It’s dang near midnight (and will be past that by the time I finish this). Time for a spooky story!
My dad and I are history nerds. Battlefields are the go-to vacation for us, especially American Civil War. I know…weird for a lady. One vacation that I took with a friend, we stopped at the Kernstown battlefield site. It’s not big, and not one of the larger engagements of the war (though nearby Winchester, VA is definitely worth a visit), but the volunteers there are top notch. One of them approached my friend and asked if he had any questions about the battle, and he actually directed them to me, saying I was the historian of the pair. From the look on the volunteers’ faces, they were not expecting a twenty-one year old blonde college student to be asking the questions. I guess it’s more of a guy thing, but they were impressed. I then dropped a couple hundred at a nearby bookstore (hey, cut me a break…I’m a librarian’s daughter).
Anyhow…
Gettysburg is a must-stop on these trips, and the last one I took out there with my father was no exception. I had just finished my first year of college, and didn’t do summer school that year. My dad and I went all over PA and VA, and MD for good measure. The hotel in Gettysburg where we stayed was literally right in the middle of the battlefield for the first day’s engagement. Sadly, that hotel is now gone, but it was really neat to walk out my door and see where General Buford’s cavalry hunkered down, or where the highest ranking casualty of the whole war sustained the wound that killed him. Yes, like I said, the hotel was IN the battlefield.
Now, Gettysburg has a reputation for being haunted. It is. Full stop. A given area of ground can’t catch that many bodies and not end up harboring a few spirits. I experience something. I want to preface this by saying I have never been frightened there. I’m sure there are some less-than-pleasant customers out there, but I’ve not run into them yet. Frankly, I’m more scared of the ticks than the ghosts. That’s not to say that there aren’t a few who won’t go out of their way to make one uncomfortable. Case in point…
I made my first trip to Gettysburg with my parents when I was in middle school. There was one spot where I was unnerved, and it was right by the Reynolds Monument. For those who have never been to the battlefield, the monument itself is on a small, manmade mound, and is maybe a twenty or thirty feet from the tree line. This is the spot where Major General John Reynolds was hit by a sniper, and died shortly after. Being from a military family on both sides, I am never going to be the one to show disrespect to a war monument of any kind. Mainly out of respect, partly because my parents would have kicked my butt ten different ways if I even considered the notion. I’m facing the monument with my back to the trees, and I feel something come up behind me. I also picked up on a bristling hostility, like somebody really, REALLY didn’t want me there. The temperature also dropped a solid twenty degrees, and with how hot PA summers tend to get, it’s noticeable when this occurs. I walked away from the monument, and the feeling dropped off when I was about twenty feet away.
Creepy, right?
Fast forward to the trip with my dad. I’m now nineteen, though I don’t look a whole lot different than I did at thirteen, except being taller and losing the coke-bottle glasses. Went by the Reynolds monument again. Same thing over again. Temperature drops, and I feel like something is rushing up behind me, same feeling of hostility. Nineteen year old me is having none of it. I whirled around and said something to the effect of ‘dude, I don’t know what your problem is, but I’m not hurting anything. Chill out.’ The feeling receded, and the temperature went back up. Here was the weird bit…I got a flash of something in my brain, maybe a fraction of a second. I saw a kid (not me) with some kind of object chipping at the monument.
That night, I went out at twilight to the road across from the monument. My dad was about fifty feet away from me, and I was looking up at one of the trees. Then I hear footsteps walking up to me on the gravel. Spoiler alert…there’s nobody out there but me and my dad. The steps stopped a few feet from me, but there wasn’t the feeling of hostility from earlier. My gut told me this was the same person. I greeted him (that’s one thing I usually do…treat spirit like people, and politely, unless the give me a hell of a compelling reason not to), and asked if he needed anything. No response, not that I expected any, but the vibe was very relaxed. I went off a few minutes later. I don’t know if that more restrained approach was this individual’s way of apologizing, but that’s how I took it.
We took another trip a few years later, only this time it was me and my husband. Same spot, same feeling. This time, however, no hostility. If I had to guess, maybe he recognized me? I didn’t look very different from when I was nineteen, and I made a point to say hello when I got to the monument. I think we’re good now. It just took over a decade.
So, what is going on with this spirit? I don’t have anything concrete, but I can make a few educated guesses. I’m going to assume he was Union Army, based on how protective he is of the memorial to a Union general. Maybe he was part of Reynolds’ corp. From observations of other families each time I’m at the battlefield, teenagers don’t seem to like being between the monument and the tree line. From that little flicker of insight I had, my assumption would be that a teenager, or perhaps multiple teenagers, at some point either attempted to vandalize the monument, or succeeded. I’m thinking that this spirit really doesn’t like teenagers, probably from that association. One of the park guides said that vandalism unfortunately does happen, though it’s usually caught quickly. No idea when the desecration event I was shown happened, but I don’t think it was super recent even at that time. All I could tell was that it was a boy and his back was to me.
We might take a trip out there in a couple years, once the kids are older. So, person guarding the Reynolds monument, be on the lookout for me, and try not to freak out my kids, okay? I’ll make sure neither of them do anything naughty. Peace out until then.
Hilary