GETTYSBURG, Pa. — Ghost City Tours has presented its case for entities from the afterlife existing in the physical realm through historical tours of famous haunted locations across nearly 60 cities in the United States since 2012.
One of its more ambitious efforts takes guests on a three-hour, hands-on ghost pursuit, not simply with a guide offering scripted remarks about sightings and locations, but with an actual researcher of spirit activity.
Specifically, for a night at its Gettysburg Ghost Hunt, guests met Waynesboro, Pennsylvania, resident Dave Haynie, a veteran paranormal investigator who has spent more than two decades investigating reported hauntings with the Keystone State Paranormal Society.
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He has been fascinated with the apparitions since seeing Fred Astaire in the movie “Ghost Story” as a child. He is a true believer, based on his encounters with ghosts, and is not swayed by others’ opinions.
“I gave up trying to convince people that it is real a long time ago. I do investigations now for my own enjoyment and for my own curiosities,” Mr. Haynie says.
“I know what I’ve seen, I know what I’ve experienced. And I don’t care what degree you have, what school you went to, and what brand of science you practice, you’re not going to convince me otherwise because I trust myself.”
Mr. Haynie had on hand some photographs and audio recordings of his many scary adventures, including chronicling activity at Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield, Ohio (home of over 200 reported deaths and the film “The Shawshank Redemption”); and the haunted Hoover House Bed and Breakfast in Waynesboro.
For the night, he greeted guests at the Knoxlyn Ridge House, located roughly 300 yards away from the first shot of the Battle of Gettysburg and supposedly, though not verified, as a temporary camp for soldiers.
Built in 1852, the unassuming two-story farmhouse with an attic, dug-out basement, broad front porch, plain siding and beat-up decorative details sits right next to Chambersburg Pike and is exposed to loud car and truck sounds.
The house appears to have drawn little organized paranormal attention until 2024, when investigators promoted it as a “never-before-investigated” property. And not entirely confirmed was the serious trauma that occurred within the building.
Mr. Haynie explained tales of an abusive husband knocking a woman down the staircase (with bloodstains still visible on the steps today); a child locked in the closet for punishment; a man named Tim dying and dropping to the floor in the main dining room; another man named John dying from white lung disease in 2017; and a little girl named Rosalyn (aka Rosie) who died from an illness, possibly tuberculosis, around 1907.
The spirits described during the evening were associated primarily with the house’s latter occupants rather than with Civil War soldiers.
However, the landscape behind the house opens toward the railroad cut, an area that saw intense fighting on July 1, 1863.
Confederate troops from the 55th North Carolina fought there, alongside the 2nd and 42nd Mississippi, against Union regiments including the 6th Wisconsin, 84th New York and 95th New York, and action was fierce and costly in that area.
Available during the evening to use by eager amateur ghost hunters were a selection of research tools all thoroughly explained by Mr. Haynie.
The tools included four infrared cameras placed around the house to record any unusual activity on a monitor, a remote thermal camera, a laser device that projects a grid on a wall and a handheld K2 meter that measures changes in nearby electromagnetic energy and displays the strength through a row of colored lights.
Another iconic tool for the ghost hunter was the SB7 spirit box, basically a handheld radio scanner that rapidly sweeps through AM or FM frequencies, capturing bursts of static and fragments of radio broadcasts that can produce words or phrases that might correspond to questions asked of the apparitions.
A handheld FLIR thermal camera was also used to detect infrared radiation and convert temperature differences into a visible image. It displayed warmer and cooler areas in contrasting colors, capturing the area’s temperature-change anomalies.
The most important devices of the night were a REM (radiating electromagnetism) pod that creates a small electromagnetic field around an antenna and sounds an alarm and lights up when that field is disturbed; a pair of cat toy balls that blink when moved; and a smartphone paranormal-investigation app aptly called Ghost Hunting Tools, the latter used by Mr. Haynie all during the night.
It combines an EMF meter, EVP-style monitoring and a spirit box feature.
In the mode Mr. Haynie used, the app scans for what it describes as irregular signals and then pulls words from a built-in dictionary that are interpreted as possible responses to questions, displaying them one at a time on the phone screen.
So, guests got a wide range of the latest known tools to try to capture paranormal activity.
After touring the entire house in darkness by headlamp, including the backyard cut, guests spent the final two hours investigating two rooms.
Before reporting on what was witnessed, it’s worth noting that the story is not about proving or debunking the existence of ghosts. It is more a collection of observations and appreciations for what occurred during that one night.
First, the room where John mainly hung out included the original chair that he sat in and a desk that had cigarettes and cold beer laid out on it to attract his spirit to make his presence known.
There was very little activity, even when a visitor was sitting in his chair, which was known to aggravate John. The only notable moments were displayed on Mr. Haynie’s phone app when the question was asked out loud about John’s favorite music and the word “jazz” appeared.
Moving on to Rosie’s bedroom, the room revealed a collection of toys on the floor and a couple of evil-looking dolls in a rocking chair, and that space led to the more intriguing part of the evening.
Roughly 10 minutes after everyone sat on the floor and started talking to Rosie, the REM pod burst into activity. At multiple points while in the room, it began beeping, and all five lights blinked brightly, in theory indicating the presence of an unseen apparition manipulating the device.
Multiple times, a cat ball began blinking without noticeable movement, even when placed in a teacup to avoid extraneous vibrations, which supposedly signaled that an entity was touching it.
Mr. Haynie was impressed by the light display and said it was much stronger than any reaction that he had seen in that room at the house.
Ultimately, whether ghosts exist will be determined by each individual’s belief.
“My theory is that it’s all about us making ourselves available to the spirits and them deciding if they want to make themselves available to us,” he says. “They’re not puppets on a string that we just dance, you know, and sure, I have the utmost respect for them.”
Whether or not guests that evening were witnessing ghostly activity, it was certainly fun listening to Mr. Haynie’s stories in the field.
The enthusiastic reactions to seeing lights go off and watching guests sing lullabies while playing with a child’s teacup set to elicit a response from Rosie also made for quite an entertaining evening at the Gettysburg Ghost Hunt.
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IF YOU DARE GO
What: Gettysburg Ghost Hunt
Where: 1429 Chambersburg Road, Gettysburg, PA 17325
Fear factor (out of 5): 4, recommended for ages 16 and older
Price range: From $64.99 per person
What’s included: A three-hour, hands-on paranormal investigation led by an experienced investigator, with access to ghost-hunting equipment and the historic Knoxlyn Ridge House
Hours: Nightly at 8:30 p.m.; about three-hours
Important: Ages 16 and older only; limited to about 10 guests per night. Advance reservations are recommended. The investigation takes place in dark conditions and includes mature subject matter involving death and the paranormal. Well-behaved leashed pets are permitted; alcohol is not.
Website: https://ghostcitytours.com/gettysburg/
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