My Encounter at The Slaughter Pen at Gettysburg

[3rd_PA_Artillery]

I'm still frightened to talk about this. This encounter was about 3 years ago in April of 2005. I was on a trip to Gettysburg with my family for the Easter weekend. We had toured the battlefield that day, starting at Cemetery Hill. We worked our way south from the hill until we got to the Devil's Den area. We stopped there to have an impromptu lunch of ham and cheese sandwiches. I finished mine quickly and went off walking alone. I worked my way over Plum Run and back into a forest, which was partially cut back recently by the Park Service. While I scrambled through the boulders by Plum Run, I had scraped by knee on a rock. I leaned against a tree and bent down to take a look at it. When I stood back up, there was a swirling black mist in front of me about 10 feet. It just swirled and swirled and turned into the form of a man, which furthermore materialized into a Confederate soldier. This soldier was barefoot with a ragged gray coat and a floppy slouch hat on, all of which was transparent, kind of the look of frosted glass. He held a musket in his hands. He was crouched behind a rock. I looked into his eyes and saw a steely-eyed stare that was shot back at me. He stared at me as if he hated me, hated me with all of his soul. Around the soldier and I, there arose the din of battle. I heard cannons, drums, and small-arms fire. I heard a shrill scream, and when I looked around to find the source, I sure found it. I looked down on the ground about 5 feet to my left and there laid a boy, maybe 15 or 16-years-old with his intestines oozing out. When I saw the macabre sight, I began to cry and I collapsed to my knees. I looked back at the soldier with the floppy hat. He was still staring at me with that hatred in him. He slowly began to shake his head in what looked like disgust and turned away and proceeded on towards Little Round Top. I then ran back over Plum Run and back to the car. I hid away from everyone else under the car. I wasn't scared of the soldier, just horrified at the sight of that wounded boy. I crawled out eventually and tried the rest of the day to act like everything was OK, as hard as it was.

[Jules362]

That's scary just to read about, 3rd PA.

I'm not sure where I stand on the issue of ghosts and hauntings, even though years ago I had an experience that I've never been able to explain, which frightened me perhaps more than I've ever been frightened. It wasn't related to the Civil War, but it did involve a soldier, although judging by the uniform he wore, it was no earlier than the World War II era.

I was alone in the house. It was a nice, sunny afternoon in August and I went from the kitchen to my bedroom where I'd left a book I'd been reading the night before. My bedroom was separated from the dining room by a hallway, with the doors to both rooms in line with each other. I recall walking through the door into the dining room, looking down at the book in my hand, then glancing up, the way you do to make sure you're not about to run into something, and coming to a dead standstill, in total shock. There, across the room at an angle to me, just to the side of the large doorway to the living room, stood two men. The only thing about this experience that I'm not quite sure about is the strong sense that I glanced into the living room and saw several other people standing there, sort of in a group. However, I focused on the two men in the dining room, since being closer to me, they presented the greatest threat.

One man was a soldier. His uniform was what they refer to as "army dress greens." He was tall, had dark hair cut short and parted on the left side. I remember a rather ruddy complexion and would guess his age as early 30s. I don't recall any stripes on his sleeve, but remember some kind of brass on his shoulders. There were ribbons pinned to his chest, and he wore red braid looped from his left shoulder. He held his hat under his left arm, standing as though at "attention." He was facing the wall across the room from him, and since he was at an angle to me, I was seeing him in partial profile. At no time did he move or give any indication that he knew I was in the room.

The second man was quite unusual. Not as tall as the soldier, I would guess his age as early to mid 40s. He had medium brown hair, worn shoulder length, and somewhat curly or wavy. He was clean shaven. It was his garment that was so unusual. He was wearing a robe, the sort of robe you might see a man wearing in a photo of a person in the Middle-east. The color was medium gray, it was floor length, and I distinctly recall that the fabric looked quite rough and heavy, far too warm for an August afternoon. This man did realize I was in the room, and he turned to look at me. To say that I was terrified would be an understatement, and yet I was rooted to the spot. When I entered the room, the man in the robe was standing, facing the soldier, with his right hand touching the soldier's left arm, the way one does as a friendly, reassuring gesture.

You have described the expression on the face of the Confederate soldier you saw, and I must describe the expression on the face of the man in the robe. Keep in mind that I was not only so frightened I literally couldn't move, I also felt that this was a serious threat to my safety, and in that state of mind it seems logical that I would interpret his expression as threatening. Yet the only way I can describe the look on that man's face is that I've never seen a face so gentle, so kind and even so loving. That face was at complete odds with the terror I was feeling.

I don't have any idea how long I stood there, looking at the man in the robe, and he, looking at me, but it was probably not nearly as long as I later thought it was. I knew immediately that I was seeing something I was not supposed to see, that it was not a part of what I normally recognize as reality, and I knew that the man in the robe also knew I wasn't supposed to be able to see him. Additionally, I knew that he was completely in charge of the situation, and knew (probably my fear was obvious) exactly how to put an end to this. Turning toward me, with that gentle expression never changing, he took a couple of steps in my direction, which was just enough to release the paralysis that had held me there, and I was out in the kitchen, through the door to the sunporch, and out of the house in a matter of seconds. I stopped just short of running into the yard screaming. I stood on the step in front of the sunporch door, holding the door open and listening intently for any sound in the house. It was completely silent.

I don't know how long I stood there, at least five minutes, maybe ten or more, my heart pounding so hard I could hardly breathe. Finally, knowing I had to eventually go back into the house, if only to grab my car keys and flee to the safety of my mother's house, I tip-toed across the porch and into the kitchen, where I peered around the doorway into the dining room. It was, as I somehow knew it would be, completely empty.

It was a long time before I was able to tell anyone about that experience. It was just too bizarre to be believable and I didn't want to sound crazy. I was raised by parents who had no belief in the supernatural and they passed it on to me. I've listened to a lot of ghost stories, and have always just considered it to be silliness. I've never known what to make of my own experience. I've considered that it was simply a hallucination, yet I have no history of hallucinating. I don't drink, and have never used drugs. I can say in all honesty that the people I saw in that house that day were as real, as solid, as any person I've ever seen. Had I encountered them on the street, except for the unusual garment worn by the second man, I would have paid no attention to them. I have a vague sense that one of the people in that group in the living room that I "think" I saw, may have been a person I knew who had been killed in a highway accident about ten years earlier, but that's more of an impression than anything else.

The best I can say is that since that day in August over 20 years ago, I've never been as sure as I once was that there's no such thing as a spirit world. And I might add that deep down in my inner-mosties, I think that gentle man in the gray robe may have been an angel. Of course I would never tell anyone that.