In February, my wife Carol and I visited New Orleans to participate in Ray Couch's Southern Ghosts investigation of certain parts of that historic town. We flew in a couple of days ahead of the conference, rented a car, and drove up to Vicksburg, Mississippi, to see if there were any ghosts inhabiting that famous Civil War town and battlefield.
My contact in Vicksburg was Terry, with whom I'd worked as a ranger at Gettysburg. He stayed in the National Park Service and I left. He is now chief historian at Vicksburg. (Many of the men and women I worked with during my tenure at Gettysburg stayed in the NPS and are now holding high positions. I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I had stayed in….no history books, no ghost books, no ghost tours, no Carol….Nah, as things turned out, I'm way better off!!) The Vicksburg Campaign encompassed a series of battles in the spring and summer of 1863—coincidentally, the same time General Robert E. Lee was leading his Army of Northern Virginia into Pennsylvania toward Gettysburg. U. S. Grant eventually ended up surrounding Vicksburg, engaging in siege warfare, bombarding and starving the Confederate Army (and much of the civilian populace) into submission. They surrendered on July 4, 1863—the same day Lee began his retreat from Gettysburg. Within 24 hours, in July of 1863, the fate of the Confederacy was sealed.
Terry gave Carol and me a fantastic tour of the battlefield. He showed us sites where men were cut down in as large numbers as at Gettysburg; where men died and were buried in the sides of levees because there was no other dry ground around in which to bury them; where a Union attack had so little chance of success, the assault column was named, "The Forlorn Hope," before the attack.
I knew the ghost stories and site associated with the town of Vicksburg: McRaven, and the murdered Union officer, Captain McPherson, whose mutilated ghost returns, as soaking wet as when he was killed and thrown into the Mississippi; Cedar Grove where the entire Klein family (and a later female resident) still conduct family business decades after their deaths; Anchula, where a daughter, disgruntled in life by her father's refusal to accept her suitor, took her dinner standing up at the parlor mantle for the rest of her life…and, since she is still seen, for a century or so after her death, as well; and the Duff Green Mansion, saved by its owner from the Union bombardment by allowing it to be used as a hospital is still being used by the blonde beautiful Mary Green, still seen roaming the halls, and by a Confederate soldier, who sits by the fireplace with his amputated leg.
When our historical tour was over, I asked Terry if there were any ghost stories about the battlefield. He said, "Mark, I've been working here for thirty years, and I haven't heard one ghost story about the battlefield." He admitted he had heard those from the town, but none from the battlefield. (Subsequent cursory research revealed only sightings of strange mists, which may truly be just mists.) Then I asked him about the geology of Vicksburg, just to explore a pet theory of mine. He said that the earth below us was alluvial Mississippi River silt, laid down over millions of years, and the nearest bedrock was a hundred feet below. I told him about the theory about ghosts that proposes the geology—particularly quartz-bearing granite, like at Gettysburg, Antietam and other haunted battlefields—can capture the energy released by soldiers in extremis, and, under certain conditions, can release that energy, producing ghostly phenomena as in a residual haunting. That the Vicksburg Battlefield has no ghostly phenomena (yet certain buildings in town do) and other battlefields with their quartz-bearing bedrock close to the surface do have ghostly happenings, at least adds to the data we are collecting. As I have often said, Civil War battlefields are like laboratories for paranormal research.
(To be continued)
