Baltimore St. 5/4/06

Hello! I am writing this blog to catalog my experiences as a tour guide/ storyteller for the Ghosts of Gettysburg. I am in my ninth season and have a ton of little stories, not necessarily related to ghosts, that I've experienced over the years. I've met tons of interesting people along the way. I have guided well over 400 walks and talked to well over 10,000 people, there's got to be something interesting stuff in there somewhere!

Last night, Thursday May 4 I had a group of about 30 fifth graders from Brunswick, NJ. I don't know what it is but groups from New Jersey are always a little different. Two kids left the tour after my opening, "How people experience ghosts" story set. There's nothing overly scary about these stories, I even end them with a joke, which I think I mistimed last night b/c only 35% of the group got it. Either way two down and 28 to go.

As we went along these kids began scaring themselves. Talking themselves into being scared. I tried to break this up by throwing in a little history lesson to set up stories for later on in the tour. This group had never heard of JEB Stuart or George A Custer, but they did know that Lincoln was in town for a cemetery dedication. It blows my mind how many kids come through that town that can recite the Gettysburg Address but have no idea why Lincoln wrote it or why he was there to deliver it!

As we continued on, of course the sidewalk got clogged because another guide took up the whole sidewalk with her group. That and the fact that 5 groups were passing each other at the same spot at the same time. It is school group season in Gettysburg! I finished in our headquarters yard, but not before a local gave us a rap concert by pulling over and blaring his music for us.

After we finished, a woman came up and told me that she had stayed in the Krauth House years ago while taking a youth ministry seminar. I always finish every tour with the Krauth House story regardless of the tour we're on. Most folks will never know what house I'm referring to even though they probably will drive by it 5-6 times. The woman told me how spooky she remembered the house being and how much she enjoyed hearing a story about it, especially since she wasn't expecting one. Sometimes the littlest things will make a visitor's experience that much better.

All in all, it was a good time with a good group of kids.

From tours gone by....Some years ago I had a group on Lincoln Square and it was around 11 PM. As I was in the middle of a story, we hear this car tearing around the traffic circle. Stopping in mid-sentence I turn around to see a woman hanging out of the passenger's side door screaming "Let me out of this @!#%&* car!" The driver was leaning over grabbing her and pulling her back into the car. She had at least one leg out and I fully expected to see her tumble out of the car. The driver managed to pull her back into the car and navigate the circle! He then went tearing down Baltimore St squealing his tires the whole time. I didn't know what to say my group and I wished I had a camera to take a picture of their faces. There was an akward silence, when a guy in the group pipes up and says something along the lines of "Holy #%$&, what was that about!" We all had a laugh and I responded "You see folks, you never know, late on a Saturday night, sometimes there are things scarier than ghosts here on Lincoln Square.” That was one of the wildest things I've ever seen in 9 seasons of guiding in Gettysburg!

Hope you all sleep very well!

"Rick Saunders"