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.

The Shriver House, a house frozen in time

Posted October 20th, 2009 by lori

The Shriver House Museum is one of Gettysburg’s greatest treasures. Located on 309 Baltimore Street, just blocks from the battlefield, the restored home of George Washington Shriver and his family tells the story of the battle of Gettysburg from the civilian perspective.

Mrs. Shriver and her two young daughters, Sadie and Mollie, and their teenage neighbor, Tillie Pierce, witnessed the entire battle from Mrs. Shriver’s parents farm next to Little Round Top. Ironically, they had gone there to escape the fighting in town, thinking it would be safer, and having no idea they were about to be caught in the crossfire of some of the worst fighting yet!

For many days the battle literally raged around their heads, and they had to scream to hear each other over the noise of cannons and musket fire. The group spent most of their time trying to help the wounded as best they could, baking bread for them and cleaning their wounds.

Upon returning home afterwards Mrs. Shriver and the three girls found a totally different town than the one they had left. Broken fences, destroyed crops, and the dead and wounded lay everywhere. The Shrivers’ home had been damaged too. In their absence a Confederate snipers nest had been set up in their attic and holes were knocked into the home’s back wall so that the rebels could shoot Union soldiers on Cemetery Hill.

The Shriver House is open to the public every day from April threw Remembrance Day and on weekends in December and March. Visitors can tour all four levels of the home, from the attic where the two Confederate snipers died (and still occassionally make their presence felt), to the homes basement where George Shriver (who ultimately died in Andersonville Prison) once operated a saloon.

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