This weekend, I’ve been in Gettysburg for a Strange Escapes event.  This place is unlike any other I’ve ever been to. Just driving into town, you can feel the heaviness of the area. Its thick with history. I recommend that people come here if ever possible. I’ve been on tours explaining the battle strategies each side used and I never realized how close the Civil War was.  If one little plan went wrong, our country could be DRASTICALLY different. It’s almost overwhelming to think about.

Last night after our investigation, a couple other ladies and I decided to go check out the battlefield at night. First, let me put in this disclaimer.  The park closes at 7pm.  We went well after closing and were technically trespassing.  I don’t advise it.  There.  I’ve officially said don’t trespass.  Now on to our walk.

After being obnoxious to another group walking through the battlefield after we mistook them for some of our group, we walked up a road that used to be a creek.  As we walked, we kept finding pockets that held that “zing” some investigators get before activity happens.  At the first spot, we stopped and looked up the hill because it felt like at any moment, soldiers could walk over the ridge.  As we watched and waited, I noticed someone standing under a large tree.  I pointed him out and the others could see him too.  We could clearly see his legs and that he was wearing a long coat that stopped just above his knees.  We watched him for a minute or two and then he just kind of dissolved into nothing.  Today, I went back in the day to see if I could find the tree and make sure there were no monuments that we might have mistaken as a person.  There are a lot of monuments in the area but none of them matched what I saw.  Very interesting.

  
The tree on the left is where I saw the soldier.  He was standing to the left of the tree. There is a statue like the one on the right of the man on the horse but, it’s not very visible from the spot we were at and it also didn’t look like what we saw.

After that awesome experience, we walked further down the road. On the left, there is a field that we felt like at any moment, you could see people walking through the field. On the right, is a hill with cool old stone fences.

  
We stopped again at a pair of gnarly old trees because we felt that “zing” again. Pretty soon, we started hearing footsteps walking through the leaves. They were rhythmic and steady. After a few moments of listening, we noticed a mist staring to form and move across the hill in behind the tree and following the sound of the footsteps. My favorite part was when we started to hear the wooden wheels of either a cannon or a wagon rolling along with the steps. It was so distinct. Unfortunately, I didn’t have my digital recorder on at the time so I didn’t catch it.  It’s just a personal experience but it was so awesome, I wanted to share it.

  
 
People experience these types of things all the time here. It’s an almost magical place in spite of the terrible, bloody history.  It’s one thing to read about the events in a history book but it’s an entirely different thing walking through the actual locations. It hits you in the heart to look at the ground and imagine that 55,000 men and boys died on that land within a 3 day period. It’s staggering and overwhelming. Most importantly, it’s incredibly moving.

I definitely want to come back here again.