I’ve never been to a place that was more
haunting and eerie in all my life, then Gettysburg. Tucked into the farmlands
of rural Pennsylvania it is one of the most well known and bloodiest battlefields in U.S. History.
It saw around 46,000 casualties, over 7,000 of those killed in three days of
fighting and it is said that the place is crawling with ghosts. I have always
believed in spiritual entities or energy living on as a soul after a person has
passed on, but the idea of ghosts walking around in the clothing they wore and
looking as they did around the time they perished has always been difficult for
me to believe because I have never seen it with my own eyes. The paranormal
aspect of life that so many people claim to have seen, for whatever reason, has
failed to reveal itself to me. The most realistic supernatural visual I have
seen that made me look twice was captured on a video at a New Mexico police
station. The camera captures a figure walking and passing through a closed and
locked gate as if it wasn’t even there. I don’t know if some kind of trick
photography was involved but the apparition is hard to write off as a glint of
light or a rolling fog. It truly resembled a person walking. One thing I have noticed
about so-called ghosts captured on film is that never do you see any overweight
ghosts.
The
overwhelming sensation of spiritual energy in Gettysburg is unmistakable.
At first it will give you the goose bumps but the more you experience it the more
you realize that there were once people there that had real lives and real feelings. It is
in the writings of people alive then and the photographs by Matthew Brady and
Timothy O’Sullivan that give us a visual into the war and the people who lived and
died during that time.
I have always been intrigued by the possibility of ghosts wandering around carrying
on lives in bizarre repetition as if they were still alive. It seems nearly everyone I
know has seen a ghost with such clarity they describe their encounters in detail and
then shrug as if its as normal as a baloney sandwich. I press them for more details
about the encounter, "Did you talk to it?"
"No," is always the response.
"Well why not?"
"Dunno. Didn't think much about it at the time." The responses I get baffle me more
then an actual ghost sighting would baffle me I imagine. I just can't understand the
indifference. Ever since I was a child I have welcomed the appearance of a ghost, but
alas, I wait.
I have a friend that told me about a ghost who regularly would walk up and down
the stairs of their house. He said he'd be laying in bed and the woman, dressed in
cloths from the early 1900s would walk down the stairs. He said he would just lay
there and watch her. She was an apparition. He said he could see through her and he
told me all of this with a straight face in such a matter-of-fact way I couldn't see any
reason on to believe him other then the fact that I have never seen one for myself and
I have yet to see a photograph or video that I have found convincing other than the
New Mexico police video. But one thing we all have learned about the modern
world is that magical tricks can be accomplished with the camera using computers.
I'd love to believe that ghosts are for real though at the same time I don't know how
keen I'd be to ending up a ghost. What then? Are there other ghost friends near or do
you take that journey alone. Are ghosts people's souls that haven't convinced
themselves that they are dead yet. Are they waiting for someone? Are they in
purgatory because of wrongs committed in life? I am convinced there are certain
things that God didn't intend for us to completely understand and figure out.
There are people out there that believe ghosts are nothing but a hoax that caught on
over time. Others believe they are real. But one thing is for sure, the world will do it's
best to keep it's secret. You can bet on that.
No comments:
Post a Comment