Okay, I couldn't resist, I have to tell my story. please remember that no matter how weird this all sounds, it is 100% true.
let me begin by telling you that I am a civil war reenactor. It is a hobby that I very much enjoy because we do see weird stuff from time to time, particularly or night sentry duty, which is where we take shifts basically just walking around making sure everything is ok, which we have sentries from 10 pm to about 7 am.
a few years ago we were at Appomattox, VA, which is were Lee surrendered to Grant, right after a short battle, which, while resulting in casualties from both sides, was more or less a massacre for the starving poorly equipped confederate army. My reenactor regiment portrays a North Carolina regiment. We are pure infantry, no horses or cannons or anything like that.
Knowing standing sentry would be truly an honor, 2 friends and I signed up for 3 separate shifts, one at midnight, one at 2 am, and one at 4 am. they are hour long shifts.
FIRST SHIFT
Everything started pleasantly enough. Walking around, just enjoying the night air, one thing that was very weird right off the bat was that whenever you walked down a certain road, you heard hoofsteps behind, you, but nothing really violent, just very slow hoofbeats behind you. slowly things started getting weirder. up on the ridge there was a stone wall, and at night, it looked there were cannons there, when there was clearly weren't any cannons during the day. my friends became a little anxious and started trying to laugh off the weird things including the white fog that would disappear when you got close enough to investigate what it was. I expected little strange occurrences like this, and was unphased.
SECOND SHIFT
Nothing really happened at first, even the odd things that happened in our first shift weren't happening any more, or at least until we got about 20 minutes in, that is. we were walking past a grave for a confederate soldier that Joined the confederate army on the day of the attack on fort Sumter. He was killed on the last day of the war. as we marveled at what a truly sad fate he had, we began to hear a soft, slow, sad, music, but the weirdest part was that we all had tears in our eyes. we didn't cry or anything, our eyes just started tearing up, which I found very unusual, because I really don't cry, even when my family members have died, I didn't cry. well, we moved on away from that area and were walking down another path, when we came to a point where the paths crossed. There was an old bearded man leaning up a fence, we say hello, and he looks at us, mumbled something I can't understand, and then smiles. His teath are HUGE, shiny, and very sharp. then he start laughing and I could tell he was about to run at us by the way he shifted his body, and when he mad his first step, I swung around my rifle, using it as a club, since we don't use live ammunition, being reenactors, and our rifles are about 5 feet long, and weigh about 11 pounds. At this point my friends start freaking out after my swing hit something that wasn't there anymore. meanwhile I keep my composure, knowing that nothing scares people more than seeing another person freaking out. I manage calm my friends by remaining calm myself (although admittedly I was scared out of my mind, and had a feeling things were just heating up).
THIRD SHIFT
due to the events of our previous shifts, all 3 of us take our rifles, and attach the bayonets as well, meaning we could skewer anything within 6 feet of us. we are walking down a high road and I have to tie my shoe, so I lean my hand on a stone wall, and as soon as I do it, I have what I guess you could call a vision. I am standing in the same spot, but it is day time, and I can see smoke down the hill. I can also hear screams, the crack of muskets, and the concussion of cannon. There is what appears to be a Union officer standing next to me, he, like me, is leaning one hand on the stone wall. we both look out and we can see the massacre below. The confederates are surrounded on all sides, and just getting destroyed. then the union officer looks at me and shakes his head with a sad, yet angry look on his face. I could tell he felt sorry for the confederates, disgusted by the massacre. then the vision was over. My friends face replaced that of the officer, and it is night again. My friend is now shaking me and asking me if I am ok. I am, so we continue. We walk down a sunken road that is lined by big trees. we walk down the road, and on our back up the road, while just scanning the fields, by the tree closest to me, about 15 feet to be exact there is a very tall, very skinny, all black figure that is just staring at me. he has four arms. I realize something is up and as I thrust my rifle with the attached bayonet at it, it literally jumps into the tree. I poked the tree several times with the bayonet but there is nothing there. (I thought at the time he was the grim reaper or something, but in retrospect when I first heard about slenderman, this is what came to my mind, even though he supposedly made up, you can't explain all the pictures and wood carvings) I am beginning to crack and I am visibly shaking. we continue walking along the sunken road, which ends in a hill a the end. we hear hoofbeats from the hill and when we look we see the shadowy figure of a man on horseback, holding a sword high in the air. we can see him easily because he is in front of the moon. we stop dead in our tracks. He turns the horse to face us. we start slowly backing away, back down the sunken road, back torwards the camp. then the horseman starts charging at us, sword pointed at a downward angle. Is clear he plans to get one of us with that sword and at this point our fight or flight response kicks in. I crouch down and point my bayonet upward, as I plan to catch him in the throat with it. I look to my side and see my friends are running away. I remember thinking that I would rather die than live as such a coward. as he charged me, I truly began to think that that road was my place of death. when he got close enough, I braced for impact and stuck my bayonet up in the air, but he just disappeared right when he was about to get me with his sword. I remember feeling very cold. I fell back on the ground and blacked out for a short amount of time, and when I came to, My friends were carrying me back to camp. I told them I was fine and I walked the rest of the way. They didn't see what happened to me because they were running, but they came back when they heard the hoofbeats abruptly end, and found me laying in the middle of the road.
I've NEVER told anyone this. nor have the 2 friends who also were there that night. we told the park ranger about the horseman, and he told us to ask his 6 year old daughter what she liked to to do at night, and she said " I like to sit in the field with daddy and watch the man ride the horse up and down the road at night." the park ranger went on to tell us that a Union officer on horseback was shot by a North Carolinian soldier on that road during the battle. He was dead before He even fell off the horse. As I previously mentioned, we portray a North Carolina infantry regiment, and our jacket buttons all have the state seal on them, making our jackets very identifiable as NC Infantry. I believe that horseman was out for revenge on a north Carolinian, because there are no accounts of him attacking anyone, and there still isn't, because we decided it was best not to tell.
let me begin by telling you that I am a civil war reenactor. It is a hobby that I very much enjoy because we do see weird stuff from time to time, particularly or night sentry duty, which is where we take shifts basically just walking around making sure everything is ok, which we have sentries from 10 pm to about 7 am.
a few years ago we were at Appomattox, VA, which is were Lee surrendered to Grant, right after a short battle, which, while resulting in casualties from both sides, was more or less a massacre for the starving poorly equipped confederate army. My reenactor regiment portrays a North Carolina regiment. We are pure infantry, no horses or cannons or anything like that.
Knowing standing sentry would be truly an honor, 2 friends and I signed up for 3 separate shifts, one at midnight, one at 2 am, and one at 4 am. they are hour long shifts.
FIRST SHIFT
Everything started pleasantly enough. Walking around, just enjoying the night air, one thing that was very weird right off the bat was that whenever you walked down a certain road, you heard hoofsteps behind, you, but nothing really violent, just very slow hoofbeats behind you. slowly things started getting weirder. up on the ridge there was a stone wall, and at night, it looked there were cannons there, when there was clearly weren't any cannons during the day. my friends became a little anxious and started trying to laugh off the weird things including the white fog that would disappear when you got close enough to investigate what it was. I expected little strange occurrences like this, and was unphased.
SECOND SHIFT
Nothing really happened at first, even the odd things that happened in our first shift weren't happening any more, or at least until we got about 20 minutes in, that is. we were walking past a grave for a confederate soldier that Joined the confederate army on the day of the attack on fort Sumter. He was killed on the last day of the war. as we marveled at what a truly sad fate he had, we began to hear a soft, slow, sad, music, but the weirdest part was that we all had tears in our eyes. we didn't cry or anything, our eyes just started tearing up, which I found very unusual, because I really don't cry, even when my family members have died, I didn't cry. well, we moved on away from that area and were walking down another path, when we came to a point where the paths crossed. There was an old bearded man leaning up a fence, we say hello, and he looks at us, mumbled something I can't understand, and then smiles. His teath are HUGE, shiny, and very sharp. then he start laughing and I could tell he was about to run at us by the way he shifted his body, and when he mad his first step, I swung around my rifle, using it as a club, since we don't use live ammunition, being reenactors, and our rifles are about 5 feet long, and weigh about 11 pounds. At this point my friends start freaking out after my swing hit something that wasn't there anymore. meanwhile I keep my composure, knowing that nothing scares people more than seeing another person freaking out. I manage calm my friends by remaining calm myself (although admittedly I was scared out of my mind, and had a feeling things were just heating up).
THIRD SHIFT
due to the events of our previous shifts, all 3 of us take our rifles, and attach the bayonets as well, meaning we could skewer anything within 6 feet of us. we are walking down a high road and I have to tie my shoe, so I lean my hand on a stone wall, and as soon as I do it, I have what I guess you could call a vision. I am standing in the same spot, but it is day time, and I can see smoke down the hill. I can also hear screams, the crack of muskets, and the concussion of cannon. There is what appears to be a Union officer standing next to me, he, like me, is leaning one hand on the stone wall. we both look out and we can see the massacre below. The confederates are surrounded on all sides, and just getting destroyed. then the union officer looks at me and shakes his head with a sad, yet angry look on his face. I could tell he felt sorry for the confederates, disgusted by the massacre. then the vision was over. My friends face replaced that of the officer, and it is night again. My friend is now shaking me and asking me if I am ok. I am, so we continue. We walk down a sunken road that is lined by big trees. we walk down the road, and on our back up the road, while just scanning the fields, by the tree closest to me, about 15 feet to be exact there is a very tall, very skinny, all black figure that is just staring at me. he has four arms. I realize something is up and as I thrust my rifle with the attached bayonet at it, it literally jumps into the tree. I poked the tree several times with the bayonet but there is nothing there. (I thought at the time he was the grim reaper or something, but in retrospect when I first heard about slenderman, this is what came to my mind, even though he supposedly made up, you can't explain all the pictures and wood carvings) I am beginning to crack and I am visibly shaking. we continue walking along the sunken road, which ends in a hill a the end. we hear hoofbeats from the hill and when we look we see the shadowy figure of a man on horseback, holding a sword high in the air. we can see him easily because he is in front of the moon. we stop dead in our tracks. He turns the horse to face us. we start slowly backing away, back down the sunken road, back torwards the camp. then the horseman starts charging at us, sword pointed at a downward angle. Is clear he plans to get one of us with that sword and at this point our fight or flight response kicks in. I crouch down and point my bayonet upward, as I plan to catch him in the throat with it. I look to my side and see my friends are running away. I remember thinking that I would rather die than live as such a coward. as he charged me, I truly began to think that that road was my place of death. when he got close enough, I braced for impact and stuck my bayonet up in the air, but he just disappeared right when he was about to get me with his sword. I remember feeling very cold. I fell back on the ground and blacked out for a short amount of time, and when I came to, My friends were carrying me back to camp. I told them I was fine and I walked the rest of the way. They didn't see what happened to me because they were running, but they came back when they heard the hoofbeats abruptly end, and found me laying in the middle of the road.
I've NEVER told anyone this. nor have the 2 friends who also were there that night. we told the park ranger about the horseman, and he told us to ask his 6 year old daughter what she liked to to do at night, and she said " I like to sit in the field with daddy and watch the man ride the horse up and down the road at night." the park ranger went on to tell us that a Union officer on horseback was shot by a North Carolinian soldier on that road during the battle. He was dead before He even fell off the horse. As I previously mentioned, we portray a North Carolina infantry regiment, and our jacket buttons all have the state seal on them, making our jackets very identifiable as NC Infantry. I believe that horseman was out for revenge on a north Carolinian, because there are no accounts of him attacking anyone, and there still isn't, because we decided it was best not to tell.
