Ghosts and the City
204 Carlisle Street (Red House) (Photo courtesy of Google Maps)
By Camila Seluja, Contributing Writer
Ghosts? At Gettysburg? Well, that is no new story. Moreover, how could any rational human being buy into the tales of ghosts, particularly when attending a center for higher education?
Any step into the town proper reveals eager tourists escorted by the light of lanterns to hear
the bone-chilling whispers of spirits, but is a capitalist pull for money all these stories are? I will make no move to argue one point versus the other, but this case of the rational versus the believers becomes more compelling when the supposedly rational switch to the side of the believers. Such is the case with Gettysburg College senior Julia Rodbell, a resident of Red House.
So goes her sighting:
Julia woke up a dark night last semester to stumble her way to the bathroom when,upon turning around, saw the fuzzy shadow of a girl standing near her desk. Julia rubbed her eyes and squinted but the outline refused to leave, only banished when the light was turned on. The one defining characteristic that stood out most strongly was this young girl’s long, curly hair.
Now, Julia had never been a full believer. Like a rational human being, she recognized that without having the data to disprove the presence of spirits one could not assume they did not exist. However, you could hardly call her a firm advocate. A second case for her rational mind at the time was the lack of information Julia had regarding ghost activity at Red House.
After her encounter, Julia googled ghosts at the house, only to find an entry regarding a young girl with long, curly hair who had died in the house and was buried in the back yard. Because Julia had not known this information before, an argument cannot be made that her subconscious had
slipped this image into her mind late at night.
Recently, Julia and fellow roommates were sitting in the downstairs area of the house, with only two house members on the second-floor at the time, when the girls downstairs heard a scream from the second floor. Upon going upstairs, Julia found that no one upstairs had heard
the scream, although Julia strongly attests that the screech came from the house.
Thus, we are presented with quite the conundrum. If a rational, even-minded individual stoutly testifies that she sighted a spirit, how can one argue against her? Is this not the most compelling argument of all? Perhaps more credit should be granted to those eager tourists searching for any ghost experience they can buy, for it’s the act of rational individuals searching for evidence for a long-standing question.
