Ghost hunters scout spirits of old soldiers

As dusk fell, the group of amateur historians was in position, spread out across the grassy field with digital voice recorders at the ready and infrared cameras rolling. If someone — or something — out there so much as sneezed, they were prepared to catch it in action.

Experts have scrutinized these Spotsylvania County, Va., battlefields for years, looking for clues to the past. Now these history buffs had come from Maryland to conduct their own brand of Civil War scholarship: battlefield ghost hunting. Why limit yourself to letters and artifacts, they reasoned, when you can go straight to the source: firsthand, albeit dead, witnesses.

The group of mostly middle-aged men had picked their spot carefully. Bloody Angle, part of one of three battlefields they visited on a recent night, was the site of the war's longest, most savage hand-to-hand combat. For 20 hours on May 12, 1864, soldiers shot, bayoneted and clubbed one another. "Rain poured down and the dead piled up in the mud," says the welcome sign on the grounds.

If spirits were likely to appear anywhere, the ghost hunters said, this was the spot.

More was at stake than a simple chase of the fantastical, said members of the American Battlefield Ghost Hunters Society; they had come looking for keys to historical mysteries, such as the battle decisions of field leaders and the mentality of soldiers, as well as answers about the very nature of life and death.

But so far, nothing. Two hours into what would turn out to be a seven-hour stakeout in freezing wind, the hunters had captured little besides locals walking their dogs.

So team leader Patrick Burke, 47, a mortgage broker, sprinkled beef jerky and chewing tobacco on the ground, trying to entice soldiers' spirits with what would have been luxuries in their day.

"It usually works better with the Confederate soldiers," he explained, "because they were less well-fed than the Union."

Nearby, other members scouted for better camera angles while Patrick's brother John, 50, and Laine Crosby, a self-described psychic, walked the grounds trying to suss out spirits.

Standing off to one side, looking doubtfully at all of them, was Darryl Smith, the team's designated science officer.

Smith, 53, a bespectacled mechanical engineer for a construction company, has been with the group since it started five years ago and counts its members among his closest friends. But on the battlefield, as he took careful notes in his composition book, he remarked, "I don't believe in ghosts."

His role was to log the time and place of everything that happened in the field, so a flashing camera or a passing car wouldn't later be identified as an apparition. Over the past five years, members have captured sounds they believe are cannonballs and musket fire from ages past and misty, half-formed figures they believe are dead soldiers.

Stopping at a spot they believed had been the Confederates' second line of defense, the hunters took out their digital recorders. Crosby put her hand on a mossy stone and said she felt a cold spot. With the cameras and voice recorders running, the team started asking questions and pausing for answers. Then with eager anticipation, they played back the audio recordings to listen for odd noises that might qualify as responses.

"Tell us what your name is." No answer.

"Are you Union or Confederate?" There was some noise, like static or a gust of wind. Everyone leaned in closer.

After two more hours of searching for ghosts in the dark, the group retreated to a steakhouse.

"The thing I'm really looking for is that perfect night, when you're out there and it's like a window opens onto the world," Burke said. "And you get a whole brigade marching down in one glorious moment. The battle unfolds in front of you, and you get it all on camera — history in motion."

With dinner over, the group started gearing up to head back into the cold.

Outside, the sky was dark, the wind was blowing and, on the abandoned battlefields, not a living soul was stirring.