Ghosts of Gettysburg II

by Mark Nesbitt

  November 8, 1979—One of the women was in the attic at 2:30 in the afternoon. She was alone in house, but heard a voice—as she described it—“say" to her the words “No, don’t do it!” There was a pause, then “Stop!” She called downstairs to see if any of her housemates had returned, but she was answered only by the same voice yelling “Stop!” As if to punctuate the finality of the statement, and with the windows in the house closed to keep out the cool November breezes, two doors on the floor below her mysteriously slammed shut at that moment. Later, to one of the students who was investigating the story for his paper, she demonstrated that one door squeaks loudly when it is closed. She had heard no such squeak that afternoon. The other door, because of the high carpet, can’t be blown shut by the wind, can be closed only with great force, and cannot be slammed without continued pressure on it.

  November 11,1979—One of the women was napping in the afternoon. The shades were drawn and the room was in semi-darkness. She awoke to see what she described as a lady sitting in her rocking chair at the foot of her bed wearing a long, outdated dress with long sleeves and either short hair or hair done up in a bun. Though thoroughly frightened and confused at the appearance of a woman from apparently another century in her room, she gathered enough courage and found her voice long enough to ask the stranger a couple questions. “If there is anyone in here besides myself, knock twice for yes.” Incredibly, from somewhere in the room she heard two knocks. “If you are friendly, knock twice for yes and once for no.” No response. Growing frightened at the lack of an answer to whether the apparition was friendly, she repeated the first question and got the same response of silence. Suddenly, the image disappeared.

  She sprinted downstairs, as her housemates described it, in hysterics. Our skeptical researcher discounts her story as merely the woman being half asleep, perhaps having a dream. And while that is possible, couldn’t sleep—“death’s counterfeit” as Shakespeare so poetically described it—be but one of the many windows to glimpses into the other world?

  November 13, 1979—A third woman resident was sitting in the communal TV room. She was in the house with just one other housemate, yet they heard someone walking around upstairs and she suddenly shivered from a cold spot on the side of her chair. Their courage bolstered by one another, they managed to force themselves up the stairs to see if they had an intruder. They found no one. While on the third floor they heard what they described as papers falling, yet found no scattered papers anywhere throughout the house. One of the researchers says that one of the women claimed she had felt a hostile male presence staring at her. Apparently she is not the only one; all the women in the house at one time or another had felt that hostility.

  November 13,1979—This appears to have been one of a couple of days and nights where a large amount of psychic energy was being expended. The resident who had seen the woman rocking in her chair was climbing the stairs to her room with her arms full. No one was near her on the stairs yet she felt someone tap her on the left shoulder blade three distinct times.

  November 29, 1979—One of the women residents who had heard the glass breaking in the dining room saw a stack of papers float off her table, flipping like a deck of cards. Because of where the papers were stacked and where they fell, any breeze that might somehow randomly blow the papers in such an organized way would first have had to pass through a wall, through the woman herself and then across the papers.

  December 9, 1979—One of the women who had heard footsteps on the floor above her in November, awoke at 12:30 a.m. after hearing a banging noise above her head. The woman who was tapped on the shoulder in November was also awakened by the same banging but another resident next door to the first woman was not awakened. The researcher checked out the house for animals, but the women said the noises—like the ones the guest heard coming from within the walls of the house—were far too loud for a small animal like a squirrel or mouse. During his investigation, the researcher checked to see if the noise had come from perhaps a tree branch slamming against the house in the wind. No branches were near enough to the house to even touch it.

  On that same night the woman whose bedroom was in the attic had a little problem getting to sleep. In the darkened quiet of her upstairs room she heard someone walk from her third-floor window, around her bed and back again to the window. She couldn’t describe what the entity may have looked like; she wisely kept hidden under the covers. The woman whose room was right below was also kept awake, not by one person walking but by what she described as an “army” marching in her upstairs housemate’s room.

  December 10, 1979—One of the women caught a sudden whiff of flowery perfume. She didn’t recognize the scent as belonging to anyone in the house and no bottles were open or had spilled. (Dr. Emmons’s marginalia records that others had smelled it too at one time or another.)

  December 12, 1979—Finally, the women decided to pull out the Ouija board. All the women in the house agreed from feelings that they had that there were definitely two spirits and that they were of opposite sexes. The women, having had at least several experiences arbitrarily named their “ghosts” Agnes and Homer. (Interestingly, although none of the women had done research into the house, they coincidentally chose Jacob Sheads’s wife’s name.) Their first contact through the Ouija board was made upstairs: the name Ester was immediately spelled out. (Remember, none of the women had done any research, or knew about Ester Gitlin.) Through the board Ester said there were actually two other entities present and that one of the others was a woman and spelled out the names Steub and then Sterd. The women at the Ouija board also made contact with her ghostly companion but couldn’t find out her name. Ester admitted to knowing Homer and liked him but said she was tired and kept spelling out “goodbye.” The contact upstairs was broken.

  The women took the Ouija board downstairs and contacted Homer. Through the board they learned that in life he had a wife whom he loved very much, but the marriage was flawed. His wife had had a lover, but apparently they had never been together in this house. Homer told them that he does not like women. He frightened the women when he said he was buried in Gettysburg. Quickly they asked if he was buried somewhere in the house. He answered, “no.” Homer said he liked one of the women but not another. He said that even though he did not particularly like women because of his personal experiences with one in life, he was extremely lonely and liked the current residents’ company in the house. Asked if Ester was his wife he responded she wasn’t. Suddenly, the contact was broken, but they re-engaged for a time on December 30, and then again on January 4, 1980. Both resulted in short conversations. This was the last contact they were able to make.

  No one knows the name of the poor Union soldier who breathed his last within the confines of that house and was probably buried temporarily in the yard, and then moved later to the National Cemetery in Gettysburg. If, however, his name happened to be “Homer,” a sad and frightening insight into his life may have been gained by a rather unusual method this cold December night.

  December 1979—Just before Christmas vacation two young female students who considered themselves skeptical of the ghost stories the residents had been telling were sitting near the Christmas tree in the living room. Suddenly they heard the doorknob to the exterior door being shaken violently. They jumped up and ran to the door. No one was there. No one was to be seen nearby.

  January 2,1980—One of the researchers was staying a little later after a party and was apparently alone after everyone else had either left or gone to sleep, when he heard footsteps upstairs early in the morning hours. (He could have shrugged it off as perhaps someone going to the bathroom, but recorded it in his paper, apparently because he wasn’t convinced it was any of the women.) Some of the people who had been at the party returned and they began to tell ghost stories. The researcher said jokingly “Yeah, I feel a presence,” when, as he described it, a “very odd sounding voice replied ’yes’.” He couldn’t distinguish the gender, but said it had a
n “echoey” quality about it. Six other people were present but only one other heard the ghostly reply.

  January 6, 1980—Two of the women kept waking unexplainably throughout the long night. Subsequent research revealed that January 6 was the date of Ester Gitlin’s death.

  January 14,1980—One of the women who had heard the glass breaking when she had first moved in four months before was standing at the stove in the kitchen when she saw the reflection of a “black, bubble-like blob with a head” pass through the door of her room coming from inside the room. She turned around and checked the hall, but there was nothing to be seen. On this same day, one of the skeptics (perhaps, I should say, soon to be former skeptic) was walking down the hall returning from the bathroom. As she passed the first woman’s room, she saw something out of the corner of her eye. She looked over her shoulder into the woman’s room and saw in the doorway what she described as “an amorphous mass of white substance.”

  That same day—another one of those days with a great deal of paranormal energy being expended—the first woman mentioned above, and one of her housemates, were in the kitchen and heard furniture being moved in the section of the house above them. However, nothing had been stored in the small area; there was only empty space in the small room above the kitchen.

  January 14, 1980, may have been the focus for an abnormal amount of psychic energy in the house perhaps because one of the researchers was there conducting an investigation. While in the cellar of the house he noticed a door bolted shut, and upon inquiry, was told by one of the residents that she had heard that the room behind the door was where séances were supposed to have taken place. Could other former residents have had strange experiences in the past and sought an answer? Could the “rumor” that séances took place in this inaccessible back room in the cellar be the last existing evidence of curious minds from the past attempting to understand the inexplicable?

  One of the last events to occur in the house during the 1979–80 series of occurrences happened when one of the researchers was working with a Ouija board. Unfamiliar with the history of the house, he asked Ester what her last name was. It spelled out GISTWU. A six letter answer with three of the letters correct, if merely transposed. When asked the year she died, it spelled out 1896. Actually Ester Gitlin died in 1968. When asked if she was a man or woman, she responded “FEMALE” illustrating some creativity rather than merely answering the way the question was asked.

  Finally, one of the women referred to an incident that seems to indicate a heightening of paranormal interference to a more physical level. Inexplicably, with no one around, her electric sewing machine would begin sewing by itself. The researcher checked the switch and connections, but everything seemed to be in order. But even after his inspection, the machine would continue, upon occasion, to start its sewing, the ghostly seamstress hard at work, but nonetheless, invisible.

  A researcher in a 1983 paper mentioned a 1981 graduate who experienced some odd happenings the year she graduated. She and her roommates who all lived on the first floor, mentioned feeling a “presence around them” and of seeing a male apparition on the first floor. They also found the water running into the tub several times when no one had turned it on. At that time the researcher decided not to investigate what the second floor residents had to say because, he stated quite candidly, he was frightened.

  January 21,1983—The researcher began to interview the residents. They mentioned that they had found the heat thermostat set with sometimes fifty degrees difference from its original setting. An investigation by Dr. Emmons revealed that it took more force than just brushing by to change it. Dr. Emmons also confirmed that when he interviewed the first set of residents on Dec. 12, 1979, they too had had problems with the thermostat jumping up and down—something they had failed to mention to either of two previous researchers. As well, the loudness setting on the telephone kept being re-adjusted. Inexplicably, as if someone who was hard of hearing or perhaps was a great distance away were trying to listen to the conversation, the loudness setting would be set at its maximum when the students would pick up the phone. None of the students ever touched the loudness setting since not one of them had hearing problems.

  One of the women had a frightening nightmare about a séance, only to find out that her housemate had been at a local pub that night discussing the house and séances that may have occurred in it. (Interestingly enough, there is a handwritten note on the paper from Dr. Emmons: “I think I told them at that conversation!” Obviously, he was there the night of the woman’s frightening dream.)

  That same day, January 12, 1983, the researcher found the courage to interview the residents of the second floor. Two of them related a story about being in one of their rooms and watching a tape literally levitate from a stereo speaker then propel itself across the room as if someone had lifted it and thrown it.

  The women related how personal items have disappeared and reappeared in odd places in the house. All the women on the second floor admitted to having had nightmares about “orange blobish” figures pursuing them inexorably.

  One of the residents, who lived in the front right hand room on the second floor, had felt a presence in the kitchen and, more frighteningly, next to her bed. The night before she was interviewed (January 11,1983) she said that her bed had been actually shaking for 15 minutes. She confirmed that it could not have been caused by a train. She has often smelled weird odors in her room. One night she said that she heard a strange, low moaning on the left side of her bed in the middle of the night. She was too afraid to even look in that direction until it stopped.

  One morning around 3:00 a.m. she was awakened by the sound of a large number of horses trotting by the house for about 20 minutes. Peering cautiously out the window revealed nothing but the 20th Century street scene, devoid of traffic in the early hours. Dr. Emmons was told that some inhabitants had heard what sounded like an army marching by. Not unusual, considering that several thousand men had, at one time in that very space, marched by, devoted to death to the cause of saving their country.

  One of the women related that she was near an air vent in the house when she heard a muffled voice emanating from it and felt a cold presence. Also, all the women spoke of the incredibly huge houseflies that seem to breed in the house. Perhaps they are attracted by the unexplainable, foul odors.

  One woman also talked about a spot on the floor in front of her bed which often caused an odd burning feeling at the ankles. Two of the other women in the house confirmed the uncomfortable, searing heat as they stood barefoot in that same spot.

  There is that theory beginning to emerge in the science of physics that encompasses the idea of the existence of parallel universes, both invisible to one another but existing side by side. The theory, while helping to explain some things, also raises as many questions as it answers. Is death simply a passageway to that other, coinciding universe? Could the house on Carlisle Street in Gettysburg, with supernatural occurrences so well documented by student researchers, and for some as yet unknown reason, be a window into this world’s unseen twin?

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  Chapter 6: Twice Hallowed Ground

  Why, thou owest God a death.

  —William Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Act V, Scene i.

  Gettysburg, with its lush farm fields, clear running streams and rolling hills drew good farmers from the eastern parts of Pennsylvania. In the 1830s and 1840s the influx was mostly hard working immigrants from Germany who disembarked in Philadelphia and began making their way westward. From the Lansdowne Valley they came to Lancaster County, and when the land was all sold up in Lancaster County, they went farther west, to York and Adams Counties to settle. Trostles and Weikerts and Hummelbaughs and Schmuckers, they were called “Dutch,” a local aberration of “Deutsche.” With them they brought their strongly independent religious beliefs as proselytized and propagated by Martin Luther.

  The Lutheran Theological Seminary was established in Gettysburg in 1826. Orig
inally the Seminary was housed in the brick double building still standing on the southeast corner of South Washington Street and West High Street. In 1832 it was moved to the brow of the ridge overlooking the town of Gettysburg from the west. Soon the ridge was christened by the townsfolk “Seminary Ridge” because of the large classroom buildings and dormitory which graced the gentle slope. They little knew how that name would be etched with the bitter acid of brotherly love gone bad into American military history or how that gentle slope upon which a school dedicated to teaching Christian peace would soon be christened again, this time sprinkled with human blood.

  For years the Seminary matriculated those quiet souls who felt the special calling to the robes and pulpit. The languid summers came and went and the theologians journeyed to spread the word of God at large churches and small missions, to administer communion, to marry, baptize, and bury their parishioners as the seasons of life went around in their never ending circle.

  But, in the summer of 1863 those mild summer breezes off the sloping fields near Seminary Ridge blew hot with the belligerent breath of great weapons and the agonized cries of countrymen at war with each other. The wheel of life’s seasons seemed to groan heavily to a stop for three long days at the reaping time for death.

  On the evening of June 30, Union cavalry commanded by General John Buford rode past the buildings of the Lutheran Seminary to bivouac a few hundred yards west on another of the crop-covered ripples called McPherson’s Ridge. Buford, having ridden ahead of his men had seen Confederates that forenoon retiring from the fields west of Gettysburg. Being the kind of fiery cavalry commander he was, he knew they’d be back, and in force, and he would be there to hold them up until the infantry came.

  He was right. The next morning Confederates came from the west and attacked his two brigades of troopers. Buford’s men held out for over two hours, in part because they carried short, breechloading weapons called carbines that were issued specifically to the cavalry. They fought dismounted, every fourth man taking his and three others’ horses behind the ridge to stand in safety. The men who did the fighting could crouch down or kneel or even lie down and still use the fast firing breechloaders. They made small targets to the advancing Confederates and stung them with their rapid fire.