By Darrell Laurant

 

According to Beth Brown, there are those who simply can’t let go of the Civil War.

In this case, though, they have an excuse — they’re ghosts.

For if you accept the premise that ghosts are people who died suddenly and thus don’t realize they’re dead (“The Sixth Sense”), it only seems logical that Virginia’s Civil War battlefields would be very spirited.

Confederate General John Mosby was known as the “Gray Ghost.” Now, apparently, he has lots of company.

“I grew up very close to Fort Harrison on the outskirts of Richmond,” said Brown, who will be discussing and signing copies of her latest book, “Haunted Battlefields: Virginia’s Civil War Ghosts,” at Givens Bookstore on Saturday (1 p.m.), “and I remember as a child that a lot of people were afraid to go there at night because of all the paranormal activity that had been reported.”

Brown, of course, immediately wanted to find out what all the fuss was about. She’s still trying.

“I consider myself a ‘hopeful skeptic,’” she said. “I’m not a psychic, at least not any more than anybody else. We all have this intuitive side to us, and we can all tune in on the cues if we learn what to look and listen for.”

Like many 21st-century paranormal investigators, however, Brown doesn’t mind a little hi-tech assistance.

“I use recording devices, and various types of cameras,” she said. “If you don’t have some tangible evidence, people aren’t going to believe you, and getting that evidence has become my Great White Whale. ”

One of her “goose bump” moments came at the former site of Belle Isle Prison, now a state park in the middle of the James.

“A lot of the recordings you get are very faint and fuzzy,” she said, “and you have to play them over and over again to make it out. This time, though, I heard a voice say very clearly: “Where are we?”

Since Belle Isle was a prison for Union POW’s, that made sense.

Over the years, I’ve heard numerous reports about the shades of Yanks and Rebs drifting about Lynchburg, sometimes in uniform. After all, as one of the primary hospital cities in the South, the Hill City was the scene of a lot of dying, even if it was more likely to be from dysentery and typhoid than shot and shell.

“So far, I’ve been doing most of my research around Richmond,” Brown said, “but I’d eventually like to get around the whole state.”

Nevertheless, the Richmond-Petersburg area alone could keep a ghost hunter busy for a lifetime.

“Cold Harbor has a lot of activity,” Brown said, “and Malvern Hill in Henrico County. I once saw a strange white mass in the Fredericksburg National Cemetery that I couldn’t explain.”

Moreover, “There are stories from people stationed at Fort Lee who would go jogging in the early morning near where the Battle of the Crater took place. On a couple of occasions, they would see what looked like somebody asleep in the woods. Then they’d look again, and that person would be gone.”

Brown started the Virginia Society of Paranormal Education and Research in 1989, and frequently lectures on the topic. She’s even had ghosts follow her to the old house she and her husband and two children call home.

“When my daughter was 2 ½,” Brown said, “she told us about this older man and lady who were watching her while she slept. That’s not the sort of thing a child that age would make up.”

The weeks leading up to Halloween are, not surprisingly, Brown’s busiest.

“That’s when everyone thinks about ghosts,” she said, “but it’s also a time when paranormal activity seems to be very high.”

Spooky.