Americans are jubilantly preparing for the Fourth of July. This special day celebrates a group of American colonists who revolted against the tyrannical rule of King George III. The English king wasn’t tolerating any disobedience from his colonists. In a show of strength, George sent his best troops across the ocean to keep his colonists in line.
American colonists revolted against George and sent his beaten troops scurrying back to England. Americans had taken a stand and would no longer be ruled by a tyrant.
July is also the anniversary of another battle for freedom that happened more than 150 years ago. On July 1-3, 1863, Union soldiers battled the Confederate soldiers of General Robert E. Lee at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. This battle would destroy any hopes the South had of establishing the Confederate States of America.
By the end of the three-day battle, more than 50,000 Americans had died at Gettysburg. Unfortunately, for one Confederate soldier, he would suffer from a tragedy that would drive him mad and send him to an early grave.
While thousands of corpses rotted away in the sun, flies and other scavengers immediately arrived to feast on the corpses. The smell of death and gallons of blood forever tainted Gettysburg since no one could easily remove and bury 50,000 corpses within a few days.
On Seminary Hill, Confederate soldiers found a nearby barn and used it to store dead bodies.
Unknown to the Confederate soldiers, a fellow soldier found himself buried underneath mounds of rotting flesh. His comrades tossed him in the barn after thinking he was dead. He screamed out for someone to rescue him. Somehow, Union troops heard the screaming man. They pulled him from underneath hundreds of corpses and hospitalized him. The heat and corpses had driven him insane. He died within days.
Eventually, someone removed the barn and replaced it with a farmhouse. Residents of the farmhouse claimed the house was haunted. The house became a turnstile as families came and then went. People reported hearing explosions and other strange sounds in the farmhouse. It’s believed the sounds came from the spot where the soldier was buried while still alive.
Supposedly, his tormented spirit stayed in the old farmhouse for many years. Finally, one family brought in someone to exorcise the dead soldier’s spirit from the farmhouse. Since then, no one has reported seeing the dead soldier’s spirit.
Today, Gettysburg no longer shows the physical signs of a bloody battle. The dead were buried and the country remained intact. Although the grounds look beautiful, Gettysburg is considered the most haunted place in America. Visitors report uncanny sounds of gunfire and sounds of men crying pain. Visitors continue to report seeing ghostly soldiers walking the battlefield as if they don’t realize they died long ago.
Are these men still fighting the Civil War? It’s not difficult to believe a site where thousands died in three days could stay untouched by the supernatural.