Manassas National Battlefield, VA

In the war between the states, the North and South met up twice in what is known as the battles of Bull Run. June 1861 and again in August 1862. Around 24,000 men died in those two conflicts. I think some of them still think it's still going on.

In April 1964 me and two of my friends went camping up on a wooded area of the park. My oldest sister owned a house not more then a 1/2 mile from the park. It was Easter break from school and we had four days of camping and hiking to do. She picked us up and took us back to her house. We told her about where we were headed and off we went. We went about a mile or so and found the spot we wanted for the night. It was up on a small rolling hill and had a wonderful view of the area.

We set up the tent and got the campfire going. After we cooked our food it started to rain so in the tent we headed. As a bunch of 12 year old boys would do we started talking about the girls at school and what ever else 12 year olds talked about. Not once did the subject of ghost come up. We all started to dose off when we heard what sounded like Jug band music. By this I mean someone blowing on a jug and playing a harmonica. I had never heard the tune they were playing but it was foot tapping. You could hear men talking and clapping along with the music.
We at first thought some other group of people had camped close to us. We got out of the tent and could see a campfire down the hill from us about 100 or so feet. There seem to be about 10 or more people that we could see around the campfire. They were glowing blue in color. That might have been from the flames of the fire. You could see what looked like rifles, some had crossed in their arms. As we were looking down the hill everything went dark. There was no campfire or music or people in blue.
I think we all felt fear at the same time. We started running as fast and hard as we could. We took nothing with us. We ran the wrong way hitting trees and each other and when we did get back to my sisters house we all were shaking in her hallway next to her bedroom.

After the sun came up we went to get our stuff. We decided to go down the hill to see about the campfire and people we had seen just hours before. The underbrush was too much to have had a camp there and we could not find any traces of a campfire.

We stayed at my sisters house the rest of the time, and went hiking only. No more camping for that trip.

I had never been so frightened in my life, but could not have asked for a better camping trip. What an adventure that was.

I have not seen my friends in twenty or more years as we all went different ways and I no longer live in Virginia but the last time I saw one of them was around 1986, the camping trip was brought up and relived once again.

I still wonder if they were Northern or Southern troops and if they were reliving a happy night before their last battle.

Whatever it was, it sure got me thinking about ghosts and wanting to find out more.