Ghost hunters seek insights on battlefields of the Civil War
- William Wan, Washington Post
Sunday, March 19, 2006

As dusk fell, the amateur historians were in position, spread out across
the grassy field with digital voice recorders in hand and infrared
cameras rolling. If someone -- or something -- out there so much as
sneezed, they were fully prepared to catch it in action.

Experts have scrutinized these Spotsylvania County, Va., battlefields for
years, looking for clues to the past. Now this eclectic group of history
buffs had come from Maryland to conduct their own homemade brand of Civil
War scholarship: battlefield ghost hunting. Why limit yourself to letters
and artifacts, they reasoned, when you can go straight to the source:
firsthand, albeit dead, witnesses.

Ghost hunters seek insights on battlefields of the Civil War
- William Wan, Washington Post
Sunday, March 19, 2006

As dusk fell, the amateur historians were in position, spread out across
the grassy field with digital voice recorders in hand and infrared
cameras rolling. If someone -- or something -- out there so much as
sneezed, they were fully prepared to catch it in action.

Experts have scrutinized these Spotsylvania County, Va., battlefields for
years, looking for clues to the past. Now this eclectic group of history
buffs had come from Maryland to conduct their own homemade brand of Civil
War scholarship: battlefield ghost hunting. Why limit yourself to letters
and artifacts, they reasoned, when you can go straight to the source:
firsthand, albeit dead, witnesses.

Ghost hunters seek insights on battlefields of the Civil War
- William Wan, Washington Post
Sunday, March 19, 2006

As dusk fell, the amateur historians were in position, spread out across
the grassy field with digital voice recorders in hand and infrared
cameras rolling. If someone -- or something -- out there so much as
sneezed, they were fully prepared to catch it in action.

Experts have scrutinized these Spotsylvania County, Va., battlefields for
years, looking for clues to the past. Now this eclectic group of history
buffs had come from Maryland to conduct their own homemade brand of Civil
War scholarship: battlefield ghost hunting. Why limit yourself to letters
and artifacts, they reasoned, when you can go straight to the source:
firsthand, albeit dead, witnesses.

The group of mostly middle-aged men had picked their spot carefully.
Bloody Angle, part of one of three battlefields they visited on a recent
night, was the site of the war's longest, most savage hand-to-hand
combat. For 20 hours on May 12, 1864, soldiers shot, bayoneted and
clubbed one another. "Rain poured down and the dead piled up in the
mud," the informational sign on the grounds says.

If spirits were likely to appear anywhere, the ghost hunters said, this
was the spot.

More was at stake that night than a simple chase of the fantastical,
members of the self-styled American Battlefield Ghost Hunters Society
said. On a weekend break from their jobs -- mortgage broker, home
remodeler, engineer, construction worker -- they had come looking for
keys to historical mysteries, such as the battle decisions of field
leaders and the mentality of soldiers, as well as answers about the very
nature of life and death.

But two hours into what would turn out to be a seven-hour stakeout in
freezing wind, the hunters had captured little besides locals walking
their dogs and casting bewildered looks at the ragtag team.

So the group fanned out farther along the field of overgrown grass,
preparing for nightfall. Team leader Patrick Burke, 47, a mortgage
broker, sprinkled pieces of beef jerky and chewing tobacco on the ground,
trying to entice undead soldiers with what would have been luxuries in
their days.

"It usually works better with the Confederate soldiers," he said,
"because they were less well-fed than the Union."

Nearby, other members scouted for better camera angles while Patrick's
brother John, 50, and Laine Crosby, a self-described psychic the team had
brought along, walked the grounds trying to suss out spirits.

Standing off to one side, looking doubtfully at all of them, was Darryl
"Smitty" Smith, the team's designated science officer.

Smith, 53, a bespectacled mechanical engineer for a construction company,
has been with the group since it started a half-decade ago and counts its
members among his closest friends. But on the battlefield, as he took
careful notes in his composition book, he casually remarked, "I don't
believe in ghosts."

His role was to log the time and place of everything that happened in the
field, so a flashing camera or a passing car wouldn't later be identified
as an apparition or the roar of the undead -- common mistakes among ghost
hunters, he noted.

Over the past five years, members have captured sounds they claim are
cannonballs and musket fire from ages past and misty, half-formed figures
they believe are dead soldiers.

"But I put my faith in physics, not psychics," Smith said. "I guess you
could say I'm the official naysayer in the group."

His reason for joining the team: "It could be other things out there.
There may be things in the world that we don't know about yet, like
quantum physics, other dimensions and parallel universes."

Also on the team of nine that night were two trainees; Mark Nesbitt, an
author of books on Civil War ghosts; and Ranger Charles Lochart from the
National Park Service. Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military
Park, 60 miles southwest of Washington, D.C., near Spotsylvania, Va.,
allows after-hours visitors only with a permit and under supervision.

Lochart said the park has no official position on ghosts. During the
team's previous visit, Lochart agreed to be its guinea pig. "They wanted
to see if the ghosts would respond to an armed person," he said, pointing
to his service weapon. "So they had me walk around a bit."

Stopping at a spot they believed had been the Confederates' second line
of defense, the hunters took out their digital recorders.

Laine Crosby put her hand on a mossy stone and said she felt a cold spot.
Out of earshot, Smith, the skeptic, jokingly pointed out that the words
"psychic" and "psycho" have the same Greek root. Nonetheless, he swerved
his infrared camera toward her.

With the cameras and voice recorders running, the team started asking
questions and pausing for answers. Then with eager anticipation, they
played back the audio recordings to listen for odd noises that might
qualify as responses.

"Tell us what your name is." No answer.

"Are you Union or Confederate?" There was some noise, like a burst of
static or a gust of wind. Everyone leaned in closer.

"Who is your commanding officer?" Suddenly, a cell phone rang, and the
group groaned in frustration.

"My bad, guys," Burke said, laughing and flipping open his phone.

After two more hours of searching, recording and feeling for ghosts in
the dark, the group retreated to a nearby steakhouse. On the way, Mike
Hartness, usually the most taciturn of the team's four core members,
began to talk, trying to explain the goal of the hunt.

For most of his life, he has harbored a suspicion that there is something
more to this world than what we see and hear. "Everyone's looking for
something to believe in," said Hartness, 54, a lanky home remodeler. "But
there's always doubt, and until you see it with your own two eyes, you
never know. That's what I'm trying to do: see it with my own eyes so I
can believe."

Many in the group hope to give up their day jobs and hunt full time,
Burke said later at the steakhouse. There are other dreams, too: a TV
show with the History Channel, a correspondence course for ghost hunting,
a funded expedition to the beaches of Normandy -- a mecca for battlefield
ghost hunters.

"Even if all those things don't happen, we'll keep searching," Burke
said. "The thing I'm really looking for is that perfect night, when
you're out there and it's like a window opens onto the world.

"And you get a whole brigade marching down in one glorious moment. The
battle unfolds in front of you, and you get it all on camera -- history
in motion."

With dinner almost over, the group started gearing up to head back into
the cold.

Outside, the sky was dark, the wind was blowing and, on the abandoned
battlefields, not a living soul was stirring.