Fredericksburg GhostQuest Weekend

Fredericksburg GhostQuest Weekend

    In January, the Ghosts of Fredericksburg Candlelight Walking Tours and the Richard Johnston Inn sponsored our first GhostQuest weekend in Fredericksburg, VA. We filled the Inn with "thrill seekers" who were treated to talks by Laine Crosby ("Working with a Medium" and "Remote Viewing"), Scott Crownover ("Spirit Photography in the Daylight"), and myself ("Ghosts of Fredericksburg" and "EVP"). Paranormal investigations of the Richard Johnston Inn, Lee's Hill Golf Course, Spotsylvania Court House Jail, and The Chimneys were included, and, as always, some remarkable results and evidence were collected.

    The Fredericksburg area was the scene of four major Civil War battles: Fredericksburg, where they fought through the streets in December of 1862; Chancellorsville, in May of 1863, precursor to the Battle of Gettysburg; The Wilderness, scene of the first meeting of Grant and Lee in May of 1864; and Spotsylvania Court House, also in May of 1864, where they fought for 22 hours straight in the pouring rain. In the course of those four battles, some 100,000 men fell. Most of the wounded were brought back to Fredericksburg to be operated upon, suffer, recover, or die. It is no surprise the area is haunted.

    The first night in the Richard Johnston Inn, the spirits treated us to booted footsteps, a doll with a nasty attachment, and an EMF meter that continued to register electromagnetic fields even when stationary on a table, meaning the entities were apparently moving to it.

    In spite of the frigid temperatures, our group braved the elements for a lunch at Lee's Hill Golf Course and an investigation of the grounds. A preliminary investigation a year before yielded evidence of not only Civil War soldiers (Robert E. Lee, Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson and their troops wintered on the grounds after the Battle of Fredericksburg), but French and Indian War entities and Revolutionary War spirits. (Historian's know that Lafayette's troops marched through the area on their way to Yorktown, but we're still working on the F & I connection.) After a visit to some Confederate trenches on the golf course, Laine picked up an entity that she detected through heat. A check with a quick-read thermometer confirmed a rise in temperature in the area she indicated. We were fortunate to have Nancy and Patrick along who both spoke French and asked questions in that language. They were answered in French!

    That afternoon we went to the old jail in Spotysvania Court House. Some of the participants were affected by the remnant emotions of a slave child in the room to the right. We knew that the jail had held escaped slaves in the pre-war era, as well as captured Union soldiers during the Battle of Spotsylvania. In the room to the left, one investigator began getting strong EMF readings all along the wall, up to about waist-height, but very little to nothing at all above that. She picked up low readings in the center of the room (again, only waist-high), and nothing by the door. At the window she picked up an EMF reading that moved from one side of the window sill to the other. Our conclusion: captured Union soldiers hustled in during the battle would have sat down and leaned up against the wall; others would have sprawled in the center of the room; none would have been able to lean up against the jail door. We believe we caught the remnant energies of the soldiers incarcerated there en masse. Scott Crownover and I investigated the wiring outside the building and found that it was at least twenty to twenty-five feet above the ground and could not have produced the readings low to the floor inside the building.

    That night, we investigated The Chimneys, a building built in the late 1700s and used continually since then for everything from private residences to numerous restaurants. Photographs turned up orbs and some strange, misty substances.

    The next morning, residents of the Richard Johnston Inn reported about the strange happenings from the night before. They apparently (and inadvertently) discovered a psychomanteum effect in one of the mirrors upstairs. (Dr. Raymond Moody revived the ancient "mirror-gazing" technique to see and communicated with the dead. He called his mirror-gazing room a "psychomanteum.") Participant Robin Lord, who was witness to the bizarre events, is writing up a description of just what happened. With her permission, we'll publish it in an update.

    All in all, it was an exciting and edifying weekend. As in all our weekends, more and more data is being accumulated on the paranormal, this time from a new venue. More about Fredericksburg in a later blog!

    

Back to New Orleans

    Back to New Orleans. The destruction from Hurricane Katrina is still a part of this fabulous (as in "fabled") city. Rick Pustanio, who oversees the Haunted America Tours (www.hauntedamericatours.com) website, whose patrons have voted Ghosts of Gettysburg Tours the #1 ghost tour in America three years in a row, offered to be our guide. For a couple of hours every day he donated his time to take Carol and me on a tour of the areas of devastation and for his hospitality we are very grateful.

    We saw where one of the breaches in the levee, which everyone saw from the helicopter viewpoint, took place. Believe me, Katrina was an equal opportunity destroyer. She took out million dollar homes in that section. She took out regular people's homes in others. Twelve feet of water in sections of the city was not unusual and most of the streets are still buckled and almost un-passable because the underground infrastructure was wiped out. Still, the very soul of "The Big Easy" is still there—in its people. Standing in front of the Bourbon Orleans Hotel with Ray Couch waiting for Rick to pick me up for a visit to the Chalmette ("Battle of New Orleans") Battlefield, I saw something legendary: Marching down the street was a "parade," New Orleans style, for a deceased member of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. The surviving members of the band marched playing Dixieland; behind them, replete with bouncing umbrellas and twirling bodies, were people off the street, joining in because they just couldn't help themselves—it was all I could do not to follow. A city with a soul like that deserves a second chance. Go visit New Orleans this year. Leave some money there, in the bars, at the fabulous restaurants, in the magnificent hotels. See the cemeteries, take the ghost tours, and visit the voodoo queens. New Orleans is a unique world unto itself.

    Ray Couch, leader of "Southern Ghosts," (www.southernghosts.com) one of the more highly respected ghost investigation groups, had set up an investigation weekend based in New Orleans. He graciously invited Carol and me to attend. I was to help out gathering EVP in a couple of the haunted venues he had secured for the group's purposes.

    I had worked with Ray a couple of times in Gettysburg and was always impressed with his professionalism and creativity when it came to investigations. (Laine Crosby and I recently interviewed him for "Ghost Talkers," our internet talk show found at www.ghostchannel.tv. He talks about our investigations in New Orleans. It's a great interview.) Our first stop was the Ashley House, a pre-Civil War house which is now surrounded by a modern hotel. We arrived shortly after 11:00 pm and got a briefing and a tour from Ray. Located in the "Garden District" of New Orleans, the house was built in the 1840s originally owned by a man named Phillips, who apparently still visits, decades after his death. (His was one of the names Ray gave us to try to get EVP.) During the Civil War (or, as they call it down south, "The War for Southern Independence") it was owned by a Mr. D. R. Carroll and used by the occupying Union Army as boarding for captured Confederate soldiers. There is ancient graffiti on the walls—obscene, no less—denigrating women (or at least one particular woman.)

    We began our investigation. One man and his son began getting high readings on their EMF meter in the graffiti room on the second floor. I warned them that it might just be electrical wiring in that area. After several minutes of the meter going off, they moved on. A few minutes later, they returned to the active spot and the meter was silent—no readings whatsoever. Apparently, what they were getting was NOT something in the wiring, since it had apparently left the area.

    Ray had mentioned something about an antique mirror in the one bedroom that caused some individuals to act oddly—women would stare into the mirror and suddenly regress, begin to giggle and play with their hair like little girls. Looking into the darkened room when no one was in it, I thought I saw a dark, shimmering figure standing in front of the mirror—a "shadow person" perhaps? As I approached the doorway, the image ceased to exist.

    I got a dozen samples of EVP before we took a break around 12:52 am and met in the courtyard outside. Ray offered to stay later for a second round of the investigations, but everyone said they were exhausted. I know for a fact that paranormal investigations can be utterly energy-draining affairs. It seems that the entities are "energy-thieves." Why, I don't know. I do know that they seem to need more energy to manifest, and often they will drain batteries in cameras, as well as the investigators themselves of energy. Most people do not consider this feeling of exhaustion after an investigation a paranormal experience, but it is, just as surely as being touched by an unseen hand. All of us caught cabs back to the Bourbon Orleans Hotel where we were based—another New Orleans haunted site.

New Orleans & Vicksburg Part 1

    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)

Mysterious Journeys

Since the Travel Channel's Mysterious Journeys segment on the Ghosts of Gettysburg first aired in October of 2007, I have received a few e-mails that have voiced concerns, and dozens of others that were positive and asked for more information on paranormal investigations, equipment, etc. The concerns seem to be thematic with 1) how, as a historian, I work with our medium, 2) how programs are made for television and, 3) the historical research done for and by our medium.

As to how I work with Investigative Medium Laine Crosby:

One of the complaints was that our Investigative Medium, Laine, "didn't know her history" and I didn't correct her when her history didn't agree with history available on the world wide web.

First and foremost, I never tell Laine anything about the history of the site we are to visit. That would negate any real psychic information received at the site. In most cases, I try to set up classic "double-blind" experiments: I'll choose five or six historic sites, then randomly visit only two or three. That way, even I don't know where we will end up ... so there is no way she can "study-up" on the history of the site and "fake" getting historically correct information. I try never to react to what she comes up with during an investigation- sometimes to the point of not answering her questions and appearing rude. A classic way many well-known psychics get their "other worldly" information is actually by reading the reactions of their audience. If I were to react and "tip off' a psychic/medium when she was wrong historically, it would help her to eliminate what she "receives."

The fact that Laine "messed up" the history by appearing to say that Isaac Trimble had been shot in the side and died in that room is only proof that she hadn't studied about the Lady Farm or Isaac Trimble. But that is not what she said during the actual filming of the segment.

The editing process in television productions:

The production company for the Travel Channel spent two weeks in Gettysburg and shot approximately 70 hours of tape-all for a 45 minute (minus 15 or so minutes of time for commercials) program. It wasn't Isaac Trimble, the Confederate general, with whom Laine was speaking, but the editing done in California made it appear that way. What was edited out of Laine's reading was that after she got the name "Isaac Trimble," who was a relatively famous person who fought in the Battle of Gettysburg, she went on to hear that the person with whom she was communicating was NOT Trimble himself, but had been commanded by Trimble, and was from Georgia. At Gettysburg, the man had been shot in the torso. Paranormal investigators must word their questions very carefully. I asked, "Did he die here in this room?" Laine became incredibly sad at that moment and said, "He didn't know he had died." I had committed a grave error in the field of paranormal studies: You never tell the spirit with whom you are communicating that they have died because many are not aware of that fact. That explained the look on Laine's face as she heard the man say, "You mean I'm dead?" (It is indeed a mysterious place, the land of the dead.)

The remarkable thing is that Laine came up with the name "Isaac Trimble," a name she'd never heard before. I remember her struggling with it as the information came to her: "Trem ... Tremble ... " A long pause. She asked, "What is the first name, please?" Another long pause as she listened intently. "Isaac? Isaac Tremble" She listened and that was the name she heard. (All of this was edited out.) I had heard of Isaac Trimble, of course, but didn't connect him with the Lady Farm. Laine also got "Earl." I thought she was saying "Ewell," but she may have been coming up with "Early"- Jubal A. Early, another Confederate officer associated with Ewell's 2nd Corps, and another remarkable psychic "hit" by Laine.

The drawbacks of using the internet for historical research:

The internet has given virtually everyone almost instantaneous access to general facts.
Unfortunately, not all historical sources are available there. After concern was raised about Trimble's psychic "presence" at the Lady Farm, I checked my personal library, compiled over the last 30 years as a writer and researcher and containing much from my 6 years as a National Park Service Ranger/Historian at Gettysburg. I found some interesting things.

According to Trimble's own Civil War Diary (located in the Maryland Historical Society archives and published in the MD Historical Magazine, Vol. XVII in 1922), he was operated on by "Drs McGuire, Black & Hays" (Trimble's quote) on Saturday, July 4. McGuire (Hunter H.) first served as a line officer with the 2nd Virginia, "Stonewall Brigade," then became Stonewall Jackson's surgeon until Jackson's death in May of 1863. During the re-organization of the 2nd Corps, McGuire served as Chief Surgeon for the 2nd Corps under Ewell at Gettysburg. Would he have bivouacked with old friends in the Stonewall Brigade (on the Lady Farm) at Gettysburg, just a few weeks after Jackson's death? I think it very likely.

We know McGuire was already in the vicinity because he visited another of Jackson's former staff members who had been wounded, Henry Kyd Douglas, at a farm on the Hunterstown Road, just a few miles away, on July 3. (I Rode with Stonewall, by H. K. Douglas). McGuire did not operate on Douglas or apparently spend much time with him according to Douglas; just a quick visit, then McGuire moved on.

A second confirmation to Trimble's diary is in McGuire's biography in the Southern Historical Society Papers. It states that McGuire amputated Trimble's leg. Dr. Harvey Black, who was named as one of Trimble's surgeons, was also one of Jackson's surgeons, serving in the 4th Virginia Regiment, Stonewall Brigade, Johnson's Division, which was bivouacked on the Lady Farm. Trimble, having been wounded in 1862, was without a command before Gettysburg. He attached himself to Ewell's Corps on June 28, no doubt re-acquainting himself with his fellow soldiers in the corps. Trimble had commanded a brigade earlier in the war in Ewell's Division and almost got the command of Johnson's Division before Gettysburg. We also know that on the evening of July 1, Trimble claims to have had a very famous contretemps with Ewell about attacking Culp's Hill wherein he threw down his sword and exclaimed that he refused to serve under such an officer, linking Trimble with Ewell/Johnson and Johnson's headquarters at the Lady Farm. Although Trimble was wounded in Pickett's Charge on July 3, would he have requested to be operated on by surgeons he knew and trusted? As a high-ranking officer he, no doubt, would have been accommodated.

According to Gregory Coco in his book, A Vast Sea of Misery, a guide to the field hospitals at Gettysburg after the battle, Trimble's leg was amputated at the Samuel A. Cobean Farm just north of Gettysburg on the Carlisle Road. What Laine had picked up on was someone talking about Trimble, perhaps the soldier who had been wounded in the side.

One e-mail correspondent was irate and insisted that Laine's picking up on Trimble's energy was impossible, because Trimble didn't die at the Lady Farm. Trimble did not get command of Major General William Dorsey Pender's Division until after that officer was wounded on July 2, and so was likely with his old division, at the Lady Farm, until then, or off petitioning Lee for the command he finally received. As an officer he would have had access to the Lady farmhouse. Did he leave a psychic imprint there? Perhaps. It is well known in paranormal studies, that one's psychic energy can be imbedded or imprinted on a site without one having to die there.

As well known as Trimble was in Johnson's Division, and especially with two of the three surgeons who had amputated his limb associated with the units bivouacked at the Lady Farm, it is very likely his name would have at least been mentioned there. If so, his men, some of whom he had once commanded, may have inquired about him, especially if they had once served under him. It was not Trimble's energy, but someone he had once commanded that Laine picked up on. (This, as I mentioned before, was edited out of the final cut.)

In addition, no one was more surprised than I when I first saw the program and they talked about G.W. Sandoe being a Confederate soldier and being killed near Cashtown. In reality, Sandoe, who was one of the first soldiers to be killed in the battle, was a Federal and was killed south, not west, of Gettysburg. The mistake is a result of filming in Gettysburg and editing in Hollywood, where there are precious few Gettysburg historians!

The film crew was a highly professional group and spent 2 weeks putting 70 hours of tape "in the can." However, in the editing process things got cut, turned around, and generally re-arranged.

Fortunately, most of the viewers (Travel Channel programs get some 77 million) understood the program for what it was: a program on the mysteries of paranormal phenomena. They also appreciated the good things that resulted from the program: Five never before filmed haunted venues in Gettysburg were brought to light; that Scott Crownover shared with them one of the biggest break-throughs in the field of paranormal research in decades: his technique of taking photographs of spirits in the daylight; that Laine accomplished the incredible feat of correctly identifying (by psychically "talking" to him) Mr. "Culbertson" a local soldier whose name appears in the historical records of the men from Gettysburg who fought in the Civil War; and finally, that Gettysburg remains one huge laboratory for paranormal research and not just an obscure historical event many people (sadly) merely gloss over.

The bottom line is that this was "Mysterious Journeys" on the "Travel Channel "and not the "History Channel." The emphasis therefore was more on the paranormal aspects of the story. Some historical latitude is in order. My philosophy is that whatever gets people interested in the history of Gettysburg and the Civil War is productive.