An Almost Ghost Recounts Civil War Ghost Stories

Re-enactor Vincent DiCicco almost knows what it’s like to be a Civil War ghost. When he and fellow members of the 12th New Jersey Company K infantry re-enactors camp at historic battle sites, they sometimes wander the grounds after dark in full uniform. Modern visitors encountering them coming out the shrubbery into the moonlight tend to freeze, uncertain whether they’re seeing the living or the walking dead.

“You could tell that for a brief period after they first spotted us, they weren’t sure if we actually were ghosts until we wave at them and yell out that we’re real people,” DiCicco said. “It can be surreal at night in some of these battlefields.”

DiCicco has never encountered a ghost himself in all his years around battle sites, but he has become a connoisseur of Civil War ghost stories—particularly those from Gettysburg, the focus of his October 17 “Ghost Stories of the Civil War” presentation at the Gloucester County Historical Society in Woodbury.

A U.S. Navy veteran and retired meatcutter, DiCicco became interested in re-enacting 40 years ago when he encountered a re-enactor troupe at a local parade. Since then, as a member of the 12th New Jersey, he has tramped through and camped around most of the major Civil War battle sites.

“If you’re seriously into history, there’s a certain magic in the sites that are located where there are no visible roads, no stores, no lights, no parking lots. It’s just intense quiet and darkness in the surrounding trees with an endless sky of stars overhead. You’re there with all your authentic gear, and the campfires are crackling as you easily imagine how it really was back in the 1860s. It’s like being in time warp.”

The Westville resident and other members of the 12th New Jersey have also been authentic extras in Civil War movies including Turner Broadcasting’s “Gettysburg” (1993), British TV’s “Ironclads” (1991), Columbia Pictures’ “Glory” (1989) and DreamWorks Pictures’ “Lincoln” (2012) as well as several smaller historical TV productions.

“It turns out,” said DiCicco, “that the movie studios find it a lot easier to hire a re-enactment group for their Civil War movies than to try and outfit a couple hundred extras who don’t know how to dress or march or behave in military ways authentic to the period. In the beginning of ‘Glory,’ which starts out at the battle of Antietam, the 12th New Jersey re-enactors were in what looked like a battle and then there was another shot as smoke was clearing, and this subdued music was playing on the soundtrack when the camera panned the bodies across the field. We were the bodies, and I got picked up and carried off the field as the shot ended. That’s my Hollywood claim to fame!”

As he opened his Ghost Stories presentation in the Museum of the Historical Society, DiCicco noted that if severe trauma has the power to tether a soul to the place of its suffering, then few landscapes hold more ghostly promise than the grounds and buildings of Gettysburg.

Pickett’s Charge on the final day of the Battle of Gettysburg was the climax of that three-day struggle and a turning point in the war as the Confederates suffered a crushing defeat. Lee lost about 30% of his entire Army and remained on the defensive for the remainder of the war.

“It was a long time ago and the full scale of the horror at Gettysburg is not well remembered today,” said DiCicco. “The day after that battle ended, the citizens of Gettysburg woke up to confront a scene of unimaginable destruction that included thousands of dead horses, mules, and human corpses scattered across a few square miles. And they had to clean that up. If that kind of unspeakable trauma produces ghosts, it’s no wonder there are so many ghost stories across the region. Think about what legend says about the farm of of Mary Thompson whose house served briefly as Lee’s headquarters.”

Thompson Farmhouse

“The house structure had a stone-walled recess, like a root cellar, and it was used by Confederates as a temporary storage for dead bodies. The corpses were stacked like cord wood. After the battle, as Union Army troops cleared bodies out of other community buildings being used as field hospitals, they also dumped more bodies in the same Thompson Farm area,” said DiCicco.

One story is that as the bodies were being moved away from the Thompson farm, Union soldiers were down to the second layer from the bottom of corpses when one of those corpses opened its eyes. Wounded, but alive and unconscious, he had been dragged in and piled with the other dead.

The house itself was destroyed; but its stoned recess remained and was incorporated into a new house built on the site many decades later.

“The new family in that house is said to have been startled by hearing voices and footsteps from down in that stone room,” said DiCicco. “It’s said that they ultimately brought in an excommunicated priest to perform an exorcism in an effort to drive out the ghosts.”

Jennie Wade House

Two miles away from the Thompson Farmhouse was the two-story, red brick house where Jennie Wade was killed. The 20-year-old was helping her sister who had just given birth. She was also known for baking and delivering bread to Union soldiers encamped nearby. On the third day of the battle, she was kneading dough for bread in the kitchen when a Confederate Minié ball blasted through two doors and pierced her heart, killing her instantly.

Union soldiers who knew her well quickly carried her body into the house’s cellar to protect it. Soon after, she was buried in the garden behind the house. Paranormal investigators have called the Wade house a very active ghost location, reporting footsteps, the sudden smell of baking bread, and apparitions of a young woman in 1860s dress.

“People have told me they also hear children laughing in the Wade House even though there are no children visible anywhere,” said DeCicco.

Spangler’s Spring

Just half a mile from the Wade House in Gettysburg is another infamous ghost site known as Spangler’s Spring that was an informal water source for both Union and Confederate soldiers. Located at the southern end of the Union line and an area of high casualty counts, it was one of the battlefield’s most frequently cited sites for brief, wordless nighttime truces among thirsty soldiers from both sides.

According to local tradition, the Spring is one of the most haunted locations in all of Gettysburg. Some sightings report a misty or cold spot phenomenon emanating from the spring on summer nights. Others describe a single ghostly figure of a soldier kneeling to drink and then vanishing.

“I remember when a few of us drove around the perimeter of Spangler’s Spring years ago and we saw this rising mist coming out of the ground,” said DiCicco. “We were never sure exactly what it was.”

Devil’s Den

On the opposite side of Gettysburg is another ghostly place called Devil’s Den, a name that is widely assumed to have come from terrible events that occurred in the battle. But that assumption is wrong. The name is actually rooted in local legends going back two centuries or more that a giant snake — “The Devil” — lived there. During the Civil War, the rugged, boulder-strewn hill between Little Round Top and Big Round provided good cover for artillery and snipers. The level fighting there was extreme.

The local commercial ghost tour reports that visitors have seen figures in Civil War dress around the rocks; and paranormal investigators tell of frequent failures and malfunctions of cameras and recording equipment in the area.

“There is some thought among ghost hunters that the spirits require energy to work, and they can drain energy from sources like batteries. They say sometimes when you try to replay audio recordings the only thing you get is static,” said DiCicco. “Some visitors are said to have claimed to see a man in really raggedly clothes who vanishes. However, as I said earlier, from personal experience I can tell you that some visitors see and mistake modern day re-enactors for ghosts.”

Devil’s Den is also the site of one of the most famous images taken by Civil War photographers — a photo of a Confederate sniper sprawled dead near his rifle in the rocks. However, DiCicco points out that that image made by Andrew Gardner has subsequently been identified as a fake. Gardner and his associate dragged a soldier’s dead body from somewhere else on the battlefield and placed it the Devil’s Den site with a sniper’s rifle propped against a nearby rock. Historical researchers later pointed out the rifle was not the kind snipers used. They also showed evidence that the same dead body appears in several other Gardner photos in different settings.

“Another Devil’s Den legend is that if you’re walking around the site taking pictures you may suddenly hear someone walk up behind you and ask, ‘What are you looking for over there?’ but when you turn around there’s no one there,” said DiCicco.

Codori Farm

In 1895, the U.S. War Department officially established the Gettysburg National Military Park, preserving and marking the battlefield. Forty years later, control of the 6000-acre park was transferred to the National Park Service which took possession of many of the houses of the battle era and allowed park rangers to live in them. But those rangers felt they weren’t always alone in buildings like the Codori Farmhouse located between Seminary Ridge and Cemetery Ridge. Seminary Ridge was the starting point of Pickett’s Charge. Cemetery Ridge was the Union Army’s defense line. The Codori farm was located in between and was the site on which intense combat and massive numbers of casualties occurred during Pickett’s Charge.

“Most families in Gettysburg in July 1863 left their homes or hid in their basements and root cellars to escape the carnage of two clashing armies,” said DiCicco. “The Codoris were one of those that stayed and hid in the stone-walled cellar of their farmhouse. Meanwhile, the house structure above them was used as a field hospital. Incredibly, although that house and its farm buildings were heavily damaged, the family emerged from their cellar unharmed to find their land transformed into the aftermath of one of the most infamous killing fields of the entire war.”

“Today, if you’re shot with a standard bullet that hits bone, they frequently break it in a way that can be put back together,” said DiCicco. “But in the Civil War, the Minié ball ammunition completely shattered bones apart. That’s why there were so many amputations. And that added another element of horror to the post-battle scene at Gettysburg, where there were often piles of cut off arms and legs at the makeshift field hospitals.”

Over time, the Codori house was repaired, and a National Park Service family ultimately took up residence in it, with their daughter living in the refurbished basement. Local folklore holds that one day when her parents were away, the daughter heard footsteps entering the house above and walking across the floor but when she went upstairs to look there was no one there. In addition, over the years, residents of the house reported phantom drumbeats and echoes of musket and cannon fire in the immediate area. There were also reports of apparitions near the monuments that now flank the house and sightings of luminous orbs and other energy phenomena described by ghost hunting enthusiasts.

Gettysburg College

The institution known as Gettysburg College now, was called Pennsylvania College at the time of the Civil War and it was located on the outer perimeter of field of Pickett’s Charge. There were three college buildings, the largest of which was officially called Pennsylvania Hall but was better known as the “Old Dorm.” During the battle, it was used as a field hospital first by the Confederates and then by the Union Army after Lee’s army retreated from the area.

It was a place of horrendous suffering and death, and its history has spawned numerous ghost stories. One of them highlighted in commercial ghost tours is about a young man secretly invited into the girls-only dorm on a very snowy night in the late 1800s. The dorm matron heard of his presence and went looking for him as he climbed out onto a ledge to hide. After the matron stopped her searching, the female student went to the window to let the man back in. But he was no longer on the ledge. And when she and several other girls went outside, they could find no tracks in the fresh snow that would have been left by a walking man. In subsequent years, some students reported seeing a bluish face looking in through their dorm windows, but said it vanished when they got close.

The most infamous of the Old Dorm’s local ghost legends involves a time warp. Several students and college administrators at different times are said to have reported taking the elevator to the basement and stepping out into a fully operational Civil War hospital scene with surgeons, wounded patients, bloody beds, and a din of moaning and screaming. In one of these instances, a ghostly surgeon is said to have looked up and gestured the elevator riders to approach and help with the work — prompting the terrified staffers to flee but to return later to find only a regular basement.

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