A Strange Experience

Here is a story that I heard numerous times, all from different individuals, when I was doing research on the area in which will be spending our time in over the weekend of July 1st. Little Round Top.


A husband and wife, two college students, and a young couple, all had this same experience, none on the same day as the others.

Gazing down from the summit of Little Round Top, around dusk, in the fall (somewhere between 8 and 8:30pm), the night air was cool and clear on all occasions. As they stood near the 91st Pennsylvania Monument they surveyed their surroundings. As they glanced to the left, into the darkened trees on the lower slope of Big Round Top, at the Southern portion of the Valley of Death they saw an uneven row of 4 to 6 lights, depending on the witnesses accounts.

All claim to have watched the lights for quite some time. In two of the accounts, a car approached the area near the lights. The car stopped suddenly, parked and turned off its lights, as if the driver too had seen the mysterious lights. They continued to watch the lights as the slowly dimmed and disappeared, one by one, over the space of about two minutes.

They waited to see if the lights appeared again, they didn't. Curiosity got the best of them and the next day they visited the Visitor's center and asked whether or not there were any houses, encampments, or any other logical explanations that existed in the area of the ghost lights. There were none of the above, and the park ranger laughed and asked them if they too had seen the lights of the phantom regiment lining up for battle.


I personally have not seen the strange lights, something I hope to change here soon, and hopefully I will have a photo to share, but until then, Happy Haunting.



AS A SIDE NOTE, IF ANYONE HAS ANY STORIES THAT THEY WOULD LIKE TO SHARE, PLEASE FEEL FREE TO SEND THEM TO jsusalla@msn.com AND I WILL POST YOUR EXPERIENCES.

Return to Gettysburg

Okay, here is a picture taken in Devil's Den. My team and I went out on a hunch that it would be a good night. Please don't mind the date on the photo. My camera is stuck on one date and can't be changed, at least I haven't figured out how to yet, it isn't in the manual. Any way, we were walking through the jumble of boulders and the field immediately before them and Donna heard what she claims was a cry for help. A soldier in anguish, she said. So Kyle pulled out the thermal scanner and began scanning the area, I snapped some photos and and Donna and Julie took turns trying EVP and Video. The air around us seemed to chill rapidly. When Kyle called out the temperature, a chilly 22 degrees on a night where it had just been 70 degrees we knew that we were experiencing something paranormal.


This next photo is taken just a few feet to the right of the one above. Using the thermal scanner we were able to track the movement of the cold spot. When we walked into these areas that you see in the photos I felt as if it was extremely hard to navigate through the grass, it was as if someone was holding onto my feet and I was dragging that extra weight, which slowed me down. We have video of this, which is eerie to watch. Our EVP also picked up what sounds like cries for help.


We went out on a hunch that proved successful. We were lucky that the weather cooperated last night. There were no clouds, no rain, only a light breeze and no one was smoking nor did we use anything but infrared flashlights. We will have to go out again soon. I have other experiences from last night that I want to share but I still have to review the findings before I post our adventures in Triangular Field and the Weatfield. So until next time, Happy Haunting!!

Off Topic

Forgive me for posting this, as it is off topic from the rest of my posts, but I simply have to share this with someone. You see I have had the most wonderful weekend. I met the most wonderful guy and well, it was just a great experience. He works with the company that came to install and set up our new radiology system at the hospital I work at. He actually lives in Canada, which really stinks at the present moment, becuase he had to go back last night. This is his picture. You see neither of us has ever gone out with someone that was brought in to work at the hospital or has come in to work at the hospital and gone out with one of its employees. It is something that is fround upon. It isn't against policy, though. He left his card for my to call him with a question I had involving the new radiology system and we got to talking and a half an hour later we decided to go out that evening. I took him up to Gettysburg, where we had a picnic at the summit of Little Round Top. The outing was supposed to stay strictly plutonic, as he didn't want to hurt me when he left to go home to Canada. However, it didn't end up working out that way. There was a spark between us, and attraction that we tried to deny for three quarters of the evening. I must admit that I didn't expect anything more than friendship with him, but I am certainly glad that it proceeded past that point. We spent the next two days together, he even played with my 4 year old daughter and enjoyed himself. I wasn't looking forward to the time when we would have to say goodbye, no matter how temporary it would be. You see I have discovered that it is entirely too easy to fall for this guy. It is not a bad thing, he is incredibly sweet, kind, caring, patient, intelligent, chivalrous, and attractive, at least in my opinion. He likes my daughter and she likes him. He is easy to talk to and incredibly comfortable to be around. I feel like I have known him for years, instead of the week total that I have known him. He made goodbye incredibly easy for both of us. We went out to lunch at Applebees, he paid, as he did everytime we went somewhere. Then we went driving around so that we could talk away from everyone else that would try to cut short our already decreasing time left together, and eventually we stopped and said our goodbyes in the most intimate way possible at that moment, and no I don't mean by sleeping together. That is fairly hard to accomplish in a tiny car in the city, though I will keep those details to myself. They are memories that I will cherish forever. I just wanted to share my happiness and my sadness with you all. I think that despite the distance it will be possible to make this work, and I intend to try. Because it will be worth it in the end if we succeed.

Post Your Experiences

If anyone has an experience, at Gettysburg, or anywhere else for that matter, please feel free to share it. Send me an email at jsusalla@msn.com and I will post your story. The same goes for pictures. Just be sure to put Story to Share in the subject box of the email if you want it posted.

Photo From Hospital Woods

Okay, this is the first photo that my team decided to discuss. My team and I were out on Hospital RD. which runs through the area known as Hospital Woods. They are so named because the area was primarily used for field hospital sites during the great blood letting that was the Battle of Gettysburg. In this photo you see an orb just above and slightly behind our car. We had been walking in the field in which we stood to take this photo. We had originally been facing the opposite direction. There were four of us present, I held the digital camera, Kyle held the thermal scanner, Donna held the 35mm camera, and Julie had the video camera and digital recorder. We were all silent as Julie attempted EVP here. I got this weird feeling like there was someone behind me, someone watching us, so I turned around to look. Kyle was silently scanning the area with the thermal scanner. He waved his hand at me to signal an abnormal reading and I snapped this shot. And this is the result. The camera lenses are cleaned before every investigation, it is dusk, so the moon is not yet visible, and there were no lights of any kind used, including flashes on the cameras. Donna claimed after the fact to have heard the sound of gunfire, which the rest of us didn't hear, nor did the EVP catch but who knows, perhaps she really did hear something. I certainly felt like we were being watched, and I felt the tiny hairs on the back of my neck rise.

It Is Watching!!

Up by Devils Den, there is a statue that has the gun sawed off. They say before they sawed it off, this statue would face you as your driving on the path and as you pass it around the corner its facing you again and it would shoot at you. There is a reason that gun is sawed off.

That statue in Devil's Den still turns to look at you, that is one thing that my team experienced last Halloween. We were driving through the Den and as we approached the statue with the sawed off gun it appeared to turn and look at us, it followed us until we were almost out of sight.

Also we were walking up the steps in the Den when i felt a hand grab onto my left ankle, prohibiting me from moving. After the pressure was released i continued up the steps and as i got almost to the top it happened again. My team took some digital photos that came out with either a whispy substance or a blue orb, we even video taped them as the cleaned the camera lenses just prior to the ascent up the steps so we know that it was something paranormal.

One of My Teams Personal Expriences.

Here is a story that scared one of my best friends. We had decided to drive to the weatfield. Instead of going through devil's den, we took the second left on the road that leads that direction and had stopped to take some photos when my friend Donna screams "There is a soldier walking towards us, a confederate soldier." Well, none of us heeded her words, she has a tendency to make up things to get attention. She screamed it again. "Hey guys, there is a confederate soldier walking towards us!" Still no one looked up from their cameras, no one looked directly in front of our car. The third time she yelled the rest of us looked up, primarily to tell her to stop making things up. Boy were we surprised to see a confederate soldier, in an authentic uniform, i mean not one detail lacking historically. We watched him pass our car, none of us bothered to take his picture, which we all regret to this day. After he passed our car he disappeared. That alone made Donna Scream. still unsure of what we had seen we got back into the car and hurried around and went back through the same way we had come in. there was no one, no cars parked, no sign that anyone had been there but us. I have learned that next time Donna says she sees something that we cannot ignore it. She might actually be telling the truth!

Some stories about Devil's Den and Tiangular Field

For those who have been to Gettysburg, Devil’s Den and Triangular Field are two of the main attractions to tourist, especially tourists that are also looking for ghosts. As the two are so near together I will be combining the stories that surround them. The reports of my team’s investigations, however, will be separated.

Devil’s Den had legends circulating about it before the American Civil War. The area, because of the large and numerous boulders, was a maze for the local hunters in the early years before the war. Some of the hunters, who got themselves all mixed up and lost, say that they saw a stranger beckoning them to follow him. They say that he stayed far enough in front of them so that conversation was impossible. Because they could not speak to this person they were unable to learn his identity. He motioned for them to follow, which they trustingly did. Following the stranger until they were out of the maze of boulders, they were very grateful to him, and when they realized that they had safely made it out they turned to thank the good Samaritan only to see that he had vanished during the two seconds they had taken to verify there location and turn back to express their gratitude.

Also, this personal experience of ours is quite similar to one published in Mark Nesbitt's Ghosts of Gettysburg 4. In his book he tells about the audio and visual witnessing of a phantom regiment. Here is what my team experienced. Donna Richards, Kyle Phelps, Julie Susalla, and Myself were parked in the parking lot at Devil’s Den at approximately 9:30 on Halloween two years ago, Julie, Kyle and I expressed that we all wished to take a walk the length of the road that stretched between Devil’s Den and the Triangular Field. Donna, who claims to have seen a soldier walk behind the rear of the car refused to get out of the vehicle. In other words she was scared of something that the rest of us could not see. So after we ensured that she was locked securely in our car we backtracked to the beginning of the road and started our walk. I will leave out the technical details here that will be in the detailed report but suffice it to say that we heard the approach of a horse and rider clopping down the road behind us at top speed. Needless to say we moved to let the rider pass, only nothing passed us but the sounds of a galloping horse, nothing physical anyway. Apparently Donna also heard it, because when we stopped at the car on our way around the bend her face was pale and she was screaming. There is a similar story to ours in the Mr. Nesbitt’s book. Also the story of the lost hunters is located in there as well, though I heard it from a friend I met while touring the battlefield nearly 8 years ago, on my first trip to Gettysburg.

Triangular Field is as it’s name suggests triangular in shape. Cameras of all types seem to malfunction or fail more here than at any other area of the town or battlefield. One story suggests and explanation for this. Perhaps the spirits are angry with photographers because shortly after the war a photographer dragged the remains of a soldier from just outside this oddly shaped field to a secluded spot behind some of the boulders in Devil’s Den and set them up to portray a role that he never played in life, that of a sharpshooter. Could it be that this really is the case? It really did happen. The photo is located in William Frassanito’s book Gettysburg: A Journey Through Time, in which the author explains exactly what occurred in the creation of this supposed photo. He even located photographic evidence that shows the remains of the same soldier some 40 yards away from where he was set up to portray the role of sharpshooter. It is an interesting book to read, with plenty of pictures.

Welcome

First let me say WELCOME to all my blog on Ghost Investigations in GettysburgThe group that I work with consists of close friends and family and may post here if they venture out on an investigation without me, though I usually always insist on attending all investigations.We have many photos to share and I have a log book for every event that has occurred while on an investigation. We have recently acquired two new tools for investigating that are quite controversial, dowsing rods and a pendulum board with a genuine crystal pendulum. As we have yet to try these new tools the results may be questionable, due to the fact that these tools are not widely accepted. However when correlated with digital photos, 35mm photos, E.V.P.s and video tapes they may prove to be successful additions to our tool list.Anyway, I think that this is enough for now. My next post will most likely include several of our photos from our first investigation and the details pertaining to the investigation. Later...

A Brief Summary of the Battle of Gettysburg

The battle fought on July 1–3, 1863, considered by most military historians the turning point in the American Civil War. The Army of the Potomac, under the Union general George Gordon Meade, numbered about 85,000; the Confederate army, under Gen. Robert E. Lee, numbered about 75,000. After the Battle of Chancellorsville, in which the Confederates had obtained an important victory on May 2–4, Lee divided his army into three corps, commanded by three lieutenant generals, James Longstreet, Richard Stoddert Ewell, and Ambrose Powell Hill. Lee then formulated a plan for invading Pennsylvania, hoping to avert another federal offensive in Virginia and planning to fight if he could get the federal army into a vulnerable position; he also hoped that the invasion might increase Northern war-weariness and lead to Northern recognition of the independence of the Confederate States of America. In pursuance of this plan, Lee crossed the Blue Ridge Mountains, proceeded up the Shenandoah Valley, and, crossing Maryland, entered Pennsylvania, where he concentrated his whole army at Gettysburg.
The battle began on July 1 with an encounter between Hill’s advance brigades and the federal cavalry division commanded by Maj. Gen. John Buford (1826–63), supported by infantry under Maj. Gen. John Fulton Reynolds (1820–63). Hill encountered stubborn resistance, and the fighting was inconclusive until Ewell, arriving from the north, forced the federal troops to retire from their forward positions to Culp’s Hill and Cemetery Ridge, southeast of Gettysburg. On the following day, July 2, Meade formed his forces in the shape of a horseshoe, extending westward from Culp’s Hill and southward along Cemetery Ridge to the hills of Little Round Top and Round Top. The Confederates, on the other hand, were deployed in a long, thin concave line, with Longstreet and Ewell on the flanks and Hill in the center.

Lee, against the advice of Longstreet, resolved to attack the federal positions. Longstreet was unable to advance until late afternoon, thus allowing the federal troops to make preparations for the expected assault. The federals held Cemetery Ridge and Little Round Top but were driven from advance positions in the Peach Orchard and Devil’s Den. Although Ewell won part of Culp’s Hill, he was unable to break the federal line there or on the eastern part of Cemetery Ridge. On the night of July 2, Meade held a council of war in which the decision was made not to retreat; early next morning Culp’s Hill was stormed and retaken from the Confederates. Maj. Gen. George Edward Pickett then led his own and parts of two other Confederate divisions, totaling fewer than 15,000 men, in a memorable charge on Cemetery Ridge, against a withering barrage of federal artillery and musket fire. Although he breached Meade’s first line of defense, the strain on the Confederates proved too great, and Pickett fell back, having lost over three-fourths of his force.

With the repulse of Pickett’s charge, the Battle of Gettysburg was virtually over. On the night of July 4, Lee began his retreat to Virginia. During the three days of battle, the federal army lost 3070 killed, 14,497 wounded, and 5434 captured or missing. The Confederates lost 2592 killed, 12,706 wounded, and 5150 captured or missing.
The Battle of Gettysburg was a decisive engagement in that it arrested the Confederates’ second and last major invasion of the North, destroyed their offensive strategy, and forced them to fight a defensive war in which the inadequacies of their manufacturing capacity and transportation facilities doomed them to defeat. B.C., BRUCE CATTON, D.Litt.This summary of the battle came from www.HistoryChannel.com