In April, I traveled to Washington DC and Gettysburg for a week with my sister, niece and my niece’s friend. In addition to visiting the usual tourist attractions in DC, we spent two days in Gettysburg. The reason to go there was threefold: visit the famous battleground, learn some Civil War history, and experience some of the ghosts said to be hanging around Gettysburg.
Set in beautiful rural Pennsylvania, Gettysburg is a charming town. It has a small but interesting historic downtown and the town, battlefield and surrounding area are rumored to be quite haunted. I’ve read about visitors to the battlefield seeing soldiers and battle scenes, hearing the firing of cannons and other phenomena. We were really hoping to have that experience, but alas, though the battlefield tour was interesting, we experienced nothing unusual except some exceptionally high winds that made the air temperature “real feel” about 31 degrees.
We stayed at the historic Cashtown Inn just outside of Gettysburg. It is a lovely old inn, and we had the attic space, which was quite roomy for the four of us. One of the unique features of the inn is the natural spring that flows through the basement. During the Civil War, Confederate generals set up shop at the inn and wounded soldiers were treated (including many amputations) in the basement.
The hotel kept a small bowl of coins on the dresser in our room, and a notebook. You could place coins on a page in the notebook and outline them in pen or pencil, which would let you know if a ghost had moved them or not. The girls chose several coins and outlined them so that we could monitor for movement.
Our first evening in Gettysburg was spent with two staff from the Gettysburg Paranormal Association. We were the only customers with them that night, and we spent two hours in a house in Gettysburg. There was no electricity connected to the house so it was quite dark, and there were only a couple pieces of furniture. We spent some time learning about the technology they had brought with them, besides flashlights. You’ve probably heard of some of them before – EMF readers, spirit box radios (aids in communication) and dowsing rods. One item was a bell, the kind you’d push at a front desk to announce your arrival (this bell plays a role later). We walked through some of the downstairs rooms before heading to the attic for about an hour. The investigators left us there for a bit while they went to investigate another part of the house.
I have to admit that I was nervous about sitting in a haunted attic. It was, according the investigators, the more active spot in the house, due to the spirit of a young girl. There was a crawl space I did not dare get near and toys that people had left for her, including a rocking horse (I prayed that thing would not move) and dolls (why are dolls so creepy?). It wasn’t particularly scary, but I wasn’t relaxed either. We just sat there, talking into the air and wondering if something she would engage with us. She did not. The experienced investigator came upstairs to sit with us after awhile to help coax a reaction from the ghost, who regularly interacts with him. Still nothing, though at one point, we heard the bell go “ding!” downstairs.
A few minutes after the bell dinged, the other investigator ran up the stairs. He seemed a bit freaked out and asked if we had heard the bell. We acknowledged we had, and he said he was going to go back downstairs. Eager to leave the attic, I volunteered to go with him. We sat in the only chairs in the house and he told me that recently, while using a spirit box to communicate in the house, he had asked a question, and a voice came through the speaker saying the investigator’s name. That disturbed him quite a bit. We decided to see if the bell would ding again. The bell was on the table right next to me. My niece had placed it there, and we had examined the bell – nothing odd about it. I asked that if someone was present in the room, would they please ring the bell. A couple minutes later, the bell rang. It was both exciting and creepy. I then asked it to ring once if they were a man and twice if they were a woman. The bell rang once, right away. And that was the grand total of the night’s ghostly activity – several bell rings! It really highlights that those TV ghost shows need to spend most of their time just creating a spooky vibe and overhyping the little things that take place. I suspect most ghost investigations are boring, with only little things like bells ringing.
Afterward our paranormal investigation, we went back to Cashtown Inn. Though our attic space was supposed to have frequent ghost activity, I sensed nothing and slept really well. The only disturbance was strong wind which had us wondering if the roof would be carried off during the night. In the morning, we checked the coins. None had moved.
We had breakfast, which included a local historian talking with us about the history of the area and the inn. He also gave us a tour of the basement, and talked about all of the medical procedures that took place there during the war. After that, we went upstairs to grab our things and head off to the battlefield, to meet with our next historian. We also checked the coins again. Lo and behold, two of the coins had moved! Not drastically, but they were no longer in their original spots.
That night, after a long day of touring, I packed up as we would be heading out early in the morning. I set out a pile of all the clothing I would wear the next day. I was eager to get into bed, but I did not feel calm and secure like I had the night before. I instinctively moved closer to my sister (she was far away in the king bed), as I didn’t feel like we were alone in the room. The wind had died down, and I heard a few odd noises that I decided were just routine house noises. I slept but not very well. I got up early the next day to take a shower and when I came out of the bathroom to grab my pile of clothes I noticed that my underwear was no longer on the pile! Everyone else was still asleep. I found them stuffed under my purse, away from my suitcase. That was really odd! Nobody else had moved my underwear, so I suppose that the resident ghost had! What an odd thing to do, really!
We enjoyed our time in Gettysburg and Cashtown, and concluded that most ghost encounters were likely as boring as ours – a couple of bell rings, some moved coins, and hidden underwear! However, I as I was looking through photos when I was flying home, I zoomed in on something strange – there were some greenish blobs on a rocking chair in our attic room at the inn. Since most “ghost” photos are usually just streaks of light or green or other color blobs, I have been wondering ever since if this is an image of the presence I had felt in the room all night. I will let the reader draw their own conclusion.
