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

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To Carol

From another life I knew.

How now, spirit! whither wander you?

William Shakespeare, A Midsummer NightsDream, Act II, scene i.

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I have written the tale of our life

For a sheltered peoples mirth,

In jesting guisebut ye are wise,

And you know what the jest is worth.

Rudyard Kipling

Truly to speak, and with no addition,

We go to gain a little patch of ground

That hath in it no profit but the name.

A soldier on his way to battle

William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act IV, sceneiv.

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Mark Nesbitt has gathered a group of ghost tales thatseem to support his claim that Gettysburg may very well be, acrefor acre, the most haunted place in America. Certainly the wealthof paranormal experiences he has collected in four books reminds usthat either the writer and those he interviewed all have vividimaginations, or we need to consider the likelihood that what theyexperienced actually happened. This is not easy, for we live in anage skeptical of things that defy scientific explanation, andreluctant to embrace the mystical feelings and associations we mayhave when visiting the Battlefield. While we all seem to agree witha definition of Gettysburg as hallowed ground, we are notcomfortable in coming to terms with what that means. As the writerEd Linenthal points out in Sacred Ground: Americans and TheirBattlefields, With the exception of Native American peoples,Americans are not used to classifying their land as sacred. Holyland is elsewhere.

If our generation is reluctant to talk about thingsseen and unseen, this was not true of the Civil War veterans, andthe rhetoric of their reunion speeches in return visits toGettysburg was filled with references to the spirit of place, thevoices of dead comrades, and the importance of contemplating themeaning of their sacrifices on sacred ground. For example, WilliamJ. Ayres, when addressing the veterans of the 95th PennsylvaniaVolunteers on July 2, 1888, remarked:

As we stand here together, as we remember how noblyand bravely lifes work was done, let us imagine around about usare the spirits of the brave comrades dead and gone, those whostood with you when you took your solemn oath, and as we leave tothem their pure and noble fame, as we leave this spot so sacred, somemorable, may we go forth exalted by this communion, and may wetake up lifes daily duties and responsibilities manfully.

Of course, perhaps the most eloquent reunion addressto evoke the spirit of place was given by Maj. Gen. Joshua L.Chamberlain at the dedication of the 20th Maine monument on LittleRound Top on October 3, 1889. Often quoted in recent years, itbegins: In great deeds something abides. On great fields somethingstays. Forms change and pass; bodies disappear; but spirits linger,to consecrate ground for the vision-place of souls. To MarkNesbitt, those he has interviewed in this book, and JoshuaChamberlain, those spirits unquestionably linger!

Dr. Walter L. Powell

March 13, 1998

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The stories keep coming in.

While organizing my material for this fourth book inthe Ghosts of Gettysburg series, it seemed as if I was nevergoing to get through the stack of letters and notes and photographssent to me by people who have had some sort of unexplainableexperience at Gettysburg. Piled up, the stack was easily a foothigh after I went through it a second time. It took me nearly fiveweeks to read them all, analyze them for content and categorizethem into venue. Some of the letters date back to 1994beforeGhosts of Gettysburg III, was written.

In addition to the stories there are a number ofremarkable things that have come to light because of the books.First, the photos.

Though I have received numerous photos of strangeimages, I have never included ghost photographswith one or twoexceptionsin any of the three other books on ghosts I havewritten. The reason was because I was never sure how they wouldreproduce. My concern was threefold: 1) that they should appear inthousands of books, and because of the printing technique, wouldnot show anything ghostly; 2) that they would show something notfaithful to the original photograph and therefore be misleading tothe reader; and 3) because I simply was not convinced that thephotos might not just be aberrations in the developing technique,or something the photographers did while snapping the shot, thatcaused a ghostly image to appear.

However, over the last several years, I have receiveda number of quite remarkable photos, most of which were taken byamateur photographers (it seems like everyone who visits Gettysburgcarries a camera) and some of which were taken by professionalphotographers. Virtually all were taken with no expectation ofcapturing a ghost on film. In fact, the one exception was theprofessional who took nearly 1,000 photos, many in the notoriousTriangular Field, and was disappointed to announce that not asingle one showed anything out of the ordinary. And there was theinstance where a local TV crew came in to document the experiencesof an earlier crew whose equipment failed. As if to prove itspalpable and interactive existence, something caused both camerasto fail.

I classify ghost photos into two generalcategories: Those seemingly showing an energy source not visible tothe photographer at the time the photo was made; and what I callthe matrix variety.

The matrix type will usually show a photograph of agroup of trees, or rocks, or perhaps an open field of wheat orgrass. The photographer and friends will see somewhere in thematrix field a face, or a body outlined by the leaves or shadows onthe rocks, or in the windblown grass. And while they may haveactually taken a photo of something paranormal, I have to excusemany of the photos because it is like looking at a Van Gogh or atthe clouds in a summers sky: if you use your imagination you cansee almost anything you wantsailing ships, faces, the Virgin Mary,Abraham Lincoln, Elvis.

But the other types are most interesting. They show abright area on the photo, an energy source that illuminates just asection of the picture. Sometimes the source is blue or green;sometimes it is bright white. Sometimes it shows up as a ball oflight; sometimes as a streak or blur. Most times the photographerwill explain that the image was not visible when they snapped thepicture, which means that it was just a momentary emission ofenergy, occurring coincidentally with and lasting only as long asthe shutter was open.