers Ferry, they fear running into (literally!) “Jenny,” a young townswoman of the 1800’s. She was killed when she accidentally caught her hoop-skirts on fire and ran into the path of a train rolling through the town. Modern-day engineers see the ball of fire moving swiftly up the track toward their engine, slam on the brakes and hear a sickening thump. When they inspect the front of their locomotive, there is no trace of the fiery apparition.

Dougherty also writes about the priest who is seen making his way to St. Peters Catholic Church. Visitors on their way back to town will say hello to the priest, but will receive nothing but silence as he passes. Turning to watch the incommunicative man of God, they are astounded when he simply vanishes a few feet from them by walking through the wall of the church.

Guided ghost tours of Harpers Ferry are available. See Ghost Tours of Harpers Ferry for information.

Ghosts of Gettysburg Haunted Daytrips: Antietam

It is a dubious distinction, indeed. But just for the historical records, the question should be asked.

What is the bloodiest day in all of American History?

Many will say D-Day, June 6, 1944, the invasion of Normandy.

The toll was about 10,000 military casualties, but those figures represent all the Allies, not just Americans landing on that fateful day.

Some will say the Battle of Gettysburg with its astounding 51,000 casualties. But Gettysburg was spread out over three days.

Others may point to the attack on Pearl Harbor where 2,403 were killed—including 68 civilians—and 1282 were wounded.

Still others may cite September 11, 2001 when the U. S. was attacked by terrorists. There were 246 deaths in planes, 125 mostly military deaths at the Pentagon, and 2,606 in New York City totaling 2,977. But they weren’t all Americans who died, some were foreign nationals working in the U.S.

All were horrific, tragic, and sad beyond words. All left an indelible scar on the hearts of caring Americans of any generation.

But nothing in all of American History comes close to one fall day in 1862. On September 17, two American armies ripped and clawed at each other with artillery, rifled-muskets and bayonets until, after about twelve hours of fighting, nearly 23,000 men lay dead, dying or wounded near the small creek called Antietam outside of the town of Sharpsburg, Maryland. According to their website, the National Park Service’s “official” figure is 22,720 casualties for September 17, 1862. They admit that, with the massive amount of catastrophic violence that occurred, no figures are rock solid.

The Battle of Antietam: Prelude

During the spring and summer of 1862, the military fortunes of the Confederacy were rising. General Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson, with rapid marches, had seriously roughed-up Union armies in the Shenandoah Valley. To the east, Confederate forces, after strategic retreats, had victoriously driven Federal troops from the very gates of Richmond during the Seven Days Battles on the Virginia Peninsula, between the James and York Rivers.

Under their new commander, General Robert E. Lee, the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia struck their Federal enemies near the 1861 battlefield of Manassas. At the Second Battle of Manassas, in August 1862, Confederates were so determined to win that some soldiers threw rocks when they ran out of ammunition. Seemingly unstoppable, the veteran Confederates followed Lee across the Potomac River and into Maryland on their first invasion of the north.

Hoping to garner support from the citizens of the border state, Lee kept a tight rein on foraging by his men. Regardless, Marylanders’ reception of the Confederate army was still cool. In order to open a supply route into the Shenandoah Valley, Lee needed to seize Harpers Ferry, at the confluence of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers, the scene of Abolitionist John Brown’s aborted raid to free the slaves in October 1858.

One timeless maxim of war is that a commander should never divide his forces in the face of the enemy. But more than once Robert E. Lee, ever the audacious tactician, would violate that edict during his tenure as commander of the Army of Northern Virginia. On his way northward, in early September 1862, splitting his army and relying on his opponent’s caution, he sent Stonewall Jackson to capture Harpers Ferry. On September 13, his audacity almost cost him his army. Union commander Major General George B. McClellan was handed three cigars wrapped in a copy of Lee’s orders, discovered at an abandoned Confederate campsite, specifying the routes for the divided sections of Lee’s army. With those plans in hand, McClellan could now pounce on each section with his full force before they could unite, thereby destroying the main army of the rebellion.

Instead of acting immediately, McClellan dithered. A southern sympathizer delivered the news of McClellan’s finding Lee’s order to Confederate Cavalry Commander J.E.B. Stuart, who passed the information to Lee. In response, Lee plugged the gaps in the South Mountains with Confederate soldiers. Savage and heroic fighting bought Lee a whole day. He was considering retreating to the Shenandoah Valley when word came from Jackson that Harpers Ferry was about to fall. (Its capture would net nearly 12,000 Union prisoners, one of the largest wholesale captures in U.S. Army history.) Lee sent orders to his units to concentrate at Sharpsburg, Maryland.

As it was, McClellan still managed to corner a part of Lee’s army with the Potomac River at its back near Sharpsburg behind Antietam Creek. McClellan’s attacks began at dawn, September 17, 1862. However, what was to be coordinated Union assaults, instead struck the rebel line in piecemeal fashion.

Union attacks swept from the north and fighting rolled southward. For the next eight hours northern soldiers fought through areas whose names would be seared into the American military psyche: the Cornfield, the West Woods, the East Woods, the Sunken Road, soon to be christened “Bloody Lane.” Lee continued to shift his troops from one endangered segment of his line to the next, barely staving off catastrophe. On the southern end of the battlefield, a handful of Georgia sharpshooters tenaciously held Union general Ambrose Burnside’s Ninth Corps from crossing Antietam Creek and encircling Lee’s army.

When Union assaults finally drove Confederates from the Sunken Road leaving it half full of southern bodies, all McClellan needed to do was send in his reserves. Confederate artillerist E. P. Alexander wrote of the imminent catastrophe: “Lee’s army was ruined, and the end of the Confederacy was in sight.” But true to Lee’s estimation of his opponent, McClellan, believing Lee’s army to be larger than it really was, exercised caution and held back.

Burnside’s men finally forced a crossing of the bridge that would ignominiously bear his name forever. Once again Lee’s army was threatened with destruction: Burnside was about to cut off Lee’s army’s only retreat route across the Potomac, but he halted to reorganize his advance. All McClellan needed to do was send in support to Burnside. Fatally, his caution once again prevailed.

But Lee had his own troubles. Looking to the south, he saw a dust cloud rising from marching troops. If they were Union troops, his army was destroyed, the Confederate cause of independence shattered. For what seemed like an eternity, an aide peering through a telescope, finally announced the column was marching under Confederate flags; A. P. Hill had arrived after a killing march from Harpers Ferry and burst upon Burnside’s flank, stopping his attack in its tracks.

Dawn of September 18, around the small Maryland hamlet was nothing like dawn on the 17^th. The day revealed fields strewn with some 3,650 silent dead and 17,300 moaning wounded. The two armies sat cautiously watching one another: Lee expecting a continuation of the attacks from the previous day, the next of which could be fatal to his army; McClellan seemingly satisfied he had avoided contact with what he fantasized as Lee’s never-ending reserves.

Lee began his retreat into Virginia.

McClellan boasted of a great victory. But his main objective of destroying Lee’s army went unfulfilled.

The Union general assured Washington that Pennsylvania was now safe from Confederate invasion, but with the Army of Northern Virginia intact, and after a series of major victories for it in the future, within nine months, Lee’s legions would be crossing the Mason-Dixon line again, marching menacingly into the Keystone State.

Directions to Sharpsburg, Maryland: There are a number of ways to reach Sharpsburg from Gettysburg, all taking about an hour and fifteen minutes. My favorite route is through the mountains west of Frederick. Take Route 15 South from Gettysburg. At Frederick, exit onto Route 40 West (West Patrick Street). Follow Route 40 until it leaves town, then bear left onto Alternate Route 40.After passing through the Gap you will enjoy a scenic drive down the slope of South Mountain, across the valley and through Middletown, eventually coming to Boonsboro. In Boonsboro, turn left on Potomac Street. This will bring you to the outskirts of Sharpsburg. You’ll start to see cannons, ubiquitous on our Civil War battlefields.

This route also takes you through the battlefield of South Mountain (named so by Northern troops) or Boonsboro (the Confederate name for the battle) fought on September 14, 1862. Prominent in the accounts of this delaying battle for one of the gaps in the mountains prior to Antietam, is the so-called “Mountain House,” now a restaurant called the Old South Mountain Inn. Dating back to 1732, it is located on the old National Pike, which carried troops (possibly including a young George Washington) to the future battlefields of the French and Indian War in western Pennsylvania.

There are a number of ghost stories circulating around the old stone house. For example, a fire broke out in one part of the building. It was undetected until a door, which was habitually closed, opened by itself. An employee smelled smoke just in time to put the fire out. The opening of the door was attributed to Madeline Dahlgren, one-time owner of the Inn, but long dead at the time of the fire.

Antietam National Battlefield is located near Sharpsburg.

A number of years ago a group of reenactors, under the cover of darkness, made their way out to the Bloody Lane to spend the night sleeping on the exact spot where historic photographs showed piles of bodies. Shortly after they settled in for the night, one after another, they began to leave, some slowly, some more rapidly, all complaining of some sort of weirdness that had descended upon them, from auditory anomalies to sensing something “just not right.” One reenactor was left, laughingly mocking his comrades, calling them derogatory names, swearing he was there to stay the night.

His friends were gathered about their cars when they heard a blood-curdling scream emanate from the darkened fields of death. A figure staggered from the darkness. It was their fellow reenactor, out of breath from a terrified sprint away from the Bloody Lane. It was several minutes before they could get him to calm down and relate what happened.

He was lying, he said, flat on his back, chuckling to himself about his friends leaving him for some imagined sound or trifling feeling. Suddenly he began to hear strange, unearthly sounds, whispers of moans close to his ears, the rustling of grass between his arm and chest. All his imagination, he thought, until the rustling turned into the vision of a human arm rising from the darkened, blood-soaked earth beside his torso. Frightened by the bizarre vision he tried to rise. The mangled arm and hand twisted around to press down on his chest and pin him to the ground. At his scream, the more than imaginary arm let him go.

Antietam’s Bloody Lane

The Pry House became a hospital site during the bloody battle. Union general Israel Richardson was carried there after being wounded. His wife made the long journey from Michigan to care for him. Although surgeons thought he would recover, a fatal infection set in and, despite the tender ministrations of his wife, the general was dead within a few days.

Pry House

The house was eventually purchased and preserved by the National Park Service, but one night, in the mid-1970s, the house caught fire. By the time the fire department arrived, the fire had made its way to the second floor, which then collapsed in upon the first. The firemen were put in a quandary, however, trying to determine if they should attempt a rescue of a woman who seemed to be moving around, silhouetted by the fire on the second floor. They were about to do the heroic thing when their captain waved them off, reminding them that there was no second floor remaining.

The event could be ignored, attributed to the highly unlikely (and probably even scientifically impossible) mass-hallucination of several dozen firemen, except for the experience a while later of two park rangers on patrol passing the Pry House. The interior was still gutted by the fire. As they sat looking at the old hospital on the small hill, they were struck by the appearance of a womanly figure moving—or floating—past one of the windows. They discussed whether they should exit the patrol car to investigate for a prowler, except that it would have been impossible: the figure moved past a second-floor window, a clear impossibility—at least for a living prowler—since the second floor was still not in existence.

“Ghosts of Gettysburg” Haunted Daytrips

As a youngster, one of the highlights of my year was our family vacation to Gettysburg.

Coming from the suburbs of Cleveland, the days spent in the rural atmosphere was refreshing for my parents. For me, the fabled history of Gettysburg was the draw.

We tried to visit twice a summer. After a while, we had visited every museum and attraction. I can’t remember who discovered that the battlefield of Antietam was not far away, but using Gettysburg as our base, a trip was planned.

Antietam had a completely different “feel” for me than Gettysburg. I was fascinated by it. Soon every trip to Gettysburg included additional daytrips. I remember going to Harpers Ferry, Manassas, Fredericksburg, the Shenandoah Valley, Appomattox, and even the battlefields around Richmond. Gettysburg was always our starting point.

When I moved to Gettysburg to work for the National Park Service as a Ranger/Historian, I continued the “daytrips” to other battlefields, often with fellow rangers. We would even travel to Virginia to visit Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, the Wilderness, and Spotsylvania Battlefields and return the same day to Gettysburg. Sometimes we’d take bicycles and see the battlefields that way.

The point is, Gettysburg is a great place to visit and stay, but there are other great sites that are worth the time to visit just a few hours away.

Most of them are even haunted.

After living and working in Gettysburg for nearly fifty years, I have always said that it is “acre for acre, the most haunted place in America.”

Over a thousand stories later, I still maintain that frightening boast.

Although Gettysburg has been my main focus for research into the otherworld of the paranormal, it seems that it is also the epicenter of a vast part of the country that has an abundance of haunted sites, many of which are a day trip from Gettysburg.

After speaking with visitors to Gettysburg at autographing sessions, I have learned that few realize how many historic haunted venues take only an hour or so to get to, a couple of hours to explore and another hour to return from. In other words, you can have breakfast in Gettysburg, a leisurely lunch in Sharpsburg (near Antietam National Battlefield), or Chambersburg (site of a haunted jail and where John Brown, abolitionist, planned the raid that ignited the Civil War), or Harper’s Ferry (target of Brown’s raid), then back for dinner in Gettysburg.

Some are located near enough to one another that you can even visit two or more in one trip.

Welcome to my blog: Ghosts of Gettysburg Haunted Daytrips.

Enjoy!

13 Hidden, Haunted, Hotspots of Gettysburg #13

July 1, 1863—The first of three day’s battles at Gettysburg was reaching a tipping point. During the morning, Union cavalry under Brigadier General John Buford had fanned out along McPherson’s Ridge to the west of Gettysburg to hold off Confederate Infantry sweeping in toward the town until Union infantry arrived. Fighting expanded from the west to the north of town with the Union line in the shape of a giant “L” lying on its side, its right flank resting on Barlow’s Knoll. By afternoon, more Confederates arrived, occupying the ground east of Barlow’s Knoll, making the Union position untenable. As the Union line began to collapse, Confederates continued their advance, driving the Union troops through the town of Gettysburg.

Hays’s and Hoke’s Confederate Brigades (Hoke’s temporarily being commanded by Isaac Avery) attacked in a wide battle line down the east side of the Old Harrisburg Road virtually unopposed. They crossed Rock Creek and passed on with little resistance—most Union troops were on the west side of the Harrisburg Road—until they ran into Colonel Coster’s men at Kuhn’s Brickyard (fighting which is detailed in my previous blog about the Battle for Kuhn’s Brickyard.) The area they advanced over, once they crossed Rock Creek, would become the Gettysburg North Shopping Center in the mid-20^th Century.

The shopping center was the typical strip mall of the era consisting of small shops with outside entrances. One was a Radio Shack, located in the southern end of the complex. I purchased batteries and small electronic items from there in the late 1980s and early 1990s. I remember the years because of something the manager at the time told me.

She had read my Ghosts of Gettysburg books—or at least the first one.

The manager prefaced her story with some information: she was not prone to seeing ghosts or having weird, unexplainable experiences. However, several times, when she opened the store in the early morning, she would hear one of the televisions in the back of the store chattering away. At first she thought the employee from the night before had accidentally left the TV on. But when she went back to turn it off, slowly the voice would fade. At least once, she saw a picture on the screen, which also faded as she approached. Unnervingly, each time she would find that the TV was unplugged.

She insisted that I investigate to see if the store was haunted and by whom. I opined that it most likely was haunted, and that it was probably the Confederate soldiers who had swept through the very space the store occupied, a century and a third earlier.

The next time I stopped in, she told me the same story—it had happened a few more times since she last spoke with me. I made a note to set up an investigation. But time passed. In a few more years the Radio Shack store was closed.

Eventually, the entire North Gettysburg Shopping Center was sold and became the Gettysburg branch of the Harrisburg Area Community College (HACC).

Directions to the Old Radio Shack site: From the center circle in town head north on Carlisle Street. You will pass the Gettysburg College campus on your left. Turn right at the light onto E. Lincoln Ave. Follow signs for Business Route 15. Turn right at the HACC entrance below the Adams County National Bank building. The Radio Shack was located in the last cluster of buildings, which currently houses the Harrisburg Area Community College Head Start facility. There is a parking lot behind the buildings. The area behind the HACC complex is private and overnight parking is prohibited. Be respectful and obey any law enforcement officers or officials from HACC should you encounter them.

Old Radio Shack Store Location

I always wanted to write about the story of the manager and her Confederate soldiers attempting to communicate using the strange, modern, box-like device that they could talk through and have their image appear in. So, a week before the Gettysburg Battlefield Bash, in preparation for my speech on “The 13 Hidden, Haunted, Hotspots of Gettysburg,” Carol and I drove out to the site of the former Radio Shack.

It was July 21, 2019, around 6:40 p.m. We pulled around behind the building to the parking area. I knew that just beyond the thick woods at the edge of the parking lot was Rock Creek. Running water has been known to enhance the gathering of EVP. I began asking questions with my recorder on “voice activation.” I got immediate, strong results.

There were very loud responses to my questions, almost like they were shouting or roaring at me. Were the spirits of the Confederate soldiers angry? Is that why the recordings are loud and boisterous? I would rather believe that, since they cannot hear themselves, they might be over-modulating—speaking too loudly—like we do when we have headphones on. For example, a communication I recorded years ago in the Gettysburg Railroad engine house was too loud to understand. I asked the female communicator if she could speak a little more softly. The very next response was a whisper: “I’ll be quiet.”

EVP from Radio Shack Site Investigation

A caveat: Nearby is the old Gettysburg radio station. Some might suggest that my recorder picked up a broadcast, but the recordings are obviously not music, not a disc jockey speaking, a weather or news report, or anything else that might be a common broadcast from a radio station. My recorder has no antenna, either inside or outside, and cannot receive radio broadcasts. The recordings sound exactly like other EVP I’ve collected over the last twenty-five years. The radio station was moved years ago to the Fairfield Road, miles away. I’m not sure the radio equipment is even in the building anymore.

13 Hidden, Haunted, Hotspots of Gettysburg #12 – Update

It never fails. I had no sooner publish my most recent 13 Hidden, Haunted, Hotspots of Gettysburg #12 blog entry on Benner’s Hill and Major Joseph Latimer, when I ran across two fascinating adds to the original blog.

I ran across a story by L. B. Taylor, whom I once introduced as “The Dean of Virginia Ghost Stories,” about what some people believe to be young J. W. Latimer’s ghost haunting the house in Harrisonburg where he died.

But first, a correction. Although one source I used has Major Latimer buried at Virginia Military Institute, thanks to L. B. Taylor in his Ghosts of Virginia, Volume XIII, he relates a story that located Latimer’s grave in Woodbine Cemetery, Harrisonburg, Virginia.

After young Latimer died in the home of Confederate Colonel E. T. H. Warren, he was taken to Woodbine Cemetery in Harrisonburg, where some 250 other heroes of the Confederacy are buried. Kate, the daughter of the Warrens, not much younger than “The Boy Major,” placed a small slate with his name upon the grave, so that he would not be forgotten. In 1915, over fifty years later, there was another more formal commemoration for the young artillerist that included local citizens, the Corps of Cadets from VMI, and the dedication of a fine marble memorial shaft bearing the inscription, “The boy Major. Erected by grateful hearts to the memory of one of the South’s most heroic soldiers. Love makes memory eternal.” The ceremony was led by Kate Warren who, a half-century later, still remembered the young soldier who died in her home.

Photo of Latimer Memorial by Ser Amantio di Nicolao – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=73226641

The Warren House is now known as the Warren-Sipes House. Today it houses the Virginia Quilt Museum, but from 1978 and into the 1990s it was the headquarters for the Harrisonburg-Rockingham Historical Society. During the time it served as the historical society headquarters, one member saw an apparition whom he identified as the deceased “Boy Major” standing on the landing of the stairs leading to the second floor. Another member of the society saw a very young man in uniform, frail in appearance, descending the stairs slowly. Others admitted to feeling a strange “presence” in the building.

According to Taylor’s book, even while the Virginia Quilt Museum resides in the building, the haunting by the same young, frail individual continues. A psychic visited the museum in 2006 and detected a faint presence on the stairs and in a hallway upstairs. In June 2007, the director of the museum was leaving for the night with two other tourism professionals from Harrisonburg. One saw a small figure walking through the building. The figure suddenly vanished in the second she looked away and then back, which backed up the story of the frail figure who has been visiting the house since Latimer’s death.

L. B. Taylor’s books on Virginia Ghosts are an absolute must read for anyone interested in the paranormal.

13 Hidden, Haunted, Hotspots of Gettysburg #12

Young Major Joseph W. Latimer was supposed to be graduating with his class at the prestigious Virginia Military Institute. But he had left the school in his sophomore year when war between the two sections of the country broke out and volunteered his services to his native South. The baby-faced warrior first taught drills to the Hampden Artillery, a volunteer unit in Richmond, having studied Artillery Tactics at VMI under a professor thought odd by his students, Thomas J. Jackson, soon to be revered as “Stonewall.” At this moment—late afternoon July 2, 1863—instead of holding a cherished sheepskin diploma, Latimer was desperately fighting for his life with his artillery battalion on a hill unsuitable for artillery east of Gettysburg – Benner’s Hill. He wasn’t yet twenty years old.

A grave responsibility it was for a young man. Behind him rested the left flank of the entire Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. General Robert E. Lee was to be meeting his officers at a farmhouse just behind this position. And while the Yankees had not shown the gumption to attack, so far, in the battle, one never knew. Latimer’s artillerists—most of whom were older than their commander—were the iron studded outpost placed upon Benner’s Hill, discouraging any Yankee attack upon this flank.

Latimer originally lined the 14 guns of his battalion along the ridge that extended from Benner’s Hill across the road to Hanover. But the counter-battery fire from the Yankee batteries, placed on an opposing hill with the cemetery on it, made it untenable. Never on the drill fields of VMI—or even the battlefields of this war—had he seen such fire.

Still, he held his guns in their exposed position for several hours. Outnumbered by Union artillery, no doubt he was torn by lessons learned from his prosaic professor. As far as artillery tactics were concerned, this was no place for big guns; but as far as withdrawing, it was a choice abhorrent to his old professor. After holding out as long as he could in the open against overwhelming odds, the young major finally requested permission to withdraw his guns, which was granted. Since he was obligated to protect the left flank of the entire Confederate army, he chose to personally remain behind on the hill with just four guns, because he wouldn’t ask another officer to command in such a dangerous position. It was a decision that would cost him his life.

The firing finally died down a bit and Latimer probably could have sat out the rest of the battle. But that evening, Confederate infantry began an assault toward the cemetery and Latimer opened fire to support them.

While the majority of his guns were withdrawn, the Union guns were still at full strength, now aiming at four targets instead of fourteen. Finally, an exploding shell mangled the young major’s left arm and killed his horse, which fell on him. He was painfully extracted from beneath his mount and, as night was falling, gave his last orders to his battery commanders: to withdraw the guns to a safe place, something he never would have done for himself.

After nightfall, the farmhouse to the rear of Latimer’s battle, at the bottom of the ridge, to which the wounded lad was taken, must have resembled something out of the young man’s nightmares. The once bucolic home of Daniel Lady and his family had been transformed in a matter of hours by the hideous necessities of war into a battlefield hospital. He no doubt heard the moans and pleadings of the wounded: Don’t…please…please!…don’t cut…please leave my arm…no…no…no!

Through the windows he would have seen the orderlies holding down a struggling man as a blood-covered surgeon lifted a blood-covered knife and made a rapid, circular cut around a mangled arm, much like his own. He could have heard the pitiful scream as hot steel cut into raw, tender flesh. He undoubtedly saw strange pyramids below each window and in the flickering candlelight realized the unbelievable: they were human hands and feet and legs and arms discarded recklessly out the windows as just so much unwanted trash. Leaning up against the walls of the farmhouse and scattered about the farmyard were the broken bodies of those the surgeon was finished with, and those yet to be taken into the stinking hell of the front room. Blood was everywhere, in spots and rivulets on the floor. He must have known also that the surgeon’s bloody table was to be his fate as well. How a young man, not yet twenty years old could have stood the dreadful anticipation, is beyond understanding.

There’s no knowing, but we can only hope that young Latimer’s time on the operating table was brief. Some surgeons prided themselves on the rapidity with which they could cut through the skin and muscle, saw though the bone and sew up veins, arteries, and the flap of skin covering the stump. It was better to get something like that over as quickly as possible. Often, especially toward the end of a battle, the patient received only a shot or two of army whiskey before the operation to make him giddy, if not pain-free. Sometimes, for the officers, the orderlies would save some anesthetic to knock them out. Hopefully, young Major Latimer—late VMI cadet—had the benefit of at least that.

Latimer survived the surgery, probably because of his robust youth. He was transported along with the retreating army in the spring-less wagons used for the wounded. He made it through the rainy days and nights of the retreat and the anxiety of hearing the rear-guard battle raging around the army at Falling Waters as Lee waited for the Potomac River to recede. On to Winchester, Virginia, for recovery, but picked up and moved again, farther up the Shenandoah Valley to the home of Confederate Colonel E. T. H. Warren in Harrisonburg, Virginia. He was safe from everything except the gangrene that had set in. The surgeon’s saw had carried some then unknown microbe, to be deposited in the young major’s body. His youth ended not with old age, but with his death. The Virginia Military Institute lost another hero to the war. Joseph W. Latimer, “The Boy Major,” died August 1, 1863, three weeks short of his twentieth birthday.

Major J. W. Latimer was buried at VMI in Lexington, Virginia. But his legacy may have remained in the farmhouse, where his sufferings were most severe, in a corner of the battlefield of Gettysburg.

Directions to Benner’s Hill: From the center of town, head east on York Street. At the “Y” go straight onto route 116 East (Hanover Road). Cross over Rock Creek. At the top of the hill turn right onto Latimer Drive. You are about 1 mile from the center of town.

This area is part of the Gettysburg National Park, so be sure to adhere to the seasonal closing times.

Benner’s Hill

Benner’s Hill is a rarely visited part of the battlefield and relatively quiet for paranormal investigations, especially in the early morning or evening. In just one short Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP) session, I collected a few voices, garbled, but attempting to answer my questions.

Major Joseph W. Latimer

The Daniel Lady Farm is owned, preserved, protected and administered by the Gettysburg Battlefield Preservation Association (GBPA). It is now off-limits to paranormal investigations, but the GBPA does offer tours of the restored farmhouse and barn.

Daniel Lady Farm

The Daniel Lady Farm, to me personally, is one of the most paranormally active sites on the battlefield. During a visit with a group of paranormal investigators, as they sat in a circle on the ground behind the barn, I looked at the woods to the west. I had to blink several times before the vision became clear enough to ascertain: the figure of a human, silhouetted against the dim light of what remained of sunset. It stood there for almost the entire time the circle was together. The thing I remember most about the figure is that it wore red pants. When the circle broke up, I asked the leader if everyone in his group was accounted for. Yes, they were all in the circle. I then told him what I had witnessed for the 15 or 20 minutes they were doing their paranormal work. No, he said, it couldn’t have been one of them.

The odd thing about the vision was that the signature color associated with the artillery was red. Uniform collars, cuffs, and, at least early in the war, trouser trim and even the trousers, themselves, in some artillery units were red.

Another time, in the same place with a different group, I felt my sleeve tugged. I had to turn to see who wanted my attention. No one was there.

One afternoon I was called to the Lady Farm to witness the impossible. A rust-colored liquid mysteriously appearing on the floor of Mrs. Lady’s front room from some unseen source. Two hours later, the liquid vanished without a trace. A thin layer of dust was on the floor in its place, as if it had never been there. You can read the full story in Ghosts of Gettysburg VII.

13 Hidden, Haunted, Hotspots of Gettysburg #11

Often overlooked as just a sideline to the rest of the battle, Culp’s Hill was every bit as important as Little Round Top, and perhaps more important than the Wheatfield, Peach Orchard, and Devil’s Den, considering where a breakthrough would have landed the Confederates. Certainly the Confederates must have realized this, since they persisted so long at their attempts to take Culp’s Hill.

Modern-day visitors to Culp’s Hill need merely look along the battlefield road, revealing regimental monuments clustered together, indicating just how many units fought here. Two earlier blogs recounted the fighting for Pardee Field and Spangler’s Meadow in the later stages of the fight for Culp’s Hill, as well as the potential for ghostly encounters. This blog will cover the area higher up the hill and the areas that appear to be the most haunted.

But first…

It must be remembered that early in the American Civil War, the “Napoleonic Tactics” being taught at West Point dictated that soldiers march in straight lines on the battlefield, like so many children’s blocks, face each other across open fields, and fire away en masse. Maneuvering against a flank would gain an advantage, since soldiers will usually stand facing fire, but retreat when bullets start coming from the side or rear.

The reason for these rigid tactics was firepower. The weapons of Napoleon’s time were mostly the muzzle-loading, smoothbore, .69 caliber, flintlock musket, model 1777 Charleville with a maximum effective range of 100 yards. According to the regulations, a well-trained unit could load and fire about three rounds per minute. Tactics would compel the officers to march their men to something under 100 yards of the enemy, fire a volley, then charge the enemy with fixed bayonets. The enemy would then have to return fire and load again in the 30 to 40 seconds it would take for the screaming, running, bayonet-tipped attackers to reach them.

The widespread introduction of the rifled-musket of the Civil War Era gave common infantry weapons a range of nearly 300 yards; the introduction of the “minié ball”—a reference to its inventor Captain Minié, and certainly not its size of .58 caliber—with its hollow base gave the rifled-musket a range of over 500 yards. (Example: Union officers were being picked off on Little Round Top from Devil’s Den, a distance of about 550 yards.) Even at 300 yards, an attacking force could not be expected to fire a volley, then run the 300 yards—all the time taking successive volleys from the enemy—and fight hand-to-hand.

The folly of standing toe-to-toe and volleying back and forth (ala First Manassas and the Brawner’s Farm fight at Second Manassas) was rapidly losing its charm. Whenever possible, and certainly by the time of the Battle of Gettysburg, when soldiers got to a position they wanted to hold, they began to construct breastworks consisting of a ditch, piled-up rocks and fallen logs. At Gettysburg, with its ubiquitous fieldstone walls, they were often improved upon with log headers, and used as breastworks.

Brig. Gen. George S. Greene’s Brigade was sent to Culp’s Hill on the morning of July 2. At 6:00 a.m., the men began constructing breastworks using the trees available on the wooded hill. The men who, according to Capt. Jesse H. Jones of the 60^th New York, were “accustomed to woodcraft” and realizing the importance of solid breastworks, began their work in earnest and by 10 a.m. had a fine defensive position constructed. For the cause of the Union, it was a good thing.

Another point about Civil War tactics:

We’ve all heard of how important “the high ground” is to military tacticians. Early in my studies of the Battle of Gettysburg and other battles—American Civil War and battles throughout history—I’d heard the adage “to seize the high ground” was tantamount in securing a battlefield. I realized that the Confederates, in winning a victory on the first day at Gettysburg, inadvertently sealed their fate as eventual losers of the battle by driving the Union forces to the high ground south of the town.

South of Gettysburg, the Federals ensconced themselves upon high ground that now has become famous, perhaps even legendary: Culp’s Hill, Cemetery Hill, Cemetery Ridge, Little Round Top, the occupation of which forced the Union Army of the Potomac to form the famous compact “fishhook” interior line. The interior line facilitated the movement of troops, ammunition, and information across a shorter space between the flanks of their line.

High ground is also the key (at least before the advent of the airplane) to observing enemy troop movements. From those observations, a commander could move his troops to any endangered point in his line.

Culp’s Hill was one of those hills on the battlefield that made the Union line impregnable. And yet, despite having two virtually inviolable tenets of military tactics securely on their side—entrenchment and the high ground—the Union Army, because of what happened on Culp’s Hill, still almost lost the Battle of Gettysburg.

Culp’s Hill was also, in spite of the “PR” other sites have gotten over the years, some of those most-fought-over ground on the battlefield.

I don’t have the space to detail the entire battle for Culp’s Hill, which took three to four hours on the evening of July 2, then started up again at first light—about 4:30 a.m.—on July 3, and lasted until at least 11:00 a.m. Suffice it to say, it was the site of the longest fighting of the whole battle.

And here’s the reason the Union nearly lost:

After the Union troops, on July 2, had constructed their breastworks, at about 4:30 p.m., when the Confederate attack on Little Round Top was gaining steam, Maj. Gen. George G. Meade, commander of the Union Army at Gettysburg, ordered some of the troops from Culp’s Hill over to the southern end of the field to help deal with Confederate assaults. That left Brig. Gen. George S. Greene’s brigade pretty much alone in their trenches on Culp’s Hill.

I remember my necessarily brief explanation of the Culp’s Hill battle from when I was a Licensed Battlefield Guide. I explained that the Confederates in that sector finally got their attack underway about 7:30 p.m. on July 2, but by that time it was nearly dark.

Astoundingly, some Confederate units actually walked right into abandoned Union trenches without a fight. They found coffee pots full, campfires still warm and smoking, playing cards lying around as if they’d just been set down, and at that point the Confederates halted. In the dark, they thought they were walking into a trap, an ambush, so they sent out scouts to see where the Yankees were. They didn’t know that the Union troops had been withdrawn earlier to the south side of the battlefield to help repulse Longstreet’s attack on that end of the field.

The remarkable thing is that the Confederates were only three hundred yards from the rear of the Union line, the Baltimore Pike and all the non-combatants, supplies, wagons, and horses parked there. Not only that, the Baltimore Pike was the main retreat route for the Union army. In other words, they were within three hundred yards of almost certain victory. When their scouts returned, they were followed closely by the Union soldiers eager to resume their positions. It took the Yankees until morning to re-capture their breastworks. By then, the Confederate advantage was lost.

But before the Union troops returned, Greene’s soldiers heard advancing Confederates in front of their thin, but well-entrenched lines, the men being about an arm’s-length apart. According to Capt. Jones’s account of the 60^th New York in Battles and Leaders,(Vol. III, p. 316)their skirmishers had just made it back into their defensive works as the Confederates were fifteen yards away, and the battle began: “Then out into the night like chain-lightning leaped the zigzag line of fire. Now was the value of the breastworks apparent, for, protected by these, few of our men were hit.”

A few yards in front of the line of monuments, on the right of the road, are remnants of the breastworks the Union troops dug on July 2, 1863. You may notice some depressions in the area, obviously not part of the breastworks or the natural terrain. These are, most likely, empty burial pits.

Greg Coco, in his book Wasted Valor: The Confederate Dead at Gettysburg, called the Culp’s Hill area the “most visited by soldiers and civilians after the battle.” Someone noticed the angle in the breastworks in this area where the Union line curved around the summit of Culp’s Hill, then straightened out. It was defended by the 28^th Pennsylvania. It was here that “many curious sightseers” to the area were treated to the horrifying sight of Confederate bodies still lying where they fell. David Monat, a member of Co. G, 29^th Pennsylvania Volunteers, wrote to the Superintendent of the battlefield in 1899 and sent a map of where he and his comrades buried just a few of the dead rebels in two “lots” containing “one officer and 16 or 17 men in one lot and 13 men in the other.” In a moment of compassion for their fallen foes, they covered the bodies with the burial party’s old blankets.

From another of Greg Coco’s books, A Strange and Blighted Land, Gettysburg: The Aftermath of a Battle, he quoted J. Howard Wert, an early visitor to the battlefield, describing the “angle” in the Union line on Culp’s Hill as covered so thickly with the dead that for four acres one could hardly walk without stepping on a body. On the Confederate side of the angle the dead were stacked three deep. Some piles of bodies were almost to the height of the breastworks.

One other thing early visitors noticed is that the trees on Culp’s Hill were practically denuded of their bark on their lower trunks, silent witnesses to the volume of fire between the two opposing sides. As an example, according to Harry Pfanz in Gettysburg: Culp’s Hill and Cemetery Hill, one New York regiment started firing at 3:30 a.m. on July 3. By 10:00 a.m., each man in the regiment had fired 200 rounds and had been relieved four times to clean fouled weapons, get food and water, and even more cartridges. And yet, there was a macabre case of grim death being economical: three men from the 150^th New York, standing in a row, were killed by the same bullet.

Another passage from Coco’s A Strange and Blighted Land, Sergeant Charles Blanchard saw the still deadly results of a Union soldier who panicked under fire: “I saw a Confederate soldier that a ramrod had passed through his body and pinned him to a tree.” He also saw where 108 Confederates were put into one trench. In the heat of July, the stench was so bad whiskey had been issued to the burial party.

Renowned historian Edwin Coddington recognized the value of the position to both Union and Confederate forces and wrote about it in his classic The Gettysburg Campaign. He pointed out how important Culp’s Hill was with its proximity to the Baltimore Pike. Modern visitors can climb the tower atop Culp’s Hill, look over the trees, and see how close it is to the Pike. As a highlight, visitors may encounter one of the Culp’s Hill Tower ghosts as recounted in Ghosts of Gettysburg VI.

Directions to Culp’s Hill: Take Baltimore Pike (Route 97) South. Go through the light for the Visitor’s Center and turn left onto Colgrove Avenue (follow the Auto Tour sign). This will take you past Spangler’s Meadow on your right and Spangler’s Spring on your left. Continue past the Spangler’s Spring parking area. Take the left hand fork onto Geary Avenue. Continue past Pardee Field to the stop sign. Turn left on the one-way road and the “Angle” area will be to your right as you follow the monument-studded park road.

Culp’s Hill Angle

The road from the angle to the summit, where the tower stands, is the site where numerous strange flashes of light have been seen by the naked eye and caught on film.

One night, pitiful calls for help were heard echoing through the woods by a physician staying at a campground (now closed) near the Baltimore Pike entrance to the Culp’s Hill/Spangler Spring area. Though it was 11:00 p.m. and after the park was closed, he was compelled by his professional instinct to locate the individual who needed help. Driving onto the park with a fellow camper, past Spangler’s Spring and up toward the summit of Culp’s Hill, he turned the car off to listen. From just a few hundred feet ahead, up the hill, they heard the mournful cry again: Help me…help. Several more times he stopped the car and heard the pitiful cries, but every time they got near, the sufferer’s cries seemed to move…or perhaps come from more individuals. Soon a park ranger stopped them for being in a restricted area. The doctor tried to explain and as the ranger was about to write the ticket, the cry came again: Help me…help…. Convinced now, the ranger radioed for help to locate the injured man. They followed the agonizing pleadings around the darkened hill until 1:30 a.m. when the search was called off…although the cries continued.

Then there’s the sighting of a phantom soldier on the trail from the summit parking lot down to the monument to Major Joshua G. Palmer of the 66^th Ohio.

Path to the 66th Ohio Monument

The witness to the paranormal event and his family were visiting the site around dusk, about the time of day the fighting had occurred. The whole family saw what they thought was a reenactor on the pathway, but as the man and his family stepped aside to allow the reenactor to pass, instead he looked up, noticed them, and promptly vanished before their eyes.

 The steel tower at the summit of the hill has reverberated with phantom footsteps when no cars are in the parking lot and no one is seen going up or down the tower. And at least one visitor has been enamored with an attractive young lady dressed in 1950s style clothing. They both were at the top of the tower. She ignored him, however, as if he wasn’t there, and began her descent down the stairs. Instead of making it to the bottom, somewhere on the way down, the lovely young lady simply vanished.

13 Hidden, Haunted, Hotspots of Gettysburg #10

Researching for this blog I found an interesting post-script to the story of the 2^nd Massachusetts Regiment’s loss of their commander and over 40% of their rank-and-file in Spangler’s Meadow. (See 13 Hidden, Haunted, Hotspots of Gettysburg # 9  for their story.) Apparently word of their tenacious, bloody and selfless action made its way to their higher-ups. As the tattered remnants of the 2^nd Massachusetts Regiment were leaving the battlefield, they marched past the headquarters of General Slocum, their Corps commander. Slocum and his staff were standing outside and someone recognized the regiment. The staff fell silent and Slocum removed his hat, followed by the rest of the staff, honoring the unit that proved too brave for its own good.

We used to joke irreverently in the park service that the soldiers were so inconsiderate as to not fight the battle in a way that future tourists could see the battlefield in a chronological, understandable way. With that in mind, the fighting in Pardee Field was earlier on the morning of July 3 than when the fighting in Spangler’s Meadow took place. Still, it is all part of the long battle for Culp’s Hill

The Union defensive preparations on Culp’s Hill were formidable. (I’ll get into the reasons why tactics evolved from early in the war in my next blog.) The fighting over the breastworks on Culp’s Hill was important not only to the immediate conflict, but to the final outcome of the battle and perhaps even the war.

When Confederates, on the evening of July 2, took over the Union lines on Culp’s Hill (virtually without a fight since the Yankees had earlier been sent to the more endangered other end of the field) they were within a short distance of the Baltimore Pike and the rear of the Union Army. To explain the danger a little further, the “rear” of an army is where everyone who can’t or isn’t supposed to, or doesn’t want to, fight goes. Teamsters, cooks, orderlies, blacksmiths, body-servants, the walking wounded, some staff members, and skulkers shirking their duty, all congregate at the rear. If the Confederates had suddenly burst from the woods along the Baltimore Pike in the darkness, those in the rear of the Union line would have evaporated in panicked confusion and the fighting men in the front line would have had been attacked from the rear by the enemy.

Worse yet, one of their main retreat routes, the Baltimore Pike, would have been captured and sealed off by the Confederates. They had already cut the Emmitsburg Road with their attack earlier on July 2. All that was left for retreat would have been the Taneytown Road: one road for 97,000 Union soldiers (minus those killed and wounded in the first day’s battle), thousands of horses and wagons, the wounded and the ambulances to squeeze out of Gettysburg. It would have been the worst traffic jam in the world.

A quick look at a map shows that from Pardee Field it is only about 300 yards to the Baltimore Pike, and about five hundred yards to the Pike from the crest of Culp’s Hill. Famed historian Edwin Coddington, in his classic work The Gettysburg Campaign, emphasized that the battle for Culp’s Hill, which began at sunrise and lasted until noon on July 3, has been overshadowed by Longstreet’s Assault (“Pickett’s Charge”) later in the day. He also points out that the fighting on Culp’s Hill easily involved at least three-quarters of the number of men that are attributed to Pickett’s Charge. So it was a big battle with at least as much at stake as the later, more famous assault.

As with all battles terrain was king, dictating where to place troops and artillery to the best advantage. And Culp’s Hill offers some interesting terrain: hills linked together by “saddles” through which troops could move, woods to conceal assaults until the last minute, gullies behind the lines where troops could rest, clean fouled weapons, refit with ammunition, food, and water, then return to the fight somewhat refreshed.

The terrain in that sector was utilized best by the Union commanders, who placed five batteries of artillery so as to rake what was to become known as Pardee Field along the front of their infantry. They also placed some units, like the 310 men of the 20^th Connecticut, away from the main position to harass the Confederates in their assaults. They could pour fire into the flank of a Confederate column as it approached Pardee Field and act as “spotters” for the artillery.

Confederate Maj. Gen. Edward Johnson had launched two major, unsuccessful, efforts farther up Culp’s Hill in an attempt to dislodge the Union troops from their positions. Now he was ready to order a third.

On the northwest side of Pardee Field stood the 5^th Ohio and 147^th Pennsylvania, commanded by Lt. Col. Ario Pardee, Jr., after whom the deadly field would be named. Opposite them was Steuart’s Confederate Brigade of about 900 men. The Confederates were aware of the impending danger of an assault across an open field swept by artillery. Major Goldsborough, commanding the Confederate 1^st Maryland Battalion on the right of the line, couldn’t believe the order to attack and said to his captain it was “nothing less than murder to send men into that slaughter pen.” Historian Harry Pfanz wrote that the Maryland men, with that strange prescience given to the doomed, seemed to know what was coming and to “feel the solemnity of the occasion.”

Steuart’s men were quietly ordered to fix bayonets. Steuart, himself, ordered the attack and accompanied it on foot. From their right came Daniel’s Brigade to assist in the assault.

According to some of the rebels attacking across open Pardee Field, as soon as they left the trees they received severe crossfire from infantry and the artillery farther away. Still, they continued their march across the 300-yard open field, at first at the double quick, then slowing as they reached the mid-point. At 100 yards—point-blank range for the rifled-musket—the 147^th Pennsylvania let loose a volley. One participant actually heard the men shriek as they were hit and killed. The 1^st Maryland was decimated. Just to their left a soldier in Company A of the 37^th Virginia looked around and saw that he and only one other man of the company were still standing.

Confederates continued to advance, bayonets fixed, rifles at the right-shoulder shift, closing up whenever a Yankee bullet left a gap in the ranks, across the open field and into the Union fire until their line seemed to waver. With that, the line broke again into a double quick and ran at the Union line.

Confederate Capt. William H. Murray and the 1^st Maryland got to within 40 yards of the enemy when they heard a shout to withdraw. In the din, Murray was seen waving his sword, which was taken as a signal by the men to retreat. Murray wouldn’t be able to confirm it: he was immediately shot in the neck.

Some in the 1^st Maryland remonstrated against retreat, but the impetus was established and the withdrawal continued back up the slope.

Union Brig. Gen. Thomas L. Kane recalled seeing a dog race from the Confederate advancing lines into the Union lines, yapping and barking as if he thought the two enemies were fire companies competing as in peaceful times gone by. Kane saw him first on three legs, hobbling between the wounded, perhaps looking for a dead master. “He licked someone’s hand, they said, after he was perfectly riddled.” After the fighting was over, Kane ordered that the dog, “as the only Christian minded being on either side,” be honorably buried.

Confederate Gen. Steuart, after watching the defeat, was in tears, overcome and muttering, “My poor boys,” over and over.

The Confederate wounded left in the field continued to be struck, some several times, before the firing ended. Some Union troops left their positions to enter the field and bring some of the wounded into their lines. One was a private from Maryland. When the Union men found out where he was from, they asked him if he knew he had been fighting men from his own state. Unapologetically, and apparently still upset that some of his neighbors didn’t secede, he answered they did and that they had intended to.

It was remembered that when first told of the assault the Maryland Battalion was about to make, Capt. Murray went down the line and shook the hand of every man saying, “Goodbye, it is not likely that we shall meet again.” The 24 year-old captain’s premonition came true. He died of his neck wound and is buried in Loudon Park Cemetery in Baltimore.

Directions to Pardee Field: Take Baltimore Pike (Route 97) South. Go through the light for the Visitor’s Center and turn left onto Colgrove Avenue (follow the Auto Tour sign). This will take you past Spangler’s Meadow on your right and Spangler’s Spring on your left. Continue past the Spangler’s Spring parking area. Take the left hand fork onto Geary Avenue. Drive through the woods until a field opens up on your right. There is a large rock in the middle of the field with the words “Pardee Field” on it.

Mark visiting Pardee Field

Pardee Field, when it is mown, can be seen for the killing ground it was. Most of the accompanying photos were taken from the position of the 147^th Pennsylvania Monument. Imagine a line of men, shoulder-to-shoulder just 40 to 60 yards ahead and the easy target they would make.

S. G. Elliott’s company, by June 10, 1864, had created a map of the Gettysburg Battlefield, not even a year after the battle. One of the most interesting features is that it shows the mass graves around the battlefield. The Union dead had been removed from the battlefield and re-interred in the new National Cemetery. The Confederates were still buried on the field and would remain there until the early 1870s. Keeping in mind that the Elliott map may not be wholly accurate, it shows a large number of graves in the area circled by Geary Avenue, including Pardee Field. The map shows about 28 Union graves and 28 Confederates in four rows.

Those who are interested in attempting to collect EVP in the area will be pleased that Pardee Field is somewhat off the beaten path and relatively quiet. Some names that may yield results are: Capt. William H. Murray, mortally wounded in the neck; Pvt. D. Ridgely Howard, (of the old Maryland Howards) wounded in the field; Maj. William W. Goldsborough, wounded; Sgt. James W. Thomas, Co. A, 1^st Maryland, wounded.

I had some results addressing the men of the 147^th Pennsylvania, but did not have a chance to narrow down to whom I was speaking.

Dowsing rods or a pendulum can be used to locate graves in the field. It is assumed that most of the soldiers buried in Pardee Field have been removed, but one can never know for sure at Gettysburg. The thing to keep in mind about dowsing is that even empty graves will make the rods cross, as evidenced by the experience Carol, my wife, had at an abandoned church cemetery in Virginia and at one of the abandoned military cemeteries on the Wilderness Battlefield. The graves had been emptied a century ago, yet the rods still crossed over the grave sites apparently from the remnant human energy. Dowsing rods will react to naturally occurring ley lines beneath the sod. And they’ll do what they are famously known for: finding underground water.