Ghost Soldiers of Gettysburg

by Patrick Burke

  Resonance, therefore, can result from constant or extended contact between two forces, thus allowing an individual to become more in tune with the specific vibrations associated with both residual and genuine spirit hauntings. Or, as Marie Jones suggests, can those things we call paranormal find shortcuts and routes to change the frequency of their vibratory nature until it is in phase, or in sync, with our own? Through resonance, a ghost soldier might lock into just the right frequency to show himself to a terrified tourist staying at a battlefield bed and breakfast.

  Taking this line of thought further, using resonance, a ghost operating on a particular vibratory frequency might sync up with a similar frequency in our own brain, our consciousness, or perhaps even our environment, and, as Jones describes, manage to slip through the thin veil between worlds. Jones notes that ghostly apparitions are rarely consistent and are often described as “erratic” and “fuzzy.” Some ghosts appear almost as three-dimensional projections, furthering the idea that the visual image is somehow being projected onto our reality from an alternate dimension.

  Not surprisingly, almost every historic building in Gettysburg is reportedly haunted. Two in particular are currently open to the public as museums and also serve as the main events of a local ghost tour. Each property also has a tragic history associated with the battle and the collateral damage it caused. Not only are they both visited by thousands of tourists every year, they are also the workplaces to several tour guides and museum managers. As a result, they represent ideal laboratories for the collection of paranormal evidence and eyewitness testimony.

  The Jennie Wade House

  The story of Mary Virginia “Jennie” Wade is one of the most tragic of the entire Civil War. Jennie Wade was a twenty-year-old resident of Gettys-burg engaged to be married to her childhood friend, Corp. Johnston H. Skelly of the Eighty-Seventh Pennsylvania. She worked as a seamstress with her mother, Mary, in their home on Breckenridge Street. To make ends meet, they also took care of a six-year-old boarder named Isaac.

  For safety during the first day’s battle, Jennie and her family moved to the brick home of Jennie’s sister, Georgia Wade McClellan, on Baltimore Street. Jennie’s sister had gone through a difficult birth about one hour before the Confederates rode into Gettysburg and needed to be cared for. As the battle escalated, the McClellan side of the house on Baltimore Street housed Jennie, her mother Mary, her brother Harry, her young boarder Isaac, her sister Georgia, and Georgia’s newborn son. Although there was no heavy fighting in the area, a Federal picket line ran behind the house, and there was intermittent skirmishing between Union and Confederate sharpshooters who were hunkered down all over town.

  Jennie spent most of July 1 distributing bread to Union soldiers and filling their canteens with water. By late afternoon on July 2, the bread was almost gone, and it was apparent that more would be needed the next day. Jennie and her mother left the yeast to rise until the next morning. At about seven a.m. on July 3, Confederate sharpshooters began firing at the north windows of the house. The prep work to bake biscuits began at eight a.m. At about eight thirty, while Jennie stood in the kitchen kneading dough, a Confederate musket ball smashed through a door on the north side of the house, pierced another door that led into the kitchen, and struck Jennie in the back beneath her left shoulder blade, embedding itself in her corset, killing her instantly. The cries of her sister and mother attracted Federal soldiers, who carried her body to the cellar. After the battle was over and the streets were once again safe, she was buried in Evergreen Cemetery in a coffin that Confederate soldiers had made for an officer.

  Jennie Wade was the only civilian casualty of the Battle of Gettysburg. Unknown to Jennie at the time of her death, her fiancé Jack Skelly had been wounded and taken prisoner at the Battle of Winchester on May 13. Transferred to Virginia, he died in a hospital on July 12. News of his death came several days after the Southern army had withdrawn from Gettysburg. To add to the tragic nature of this story, their childhood friend, John Wesley Culp, who joined the Confederate army and talked to Jack as he lay mortally wounded in Winchester, was killed in action at Gettysburg on his cousin’s farm before he could relay Jack’s dying message to Jennie.

  Today, the Jennie Wade House is one of the most popular tourist attractions in Gettysburg. The home, for the most part, remains historically intact, and visitors can see the actual hole in the kitchen door made by the rifle ball that killed Jennie. Several other bullet holes are clearly visible in the brick walls, as well as the damage caused by a misdirected 10-pounder Parrott artillery shell, likely fired from somewhere along Oak Ridge, two miles north of town. Over the years, people have seen apparitions of a young woman, a man, and several small children. The scents of rose perfume and freshly baked bread have been reported, and the sounds of sobbing, children laughing, and footfalls on the staircase have been heard. Also common is the sudden appearance of a ghostly mist, especially in the basement where family and friends kept vigil over Jennie’s body until the battle ended.

  During one of our weekend investigations of the battlefield, a couple (Frank and Cathy) clearly saw a white mist slowly appear in the basement while they were sitting on one of the benches. I interviewed them shortly afterwards.

  “When did you first notice this mist forming?”

  Frank began: “The rest of the group had already left the building, but we wanted to stay in the quiet of the basement for a few minutes. The story is so tragic, you just want to sit there and reflect. So we were sitting on the bench, and, Cathy, you actually saw it first.”

  “I looked up at where Jennie’s body would have been wrapped on a bench, and to the right, in that corner of the room, I saw a white mist,” added Cathy. “At first, I thought my eyes were just tired or something, but then I realized it was becoming more prominent. That’s when I told Frank to look.”

  I asked Frank what he saw when he looked up.

  “I was startled because it was clearly visible,” he explained. “It was almost like smoke was coming out of a fireplace or something. But it wasn’t smoke. We couldn’t smell anything. It was just misty, but it was moving.”

  “How was it moving?” I asked.

  Kind of like cigarette smoke,” he said, “where some of the smoke is thicker than the rest, and just kind of wafting around. In no particular direction either. Just emanating from that corner of the room.”

  “Did you feel anything else? Cold spot? Warm spot?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “It just seemed so quiet. Like everything else just stopped. It was actually quite peaceful.”

  “Not that peaceful,” Cathy interjected. “I mean, yeah, it wasn’t menacing or anything, and it was really quiet, but it definitely wasn’t normal, and it definitely felt like it was going to form into something.”

  “Like an apparition?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I was afraid that it would form into Jennie Wade.”

  “That would have been awesome,” Frank said with a huge smile on his face.

  I asked them what happened next.

  “It just kind of faded away, and I have to say that I was just mesmerized and frozen with fear at that point,” said Cathy. “If it would have continued to form into a figure, I would have run out of there. But it did just kind of disappear.”

  “Into the corner of the room?”

  “No,” she said. “Just dissipated.”

  Frank added that it just kind of faded out.

  I asked if they took any pictures, but their cousin, who was also with our group, had their camera and had already left the house when the event occurred.

  “So when it faded, you just walked out of the house?”

  “We sat there for a few minutes trying to figure out what had just happened, but Cathy was spooked by it so we decided to slowly walk outside to tell you what we saw,” said Frank. “It’s a weird feeling when that happens. It really felt like everyt
hing else didn’t exist at that moment. Just us and that mist.”

  Frank and Cathy are among hundreds of people who have had strange experiences while in the Jennie Wade House. Their experience with the ghostly mist was interesting to us because we already knew that other people had experienced the same thing in the same room, and the fact that there were two eyewitnesses to the same event makes it a corroborative sighting, which makes for solid evidence.

  Soldiers National Museum (Orphanage)

  One of the more emotional haunts of Gettysburg began when the body of a soldier was found on the Gettysburg battlefield tightly clutching a photo of his three young children. The small, glass-plate photograph turned out to be the only clue to his identity after he was killed. Freed from his frozen grip prior to his burial in an unknown soldier’s grave, the ambrotype eventually found its way into the hands of John Francis Bourns, a Philadelphia physician who traveled to Gettysburg to treat wounded soldiers. After hearing the story of the unknown soldier, Bourns, whose intention was to “find this poor soul’s family,” recounted the story to the Philadelphia Inquirer. The photo was printed in the Inquirer on October 19, 1863, with the headline, “Whose Father Was He?” The article read:

  After the Battle of Gettysburg, a Union soldier was found in a secluded spot on the field, where, wounded, he had laid himself down to die. In his hands, tightly clasped, was an ambrotype containing the portraits of three small children, and upon this picture his eyes, set in death, rested. The last object upon which the dying father looked was the image of his children, and as he silently gazed upon them his soul passed away. How touching! How solemn! What pen can describe the emotions of this patriot-father as he gazed upon these children, so soon to be made orphans? Wounded and alone, the din of battle still sounding in his ears, he lies down to die. His last thoughts and prayers are for his family. He has finished his work on earth; his last battle has been fought; he has freely given his life to his country; and now, while his life’s blood is ebbing, he clasps in his hands the image of his children, and commending them to the God of the fatherless, rests his last lingering look upon them. It is earnestly desired that all papers in the country will draw attention to the discovery of this picture and its attendant circumstance so that, if possible, the family of the dead hero may come into possession of it. Of what inestimable value will it be to these poor children, proving, as it does, that the last thought of their dying father was for them, and them only.

  Shortly after the Philadelphia Inquirer story, copies of the children’s picture and related sheet music and poems cropped up across the North. They were sold with the intention of locating the man’s family and supporting the orphaned children. Finally, in early November 1865, Philinda Humiston recognized the image as that of her children. She contacted Bourns, who returned the ambrotype and presented the widow with the profits from the sale of hundreds of copies.

  The man whose dying act was to gaze upon the photo of his children was Sgt. Amos Humiston of the 154th New York Volunteer Infantry, a harness-maker from Portville, New York. He enlisted on September 24, 1862, shortly after President Abraham Lincoln issued a call for 300,000 three-year volunteers. During the next nine months, Humiston related his experiences to his wife, Philinda, in letters that expressed his longing for their family. Hoping to offer some solace, Philinda, in June 1863, sent him a sentimental keepsake, an ambrotype of their children, Frank, Frederick, and Alice.

  “The likeness of the children pleased me more than anything you could have sent,” he wrote in what would be his final letter. “How I want to see them and their mother is more than I can tell. I hope that we may all live to see each other again.”

  Amos Humiston’s hopes were dashed by a Rebel bullet.

  He was eventually laid to rest in Gettysburg National Cemetery, and in response to his heart-wrenching story, donations helped to found the National Soldier’s Orphan Homestead in Gettysburg in 1866. Philinda accepted a position as the orphan’s teacher and caretaker and brought her children to Gettysburg to live at the Homestead, which was less than a mile from where their father had died. During the battle, the building served as headquarters for Maj. Gen. Oliver O. Howard, the commander of the Union Eleventh Corps, and also as a haven for federal sharpshooters firing on Confederates who were hiding on the south side of town.

  Philinda helped to raise over sixty children from eleven different states, but eventually, circumstances forced her to move away from the orphanage in 1870 and leave the children in the care of a younger woman named Rosa Carmichael. Unfortunately for the children, Rosa turned out to be a sadistic sociopath who beat the children, tortured them, tied them up in the basement for days, and even killed some of them.

  Union soldier Amos Humiston was found dead on the battlefield, clutching a photo of his three small children. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

  The crimes were discovered after a runaway was caught and told of her experiences at the orphanage, which included being beaten by teenage boys who Rosa armed with sticks and being tied to a fence in the hot sun until she suffered serious burns. Everything the little girl said was later proved to be true as the house was investigated and found to be full of torture devices. The basement had even been converted into a dungeon where children were shackled to the walls and left to die. On June 11, 1876, Rosa Carmichael was arrested on a warrant charging cruelty to one of the orphans and held at $300. She was indicted on three counts of aggravated assault and battery, but in consideration of her sex, the court only sentenced her to pay a fine of $20 and the cost of prosecution.

  This sentence only made her worse. She called upon the services of a brutal henchman, a boy about the age of nineteen who would beat and kick the little children to the delight and approval of the matron. In the bitter cold, she had a boy aged four or five penned in the outhouse. He was released at midnight by the intercession of two passing men who heard his screams. She also had a little girl stand on a desk in one position until she had to be lifted down, exhausted and helpless.

  This controversy, along with charges of mismanagement and the violation of a trust fund, caused the closing of the orphanage by the county sheriff. The Homestead property was sold at a sheriff’s sale during the summer of 1878, and the building was left vacant until 1950 when it became the Soldiers National Museum. Rosa Carmichael left Gettysburg, never to be seen or heard from again and never having to answer for her vicious crimes against the children. Today, the shackles can still be seen in the basement and many of the other artifacts are on display from that time period. Visitors often claim to hear children crying or feel invisible hands tugging on their clothes. Eyewitnesses also claim to feel the presence and see the apparition of an older woman, who, by all accounts, is as mean, nasty, and unpleasant as any living person they have ever come across.

  One of the tour guides who works at the Soldiers National Museum told us a tragic story associated with the orphanage. One day, she said, one of the little boys in the orphanage escaped and ran off into town. He found himself at Gettysburg College in one of the girl’s dormitories. A few of the girls who happened to see the boy decided to take him in from the cold.

  By now, Rosa Carmichael had found out, and being the witch that she was, was not happy about it. She did a quick search of the town and found the most likely place he would go—one of the girls’ dormitories. She searched each one and eventually came to the dormitory of the girls who had taken the boy in. They saw her coming and told the boy to hide out on the ledge outside their window. It was the dead of winter and frigid outside. The girls didn’t think it would take long, but, unfortunately, it took a while because they were a little nervous and Rosa thought they were acting suspiciously. Eventually Rosa left, and the girls ran to the window and threw it open as fast as they could, but their hearts sank when they saw nothing. They checked the other ledges, the snow bank beneath the window, and the tree branches outside the window, but all proved fruitless.
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  Years later, another girl was studying alone in the same room when she had the feeling that somebody was watching her. She looked at the window and there was a young boy, his face and hands blue as if he had been in the cold too long, sitting on the ledge. She called to him, but he didn’t respond. When she tried to get closer, he vanished. The tour guide told us that sightings of the spectral boy have continued to this day.

  Kendra Marie Belgrad, a five-year resident of Gettysburg, lives not too far from the location where Amos Humiston was found clutching the photo of his children. She has worked for three years with Ghostly Images, the only tour company allowed inside the historical buildings known as the Orphanage (Soldiers National Museum) and the Jennie Wade House. As a tour guide, she imparts history and tells stories about the hauntings and previous visitors’ paranormal experiences. She typically leads groups outdoors to a few locations around the buildings and then takes them inside. I was able to talk to her extensively about her personal experiences at these locations.

  “How long did it take for you to begin having paranormal experiences at these locations?” I asked.

  “Before I was allowed to lead tours, I had to follow a seasoned guide through the locations to learn the history and stories of previous experiences,” she explained. “In both homes, it only took one trip through for me to notice there was something to the stories being told. I also worked during the day for a year in the Ghostly Images shop, the old library of the orphanage, and had some startling experiences.”