Mark Nesbitt - Ghosts of Gettysburg V: Spirits, Apparitions and Haunted Places on the Battlefield

Spirits, Apparitions and Haunted Places on theBattlefield

***************

To Katie

Yours to count on.

Sit down again together, Army of the Potomac! allthat are left of us,on

the banks of the river whose name we bore, intowhich we have put new

meaning of our own. Take strength from one moretouch, ere we pass

afar from the closeness of old. The old is youngto-day; and the young

is passed. Survivors of the fittest, it seems to us,abide in the glory where

we saw them last,take the grasp of hands, and lookinto the eyes,

without words! Who shall tell what is past and whatsurvives? For there

are things born but lately in the years which belongto the eternities.

Major General Joshua Chamberlain

The shadows deepen. It has passedthesplendid pageant; it is gone

forever,the magnificent host that streamedfrom the mountains to the

sea; that flaming bolt which cut theConfederacy in two,or shall we

say that left its deep track upon the earthto mark the dark memories

of those years; or to shine forever as atoken of saving grace in the galaxy

of the midnight sky?

Major General Joshua Chamberlain

***************

***************

Once again, scores of individualswere helpful in putting together this work. My sincere thanks goout to those who, out of the goodness of their hearts, a love forGettysburg and a more or less forced interest in the paranormal,have shared their strange, yet fascinating and undeniableexperiences with me.

Those who related stories to me includeDenise and John Ackerman, Mary Adelsberger, Jennifer Hodge and AnnLeifert, Mollie Back, Andrew Batten, Harry Borger, CorinneBrownholtz, Sara Callen, Richard Capiccioni and family, DeborahDiCaro, Duke Conover, Jim Cooke, James J. Corsetti, Jr. Esq.,Suezette Dunham, John Dynia, Dr. Charles Emmons, Donald E. Evans,John Fenstermacher, the Rev. Mark Fischer, Rick Fisher, JimGarrahy, Jason Gross, Bill Hallett, Harry I. Halloway, AlomaHandshew, Dave Hann, Michael K. Hollahan, Steve Kovall, Suzanne M.Ledger, Dianna Loski, Wendy Miller, Jennifer Moyer, EdwardNewhouse, Ron Ogburn, Lorraine Ortiz, Danny and Terri Potter,Cheryl A. Raimondi, Katherine Ramsland, Betty Roche, Kerry J. Ryan,Bruce A. Sigmon, Karl Silvius, Michael Smith, Terry L. Smith,Rachel Stombaugh, Shelley Sykes, Sally Thomas, Mark C. Wilson, SueWilson.

I have endeavored to include everyone whocontributed to this book in this list, but papers get shuffled andnames get misplaced until after the book is finished. If I have notmentioned you, my sincerest apologies. Look for yourself in my nextbook!

***************

The distinction between past,present, and future

is only an illusion, however persistent.

Albert Einstein

To those who say, these are good storiesifyou believe in ghosts, I say: You dont have to believe in ghoststo believe these stories. All that you have to believe in are thepowers of human observation, for these stories are eyewitnessaccounts of experiences at Gettysburg.

Still there are those who doubt what I havewritten and collected from the percipients of the paranormal atGettysburg.

Scientists are great skeptics sinceparanormal experiences, they feel, cannot be recreated in alaboratory. I saw a recent TV special in which scientists had beenshown photos and videos of paranormal events to watch on TVs intheir labs. They proceeded to explain how easily the videos orphotos could have been faked.

I am not a scientist, but I know that if youwant to find out if things are faked or not, the first thing you dois watch the experiment being done. The next thing you do is try todo the experiment yourself. Not one of the scientists pronouncingthe fakes had ever been along when the videos were beingmade.

I have. I have accompanied numerousparanormal investigators on forays into haunted houses, orcemeteries or battlefields. Intrigued, I purchased the equipmentand have made videos and taken photos and asked questions in thesilence of the darkened battlefield and have heard noises andvoices recorded when there were none to be heard while recording.Nothing, I can say unequivocally, in my presence, was everfaked.

You must realize that it is obviously not theghosts fault that they cannot be explained scientifically. Theghost is merely evidence of something that our current definitionof science is too narrow to explain. Because we cannot explain whysomething happened or repeat it in a lab does not mean it did nothappen or was not observed. Perhaps it is science that needs tochange to accommodate what is going on, like it did when Newtonexplained through mathematics about motion and gravity, or whenEinsteins theories forced science to expand even more to encompassthe unseen interior world of the atom. Eminent scientific scholarsonce believed the universe revolved around the Earth too.

The problem with science denying theexistence of ghosts in spite of all the collected data, is thatit fails to take in the future, the potential or the possibilitythat one day we may have an explanation for the sightings andexperiences: it may come from a newly developed method or device;or perhaps from somethingan offshootof paranormal studies, somepattern we havent noticed before because there wasnt enoughdata.

I mean, if you would have told someone justfifty years ago that sand would be doing our thinking for us in the1980s and 1990sour calculations, our writing, our editing, ourprintingthey would have considered the concept nonsense. And yet,that is just what is forming the letters I write nowsandsiliconcomputer chips.

Were not at the end of our knowledge, soplease do not sell us humans short. About reality and what exists,we havent yet scratched the surface.

Another group of disbelievers are thehistorians, especially around Gettysburg, yet their motives arestill unexplained. I consider myself an historian and admit thatour own discipline is far from scientific, history being, as onewag once wrote, a pack of lies everyone agrees upon.

But the concise definition of history is thecollection of eyewitness accounts to an event in the past. Its assimple as that. Theres no cut-off date; it can be as recent as tenminutes ago. Strictly speaking, history doesnt even have to beeventfuldoesnt have to be the Battle of Waterloobut can besomething as simple as diary entries, which a number of historiansnow publish.