We had a number of incidents take place while we were living there. The toaster oven in the kitchen would turn on by itself, and unseen hands snatched the headphones off of my daughter’s head while she was riding her exercise bicycle in the downstairs area near our kitchen.
I’ve seen shadows pass along the wall during the evening hours when all the lighting was steady. And my wife saw a headless soldier!
The headless figure, in uniform, walked with a limp through the gate to the backyard. He walked around to our back door and paused, as if he was asking for help. After a few moments, the figure walked through the back door and into the house.
After hearing my wife’s description of the soldier’s uniform, I did a little research and discovered he was more than likely a Hessian soldier. We theorize that he must have been wounded and looking for medical help when he appeared at the back door of the house. The occupant of the house must have taken him in and helped him. The soldier would obviously have had his head at the time, so I figure that perhaps he was later killed and lost his head. The help he received at the house must have imprinted itself upon him so that his ghost returned to that spot.
The kitchen is located directly above the basement, and my wife always said she felt as if the energy from the manifestations was coming from down there. I know that we rarely went into the basement, except to do the laundry. Even then, we headed back upstairs as quickly as we could! There was a boarded-up recessed area in the basement, and I was unable to figure out its purpose. Perhaps there is a connection between that area and the haunting.
While Dan Gallagher makes an interesting point about a possible injury that caused the soldier to lose his head, the ghost’s presentation may have nothing to do with his appearance upon death.
Ghosts often appear with missing parts. One theory says that they are simply unable to exert the energy necessary to present a full image.
When it comes to apparitions with missing parts, witnesses most commonly report that the apparitions are missing their lower extremities.
Ghosts in the News
Graveyard Party
IN WILLISTON, TENNESSEE, an antebellum home that was once part of the historic Walker Plantation is today home to a small family and to the ghosts of Civil War soldiers buried on the grounds. The lovely home with its columned front porch was built in 1857 and was home to the slave-owning Walker family, one of the first families to settle in Williston.
Phantom conversations were first heard by a painter who was working during remodeling. Before long, the family, too, heard the jumbled voices, always sounding as if they came from the next room. “It sounds like someone is having a party,” one family member told a reporter at the Fayette County Review.
It was common in the area for Confederate soldiers to be buried in shallow graves and under houses during the Civil War, and some believe it is the restless spirits of fatally wounded soldiers who haunt the home.
Where the Dead Wander
Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, is home to one of the most famous haunted battle sites in America. It was the biggest and bloodiest battle of the Civil War with over 51,000 soldiers killed. The horror filled the first three days of July 1863 and ended with the union Army claiming victory over the Confederate troops.
What was once just a small town fifty miles northwest of Baltimore is today a major tourist magnet. Two million people visit the Gettysburg National Military Park each year to explore the twenty-six miles of park roads and scrutinize the fourteen hundred monuments. Whether they are looking for ghosts or not, countless visitors come away with inexplicable images on their photos and thrilling accounts of spirit encounters.
Apparitions of soldiers are most frequently witnessed. Sometimes the images are filmy and transparent. Other times they appear so solid that they are assumed to be live people dressed in period costume—until they vanish before astonished viewers’ eyes!
Sometimes the soldiers float by without legs. A headless soldier on a ghostly horse is among the specters seen.
Downtown Gettysburg, about a mile north of the park, is also swarming with ghosts.
Built as the Hotel Gettysburg in 1890, one old inn took over the site of a 1797 tavern. Despite the newer structure, spirits of the Civil War seem rooted to the spot, for they are often seen at the hotel.
Hotel staff has named one ghost Rachel. Several times each year, guests report an eerie visit from the specter of a nurse who appears with a whoosh of cool air.
Some insist that she has communicated with them. She is distraught, they say, because of her inability to treat the many wounded soldiers with such horribly damaged limbs.
Nurse Rachel recently visited the same room twice, encountering a different startled guest each time. Both guests reported that their dresser drawers mysteriously popped open, and their clothing was yanked out.