I have a highly unusual experience with Civil War ghosts. I grew up in a home that was previously used as a field hospital during the Civil War by both the North and South at different times of the war. A war-time setting is the ideal breeding ground for ghostly activity.
We know that battlefields have earned enormous reputations as haunted locations, as have sites such as my childhood home that were used as hospitals for the dying, who died in agonizing and barbaric conditions. This is an ideal set of conditions for some serious hauntings.
In the case of the home I grew up in, the estate had many apparitions on the land and a shadow like figure within the house. It had lots of voices and memory sounds like booted footfalls, as well as objects moving and poltergeist type "throwing" of objects upon occasion.
The ghosts of Gettysburg are most popular of all the Civil War ghosts, though the South certainly has a huge share of ghosts from the era from Atlanta to Charleston and places onward.
We have a lot of beloved ghosts in America based on an unusual and often times lawless beginning. It takes a great deal of trauma and strife to get to a place of productivity and prosperity. On the blood, sweat and tears of our citizens, we have built an amazing country, and perhaps a rather hefty ghost population of souls taken too soon.
I spent two weekends in the Bottom House located on the Perryville KY battlefield. It is unchanged from the war and has a history of being quite haunted. This house is(was?) privately owned and the group I was with had received permission for the stay.
ReplyDeleteI remember how strange the house felt upon entering and the room I slept in was by reputation the most active room in the house. There were thousands of houseflies on one of the windows and the floor was black with them I swept them up but the next day there were an equal number of fly carcasses to clean up. The room across from me was the room that had activity on the first night we were there. My friend (an attorney) woke up around 2AM with someone standing over him--a few moments after he adjusted his eyes a bed collapsed and we were all awakened. Strange events? You bet.
The fighting at Perryville was brutal and this house was used as both a refuge and a hospital. Pretty intense experience.
The Bottom House is a pretty well known battlefield landmark and I lived in it for two great weekends about ten years ago. We saw enormous collections of houseflies (in November) and my friends sleeping in the room across from mine experienced a shadow figure standing over him and then the bed of another sleeper just collapsed (foot of bed just fell away) as the shadow was disappearing . Do these things sound familiar?
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