Antietam.
Cornfields are what I remember most about Antietam from my first visit. Looking out at the National Battlefield today, you might never guess the devastation that the Civil War’s “bloodiest single day of battle” inflicted on this quiet area. Lodged amidst the cornfields now are monuments, statues, and cannons that honor and remember the men that died there.
I used to have to cross over Antietam Creek in order to get to my college from home. Every time I drove over it (or more likely, was driven over it) a single sentence echoed eerily in my head: “The creek ran red with the blood of the fallen and wounded.”
The college I went to was right across the Potomac River from Sharpsburg (which is the town closest to the Antietam Battlefields). The area was overflowing with Civil War memories, ghosts and lore. It’s probably one of the things liked best about going to school there. There was such a sense of history. That long memory of the residents did lead to some odd myths and legends though.
One night, my freshman year, I went for a drive with a couple of people I knew. We were going to Antietam to experiment with a myth. The story goes that if you drive to this spot on a road I can only remember as “Bloody Lane” and put your car in neutral, your car will move UP a hill by itself. Supposedly, it’s being pushed by soldier-ghosts. So, we did as instructed, putting the car into neutral, and waited. We watched the cornfields on either side of the road, jittery in anticipation. And the car did move, but maybe we were on an incline we couldn’t detect. It wasn’t dramatic.
Until the guy driving the car let out a shout and said, “Did you see that?” “No, what?” My friend and I replied. “There was a guy out there. No, two. One was helping another across the road behind the car!” We craned our heads to look, thinking he was hallucinating or something. We didn’t see a thing.
He drove us away from there pretty quickly, acting genuinely spooked. After he’d calmed down, he started driving slowly back to school. On the way he described the men he’d seen. The sounded suspiciously like Confederate soldiers. My friend and I offered up suggestions: maybe they were re-enactors out late in the fields? Maybe he just hadn’t seen them clearly? Maybe he’d mistaken some trees waving in the wind for men?
He continued to swear that he’d seen ghosts out there. I never drove to “Bloody Lane” to try that again. Too many natives of the area told stories of the Civil War ghosts haunting the area. Much as I like history and areas steeped in it, I can live without the ghost stories!
