Walking Tours Present Gettysburg's Ghosts

GETTYSBURG, Pa. (AP) - Gettysburg is known for books, stories, tours and tales of the thousands of people who died on the fields during the three-day battle, some of whom are said to still be there in spirit.

One of the most famous stories is that of the Blue Boy, a ghost of Gettysburg College. The young boy supposedly haunts what was once a women's dormitory. After escaping from the local orphanage, two girls hid the boy on a window ledge in the winter during a room check. When they returned more than an hour later, the only sign of him were footprints.

The boy has been seen by past occupants of the room with blue lips as if he was frozen in the winter weather. That window is known to fly open during storms, even while locked.

Mark Nesbitt, owner of Ghosts of Gettysburg, is the author of the six-book series, "Ghosts of Gettysburg." Nesbitt, who has been studying the town for more than 40 years, opened the tours in 1994 after releasing the first two books of the series.

Throughout the years he has collected about 1,000 stories of paranormal experiences from others and has had some of his own. In the past 10 years, Nesbitt has been doing ghost investigations with different paranormal investigation groups.

Before writing the "Ghosts of Gettysburg" series, Nesbitt spent five years as a ranger historian working for the National Park Service in Gettysburg. He has been featured on "Unsolved Mysteries," A&E and on the Travel Channel, where he was seen picking up electronic voice phenomena, sounds that are recorded without being heard at the time of the recording.

"You get so into the investigation you don't even think about being scared," Nesbitt said. Nesbitt recorded the events that happened to two of his friends who were working in the former Dorm Hall building at Gettysburg College.

In 1980, two women got on an elevator to leave and it bypassed their stop, taking them to the basement of the building, which served as a hospital during the battle of Gettysburg. When the door opened in front of them, there was a scene from a Civil War-era hospital, complete with a bloody surgeon operating on patients. Frightened, the two women, who assumed it was a prank being played by one of the fraternities, left to retrieve a guard. When they returned to the basement with the guard, they found nothing.

Van Richards has been an innkeeper at Battlefield Bed and Breakfast the past two years. On Friday nights, the inn at 2264 Emmitsburg Road offers ghost stories as part of guests' room package.

While Richards doesn't believe in the stories himself, he shares tales of experiences from past guests and historical stories passed down through time. Yet, the inn gets groups as large as 25 each Friday night because Richards says, "People still like that form of entertainment whether they believe in it or not."

The Farnsworth House has been rated one of the most haunted inns in the country by A&E and the Travel Channel. It was even named one of the spookiest places to eat by the Food Network.

A tour by the Farnsworth House Mourning Theatre and Ghost Walks, headquartered at 401 Baltimore St., takes guests to the attic of the house, where they hear of the ghost known as Jeremy.

The young boy, who was killed when trampled by horses pulling a carriage, is known to roam the rooms of the Farnsworth House, stealing guests' belongings and returning them in exchange for toys, said Dave Dossey, a tour guide for Farnsworth Walking Tours for three years.

The tour takes guests past the famous home where Jennie Wade, the only civilian killed during the battle of Gettysburg, was killed by a stray bullet while making bread. It is said that her father's ghost roams the house as an angry spirit because he was not allowed to attend his daughter's burial.

"The tours are about making the stories come to life," Dossey said.

Information from: The Frederick (Md.) News-Post

(Copyright 2006 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)