Return to Gettysburg - March 2011

Nearly back to back to my trip to the Stanley Hotel, I went off to Gettysburg, PA for another Phenomenology! How could I resist?! The price for this trip was very reasonable as you pay a base price and then pick and choose which investigations you wanted to go on and what night they are available. I really do like that set-up with the paranormal events and being able to choose. You pay then for each investigation. The base price gets you into all the lectures and classes and presentations as well as the vendor room and meet and greet.

Hats off to (NEPI) North Eastern Paranormal Investigations, for putting on another really great event! This one was even better than last time although my friend Tina was not able to attend so I was on my own.

Here's an overview that AdventureMyths put together on Youtube that shows you the very large vendor room!:

I went up early as I was visiting a sick friend in north-central PA/NY area. Sadly, she was not doing well health wise but it sure was spooky driving up to see her on the back roads of PA in the mountains and there are hardly any lights at all on the winding roads! She pointed out a place that she, herself had seen apparitions in and told me how haunted it is. It is one that I would love to go and investigate with her when she is feeling better.

After our visit, I drove back down to Gettysburg and arrived at the hotel a day ahead of time. I really do like getting there before the event because I like to get settled in and explore then on my own. This time, I had picked up a great book of history with a walking tour. The book is great, complete with maps! I loved it! I didn't get to utilize it however too much as it was raining and cold and miserable out when I arrived. Figures. But I do have it for future visits and I intend on using it when I have someone else who can navigate while I am driving. That is the only bad thing about going to these events alone is that you don't have someone there to help you and do things with.

I did manage to drive back out to Sach's Bridge, found it on my own and parked there.

I did a small evp session and played Dixie while on the bridge. I was able to be there alone. I've played back the recording and didn't pick up anything on there unfortunately.

 I then drove back over to Confederate Ave, where Tina and I were at last year and I played some civil war music that my father used to play and I sang along while in the car. I did another evp session but have not heard anything on it aside from myself and the movements of my jacket and outside noises. There were alot of people there outside milling around and making noise so it was hard to really distinguish much.

I've talked to alot of people about EVPs and most think the shows are fake and that many times, when they have investigated, they didn't pick up anything. So that is why they don't believe the shows that are out there. Well, I can see their point, however, they have to remember that what they see on a show is a condensed version of the full investigation. They may not have gotten hardly anything at all for hours upon hours and then all of a sudden got this one thing. So that one thing will get hyped up on the show and replayed. All the evidence gets shown then at once and what they do not show is all the many hours it took to get even one thing.

Also, most believe that if they go out and try it and get nothing, then it must not be haunted. No, that may not necessarily be true. Many seasoned investigators will go out for hours on end and not get a single thing and then someone brand spanking new to it will go out and get a good class A EVP! Now why is that? Well, luck is one thing. Sometimes the spirits or energies may not have responded to one versus another person. Style, technique, personality...and did I mention luck? Even on the shows we've been watching like on Paranormal Challenge, some teams got all sorts of things and others didn't get anything. It came down to being at the right place, at the right time. It happens.


My best friend from high school, Penny, lives not far from Gettysburg, so I got to go visit and have dinner with her. My plans to do some investigating on my own got waylaid however with the weather as the storm got worse while I was there. We nearly lost power at the restaurant even! All I felt like doing was to curl up in bed with a nice cup of hot tea afterwards.

As I drove along Confederate Ave, I realized how much of this huge place that Tina and I had missed! So much we had not even seen! I have promised myself when I go back to go up for a full week and early, so I could take advantage of some of the local tours and truly entrench myself into the history of the civil war. I did go back to the graves and I went walking along the area her and I picked up the voice on the Shack Hack radio, looking for the name "Neil". I didn't find that name on the monuments but not all the soldiers are listed, only the commanders. Ashame. It was great to do the follow up however and to see it all better in the light of day and explore places we missed.

While at the Stanley, I was hoping to convince Zak, Aaron, and Billy from Ghost Adventures to go to Gettysburg and drop in as a surprise but they were busy and had filming to do although Billy was scheduled to go out there but then the filming came up and he had to cancel. Bummer!

I was excited about going back to Gettysburg this time for I was more prepared than the year before. I have been really intrigued by utilizing the music of the time to entice the spirits to make contact. With that in mind, I had been preparing for weeks ahead of time, going thru the internet to find some of the old songs as my old Soldier Song 33 1/3 record was warped and I could not get it recorded to save it. I did manage to record the Jimmy Driftwood civil war songs from my father's record collection that wasn't warped. Below is a sample of one of the Civil War songs, Billy Yank and Johnny Reb.  Picture is of Jimmy Driftwood.

I put all of the civil war songs up on my computer and even burned a couple copies to take with me in case I had to use the car's player instead of my laptop. I grew up on those old songs and you can get them in a huge collection of Jimmy Driftwood's but it's expensive. As I was recording these songs and making them into mp3s, I read up on Jimmy and learned that he was a schoolteacher and he wrote those songs about American history to teach his students. How cool is that! I loved those songs and used to sing along with my father as he played them on his guitar and when he played the record. It brought a tear to my eye when I first played them in remembering him. My father was a big civil war buff. This is not a picture of my father, but I believe it is Jimmy Driftwood and the song is, On Top of Shiloh's Hill. It's a very sad song that reflects the turmoil amongst families and how torn they were, fighting brother against brother, father against son.

I taped a few other more traditional civil war songs and mixed them up with Jimmy Driftwood's that he wrote. Some of those other songs like Dixie and Goober Peas, I downloaded as mp3s off Amazon.

I did take a few lead soldiers up with me too that my father had bought many years ago, Britains. They were civil war soldiers. I was going to talk to the Soldier museum about my father's collection but I didn't get a chance to get over there this time.

This year, they did not have any T-shirts for the Phenomenology event. I was a bit disappointed but I did manage to pick up one from Gettysburg Tours. And it glows in the dark! It's very cool.