From: lobby3@cirrus.com (Receptionist Lobby3)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.ghost-stories
Subject: Army ghosts
Date: 9 Nov 92 22:15:41 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: Cirrus Logic Inc.

Those who want to visit sites where ghosts have been reported should
consider army posts.  Unsolved mysteries had a piece on about a museum
in California that is supposed to be haunted. (I forget where--anyone
who saw that piece, please tell me what city it was in. I would like
to visit it.)

Also, here is a reprint of an article found in SOLDIERS magazine, the
magazine reservist get sent to their homes.  It is a little long:

(Story by Msgt. Darrell Cochran)

Houses wherein men have lived and died are haunted houses......
                                                     Longfellow

Strange things happen late at night when the moon plays hide and seek
with the scurrying clouds.  Forms and faces not of this world appear
out of nowhere to startle the living, while the cries of those long
departed rise with the wind.

Nowhere does that seem to be more true than on Army posts, which
unfortunately have seen their share of violent and untimely deaths.

One such post is Fort Monroe, Va., where according to museum curator
Dennis Mroczkowski, "almost every building" inside the moat is
haunted. "We've had everything from people seeing things, to people
hearing voices an other noises, to furniture being rearranged and
locked doors inexplicably opened," he said.

Not surprising, considering Fort Monroe has been around for almost 175
years.  One soldier who served there in the post's early days was a
young man who left the Army to become famouse as a writer of scary
stories-Edgar Allen Poe.

The post also has had its share of distinguished visitors, some of
whom are reputed to occasionally return in spectral form.  At various
times, people have reported seeing Abraham Lincoln and Gen. Ulysses S.
Grant in the house known as Old Quarters No.1.  Both stayed there
during visits to Fort Monroe.

The house is also knwon for its ghostly sounds, th most common of
which are footsteps and rustling skirts.  The tale is told of one
former resident who, after a particularly noisy night of footsteps,
rustling skirts and distant laughter, came downstairs to find fresh
flower petals strewn on the hall floor.  These and other stories are
recounted in the book "THe Ghosts of Ft. Monroe" by Jane Polonsky and
Joan Drum, which is available in the fort's Casemate Museum.

At Fort McNair in Washington, D.C., those who went before apparently
left an indelible path.  The post was the site in 1865 of the trial
and execution of four people accused of plotting the assassination of
President Abraham Lincoln.  Now, even on the coldest days, snow melts
where the condemned walked on their way to the gallows.  No
underground pipes lie in the area to lend a natural explanation to the
phenomenon.  

The building at Ft. McNair that housed the conspirators during their
trial is now appartments.  In one of the third floor rooms overlooking
the spot where the gallows stood, one windowpane seems to be
perpetually clouded by steam.  Legend says that condemed conspirator
Mary Surratt's daughter watched from that window as her mother went to
her death.  Post Engineers have replaced the glass several times, but
it still fogs up.

General George A. Custer is said to haunt not one, but two houses--one
at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., and the other at Fort Riley.  Fort Riley's
Cavalry Museum also is said to be home to spirits.

Specters soldierly and otherwise aren't confined to posts; they've
been reported in numerouse places that soldiers have marched, camped,
and fought.

Antietam National Battlefield, Md., is th site of the bloodiest battle
in American history.  It's said that visitors who stay around until
after sundown on Sept. 17-the date of the battle-may hear the moans of
the wounded.

Tourists driving near Yorktown, Va., have been brought up short by a
procession of apparitions in Revolutionary War uniforms crossing the
road in front of them.

Retired Air Firce Msgt. Keith Rapley, an avid Civil War buff, was once
participating in a re-enactment of the Battle of Sayler's Creek, Va.
At the end of the first day's activity, he and a buddy decisded to
sleep in the woods away from the main camp.  Deep in hours between
midnight and dawn, Rapley's friend shook him awake.

"What do you suppose those dummies are doing this time of night?" he
asked.  As they lay ther listening, both could clearly hear the rumble
and creak  of wagon wheels and the soft thump of marching feet.  They
both set upright when a near by voice said softly, "Watch out for
those sleeping men."

Determined to find the source of the sounds, they slipped through the
woods"for more than a quarter of a mile," Rapley recalled, but saw
nothing. "But just a few feet from where we'd been sleeping, it
suddenly got REALLY cold."

The next morning they learned that a road once ran near where they had
been camped--a road that had been abandoned soon after retreating
Confederate soldiers had passed that way on their way to Appomattox
Court House in 1865.

That night, Rapley and his friend slept in the main camp.


From ghoulies and ghosties, and long-leggedy beasties

and things that go bumb in the night,

Dear Lord, deliver us!

                       --Old Scottish prayer