Gettysburg is a place that my husband, Jim, and I have wanted to tour since forever. We read Michael Shaara's Killer Angels back in the '90's, enjoyed the "Gettysburg" movie based on the book, and were enthralled by what my sister and her husband told us about their own visit to the battlefield.
Plus, it's haunted.
Last summer, we had our chance to go, and we took it, using the one free day we had for the visit. In most ways, it didn't disappoint. While the battlefield itself has its museum, its bookstore, its cyclorama, the entire town is so packed with history that living there would be mind-boggling to me. There's no street that wasn't somehow involved in that three-day conflict, and very few areas that didn't see some of the tragedy.
And it's haunted.
We stayed long enough to visit the museum, take in the cyclorama, and then enjoy the bus tour. (Did you know that the guides on the bus tour must be certified in their knowledge of the battle? Our guide was impressive, to put it mildly.) Then we had dinner and drove back to Hershey, where the rest of our family was enjoying the water- and amusement parks.
That night, I couldn't sleep. Sometimes that happens: I'll be tired enough, but as soon as I lie down and pull up the covers, my eyes open up again and the feeling of sleepiness departs for a few hours. So as I always do, I went out into the other room, put on a lamp, and read for about two hours. I decided at that point that I should go to bed and get what rest I could because the next day was going to be a busy one. I'll state here that I was feeling uneasy, had been feeling that way since arriving from the battlefield, but I was doing my best to ignore it. I turned off the light, went into the bathroom, and then came back out into the darkness of the bedroom.
Where I almost had a heart attack. As I passed the closet area on the way to bed, I caught a glimpse of a union soldier standing just to my left. He was in full uniform, possibly even had a long blue coat on over his blue trousers, and he definitely was wearing a hat. More than that I couldn't tell you, because I stopped looking! I pretended that he wasn't there, went to bed, and closed my eyes, eventually falling asleep.
The morning was bright and sunny, like an August morning should be, and I thought about seeing that soldier standing there, trying at the same time to make the memory a distant thing. Or part of my imagination. But that wasn't happening. There was now an uneasiness in our hotel room, much like the uneasiness I had sensed all over Gettysburg, and I knew my visitor had chosen to stay.
I did tell Jim about what I had seen. He took my word for it, but didn't say much else. At least he never laughs at me! Then I did what I've been told (and what the characters in my Bridgeton Park Cemetery series have been told) to do: I asked him to leave.
I asked him several times. After a while, a sense of calm came back to the room and I felt better. The Union soldier had undoubtedly gone back to Gettysburg and things were back to normal.
But I was wrong.
Read the rest of the story right here, next week!
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