Published: November 21, 2009 07:45 pm      

This type of rock and roll isn’t for everyone

Donnie asked me to definition “irony,” and I told him that “irony” is like “ugly”: Most people can recognize it ... even if they can’t define it.

Here’s “irony”: While ghost hunters were tromping around Gettysburg looking for the phenomenon we refer to as “ghosts” and probably having no success, we were seeing and hearing them at our motel.

Gary and I were in our bathroom at different times when we heard voices coming from our bedroom and the room next door, only no one was there. Christa had a similar experience in her room.

One night, I watched a shadow go through the parking lot. After you’ve seen such things enough times, you know what they are. This happened right after a flock of ghost hunters went by, and it was skedaddling as fast as it probably could go in the opposite direction.

“They’re coming here,” Gary said, “because they know us, and they know we’re friendly.”

One must retain a healthy ... spirit, if you will ... of skepticism: Is it real, or is it Memorex?

Photos of “ghost orbs” abound. The reflection from the dusk-to-dawn light at the church next door to my home creates a perfect ghost orb at night in the lenses of my eyeglasses. It even has an inner texture that resembles a face.

I have other photos that are less easy to explain. One I took at at Sachs Covered Bridge shows an orange glow directly in front of Donnie’s face.

Another shows a gray something just inside the bridge, and what appears to be a mist that fills the upper structures. I took the shot without a flash, and that section of the bridge should have been as dark as it was in a photo I took there under similar lighting conditions in April.

Most of my unexplainable photos show an orange something. The Gettysburg Ghosts Web site says orange indicates a healing energy, which is what we feel at Gettysburg. Those who’ve been to Antietam battlefield at Sharpsburg say what they experience is far different.

The feelings associated with this phenomenon — what some perceive as a sudden chill or a burst of energy — are impossible to explain to folks who haven’t experienced them. They come upon you when you’re not expecting them.

I went by myself to Devil’s Den last April and left half an hour later with the virtual certainty that whoever was there knew me, and I knew them. My friends had been watching me, and Donnie and Christa asked Gary if he thought I was all right. “I know what’s going on,” Gary told them. “He’s OK.” It’s happened to him, too.

We went to a part of the battlefield where one of my friends could say a prayer on behalf of a recently departed loved one who found meaning there.

He later told me that saying his prayer was one of the hardest things he ever had to do, but that as he began he was suddenly filled by an unexplainable energy that upheld him and inspired his words.

It was a magnificent prayer, and I said I had felt the same thing at the same time ... which was why I’d told him I had reason to believe his prayer was well-received.

(People ask me if I’m not afraid of the dark side of this, and I say that I am. I have left places or refused to go into them because of what I’ve felt there. And as my pastor said, to shun all of what lies beyond is to shun the Lord and His holy angels.)

When two or more people experience the same thing, it becomes more convincing.

Gary, Donnie and Christa heard what sounded like a large rock bouncing off other rocks and rolling through the woods nearby — as if someone was trying to build a makeshift fortification. They looked, but saw nothing. I was a few feet behind them, but didn’t hear it. Maybe it was meant only for them, and not for me.

Gary and I are fond of a song called, “Going Home,” from the Civil War movie “Gods and Generals.” Its music and lyrics are ... haunting, you might say ... and go like this: “They say there’s a place where dreams have all gone. They never said where, but I think I know. It’s miles through the night, just over the dawn, on this road that will take me home.” It’s a song that would tug at the heart of any lonely soldier.

We played it on the CD player of Steve and Shirley’s car one night in the parking lot.

Christa said, “I got chills big time while that song was playing,” and showed me goose bumps on her arm. I told her that music seems to bring them in, and that I could feel their presence, too. After the song ended, they were gone.

Later, I yielded to an impulse and walked through the parking lot to lean against a rail fence and look into the Gettysburg National Cemetery.

Suddenly overtaken by the same feeling I had at Devil’s Den, I wondered aloud if among the many who rest there were those I have known, somewhere ... somewhen. There was an immediate and powerful sensation of Yes.

Was I there with you? Yes.

Will we meet again? To that, there was no answer; maybe we’re not to know the future.

Finally, I whispered that it was time for me to go back to my other friends. When I promised to return someday, the response came strongly: Farewell, until the next time.

A few feet behind me, a boot crunched on dirt and gravel, but no one was there — only the smooth, wet, blacktop of the parking lot.

One afternoon I played “Going Home” while Gary and I rode up to Little Round Top in my car. Directly, I asked Gary if he smelled pipe tobacco, and his eyes went wide open. He nodded energetically and said, “Yes!”

Music does have more charms than we realize, and visitors to Gettysburg often smell pipe tobacco in places where there should be none.

All good things must end, and as we drew near to Cumberland, Gary and I played “Going Home” one last time. We stopped briefly to say our good-byes, Gary got into Steve and Shirley’s car to return to Mount Savage, and they drove off.

After my friends were gone, I sat quietly in my car for a few moments, then smiled and began to chuckle. Lingering with me for just a moment, then fading as quickly as it had come, was the unmistakable scent of pipe tobacco.

Farewell, until the next time.