If you are looking for a paranormal experience, you may want to think about booking a hotel room in the historic town of Gettysburg Pennsylvania. In July of 1863 it's living population was outnumbered twenty to one by thedead, with so much blood spilled on the floors of some churches that drain holes had to be drilled in them.

Not surprisingly Gettysburg has long been the setting for strange tales of supernatural acitivity. Everything from phantom apparitions of battlefield ghosts to strange disembodied screams. Many people claim that the constant influx of visitors from the south tends to trigger off a flurry of paranormal activity in the summer months, sometimes resulting in mysterious backward glimpses in time to the summer of 1863.

There is the case of the mysterious ghost known as the Sentry who still guards the cupola at the top of Pennsylavania Hall at Gettysburg College.. The apparation of this rebel soldier has been on duty for the past 145 years. In some ways he behaves like a normal residual haunting, pacing back and fourth on the Cupola as though the college is still in southern hands, yet every now and then he aims his rifle at students on the ground. This behavior fascinates parapsychologists because it is part of a trend of Intelligent (communicative) hauntings in Gettysburg, which goes back hundreds of years. Everywhere else in the paranormal world intelligent hauntings are extremely rare, even when compared to the ghostlore of other battle grounds like Shiloh or Antietem, and no one knows why Gettysburg has so many of them..

One of the earliest hauntings in Gettysburg Pa happened as the battle was still unfolding. The soldiers of the 20th Maine, (famous for the heroic bayonette charge under general Joshua Chamberlain) claimed to have encountered a ghost while they were marching toward Gettysburg..As the story goes, they came to a fork in the road and stopped, not sure which way to go.. when a man on horseback appeared and led them on toward Gettysburg.. At first they thought the man was a Union General. He looked like one, but soon they began to notice a strange glow emenating from both him and his horse. They also noticed the man had an eerie resemblence to portraits of the late George Washington. He even wore a tri cornered hat that had not been in style for over a hundred years.

The ghostly man led to the top of little round top where they would later repel a Confederate attack on the Union flank, and then he disappeared without ever being identified. Could it have been the ghost of George Washington, trying to aid the Union army in one of it's most important battles? Enough people beleived so that the Secretary of war, Edwin Stanton did a formal investigation into the matter. When asked Colonel Chamberlain, responded, "We know not what mystic power may be possessed by those who are now bivouacking with the dead. I only know the effect, but I dare not explain or deny the cause. Who shall say that Washington was not among the number of those who aided the country that he founded?"

It was just the first in a long series of ghost sightings that have made Gettysburg known as the most haunted city in north america.

Gettysburg Ghost Tours

Posted November 2nd, 2009 by lori

Ghost tours are a popular activity in gettysburg. They seem to satisfy a natural curiosity people have about the paranormal, unlike regular battlefield tours which focus exclusively on facts and figures, and since they extend beyond the official battlefield they are one of the few ways to learn about the history of the town. The trouble is there are so many of them. Atleast 20 different tour companies within just a few blocks! And they vary quite a bit in so far as quality goes. So how do you know which ones are worth your hard earned money, besides reading travel review sites and trying to weed out comments left by competing businesses.. Read On…

I have found there are three basic criteria you should look for when choosing a ghost tour in Gettysburg. For starters, always ask weather the tour company pays their guides. Beleive it or not some don’t. And on top of the regular fee which the tour company keeps all for themselves the guide will ask for a tip afterward. This in itself might not bother you all that much but chances are good if the guide is forced to beg for tip money he or she will feel resentful and be less motivated to give a good presentation. These types of jobs are also more likley to be filled by college students, not retired park rangers, historians or the like.

The other thing to take into consideration is the environment threw which the tour will take you. It is best to avoid ghost tours on streets with lots of noisy traffic, unless you go late at night of course. There are plenty of negative reviews of ghost tours that walk along Baltimore street where people complain that they can’t hear the guide (because of the traffic). If you do want to take a tour of Baltimore Street, go well after dark when traffic is at a minimum and make sure the guide will take you INSIDE the haunted buildings, not just stop in font of them.

I’ve been on all of the Ghosts of Gettysburg tours and I really liked the Seminary Tour. (This one includes a visit to an old barn where a rebel soldier was accidentally buried alive in a heap of dead bodies.) and the Carlisle Street Tour which includes the Gettysburg College campus.

I also enjoyed the ghostly images tour of the haunted soldiers orphanage, and the Farnsworth House Mourning Theatre. While the mourning theatre is not exactly a ghost tour it is quite interesting with all kinds of information about the funeral customs and superstitions of the Victorian era.

One thing I especially liked about the ghostly images tour of the Soldiers Orphanage is that at the end they shut out the lights in the cellar for a few minutes so that everyone can try to collect some e.v.p’s. This is great fun (and really scary) So if you go be sure to bring an audio recorder!

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