Are They Still With Us?

Do the dead walk amongst us? Is there life after death? This controversial question has no clear cut answer as individuals have all manner of beliefs on this subject.  While beliefs can vary the ultimate answer to these questions is very simple.  Either there is life after death or there isn't.

After consulting with Jade about whether to cover anything regarding the paranormal, we decided that it would be a good way to put a cap on the general overview of "Faith in the Civil War" series.  There are enough stories that exist out there to lend credence to the topic. The reason we are covering this topic has been described before, the bodily resurrection to get into Heaven.

Over the centuries there have been stories of ghosts and spirits from before and after this belief structure came into being.  There seems, however, to be a large concentration surrounding the four years of the Civil War. A large number of them seem to involve soldiers that are missing parts of themselves. 

As mentioned in our prior medical post, the limbs were just sawed off and thrown into a pile, to be buried in a mass grave of their own.  In most cases these limbs had no marker, no way to identify where they were buried and definitely not who they were from. Taken by wheelbarrow to a hole dug not far from the hospital, they would be dumped unceremoniously into the hole and covered up. I imagine that if one went looking those piles of bones could be found today.

The problem with this solution is what happens to the soul of the man thus amputated if he should expire? The man was normally buried with proper, if quick, honors but that one piece of him was likely not.  This would have been traumatic in the mind of the dying man, that he had been denied a place in Heaven because of one ounce of lead slamming into his arm.

If the "traditional" reason for the existence of the ghost is unfinished business, that soldier definitely has unfinished work.  He has to put himself back together again!  The stories that I am personally most familiar with come from Gettysburg but others exist as well.  Stories of lights slowly moving amongst headstones, as if looking for that one that would mark the spot where the limbs were buried. Sometimes apparitions are seen doing the same thing.  If this is indeed the case, the spirits of these men will never know peace as they will never be able to do what they wish.

Other stories exist of spirits what were literally obliterated by some means, usually artillery. Those men might not even know they are dead.  They might know but are also searching for their missing pieces of which there are MANY! It was due to these two situations caused by the mass casualties that the belief in bodily resurrection largely faded out after the Civil War era.  After all, most loved ones of those who had nothing left to bury did not want to believe they would not be reunited in Heaven as their loved one was consigned to Hell due to the actions of the enemy.

I do not wish to cover any specific story in detail because most of the ones I personally know about come from books or programs that are of copyrighted material.  Obviously Jade and myself have at least some belief in these stories and their validity or we wouldn't be including this here. I will not say too many details as these beliefs are private in nature and do vary between both each other and probably our readers.

We will cover this topic again soon, but in a twist.  I just said above that I did not want to talk too much about published stories.  There are three stories that I will relate in the next post. These will cover experiences that I personally have had on original battlefields.  Two as a reenactor and one from when I was just a teenage tourist in Gettysburg.  These experiences are what got me truly interested in the paranormal.

One last point to bring up.  This topic is indeed controversial even among reenactors. Having sat around multiple camps and discussed this amongst those who have had the privilege of being on original fields these stories are not isolated incidents.  I will not relate any stories here that I was only informed of however.

-Corporal


Brady, Mathew B., Approximately, photographer. Soldiers' graves near the General Hospital, City Point, Va. City Point Hopewell United States Virginia, None. [Hartford, conn.: john c. taylor, 17 allen place, between 1861 and 1865] Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2011649967/. (Accessed March 04, 2018.)