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- Feb 5, 2017
Harper's Ferry 1865, National Archives Photo
This is your Halloween Story for the Hauntings Forum! Because I'm an election official, I won't be on the forums on Halloween as we are preprocessing ballots and I want to make sure I get this in.
I got this true story from the Harpers Ferry National Historical Park. Ranger Day put it in Facebook.
This story is from the History of the 22nd Regiment of the National Guard of the State of New York, by Wingate, who were stationed in the Ferry during 1862. The story involves a soldier named Harp who was afraid of ghosts and his pards, who wanted to scare him.
Harp, liked to talk of what he would do if attacked. "He was placed on night time picket duty near an old abandoned graveyard near his station and a number of giant fire-flies in the air. The combination utterly demoralized him. He first declared they were men with lanterns and was going to fire at them, but was restrained by his companions. He finally got over the lantern idea, but swore the lights were "corpse candles," versus fire flys. "not one of the squad knew what these were. Neither did Harp, for that matter, except that they had something to do with ghosts, and he was afraid of ghosts. He declared that he would do double duty up to midnight but that he would not stay on that post after that hour, even if he were to be court-martialed, and shot for disobedience of orders. This was a terrible state of things. For the 22nd to have a man who was afraid was bad, but to have one who was afraid of "corpse candles" would, if reported, make it a laughing-stock of the brigade."
Harp's friends, who also stood on nighttime picket duty, had a quick meeting, and decided to scare Harp into thinking that a corpse came to life and emerged from the graveyard to attack him. The picket duty soldiers waited for midnight, and knew that Harp was on post. One man turned his jacket inside out, to look like a lighter color coat of a Confederate, and rose up fromt he graveyard in the moonlight to confront Harp. But Harp, although afraid of ghosts, was not afraid of a man, and instead of running in fear, Harp loaded his gun to kill the "Confederate." The Confederate ghost, knowing that Harp had loaded his weapon, took off running for his life. Harp fired, missing the Confederate "ghost." Hearing the report of a weapon, the other pickets arrived on the scene. Harp claimed he killed the Confederate. His friends pretended to look for the dead Confederate, and of course did not find him, but they also decided they had more respect for Harp, who was afraid of ghosts, but not of the enemy!
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