Ghost Soldiers of Gettysburg

by Patrick Burke

  “What was your belief in ghosts before you started working there?”

  “I’ve always believed in the unseen,” she admitted. “My earliest memories of the paranormal are from when I was seven. I know I wasn’t scared when things happened. My mother told me that I behaved strangely from the time I could walk. I liked to play by myself as a child, but I do remember that my “imaginary friends” could move things or interact with me on a physical level. I don’t think every bump in the night or unknown sound is a spirit. I always try to remain objective.”

  “Can you tell me about some of your earliest experiences?”

  “I had quite a few paranormal experiences in Oregon, where I grew up,” explained Kendra. “As I grew older I learned to keep many of them to myself. My father would always make fun of me because he didn’t believe in such things, but my mother believed. She just didn’t like being scared. I’ve seen people staring at me from second-floor windows of abandoned homes, while the people with me could only see curtains moving. I’ve heard voices when others didn’t. Subtle things like when you feel something entering the room but can’t see anything. You know they’re there, you feel their presence, but in my case I don’t always see them.”

  “Can you describe your first paranormal experience while working in these buildings?”

  “At the Jennie Wade House, it happened as soon as I stepped through the front door,” she said. “Being a trainee, I stayed to the back of the group and stood next to the front door after it was closed. Not long afterward, a sick feeling overcame me. My stomach began to clench and I thought I might faint, so I stepped away from the door. The feeling went away, but I noticed I had been standing in front of the door with the bullet hole, a stark reminder of a young girl’s death.”

  I asked her what happened next.

  “The group moved into the next room, the parlor, and I was jostled into the corner,” she said. “Standing on the other side of the wall next to the spot where I originally felt bad, the sick feeling returned. I thought I wasn’t going to make it through the tour. The guide saw my discomfort and allowed everyone to look around the room, spreading us out. When I stepped away from the corner, the feeling left me again. These two spots weren’t the only places in this house where I felt physically ill, but they were the first.”

  “Why do you think that happened?”

  “When the energy has been very strong, be it from spirits or electricity, I’ve gotten sick,” she explained. “These two areas at the Jennie Wade House continue to make many people ill.”

  I asked her about her experiences at the Orphanage.

  Kendra began, “My first experience there wasn’t very nice. The tour guide motioned us into the building and I closed the door. I once again stood at the back of the group, allowing others to be first when moving through the room. Usually before something physically happens to me, I’ll feel a tingling sensation up the back of my neck. It’s almost like an alarm that alerts me to something close by. Well, my neck began to tingle as a pain flared up in my right shoulder. It felt like someone was digging their knuckle into my skin and twisting it back and forth.”

  “What did you think might be happening?”

  “I thought perhaps it was a muscle spasm, though I had never had anything like this happen before,” she said. “I tried to roll my shoulder and massage it with my left hand but it didn’t help. The tingling in my neck increased and I spoke aloud in a low voice, ‘Stop it.’ The sensation stopped instantly. A woman standing next to me quickly said ‘Sorry’ and, with a strange look on her face, moved away.”

  “Did the tour continue at that point?”

  “The group went down into the cellar shortly after and I found a seat at the back of the room,” Kendra explained. “My back was against the stone foundation. As the guide spoke about the haunting, I felt the skin on my hands and knees begin to tingle. I didn’t know if this was paranormal or not, but I hadn’t experienced this before and thought it would stop quickly, when something began digging into my shoulder again. I had read somewhere about negative spirits not liking the flash of a camera because it reminded them of the ‘white light.’ With my camera raised above my shoulder, I snapped off several pictures. Instantly the pain was gone again.”

  “Did the tour guide notice?”

  “The guide saw what I did and gave me a strange look, but continued with her tour,” she said. “When she allowed the group to mill about, she quietly asked me why I took a picture of the wall. I told her I was trying to stop something from happening, and she responded with, ‘You felt a pain in your shoulder, a digging.’ I was amazed and said that I had. She told me I would be a guide in the Orphanage because all the guides who worked there were greeted by the negative spirits this way.”

  I thought it was pretty brave that they still became guides after that.

  Kendra said that someone didn’t like her and was trying to scare her away, but it didn’t work. I thought to myself that they raise tough stock in Gettysburg. I asked what else had she experienced at the Jennie Wade House.

  She said that in early May 2011, she and two other guides took a young man and his chaperone through the Orphanage and Jennie Wade House on a private tour. It was a quiet night at the Orphanage, so they moved on to the Jennie Wade House. Toward the end of the investigation, the young man said he left his backpack in the parlor on the Wade side of the house, so she volunteered to lead him back through to retrieve it while the others waited outside. When they reached the second floor and stepped through the wall that separates the duplex, their trifield meters began to indicate there was energy in the room.

  They took a few moments to see if anything else would happen. As they stood in the bedroom just above the stairs to the kitchen where Jennie died, they both saw a black shadow cross the room and disappear down the stairs. They quickly followed and when they reached the landing we both saw a ball of bright white light hovering above the floor. It began to swirl in a circular pattern.

  Kendra didn’t want it to disappear before she got a closer look, so she jumped from the landing just in time to see it go through a cupboard door in the pantry. It was quick, but it was also very real. They both laughed because there was nothing else to do but be happy that they saw this activity—actual energy moving about the room. The young man wanted to see something amazing and luckily she was with him when he did.

  “How about other experiences in the Orphanage?” I asked.

  “Last year I had just finished a tour and I was standing at the doorway to the entrance of the Soldiers Museum,” she began explaining. “I was talking to two of my guests and noticed that I didn’t have my lantern. They told me I’d left it in the cellar, so I thanked them, closed the door, then turned to walk to the back of the room where the stairs lead to the cellar. Halfway back, I walked through the most disgusting smell. It was so rancid that I gagged, then raced past to get to the stairs. Before I could get to the doorway of the cellar, I heard a loud sound behind me. I was the only person in the room and couldn’t see what could have made the noise. Picking up the pace, I raced down the stairs and grabbed my lantern, said thank you to the children and told them not to follow me home. I quickly walked back out and, in the same spot, smelled the wretched scent again.”

  “Did you go through in your head what it could have been?”

  “I was trying to think of logical explanations,” she said. “Did a sewer line break? Maybe someone had horrible gas before they left, but could it linger that long? Was there something rotting in the garbage basket? I told my manager and his wife about the smell, and he asked me if anyone on the tour had smelled it while in the cellar. When I said no, he walked over to the spot but couldn’t smell anything. I walked over to the spot, and it was still there!”

  “So you were smelling this awful stench and they couldn’t smell anything?”

  “Yes,” Kendra replied. “After literally
gagging, I asked them why they couldn’t smell the rotten eggs and rancid smell of rot. They said they couldn’t smell a thing. Incensed, I walked to the spot again, waited for my manager’s wife to pass, and hollered for her to stop. I said, ‘It’s right here! You can’t tell me you don’t smell this. It’s awful!’ She stopped in her tracks, looked around the room, and then looked at me in a most serious manner. She asked, ‘Kendra, do you want me to tell you what you smell?’ I said yes. Her manner was very serious as she told me how, a year before, they had a psychic medium enter the building. He stopped at the door and said there was a young man in the back of the room. He described a teenage boy with a stick in his hand glaring at him. The boy was dressed like someone who would live in the orphanage—checkered shirt, woolen pants. The medium tried to approach the boy, but when he got halfway to him, he gagged and said the boy smelled awful. He described the smell just as I had.”

  “So the medium is the only other one who smelled what you did?”

  “Yes … and the manager’s wife was there that night, and she watched the medium become sick in exactly the same spot where I stopped her,” she explained. “Chills went up my spine, because in all my life I had never smelled a spirit before. I wasn’t so happy when they started to tease me and told me that I had a new fan. I didn’t want that smelly boy following me around.”

  “The medium’s description of the boy matches with the history of the building, correct?”

  Definitely. It makes sense that he was probably one of the boys Rosa would have beat the children and do her dirty work,” she stated. “He is obviously a very mean spirit. I have to say this wasn’t my favorite encounter.”

  I asked Kendra of all the experiences she has had, which one was the scariest.

  “After working and living in Gettysburg for the past five years, I don’t scare easily,” she said. “With that being said, there was one experience where I wasn’t able to stand still. In early April 2012, an investigative group came to town to do a taping of the Orphanage and the Jennie Wade House. I was one of the guides that assisted them in the house and helped with their investigation later in the evening. At about three a.m., two of the team members, both women, asked me to go down into the cellar of the Jennie Wade House with them while the men went to the second floor. We were going to conduct an EVP session to see if we could record any activity.”

  “What kind of equipment did they have?”

  She described that several cameras had been set up around the room and the lights and power to the building were off. One investigator sat at the front of the room with dowsing rods and the other sat in the middle of the room with a night vision camera pointed at the first investigator. They began to conduct a Q&A session with the dowsing rods and recorders. Because they were in the dark, the investigator with the night-vision camera would tell them what the rods were doing.

  Kendra’s job was to move around the back of the room with an energy meter and record energy fluctuations. As the investigators asked questions, she leaned against the wall near an opening that connects the two cellars in the house. She heard several noises in the other room, so she pushed aside the sheer black curtain that covers the doorway and reached her hand in. The meter suddenly shot up to its highest reading. Kendra alerted the investigators, and they started asking questions of James Wade, Jennie’s father, because it’s believed he frequents that section of the cellar. But the high energy reading went away, so essentially whatever was there was gone. She stuck the meter back in, and to her surprise it fluctuated again, but this time something else happened. A white mist curled at the end of the meter, covered the lights and then obscured her hand. Her hand disappeared before her own eyes, covered in what looked like a thick smoke-like substance.

  I asked what she did next.

  “That was it for me,” she exclaimed. “I panicked. I said a choice word and scared the two investigators as I quickly backed across the room. The investigator with the dowsing rods called out to me and asked if I was okay. I needed a moment to gather my thoughts, but then I explained what had happened.”

  The lady with the dowsing rod immediately started questioning James Wade. She wanted to know if he had tried to scare me. She then asked me to move to the front of the room where she sat. Her plan was to coax the spirit out further. I sat down beside her, and she asked if the spirit wanted them to leave. The investigator with the night-vision camera suddenly felt a deep chill envelop her and also felt something brush her shoulder, as if someone had bumped her as they walked by. It was at this point Kendra felt it was time to take a break.

  “I can laugh about it now,” Kendra said, “but not at the time.”

  I asked her if she ever captured an EVP at these locations.

  “Many voices have been heard, both on tape and with the naked ear,” she said. “Sometimes they sound like small children laughing or crying. Other times they sound more sinister, like growls or moans. One recording was captured in the old dining hall in the Orphanage. You can hear me talking about the history, but someone talks over my voice. The first sounds like a man muttering, but you can’t understand what he’s saying. The second voice is clearly of a woman telling me to ‘Go to hell!’”

  That’s disconcerting, I thought to myself.

  “I know things like this should scare me, but voices don’t do any harm,” Kendra continued. “I’m more intrigued as to why I would be damned to hell. Was it something I said?”

  “You have a great attitude about this stuff, which is important considering you’re around it all the time,” I told her. “In your opinion, why do you think these locations are haunted?”

  “I believe there are many different factors,” she explained. “The bricks used to build a lot of the historic buildings in Gettysburg contain quartz and limestone. Some investigators believe these minerals act as a charge to power residual hauntings. The minerals are found all over town and the surrounding ground. Perhaps the tragedies that occurred within the walls of each building have anchored the spirits within. They aren’t trapped at the location, but their belief that they can’t leave this plane of existence keeps them near a place they once knew or called home. Belief is a very powerful force.”

  I told her that she had an acute sense of ghostly phenomena and what it could be.

  Kendra continued her with her impressive response: “I’m familiar with the difference between what investigators define as a residual haunting and an intelligent haunting. I believe humans have a tendency to try and define what they don’t understand, whether the definition is correct or not. Perhaps a residual haunting is really an intelligent spirit stuck in a loop and not what we think of as a repeating pattern alone. The living may never truly know why spirits do what they do, unless these spirits decide to explain it. Trying to understand human behavior and define it in a specific pattern has been a challenge for scientists throughout our existence. Spirits were once living humans, which makes it more difficult to guess their motives now that they are dead.”

  “I agree,” I told her. “Again, you have a very objective, open attitude about this. When you think about the possibility that the spirits of children are roaming or trapped in the Orphanage, how does that make you feel?”

  “When I first heard the story of the Orphanage, I was saddened,” she admitted. “I know spirits linger, but children lost and alone really struck a chord with me. However, after being in the building interacting with the activity and seeing the childlike behavior within, I know most of the time these children are happy.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes,” she said with certainty. “For most of them, this was the only home they ever knew. For a time, their joy was taken from them and bad things occurred, but now, with so many guests visiting them, I believe the children are happier than they have ever been. Why would they leave when guests come to see them every night? These people bring them toys and candy, and listen to their stori
es. They have a captive audience that come out to see them and play. I believe that as long as they have someone who remembers them, they will always feel as though they’re at home.”

  “Do you think the spirit of Jennie Wade still resides in Gettysburg?”

  “It’s definitely possible,” she said. “We humans have a tendency to return to the locations where monumental moments in our lives occurred. A woman, short in stature and dressed in Civil War attire has been seen with two young men also dressed as reenactors near Culp’s farm. This farm isn’t far from the house where she died. They always get everyone’s attention because they look so authentic, but if a picture is taken they don’t show up on it. Sometimes they fade before a photo can be taken. Could that be Jenny, Jack Skelly, and John Culp? Maybe, but we’ll probably never know for sure.”

  “How have these experiences changed you as a person? Do you consider yourself more spiritual? More in tune with other realms? More skeptical? Less afraid of the unknown?”

  “They’ve made me more considerate of those who have died,” she explained. “Whether it’s a soldier who lost his life on the field of battle or the children who may never leave the Orphanage, I have to live with their presence and teach others to do the same. We can’t traipse around this earth expecting others to do what we wish; we can only ask and not be angry if they don’t comply. That goes for the spirits as well. I’ve always believed in them and always will because I trust my own senses. I’m more afraid of the living than I am of the dead, but the fear of the unknown is always there. Perhaps that’s what truly keeps us on our toes.”

  I talked to Kendra about living and working in Gettysburg, and the fact that she’s around these energies every day. She either knowingly or unknowingly interacts with them on a pretty regular basis. I asked her if she thought that she had tuned into some of these energies, and vice versa, as a result of this constant contact.