Ghost Soldiers of Gettysburg by Patrick Burke

Author:Patrick Burke
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ghost, haunting, true ghost, true ghost story, true haunting, gettysburg, gettysburgh, war, haunted
Publisher: Llewellyn Worldwide, LTD.
Published: 2014-09-03T16:00:00+00:00

[contents]

Cemetery Hill

Chapter Twelve

Maniacal Maelstrom

of Sound

— By Patrick Burke —

As I stood on the edge of the Brickyard Road, my right foot resting near the Seventh West Virginia left flank marker, I let my mind travel back in time. The summer heat I was experiencing was nothing like the heat on July 2, 1863, which was, reportedly, downright oppressive. I looked over the fields that the Confederate troops of Gen. Richard Ewell’s Second Corp traversed in order to get to the bottom of the steep incline on the east side of Cemetery Hill, and I wondered how any of those brave souls could actually have made it through the cannonade and musketry fire.

The Eleventh and Twelfth Corps of the Army of the Potomac sat waiting, entrenched in front of a mass of cannons that bristled out in every direction, like a porcupine’s quills, defending all the approaches the Confederates might use to attack the far right flank of the Union line. I imagined the skirmish line—comprised of the Forty-First New York and Thirty-Third Massachusetts—and saw them standing (or in most cases lying down or kneeling on one knee), watching a massive gray line come toward them. I saw a fleeting shadow out in the middle of the field where the Union skirmishers would have been waiting in front of the steep incline to the top of Cemetery Hill. I felt a chill, the kind that only happens when spirit energy is around me. The energy reminded me of a firsthand account from a Union soldier from the Forty-First New York. He reported that suddenly, through the smoke, the Rebels were on them. He fired one shot and chaos ensued around him. “We held the line for about one minute, and then we broke and ran back to the safety of our lines.”

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