Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 28, 1995 TAG: 9502280066
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BETH MACY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHARLOTTESVILLE LENGTH: Long
But there he is sitting by a tree in the black-and-white photograph Nannette Morrison shot last summer - 130 years to the day after 7,000 Union soldiers were killed in an ill-conceived assault on entrenched Confederate soldiers at the Hanover County battleground.
A little bit fuzzy and more than a little bit eerie. Morrison used her mother's Canon AE-1 to capture on film what she believes is the spirit of a Civil War soldier. Tormented by his sudden, violent death, he wanders the ground in a state of anguish - not even aware that he's dead, she postulates.
This finding and others are the basis of "Echoes of Valor" ($14.95, Bookwrights press of Charlottesville), the first of two compilations of ghost stories anchored in the hallowed grounds of this country's bloodiest war.
A psychic, massage therapist and poet, Morrison strives to "help energies that are stuck move on," she says.
Morrison didn't actually see the spirit of the soldier she now believes is Pvt. Jonathan Schadle, buried in grave No. 327 of the Cold Harbor Cemetery, but believes she was "psychically drawn" to shoot the picture.
Two weeks later when her film was processed, she first thought the soldier was her real-life friend Tim Frederickson, a Civil War re-enactor who accompanied her on the trip, in costume.
But Frederickson hadn't worn the Union blues that day, he wore Confederate gray.
"When I took this picture, all the sounds of nature stopped," she recalls. "The birds stopped chirping, the breeze came to a halt. ... We didn't feel threatened, but you knew something kinda creepy was going on."
Pvt. Schadle's ghost emerged in the print at the base of an oak tree, Morrison concluded, because that's where he died.
Like most of Morrison's ghost photos, the image calls for a bit of imagination on the part of the viewer. At first glance, Morrison's picture of a stand of trees at the Point Lookout battlefield in Maryland looks just like that - a stand of trees.
But once Morrison suggests the presence of a white figure in the middle, and four ghostly faces near the ground, the images pop out like those three-dimensional pictures at the mall.
If if you squint hard enough ... and you believe.
Morrison, 44, started her book last March after a strange visit to grandmother's house in Grafton, W.Va. "It was about 11 at night, and all of a sudden my mother and I heard this incredibly loud banging coming from the attic over the kitchen, but there was nothing there," she recalls.
The house, she later learned, was constructed before the Civil War in a valley that became part of the Underground Railroad, which smuggled slaves northward. Union troops were also stationed nearby.
Back in Charlottesville, her focus narrowed as she stumbled upon ghost story after ghost story - all stemming from sightings where Civil War battles once raged.
A client told her about a woman who glimpsed a Confederate soldier ghost at her home near Crozet. The spirit had blond hair and a mischievous grin. But when the woman directly faced the ghost, its image shattered and fell in chunks, like a broken pane of glass.
By April, Morrison had met several Civil War re-enactors who likewise had eerie sightings to describe, including the stories of several extras who appeared as soldiers in the movie "Gettysburg." Their stories are clumped in a single chapter of the book.
She also devoted a chapter to an Oklahoma City man named Greg George, who went on a nine-year quest that culminated in his conclusion that he was a Civil War soldier in a previous life. Morrison chronicles his story, including his visit to grave No. 983 in a Danville cemetery.
Morrison snapped a photo of George wearing a Confederate cap and waving an American flag by the grave of James H. VanNostrand, from whom he believes he is reincarnated.
While "Echoes of Valor" is a straightforward, if incredible, account of Civil War ghost stories, Morrison hopes to break deeper ground with her sequel, "A Thundering Silence," due out in November. She'll continue researching ghost stories for the book, but she'll also explore her process of conversing with the spirits through prayer and meditation.
"I try to help the spirits that are ready to move on, that's my purpose - to help the spirits," she says. "And I want people to understand that [spirits are] not something to be afraid of, or to play with.
"People need to know more about the dying process; that it's not so final, it's a transition," she adds. "By being more spiritual on a daily basis and less materialistic, we have less to be concerned with" in the after-life.
Nannette Morrison will sign copies of her book from 1 to 3 p.m. March 11 at Roanoke's Books Strings & Things; Books-a-Million is also sponsoring a book-signing April 15 from 2 to 4 p.m.
by CNB