Military Officer - October 2007 - (Page 60)

his heartbroken wife, Susan Wheeler, can be heard today, while Decatur himself supposedly can be seen at the second ﬂoor window or leaving from the back door. Do the terrain and eerie darkness of the battleﬁeld, the bitter cold at sea, and the lights and sounds of the city offer explanations for hauntings? Or do ghosts and spirits from battle actually live on beyond conventional explanation? Regardless of what you believe, these spooky stories are what Halloween is made of. MO Gabbing With a Ghost Hunter Patrick Burke, a former U.S. airman and president of the American Battlefield Ghost Hunters Society, offers his explanations of battlefield hauntings: ■ Battlefields and wars are ripe for ghost stories. “Spirits often remain because their deaths were sudden, traumatic, and violent,” explains Burke. ■ Sometimes, ghosts or spirits interact with the living in real time, according to Burke. The hippie at Devil’s Den is an example of this live, interactive haunting. ■ When specific events are reenacted, it’s not ghosts or spirits but a residual haunting, says Burke. In this type of haunting, what the living see is a picture or recording of the event that remains at the location. ■ Wondering how ghosts can talk to the living in these interactive hauntings? “Ghosts need a lot of energy to communicate and make their presence known,” says Burke. “That’s why you hear stories about camera batteries going dead and [why] people are known to tire suddenly and quickly. The ghosts draw the energy.” that Washington was not among the number of those who aided the country he founded?” Seafarers from the great beyond In the nautical world of warfare, pirates seem to have more than their fair share of ghosts. Privateers aside, it seems the USS Constellation, homeported in Baltimore and once the U.S. Navy’s ﬂagship, is haunted. One story puts a former captain and crewman still on board the vessel. The sailor was put to death — strapped to a gun and blown to bits for falling asleep at his post. The harsh punishment might be what has kept the guilt-laden captain on board. A Navy lieutenant apparently captured one ghost on ﬁlm in 1955. Before he saw what appeared to be a sailor from the late 18th or early 19th century, he reportedly smelled the faint scent of gunpowder, like 60 MILITARY OFFICER OCTOBER 2007 one would smell from a crewmember coming from a shift on the guns — or being blown up by one. And in the 1960s, or so it goes, a priest came on board for a tour and got more than he anticipated. No one was on deck when he arrived, so he found his way below, where he met an old sailor with a wealth of knowledge of the ship’s history. The priest thanked the gentleman and went back up on deck, where he met a group of guides. He told them about the impressive fellow below. The guides were certain no one else was on the ship, and when everyone rushed down to ﬁnd the man, the sailor had vanished. Some seafaring spirits prefer staying closer to home. Legend has it the ghost of naval war hero Commodore Stephen Decatur haunts his stately residence in Washington, D.C., where he died. Decatur’s life was cut unexpectedly short in a duel. The sobs of

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Military Officer - October 2007

Military Officer - October 2007 Contents From the Editor From the President Your Views MOAA Directory Rapid Fire Washington Scene Financial Forum Ask the Doctor Chapter Activities Cover Story: A Hero's Welcome? Partners in Patriotism Tales from Beyond the Battlefield Financial Results of MOAA Pages of History Information Exchange Faces of MOAA Member Books MOAA Scholarship Donors Advertising Index MOAA Member Services MOAA Calendar Sounding Taps Encore

Military Officer - October 2007

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