Ghosts of Gettysburg VII: Spirits, Apparitions and Haunted Places on the Battlefield by Mark Nesbitt

Author:Mark Nesbitt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: spirits, paranormal, civil war, supernatural, ghost, ghost stories, ghost hunting, ghostly encounters, gettysburg, ghost lovers, ghost books, ghost haunting, haunted battlefields

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Chapter 11: Tales from the Guides

But that the dread of something after death,

The undiscovered country, from whose bourn

No traveler returns, puzzles the will,

And makes us rather bear those ills we have,

Than fly to others that we know not of….

–William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 3, Scene i.

Scattered throughout the books in my Ghosts of Gettysburg series are random stories told to me by people who should, by all rights, be jaded by sightings of wispy spirits or strange noises reminiscent of past events echoing through darkened streets, or odd, ancient smells wafting across fields upon which once decomposed the tattered human debris left by the great battle in Gettysburg. Since 1994, the guides from the Ghosts of Gettysburg Candlelight Walking Tours® night after night, have gone to the very edge of Reality’s horizon taking our customers with them. Occasionally, (actually more frequently than one would suppose) they and our unwary customers are treated to an event that is so out of the ordinary, it can only be classified as paranormal. I hear more bizarre stories each year.

These stories come not from new guides prone to hysterical assumptions about the slightest rustling in the street. Barbara1 is one of our more experienced guides having been with the company over six years. Her route takes her past the Gettysburg Borough Building, formerly the Adams County Library and, during the time of the battle, the county jail. It is closed for business at the time our tours pass it. One night, she began telling the story of “Gus,” an inmate or former cook at the jail who, while the building was the library, rode the empty elevator up and down, got a drink from the water fountains, and filled the building at opening time with the smells of fresh breakfast being cooked. All of these while remaining invisible, of course.

For a while, the Borough had electric candles burning in each window of the building. Standing across the street, Barbara told the story of Gus. When she finished, one of her customers asked her if she had seen the candle in the window. “What candle?” she asked since all the windows had candles in them. Several others on the tour piped up and told her that when she began the story of Gus, a candle in a second floor window extinguished, and when she finished, it went back on again.

Fast-forward one year: Barbara was again at the Borough Building, which, by then, had all the candles removed from the windows. She told the story about Gus extinguishing and re-lighting the candle and joked about how Gus, since he had no candles to manipulate, now had to make a personal appearance. One of the several people who were taking pictures suddenly said, “Hey, I got a face in my picture!” Barbara looked at the back of the camera and confirmed the image of a human face peering out from a window in the building. Which window? The same one on the second floor where they saw the candle extinguish, then re-light just a year before.

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