The entire northeastern United States is profoundly haunted. This may be due to its history. The more dramatic an area’s history, the more opportunities for ghosts and ghost stories.

In addition, some people speculate that the area’s huge quartz deposits act as ‘magnets’ for ghosts and [...]]]> Ghosts are almost “normal” in many eastern seaboard states.

The entire northeastern United States is profoundly haunted. This may be due to its history. The more dramatic an area’s history, the more opportunities for ghosts and ghost stories.

In addition, some people speculate that the area’s huge quartz deposits act as ‘magnets’ for ghosts and hauntings.

Colleges are especially likely to have ghosts. Here are some well-known haunted colleges in NY and PA:

New York

• West Point – U.S. Military Academy
  Several buildings have reported ghosts, including the Superintendent’s House and the area around the 47th Division/4th Regiment barracks.
• [If you know of other profoundly haunted campuses in NY, let us know with the contact form, linked above.]

Pennsylvania

Because Pennsylvania has considerable Colonial and mining history, it’s a perfect place to find ghosts. These are just a few of many haunted colleges in PA:

• Allentown – Cedar Crest College
  Since 1956, a female ghost has haunted Butz Hall.
• Allentown – Muhlenberg College
  Bernheim House is haunted by its former owner.
• Bethlehem – Lehigh University
  Linderman Library is visited by an annoying male ghost.
• Doylestown – Bucks County Community College
  Tyler Hall may be haunted by Stella Tyler, for whom the building was named.
• Easton – Churchman’s Business College
  She hasn’t been seen for many years, but a woman haunted the old First Presbyterian Church, which is now part of the college.
• East Stroudsburg – University of Pennsylvania
  Several hauntings occur here: at the Fine Arts Center, at Hawthorne Residence Hall, at Phi Sigma Kappa, and at Sigma Pi.
• Gettysburg – Gettysburg College
  This college is so haunted, the ghosts are too numerous to list here. Many are from the Civil War era, as you would expect in this famous town.
• Kutztown – Kutztown State College
  A 19th-century student haunts Old Main, the administration building. A woman who once lived in Whiteoak Street has haunted that building, too.
• University Park – PA State University
  A ghost of a mule, once a sort-of mascot for the school, haunts Watts Hall. Runkle Hall experienced poltergeist phenomena in the mid-1990′s.

For more about haunted colleges, see our articles tagged “Colleges – US” or search for “colleges” in the Search form at the top of this page.

We also recommend our article, College ghosts – reality and urban legends.

Hauntings are almost guaranteed at any site that’s witnessed battles, suffering… and graves where the dead were not [...]]]> This continues the stories
about the real ghosts and spirits
that haunt the site of The Blair Witch Project.
Be sure to read The real ‘Blair Witch’ ghosts – part one.)

Hauntings are almost guaranteed at any site that’s witnessed battles, suffering… and graves where the dead were not allowed to rest.

Burkittsville and vicinity have all of these from Civil War times.

By 1862, wounded and dying Civil War soldiers in this area were placed in as many as 17 makeshift hospitals. Some of those “hospitals” were actually Burkittsville homes and businesses,  including the town’s tannery.

The soldiers’ ghostly voices are still heard throughout the town, but the tannery is particularly significant.

The tannery was torn down, but the site is still haunted. Anyone who parks his car there overnight may find the vehicle marked with footprints from soldiers’ boots, where the car was kicked or even trampled by the ghosts of marching men.

But there are other ghosts in the area, too.

Stories–loudly proclaimed as “fiction” by some Burkittsville historians–explain why the area may be haunted.

In one account, the retreating Confederate Army paid a man named Wise to bury approximately 50 bodies. Mr. Wise accepted the money, but then tossed the bodies in an abandoned well.

Shortly thereafter, he began seeing the ghost of Sergeant Jim Tabbs of Virginia, who complained to Mr. Wise about being uncomfortable. Mr. Wise returned to the mass grave and discovered that the body on top was that of Sergeant Tabbs, and the corpse was face down. Mr. Wise turned the body so it was facing upwards.

He thought that would be the last of it.

He was very wrong.

Perhaps the spirits of these men revealed the truth to the local officials. Whatever the cause, the authorities confronted Mr. Wise. They forced him to dig up–and properly bury–the fifty bodies that had been left in his care.

Stories say the ghosts never bothered him again, but did they truly rest in peace?

Many other fallen Southern soldiers were left behind as a necessity of war. The good people of Burkittsville recognized that something must be done for the dead, so they buried them in shallow graves. The local residents expected that, once the fighting stopped, the troops would return to bury the men properly.

When the fighting stopped, no one returned for these comrades’ bodies. Finally most — and perhaps all — of the bodies temporarily buried in the older section of Burkittsville’s Union Cemetery, were exhumed in 1868 and re-interred in Washington Confederate Cemetery.

Was this sufficient to put their souls at rest? According to Troy Taylor in his book, Spirits of the Civil War, there have been odd and ghostly occurrences in the vicinity of those shallow graves. Many nights since then, eerie lights from long-extinguished campfires appear in the nearby open fields, and dot the mountainside.

However, the mountainside is also the source of a ghostly energy that visitors to Burkittsville can experience even now. Its history is one of the great stories of the Civil War.

At sunrise on Sunday, September 14, 1862, both the Union and Confederate soldiers expected to surprise each other with an attack. It was later known as the Battle for Crampton’s Gap, but the location is now called “Spook Hill.”

On that fateful morning, the Union soldiers carried only rifles into battle. They were able to travel faster than their Confederate counterparts, who were still pushing cannons uphill when the fighting began. The Union Army’s First Division, Sixth Corps, were overwhelmingly successful in battle.

Many Confederate soldiers died struggling with the heavy cannons. Their lingering spirits are the “spooks” of Spook Hill.

The site of this battle can be found at the edge of Burkittsville, near the Civil War Correspondents’ Memorial Arch, in Gathland Park. If you stop your car at Spook Hill and set it in neutral, you will feel the car being pushed by the spectral hands of the Confederate troops.

They are still struggling to push their cannons to the top of the hill, and achieve victory in the battle which they lost over 130 years ago.

In public, Burkittsville residents claim that this is merely an optical illusion. However, a local resident, Stephen, quietly assures me that the road has been tested using construction levels and transits. Cars do indeed roll uphill, though not as readily as they did before the road was recently repaved.

Others insist that the hill is magnetic, and that force is what pulls the cars towards the top. No one has successfully tested that theory yet.

If Spook Hill contains massive amounts of a magnetic ore, this would explain why Heather’s compass did not work properly in the movie, The Blair Witch Project.

Nevertheless, with ghostly campfires, bodies in dry wells and shallow graves, footprints at the former tannery/hospital, and the events at Spook Hill, the tale of what happened to three college students in The Blair Witch Project seems almost pale by comparison to real life.

For more information about haunted Burkittsville and vicinity, ask your local library for these books and videos:

• Spirits of the Civil War, by Troy Taylor, © 1999
• The Spirits of Frederick, by Alyce T. Weinberg, © 1992
• Ghosts & Legends of Frederick County, by Timothy L. Cannon and Nancy F. Whitmore, © 1979
• The Smoke Still Rises, by Virginia Kuhn Draper, © 1996 in notebook form, mentioned at the Burkittsville website, linked below.
• Video: The Unexplained – Civil War Ghosts, from A&E

Websites about Burkittsville, and Civil War ghosts:

• Burkittsville, Maryland’s website
• Cathe’s Ghost Encounters of the Civil War Kind
• Author Troy Taylor’s website, Ghosts of the Prairie
• Ghostly photos, including some from Gettysburg, appear at the Ghost Web site (IGHS)

This two-part article originally appeared at Suite 101, in November 1999.

Photo credits:
Foggy sunrise, by Steven Soenens
Stone Angel, by Brenda Mihalko
Campfire, by Niels Timmer
Skull, by Benjamin Earwicker of Garrison Photography
Trees, by Penny Mathews

However, few know the actual haunted history of Burkittsville, Maryland, where the movie was set.

The town began as “Dawson’s Purchase” in 1741. In the 1790′s, Joshua Harley and Henry Burkitt arrived in the area. From the start, they [...]]]> By now, most people know what’s fact and fiction in the movie, The Blair Witch Project.

However, few know the actual haunted history of Burkittsville, Maryland, where the movie was set.

The town began as “Dawson’s Purchase” in 1741. In the 1790′s, Joshua Harley and Henry Burkitt arrived in the area. From the start, they competed to control and eventually name the town.

Although Burkitt owned three-quarters of the land by 1810, the competition seemed concluded in 1824 when Harley secured the official Post Office as “Harley’s Post Office.”

However, Joshua Harley’s death in 1828 left Burkitt with the last word. He named the town Burkittsville before he, too, died in 1836.

The participants in this 40+ year rivalry may haunt the town, but there are far better explanations for Burkittsville’s ghostly spirits.

In fact, paranormal events and tragedy cover more than 100 years of Burkittsville’s history.

As early as 1735, nearby Middletown was settled by German immigrants.

According to legends repeated in the Middletown Valley Register in the early 20th century, the community was terrorized by a monster called a Schnellegeister.

The word means “fast spirit or ghost” in German, but neighbors nicknamed it the “Snallygaster.”

Whatever its name, its colonial reputation mixed the half-bird features of the Siren with the nightmarish features of demons and ghouls.

The Snallygaster was described as half-reptile with octopus limbs, and half-bird with a metallic beak lined with razor-sharp teeth. It can fly. It can pick up its victims and carry them off. The earliest stories claim that this monster sucked the blood of its victims.

It is disturbingly similar to the movie’s descriptions of the Blair Witch.

No one knows whether the Snallygaster caused the hasty sale of most of “Dawson’s Purchase” (later Burkittsville) in 1786, and the remainder in 1803. However, George Wine, who bought the final acreage, did not live to confirm the purchase.

The name “Snallygaster” has been a joke to some in the 20th century, but more sober minds recall that it has been documented in the Burkittsville area as recently as 1973.

Another 18th century German settlement, Zittlestown, a mere seven miles north of Burkittsville, was also plagued with supernatural events. Like Middletown, residents feared a large and vicious animal-spirit which was rarely seen.

An 1880′s book by Madaleine Dahlgren (widow of Admiral John A. Dahlgren), documented the troubles of that community.

However, most of Burkittsville’s ghosts are men who lost their lives in the Civil War.

Their stories, from an unscrupulous Civil War gravedigger to spectres of the dead who push cars uphill today, are in The Real ‘Blair Witch’ Ghosts – Part Two.

Photo credits:
Gettysburg at dawn, by Fiona Broome
Church sculpture, by Roar Petersen