It's easy to consider haunted houses, prisons, hospitals, and such as locations for study, but the truth is the land is very haunted!
Some of the most exceptional apparitions we witnessed at my childhood Civil War Hospital home, Aspen Grove, in Fairfax Virginia, were located outdoors.
Upon occasion, mother and one of my sisters witnessed people in period dress wandering the grounds.
There was one black man in ragged clothing standing in front of what was once a fort built by the North during the war and later on a kitchen building for the family that reclaimed the house after the war. (See the fort to the left of the building in the distance - photo was taken in 1860s right after the war).
We had sometimes seen a soldier of long ago riding on our horse, and another witnessed it jump over the well while she crouched beside it.
My father a few times chased a wanderer who disappeared in thin air.
I saw a young Civil War soldier, injured, wandering along the creek.
Land can hold memories, too. And, some locations are thick with the memories or their presences.
Let's take a look at some locales -
Let's take a look at some locales -
Battlefields
It goes without saying, the land took on the blood of many fine men during the Civil War. And, it would seem that these locations often provide ancient sights and sounds still to this day.
I rode through Gettysburg Battlefield with two friends when I suddenly felt 3 wear and somewhat wounded soldiers go right through me as I sat in the backseat of the car. I had the driver stop and I hopped out, turning to follow their energy. Although I could only see them in my mind's eyes, what shocked me the most was that as they walked through me, I could imagine each one's appearance, injuries, and what was going on in their minds - at the same time!
Later, we parked the car in a quiet spot and a friend, dressed in reenactment wear, stood near me. I kept looking up a hillside and my mind had a memory. I imagined a very large man with black curly hair, arms crossed over a massive chest. I felt that if we bothered him any further, he would rush us. My best friend, who was driving, had never been chased by a spirit before, so I told her to get in the car and start the engine. As we got back in the car, my reenactor friend said, "there was a big guy up on the hill. Did you feel it?"
Most often on these battlefields, the sound of fighting, gunfire, cannons, and screams are most often reported, along with my reports of what looks like men in uniform.
Construction sites
This is a lesser known kind of haunting, but men who worked on things like suspension bridges, The Golden Gate Bridge, the Brooklyn Bridge, and the like, as well as dams, had many deaths. As well, railroad workers of the 1800s suffered greatly. Interestingly, these hauntings seem to be caught in the very structure they were constructing.
Here's some stats:
11 workers died at the Golden Gate Bridge construction site.
20 workers died building the Brooklyn Bridge
96 men were killed during the building of Hoover Dam.
Oddly, my Grandfather Thorvaldsen, coming to America after WWI from an iron works family that lost business during the war, took to carpentry on suspension bridges in California and up the coast into Canada in the 1920s. He lost many friends in his line of work and my father, as a child, was always awaiting his dad's return from a job.
Native Lands
This was something I felt very much when I lived in Arizona for decades. The land there seems to sing the tunes, play the drums, create strange lights, and give a deep sense of being watched.
There are plenty of legends of native hauntings and most are related to burial grounds, and some are simply random sights of them along lonely highways, mountainsides, and washes.
One of the most infamous hauntings in Arizona was La Llarona, a ghost woman wandering the washes calling out to her children who drowned. There are many versions of the legend including the most popular one - that she was a woman who wanted a man, but he didn't want children, so she drowned hers and then he still didn't marry her.
Forests
It's probably the most possible location you might come to encounter a haunting. It comes in many forms from whispering voices, children's cries, spooklights, and feelings of being watched.
Some of the reportedly most haunted forests in America -
Smoky Mountains: North Carolina's Norton Creek Trail
Mammoth Cave National Park: Kentucky
New Jersey Pinelands: Batona Trail
Devil's Tramping Ground: North Carolina
One of my favorites is -
Old House Woods: Bavon, Virginia. I had heard a lot of things about pirate ghosts wandering the woods here and looking for their treasure that they buried, having gone to sea and dying afterwards. I was in my home state of Virginia in the area of my childhood summer home in New Point, and my best friend and I just had to go check it out.
I made a video. I admit I didn't think we'd run into pirates, but what did happen defied my logic. The sounds coming from nature were intense and then suddenly, stiffling stillness and complete silence -
Cemeteries
Now, I know that some folks are going to scoff at the notion because, does a ghost need its body any longer? I certainly wouldn't want to be free of the physical burden and then decide to sit where those remains are placed. But....
I have found that newly visited graves do attract energy. A person comes, sits down after perhaps months or years and their only focus is on their loved one. They use their name, they tell them how they're doing, they explain how much they miss them. That brings the energy to the area.
Another odd features of cemeteries and parks is shadow people. These small figures, shaped like a human, but completely flat black with no features, curiously wander cemeteries and parks, outdoor locations often. They seem to believe we aren't there after dark and they can have free run of the place. Once we sight them, acknowledge they are there, they rush off or disappear.
My son and his best friend had such an encounter at a cemetery after dark. Teens, hoping to see a spooky place at night. They didn't have any belief in ghosts, but they liked the atmosphere. Their encounter so shook them that they couldn't process it.
They saw a dark small figure balled up next to a concrete altar that had a stained glass window behind it. They cautiously approached, thinking it was a wild animal. When my son beamed the laser sight on his camera on it, they realized it was solid and completely black. It unfolded to about 3-4 feet tall and moved on two legs behind the altar.
The boys rushed the altar to find it was attached to the stained glass window. There was no "behind." They rushed away from there and turned back to see this little human like black figure peek out from behind the wall and watch them. Both boys felt an intense sense of dread, like everything bad in the world that could happen, happened. They ran through the cemetery, the dark figure darting behind headstones to watch them leave.
Train Tracks
As weird as it sounds, train tracks have so many hauntings. Some of these are attached to tunnels that had cave-ins or crash sites, but almost all involve spooklights that look like lanterns on the tracks. Is it static buildup on the iron tracks and dry winds? Are the lights not necessarily part of the track's haunting but another natural phenomenon? There are so many of these reports that they have become almost a report in every state and local legends swear they have to do with tragedies.
Cry baby bridges
Nearly every state reports cry baby bridges. The legends say kids were drowned or a car ran off the bridge with children in it, but the witnesses say they heard the children screaming or crying.
States like Ohio, Texas, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and more report having one or more of these legendary haunted bridges.
It's a great time of the year to hit the outdoors. Be aware, take note of any feelings of being watched, strange voices, fogs, human shapes, shadow people, and spooklights. The outdoors is vast and so is its history.