Gettysburg is not viewed best after dark. No way, no how.
After a random night in Harrisonburg, VA hanging with more of Mike's JMU friends (my god, how many friends does he have?) we sat in a Harrisonburg cafe with no plans for the day--our first schedule-free day thus far on the trip. Musing over my egg salad bagel, I had the highly questionable idea to drive a few hours northeast to Gettysburg and check out the nightlife: the not-so-alive-and-more-like-dead kind of nightlife. Gettysburg happens to be the most haunted town in America, at least, according to my iPhone.
We arrived before dusk, checked in to a campground, and started the car tour around the battlefield. We had loose plans to do a formal, $16/head ghost tour later on in the eve, where you sit around in some dead person's house and listen for creaks. But these plans were quickly put to rest.
Dusk came and went, and Gettysburg was--mostly--asleep. Naturally, we thought it was high time to hit up the cemetery. We parked the car about a 1/4 mile down the road and made the trek to the gates. The gates to the cemetery were partly open, giving the impression that peak hours were long over.
The gravestones were fenced off. We could make out their silhouettes behind the tall iron fence. Uneventful. Not a ghost to be seen. What the hell. We carried on down the road until two bright head lights came around the bend. It was a cop. He had his window rolled down. We approached the car.
"Park's closed."
"Oh, okay. Which way out?"
The cop pointed behind us, clearly the way we had just came from. I wasn't fooling' anybody. So we turned around and headed back. The cop shut the gate behind us as we exited the cemetery.
(Note: The cop was certainly trying to make us into a guilty party, but the clock said 9:30, and, from what we were told, the park closed at 10. Somebody just didn't want us to be there....)
We jumped back into the car and intended to finish the auto tour before the clock struck 10. There was one section of the tour that we had not driven yet, a little loop that was unlabeled and branched off from the main road. I pointed at it and thought, "Good idea." We turned off the main road and circled the loop, which appeared to be just a parking lot near the visitor's center. But I spotted a trail. "Really good idea," I thought. By now it's so dark that we whip out the flashlight that we purchased only a few hours prior. Mike spots the gate that could potentially lock us in this part of the park with the clock approaching 10.
"Is this a bad idea? I'm just worried that we'll get locked in."
I pretend I don't hear him. Getting locked in is the least of my worries; we make one phone call to that friendly coper and he can have us out in no time. He seems good with gates. Plus, I was replaying the most recent episode of "Ghost Hunters" in my head. Those guys are ridiculous. It really is "Jersey Shore" meets "Paranormal Activity." Why are these guys so angry at these ghosts? Are ghosts obligated to throw shit across a room when the lights are turned off?
(Note: I'm about to switch to present tense. I think it might be a more effective way to relate the following events. Then again, I'm just too lazy to edit my first draft, but not to lazy to write this disclaimer.)
"I will be nice to the ghosts," I think, as we leave the car for the trail. We come to the trailhead via flash light. The sign reads "To Meade's Headquarters" with an arrow pointing to the left. We start down the trail. It's quiet except for the screeching cicadas, so it's not quiet at all really, just void of human noise, except for our footsteps, so not void of human noise at all really. We don't talk, I just flick the flashlight off and on randomly, revealing just how dark it actually is around us. I walk through a few spider webs and that's annoying. We walk a couple hundred meters in all
and eventually reach the road.
"We should probably go back to the car," I say, my thoughts now leaving the supernatural for the practical.
"Yeah," says Mike. It's settled: we turn around.
I take one step and stop. The temperature has dropped, noticeably. I look at Mike. He felt it too.
"Do you notice how cold it is right here?"
"Yeah."
We walk a few more paces, and I feel the temperature fluctuate from one step to the next. There is no breeze to speak of. These are small climate changes from one step to the next.
"Does this sort of thing happen in...well...in real life?" I ask.
"I don't think so."
"I mean, this is new, right?"
"Yeah."
The only thing I can think of is that it's a lot like encountering a 'cold spot' when you're swimming. If I had to guess I'd say that the temperature dropped a solid 7-10 degrees.
"We shoud probably go back to the car," and I thought, "Immediately." We retrace our steps and the 'cold spots' seem to expand. The entire trail now feels cold.
"It's much colder this whole way," says Mike.
I swipe away a few more cobwebs. Super annoying. We continue on, picking up our pace a bit. But these damn cobwebs. They just won't go away.
"Do you keep running into--"
"Cobwebs?"
"Yeah," i reply. I look at Mike, he wipes at his arm.
"But they're not..."
"No." No, they were not cobwebs at all. I shine the flashlight. There were no bugs attached to these cobwebs, nor any tangible, silky substance. What the hell. We walk faster and the sensations intensify; my arms and wrists and legs are being touched/brushed with "cobwebs." My heart is in my throat. What the hell is this?! Something's or, dare I say it, 'somebody's' silky, viscous fingers were tickling and f*&*#ing with me. It's hard to describe it as an unpleasant feeling; but you walk around in the middle of the battlefield of the bloodiest battle in American history after dark and feel anything other than nothing, you bet your ass it's unpleasant. So with ghost spiders crawling up my arm I try to keep my sanity by having a conversation with someone I know is alive:
"You're feeling this too, right?"
"Yeah, it feels like silk."
"I felt them on the way over here but I thought it was just a cobweb."
"It's not cobwebs," as if that needed to be stated again.
I stop Mike and have him hold the flashlight up to my arm. I can't take it anymore. The invisible spider monkeys have reached their peak and I am full-on being groped.
"Do you see anything?!"
"No. No, there's nothing."
"It's going up my arm. Now it's on my wrist. And my hands."
"Nothing."
Jesus. Time to stop trying to figure this shit out and get back to the car.
We reach the car, and the silky spiders have faded--mostly. But 'mostly' is not good enough when it comes to a potential haunting. I'm still feeling a tingle here and there as I buckle up. I can't help but think of "Paranormal Activity" again and how that dude tells the chick that it doesn't matter where she goes, the demon will follow.
"Are you still feeling them?"
"No."
Lucky. Guess the demon has found a liking to me. Not okay.
"Drive," I say.
"It's not quite 10 yet. Let's park up here and try this other trail to the back of the cemetery."
"Nope. I'm good." And I was good. That is as close as I ever need to come to thinking that I made contact with the third realm. As we turn onto the main drag, the spiders seem to have dispersed. Maybe it was all a dream.
"Nope, it wasn't a dream."
Thank, Mike.
It goes without saying that we did not do the $16/head ghost tour led by some uninspired college kid collecting drinking money. We park in downtown Gettysburg to find the nearest bathroom. On cue, a handful of outta-towers, aka touristas, are being led by a college-aged kid dressed in a mock Union uniform with a satchel which he slaps and shouts, "Donations are encouraged and accepted!"
It seems the story would end here, but no. I rush into the local pub to use their facilities; not sure if I had to drop a deuce because of General Meade's creepy salad fingers or because of the pint of strawberry cheesecake ice cream i had earlier.
Into the bathroom and enter the stall. Don't worry, I'm not about to describe to you the quality of my poop (it was pebbly.) I intend, instead, to tell you this: as I'm cleaning up shop, I hear the faucet go on. Somebody is washing their hands. I think I hear the hand dryer too. I pull up the ol' shorts and open the stall door fully expecting to find the 20-year old from Jersey City who stopped us on the street earlier to find some green before he goes off to the Marines the next week. Well, Pauly D. wasn't there. Nor was anybody else. There was no one else in the bathroom. No one. Now, I even will admit that this could have been just a case of poor attention on my part and that somebody had done their business, washed their hands and left, making all the appropriate sounds at the appropriate volume, and I just did not notice. I was, without a doubt, on edge and out of sorts ever since I got felt up. But I must report that I do not recall hearing the appropriate sounds in the appropriate order that would tell my brain that there is another breathing human entering and then leaving the faciities. Color me spooked.
The bathroom episode aside, something weird was going down on General Meade's trail. I tell myself that the brain does funny things. Being in Gettysburg is a trip in broad daylight, let alone after hours. There is the undeniable feeling of walking on sacred ground. Couple that with some funny sensations that feel exactly like REAL, honest-to-god cobwebs moving up and down your extremities that caused both Mike and I to wipe down our arms, and you might think that something is up. I say go to Gettysburg and check it out yourself. I, on the other hand, never need to do it again.
We check out of the campground the next morning. From behind the desk, the campground staffer asks me:
"Did you go ghost hunting last night?"
"No," I tell him. And I don't know why.
Happy hunting.
-- JEFF
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