I’d like to hear about it also.
There was the show Haunted History that I liked.
My sophomore year at Gettysburg was 1988-89. I was a Resident Adviser (RA) on a freshman floor, and part of our responsibility was to have program events for the students in our dorm once every month. There was a philosophy prof on campus, Dr. Kerry Walters, that had dabbled in parapsychology and had also published some articles on the subject. In October of '88, I figured I'd ask him to come in and give a little presentation, and he was thrilled at the chance. He gave a great, spooky presentation and the freshmen loved it (More about Dr. Walters at the end of this story). Around that same time, I had started dating a young lady I'll just refer to as, "B", who worked in the college dining facility, and with whom I'd started flirting towards the end of my freshman year, the previous spring.
B was a senior in a Catholic High School in Hanover, PA, and while we were academically two years apart, she was older for a HS senior and I was young for a college sophomore so our age difference was only about 14 months. We began seeing each other quite regularly and spent most of our free time together. B lived with her parents and slightly younger brother in an older restored house in Cashtown, PA which is about 8-9 miles west of Gettysburg. It’s home to the Cashtown Inn which itself has a reputation for hauntings. If you’re not familiar with the history of the battle, Cashtown is where Lee martialed his main body before advancing on Gettysburg from the west, and also, was along the primary route of the confederate retreat after Lee’s defeat.
In the ensuing months, I got to know B’s family quite well. Her parents and brother really liked me, and as Gettysburg was some four hours from my home in western PA, they took me in for family events and the like, and during that time, I got to know, and hang out with B’s friends, and she got to know and hang out with mine.
One of the perks of being an RA was that the college provided my room for free that year, but in return, I had some duties and responsibilities the typical college student did not. One of those was, “RA duty.” Each evening, two RAs would have to sit in a centralized office, walk rounds of the dorms and make sure people weren’t violating campus noise, alcohol, drug policies, etc., be available for students that lost their keys and got locked out of their dorms, respond with campus security to fire alarms and help get accountability, etc., and between 11 p.m. – 12:00 a.m. lock all the outside doors of the dorms and then remain in our dorm, “on call,” until 6:00 a.m. the following morning.
One weekend night in February 1989, I had RA duty so my social life was on hold for that evening. B and her friend Vanessa stopped by the office to visit for a little while, and told me they were going to go to B’s house, and just hang out. It was a very cold night, and it was snowing pretty heavily and they didn’t feel like going anywhere or doing much. We said goodbye and after completing my rounds with my fellow RA, went back to my dorm room around midnight.
Around 4:00 a.m. I got a call from B who sounded terrified. I talked her down and she related that after her parents went to sleep, she and Vanessa had built a fire in the fireplace and were just sitting in the living room talking the night away, when they both heard voices speaking on the porch at the back and side of the house (it was an older country house with a wrap around porch). B said, she couldn’t make out exactly what was being said, but it was two distinct voices going back and forth in what very much sounded like a conversational dialogue. Upon hearing this, they had snuck out of the living room, went upstairs, woke B’s dad who got up, listened, looked outside, saw nothing, heard nothing, looked in the fresh snow and saw no tracks in or out of the yard, or on the porch. B’s dad went back to sleep and Vanessa pointed out to B that they had heard the voices right at 3:00 a.m. Vanessa was so terrified she did not want to spend the night at the house and she left. B’s dad had returned to sleep, and so B had called me as she could not sleep and wanted me to keep her company (on the phone) until the sun came up, which I did. I asked the obvious questions, “Could it have been an owl?” – No, she knew what an owl sounds like. “Could it have been the wind?” – No, in fact she had noticed at the time, it was quite still, and she had not heard the windchimes on the back porch at the time she heard the voices, etc.
So, from February into March, I was a little bit skeptical, but remained agnostic, other than taking the opportunity to gently tease B and her friend Vanessa about it. At the end of March, B’s school went on their Easter/Spring break and the family went to Cancun. They had asked if I could house sit/cat sit while they were gone, and I happily obliged, spending the week at their house except of course for classes or other responsibilities on campus.
One night, I fell asleep on the couch in the living room while watching TV, and woke up around midnight. I went upstairs to the guest room at the top of the stairs where I’d been staying, climbed into bed and went back to sleep. At some point in the night, I woke up and heard what I thought was running water from the upstairs bathroom sink. My initial thought was, “somebody broke into the house,” and the adrenaline surge pretty quickly brought me to a full state of alert and I quickly lost any sense of drowsiness. In as much as I was not armed, I took stock of my situation. The head of the bed was right next to the guest room door, so I stood up on the bed with my back against the wall and my hand on the light switch. My thought was even though I was unarmed, I could still garner the advantage of surprise and the high ground, and if the intruder came through the bedroom door, I could throw on the light and smash my knee into his face, and go from there.
What happened next is very hard to explain. The staircase coming up to the second floor was on the other side of the wall I had my back against, and the guest room door was at the right at the top of the steps. As I stood on the bed with my back against the wall, something made me know, “there is something on the other side of the wall.” What was disturbing is that it did not feel like a gut feeling, but actual knowledge. Any time your brain receives information it’s from one of your five senses – you hear something, taste something, see or read something etc. In this case, it was particularly disturbing to me because it was like my brain received hard data without it coming through any of my five senses. The knowledge that there was someone or something on the other side of the wall from me was…just…there.
This happening was so outside the realm of my experience that I quite literally felt my knees begin to buckle, and as I was still somewhat under the belief there was an intruder in the house, I lowered myself to a sitting position so I wouldn’t collapse and alert the burglar. As I did so, I simultaneously saw in my peripheral vision to my left in the guest room doorway, AND to my right, in a full length mirror on the guest room closet, a confederate officer place his gloved hand on the door frame, peer into the room, look around, and then walk past down the hall.
I was stunned. Maybe even in a mild state of shock. At that point in time, I again had an overwhelming feeling that told me, “It’s 3:00 a.m.” I instinctively glanced at my wristwatch and it was too dark to see. So after listening intently for any other noise(s), I gingerly turned on the reading lamp on the bed’s headboard and looked at my watch and sure enough, the hands made a perfect, “L” reading 3:00 a.m.
I sat on top of the comforter listening and watching intently until sunrise, hearing only the occasional twinkle of the windchimes and a dog barking in the distance, completely unable to sleep.
Once the sun was up I looked around the house and noticed no signs of any disturbance or break in, then drove back to my dorm room. Back then, a small college like ours had none of our current privacy concerns. The Campus Directory had every student’s college address, campus phone #, and home address. It also had faculty office location, office phone as well as their home address and phone #. I called Dr. Walters (at his house – it was a Sunday morning) and explained what happened. He said it sounded like a very interesting experience and to come by his office during the week as he’d like to hear more. I thanked him and hung up, then moments later, my eye caught the calendar and I noticed it was April 1st. I was mortified and immediately called him back to reassure him I just realized what day it was and that this was definitely NOT an April Fool’s prank. He said the thought had not occurred to him, and he thanked me for following up with him.
Epilogue:
When I met with Dr. Walters, one question he asked was if I had felt threatened by the “vision,”. In thinking through the event, I certainly felt threatened when I believed there was a human invader in the residence, but the actions of the “ghost,” itself were more like a doctor doing his rounds, or a parent checking on sleeping children, looking into a room, making sure everything was ok, and moving on. Dr. Walters said, in his opinion, my experience and my girlfriend’s previous experience, sounded like post-cognitive experiences, i.e. there were no voices on the backporch, or confederate officer walking the halls in 1989. What happened in 1989, was most likely two people (B and I) hearing and seeing things that took place in 1863. He suggested I try to find out more about the property history. As a history major, this was right up my alley so I did…and I assure you NONE of this was known to me prior to any of the events above: The house in question was not present during the battle, but was built on the foundation of a house that was present and had been used as a field hospital by the confederates as they evacuated Gettysburg.
I will note in closing that I went to college on an ROTC scholarship and was subject to random urinalysis at all times – consequently, I never did any type of narcotic, hallucinogen or other illicit substances in college (or since). Further, because my duties as an RA included enforcement of the campus alcohol policy which prohibited consumption of those under age, I was quite diligent in leading by example and did not touch a drop during my sophomore year.