Who ya gonna call?

Well, if you're gonna spend any time in Gettysburg, PA, ya gotta deal with all the "ghost tours" around.  There's been those ghost hunting shows and other paranormal groups through here on almost a yearly basis claiming Gettyburg is one of the most haunted towns in America.  This may be true.  45000 men lost their lives in 3 days of fighting.  There has got to be some residual from all that carnage, even now, 151 years later.

Here at the campground we had one of the "guides" from a local ghost hunting company come out to tell ghost stories.  He told the same ones that are published in the multitude of printed flyers, booklets, info mags that abound here, so I wasn't too impressed sitting in a cold room watching some guy pace back and forth telling the same stories I had already heard or read.

There was one lady that was a 100% "there are ghosts here" believer and told her stories of her experiences with encounters with the ghosts. 

The guide held up his fancy little "spirit tester" which is some sort of electrical current reader that told us if there was a disturbance around us.  As a caveat though he did hold it near a cell phone and got the same blinking light response as he did when he asked if there was a spirit there with us. 

He also had a pair of "devining" rods and stood in front of us and asked the spirit if is was a man or woman, if they died or were killed in the civil war, yadda...yadda...yadda.  He then asked the audience if anyone wanted to try it out as well.

I raised my hand and he told me how to hold the rods (these looked like lengths of brass rods sitting in a skinny wooden cup that you held in your hands.  I told him as a Native American we don't usually communicate with the dead with hand held devices and would never ask some of the questions he asking them.  At first the rods kept turning around and pointing at me - I hadn't asked anything - so the whole audience thought maybe I had a special power.  (sorry - just gotta chuckle here).  THEN he told me to hold the rods at a slight downward angle and lo and behold they quit moving.  I didn't ask the spirits any questions - felt kinda foolish standing there with those rods.  But I did notice when I barely, almost inperceptably moved the rods where they were more perpendicular to the floor that they moved again. 

So, here's my take on those rods.  The are metal rods sitting in a wooden cup (think skinny straw inside a slightly larger wooden straw with a closed bottom).  They hit the bottom of the cup, so any movement can be caused by barely moving the cups.  IF the rods were suspended in a open bottom wooden holder then my take would be different.  But right now I'm thinking it mostly smoke and mirrors.

If you come to Gettysburg and do the ghost tours - then I hope you get out of it what you want - for me I won't be spending any money on them.  Now the history walks, with people dressed in period garb ARE worth the money.

Oh, one more thing.  The spot where I'm parked is supposed to be THE most haunted spot in this campground.  There was woman called Peggy Noel that was beheaded in a carriage accident and her head fell in the creek I'm parked beside and they never found it.  She was buried headless.
 
I'll keep you informed if Peggy decides to visit me.