| Gettysburg March 2008 Each year over 1.8 million people visit what has been dubbed the most haunted place in America. Most visitors are not seeking to have contact with the dead, but rather are looking to understand a part of American history. The people who are Virginia Paranormal are not like most people. Our only goal on our first Gettysburg trip was to find disembodied souls willing to interact with us. We would soon find out that we would have no trouble finding such souls. We arrived in Gettysburg just after 3:00 on Friday afternoon with the week-end ahead of us to investigate. We quickly got our things settled in the rooms and having time to kill before dinner we decided to take a drive through Gettysburg proper and then out of the town into the battlefields that hold so many memories of death and despair. I would soon realize this was not going to be just another ghost hunt. It would be an experience that I find hard to describe partly because it is also a personal journey into a past of our great nation. Despite all of it's annual visitors Gettysburg is a quaint town very much untouched by the hustle and bustle of larger cities. It is not unusual to see couples walking hand in hand down the sidewalk, or children skipping rope behind the safety of a picket fence. Were it not for the motor vehicles zipping around the town one might feel they had stepped back in time to a place when life was simpler and times were very much slower yet in many way harder. The sheer vastness of the battlefields leaves one awestruck, and while they say that a picture is worth a thousand words, one picture or scores of pictures would not do this battlefield theater justice. Measuring just under 6,000 acres it is truly humbling INVESTIGATION For investigation purposes we decided to concentrate on two areas; Triangular Field and the Wheatfield. Below are the results of our investigation. Triangular Field Behind the stone wall stands the field known as Triangular Field. On July 2, 1863 it was plunged into the history books as being part of the bloodiest days of the Civil War. It is also an area of the battlefield that is said to have strange effects on cameras and electrical equipment. It is reported that cameras will work fine while focused outward, but malfunction if you are trying to get pictures facing the field. While standing inside of Triangular Field Lisa’s camera started to act strange, but as you can see I was able to take pictures of the field. Also when entering the field the batteries in my voice recorder suddenly drain in spite of the fact that I had just replaced them moments before. Upon leaving the field the recorder worked fine and the battery indicator went back to full charge. I was unable to use my recorder while doing this part of our investigation so we did not capture any EVP here. The Wheatfield Just up the road from Triangular Field you come to a place that has become known simply as the Wheatfield. Back in 1863 this land belonged to the Rose family and was just one of many wheat fields that blanketed the area. On July 2nd 1863 it took it’s place in American history and became a blood saturated trampled wheat field where hundreds of men lost their lives. It is said that when the fighting had ended on that July day you could not step onto the field without stepping on a dead or wounded soldier. It is no wonder that many paranormal accounts have been reported here, and we collected our only EVPs captured on the investigation from this field. Below are our EVPs from the Wheatfield: CONCLUSION Is Gettysburg haunted? If any area in the United States were going to be haunted, I would place my bets on Gettysburg. For three days in 1863 this area was steeped in chaos and the ground was soaked with American blood. A constant reminder of just how much blood was shed in this area during those three days is the stream that runs through Devil’s Den and Little Round Top. It is officially known as Plum Run, but has been dubbed Bloody Run as it’s waters ran red for a few hours in July of 1863. It is a testament to the amount of dead and dying soldiers that lay nearby. Virginia paranormal plans to revisit Gettysburg. We will come equipped with recorders and cameras and other gadgets in hopes of piercing the veil that separates our world from a world that, for now, lies just out of our reach. |