Ghost Hunting At Gettysburg

Hey guys, I know I haven't posted in a while because I was beginning to run out of stories from my previous location. I have a new one now that happened just yesterday (at the time of writing this).

We were on vacation in Gettysburg and my mom had booked us on a midnight ghost hunting tour, as in an actual ghost hunt, like what you'd see on a show like Ghost Adventures, but with less of the harassment of dead souls who want to hurt you and more actual investigating to try and figure out what happened there. Aside from my mom and I, both of my sisters were there. We were shown how to use the equipment and taken to two separate locations to try and detect the ghosts that were wandering about out there.

First eerie stuff to happen was before the ghost hunters even arrived. We were to meet in the parking lot of the place that ran the tours, but because it was a midnight ghost hunt, the agency was already closed and we were essentially standing in an empty parking lot in the middle of the night, surrounded by open fields where thousands of soldiers had been violently slaughtered in a horrific battle. We were all clearly creeped out, so my sisters and I started making jokes about the KFC next to us being haunted by ghost chickens to try to calm our nerves. There was a lull in our conversation and I heard footsteps walking up on the concrete behind me. No one else heard it but me, but I know for a fact that it sounded like boots on gravel. In fact, I'd thought that the ghost hunters had arrived and was spinning around to see who was there, only to find nothing.

We waited there for about fifteen minutes and finally a car drove up, thankfully our guides, a couple that I will call "Bryan" and "Janet" just so I have something to call them by over the course of the story.

This doesn't sound like an important piece of information now, but it will be at the end of the story: The first location had a large surge in crime where shady people who used to do their business after hours at Sachs Bridge were starting to move down to our ghost hunting location. Bryan and Janet apparently had several dangerous encounters on tours with drug dealers and addicts who were threatening them and their clients, so Bryan now conducts tours while carrying a gun. He informed us at the start and showed us his carry permit, so we were not in the dark about this.

They began showing us the equipment. We had two different EMF meters, one of the more traditional ones you'd see detecting electrical wires in a ghost show and another one that had a red light on the top that would light up like crazy and make a grinding noise when something was near, dowsing rods, and a thermal detector. There were also three "pens" that made a light pattern in green or red, the purpose of which was apparently to detect shadows running across it. The last piece of equipment that only Janet would use over the trip was some kind of EVP device that let us talk to them using the static from radio stations (not sure how it worked, and occasionally it just played snippets of music from radio stations rather than giving us actual answers).

That's when the second strange thing happened. I wouldn't call it eerie though, just out of the ordinary. The second they turned on the EMFs, both of them went crazy, and Janet claimed that there was definitely someone there because she could feel them standing behind her the second they'd arrived. During the demonstration of equipment, they gave my sister the dousing rods and immediately they hugged her. They explained that usually happens if a relative if nearby. We couldn't get it to move anywhere else after that. While we were asking questions to try to figure out who it was, three times I felt someone gently touch my arm, like a reassuring kind of touch rather than a violent one. We never got a definite answer due to the refusal to let go with the dowsing rods, but we're pretty that it was my Nana.

Then the ghost hunt itself happened. We drove out to a historic bridge (I don't know what the bridge was officially called. I can tell you for sure that it was not Sachs Bridge, but a different, smaller, uncovered bridge. Bryan called it "Suicide Bridge" a few times- I found a picture of it online from someone else's ghost hunt, but there was no name attached). According to what we were told, the place was a suicide hot spot. People would go out there and hang themselves from the bridge. There was a carriage accident there about a hundred years ago where a woman and her young child both lost their lives. Apparently there were KKK lynchings there. The usual sightings of Confederate and Union soldiers that are common to Gettysburg ghost stories. Most recently, the bridge was barred to traffic via barriers after a man drove his car up there and shot himself.

They'd done many ghost hunting tours to that bridge and he mentioned that he'd recently had a man who was extremely sensitive to paranormal influence burst out crying because one of the suicide victims tried to reach out to him and he could apparently feel how sad and lost they were in their final moments.

The very moment we got out of the car and turned on the EMFs before even getting to the bridge, the blinking light one went crazy for about half a minute before dying down. My sisters got the EMFs, my mom got the thermal detector, and I had one of the pens. Note that we didn't even bother with the dowsing rods here because they also detect water and we were on a bridge over a creek.

It was pitch black. The creek looked almost stagnant, and I'm not sure how deep it was at the moment because I couldn't see even with the flashlights, but I certainly didn't hear any running water. There were frogs croaking and opossums making screeching noises that sounded like the Devil everywhere, which certainly wasn't unsettling at all. The second we got onto that bridge, the temperature dropped about fifteen degrees and continued to get even colder, but only in certain spots. It was still obviously summer in others. The flashing light EMF was apparently more sensitive than the other one, and it was absolutely going nuts in places.

During this time we set up the EVP and Janet would ask questions while the rest of us listened and tried to detect what was there. During that time, Bryan walked to the other end of the bridge and took pictures with his camera to try to see if anything was there.

At first we heard a little girl's voice saying "Hi," over the speaker. We tried to keep talking to her, but she never replied again. Instead we got an older man's voice who seemed distressed that we were there. One of the first things he told us was to leave, and he noticeably sounded sad, like he was crying. Likely one of the suicides. It was around that time that Bryan informed us that something just hit the side of the bridge from where he was standing.

Quickly everything else was drowned out by a pair, a man and a woman, who seemed to both be talking in tandem. Bryan returned to listen to our EVP session and was looking through his photos at the same time. From what we think we could gather, it sounded like the two were a couple. At first we thought they committed suicide together on the bridge, but after a while we suspected we were talking to the one who shot himself, and we couldn't figure out who the woman might be, since she wasn't the woman who died in the carriage accident and we weren't aware if there were even any female suicide victims.

My mom suddenly started wondering if it really was a suicide or if maybe he had killed his girlfriend elsewhere and then drove out here and shot himself or even if he might have been murdered. They started asking questions about how they both died and I think that Bryan was getting a little suspicious about the male spirit's intentions, though he didn't say anything at the time. I don't know what was being asked after that because I was fixated on the other end of the bridge at the time and the fact that it got really cold. Then both EMFs went off.

Suddenly we all felt the bridge shaking violently, almost like a car was driving across it. I know we all felt it because I was in the process of asking everyone if they felt it and they were all mentioning it, and then all of a sudden I felt sick. The back of my neck was burning, I couldn't breath, and I was overcome with a combination of sadness, fear, and anxiety and couldn't stop crying. The EMFs were going nuts around me, the thermal detector which was previously reading about 70-71 when pointed at people suddenly jumped to about 85 on the back of my neck, and my mom said that I was suddenly sweating really bad. My sister stood next to me and said that she couldn't breath only in that spot I was standing, like there was something there in that exact spot.

I started walking towards the other end of the bridge. I don't know why. I just felt like I was supposed to go out there. Before I could get far though, my mom and Bryan both grabbed me and dragged me off the opposite end of the bridge toward our cars and made us all get off. Apparently whatever they were asking the spirits had upset something and it attacked all of us, but I'm apparently the most emotionally vulnerable and was the only one it was able to outright assault.

Once I'd calmed down and could breath again, Bryan started going through his photos from the other end of the bridge. He informed us that he didn't want to say anything until we were out of the area, but he had taken a picture of something evil standing at the opposite end of the bridge. As plain as day, there was a red face staring right at us from the other end of the bridge. It didn't look like a slight red smudge that sort of kind of looked like a face, it looked distinctly and clearly like a human face, except it was composed of a bright red light. I'm pretty certain that whatever was in that photo is what attacked me. I have a sinking suspicion we were talking to it and didn't know it.

I also wonder if I was feeling someone who had been hung since I couldn't breath and only my neck was burning, as though from rope burn.

Unfortunately, here comes the part where I tell you why that earlier tidbit was relevant. Apparently due to the recent surge in crime, the police now make random patrols in the area at night, and we were the lucky ones who happened to be there at the time when they arrived that night. The cop must have seen two cars and assumed "drug deal" because he immediately called back up and began searching Bryan. Because Bryan had a gun, it took several minutes of waiting for them to search him and run his license and permit before they even approached our car to question us. Fortunately the cops were friendly and because Bryan's permit was legit and they were both working through an official agency that had permission to do the tours, we weren't trespassing, so they cleared us and let us all leave. My only issue is that we were trapped there during the search the entire time and I felt like whatever had attacked me was standing in front of us, watching us and waiting for us to leave the whole time, and I just wanted to get out of there.

Why do I bring this up? Because we were informed at the start that if they got any photos on their cameras, we would be able to buy copies from them, but in this confusion, Bryan accidentally set the camera on top of the car and forgot it was there, then drove off. We have no idea if he went back and got it after our hunt was over, but if not, that picture is forever lost (I'll update if we find that he found it). I still remember how it looked though. It was the most inhuman looking face I'd ever seen, and it clearly didn't want us on that bridge.

Some freaky stuff happened in the second location, fortunately not as bad as what happened on the bridge but still freaky, but I'll compile that as a "part two" story to keep this from being overly long and because they almost seem like two separate experiences.