It's said that ghosts are the souls of those who died suddenly or tragically and are tied to the location of their demise for all eternity, unable to accept their death. If that's true, the battlefield of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, should be one of the most haunted places in America.
Few things were more sudden or tragic than taking a 24-pounder howitzer to the face while slowly walking toward a line of people who were supposed to kill you with rifles or bayonets.
The fighting at Gettysburg was so intense that Americans are still finding remains of the dead: The latest was found in 1996. The Confederacy lost 39% of its manpower due to the sheer volume of soldiers wounded there and was never again able to threaten the North.
In fact, the loss at Gettysburg was so detrimental to the South that it may have cost the Confederates the entire war.
That being said, if ghosts do exist, the battlefield at Gettysburg must be crawling with them. And if the video below is to be believed, two of them like to cross the street in the dark in front of moving vehicles.
It's OK, they just don't know what a car looks like. Besides, what's it gonna do? Kill them?
Tourist Greg Yuelling and his family were visiting Gettysburg and decided they would take a drive one night. Yuelling recorded the video on his phone as he and his uncle drove through the historic site.
"We just went there as tourists, to learn more about the history of the Civil War and see the old battleground, where the Gettysburg Address was given and all that stuff," he told the Irish Sun. "We were driving along one night, and we started hearing noises. I heard things to the left, and my uncle heard things to the right. And there was a fog, but the fog was weird; it was only in one patch, not dispersed. Then, we saw these shapes moving in the darkness; they were the size of humans. One of them ran right through the cannon."
The Irish Sun notes that between 46,000 and 51,000 people died in the three-day battle. Actual historians say that an estimated 7,000 men died during the fighting.
The "ghosts" Yuelling captured on camera appear to jump out of nowhere, go right through an artillery piece and then run out into the road as the car approaches. While it may seem spooky at first glance, especially on such a foggy night, the windshield of the vehicle driven by the Yuellings doesn't provide the clearest view of the road.
One of the "ghosts" could be just a drop from precipitation outside the vehicle. But since the visibility isn't the best, it's easy to see how the 46-year-old Yuelling could think he saw a ghost.
If there's anywhere a person could get swept away by the gravity of a place, it would be the battlefield that turned the tide of the Civil War at the cost of thousands of lives -- and inspired President Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.
-- Blake Stilwell can be reached at blake.stilwell@military.com. He can also be found on Twitter @blakestilwell or on Facebook.
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