The Big Book of Pennsylvania Ghost Stories

by Mark Nesbitt, Patty A. Wilson

A treasury of 125 ghost stories from the Keystone State makes up this huge volume. Each region of Pennsylvania is represented by an assortment of eerie tales, gathered by two of the state's best-known authors on the subject,

Genres: Paranormal, Ghosts, History, Horror, Nonfiction, Ghost Stories

368 pages, Hardcover

First published August 30, 2008

About the author

Mark Nesbitt was a National Park Service Ranger/Historian for five years at Gettysburg before starting his own research and writing company. Since then he has published fourteen books including the national award-winning Ghosts of Gettysburg series. His stories have been seen on The History Channel, A&E, The Discovery Channel, The Travel Channel, Unsolved Mysteries, and numerous regional television shows and heard on Coast to Coast AM, and regional radio. In 1994, he created the commercially successful Ghosts of Gettysburg Candlelight Walking Tours

Reviews

[Sarah-Grace (Azrael865) · Rating 5 out of 5]

A chilly rainy day and a chilly eerie read.

The Big Book of Pennsylvania Ghost Stories is filled with legends and tales that span the Keystone state, broken up by region. Many of the stories are from colonial times, The Revolutionary War and a few accidents and murders. It is no surprise that the Civil War has the most stories. Over 7,000 combined soldiers died over the course of 3 day in the small farm community of Gettysburg. Over 33,000 were injured. Of all the casualties only 1 civilian was killed, as she was baking bread for the soldiers in her house. If ghosts do exist, Gettysburg, with its history of blood and suffering, would be the place to find them.

I'm not saying I believe in ghosts, these stories do give good snapshots into history. From the clash between settlers and natives, the founding fathers, the growth of a nation and the building of the railway system and industry, Pennsylvania has a rich deep history.

If these historic personages were still around as ghosts, I believe they would just shake their heads at the world today and think "What a Mess, no reason to stick around here anymore."

[Jakob Shingler · Rating 5 out of 5]

This one started off as something just to read in the background and a couple stories/passages every other day. But once I got to the “Gettysburg” chapter, that’s when reading this became my top priority. Although most of the history and the accounts told this book aren’t happy at all, with colonization, war, death and murder, and it’s still good to learn about. They happened and it shouldn’t be forgotten. They’re a part of our country’s history, we have to embrace it instead of shelving it.

With all that said I really enjoy this book! As someone who lives in PA, it was nice to learn about the history of my home state and some paranormal stories that came with it is a nice added bonus. I love reading and watching about paranormal encounters, and can’t wait to dive deeper into the rabbit hole of this genre for years to come.

[Joe · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book started very slowly...so slowly that I started to doubt whether I should continue onward or give up. The collection of stories are broken into sections according to geographic area and it began with the Philadelphia area. In the Philly section, there was story after story of Hessian or other Revolutionary soldiers hanging out it basements. Id much rather the authors had just dedicated on collective chapter to the subject of Hessian soldiers hanging out in basements, provide a couple of the more exciting examples, and then list the collection of bars, restaurants, and inns that have similar sightings.

Finally things started to pick up a bit with a series of stories that included Little Girl Lost, which had a more engaging narrative style.

I realized I was really hooked at some point in the collection of stories from Gettysburg. It helped that there was much more historical knowledge that helped explain why some of the hauntings may occur.

Finally, it’s pretty cool I’ve added a number of places to visit in my home state. I’d give this book 3.5 stars if I could, but have to settle for 3 based on it’s very rocky beginning.

[Jodi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I teach Pennsylvania History to my students so I picked up this book out of a morbid curiosity of the "weird" things around Pennsylvania. Definitely a lot of creepy stories in this book and I must admit I had a few nights where I found it hard to sleep and coming up from the basement in the dark was a tad scary from me. That said, I wouldn't mind visiting the Eastern State Penitentiary. Eek!

[Erin Rogoff · Rating 5 out of 5]

How did I come by this book? Every year, my family goes on vacation in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. We’re all history buffs and can’t deny the pull/spell/call it what you will that Gettysburg holds over us. Each time we go, I come home with at least three ghost-related books of sightings and stories of unexplained phenomena that science can’t explain. I have a whole shelf dedicated exclusively to Pennsylvania ghost stories, and that won’t change anytime soon!

Do I believe in ghosts unrelated to the odd phenomena I’ve experienced in Gettysburg, specifically? Yes and no. I want to say yes because I’ve experienced things I can’t explain, but as a young woman from a scientific family, I don’t believe in the paranormal… yet. Believing in the paranormal would explain some things, but until I experience something I can’t explain with fact or logic 100%, I’ll simply continue daydream about the paranormal being real.

Although I’m fascinated by the paranormal and all sorts of unexplained phenomena, what I love so much about ghost stories is learning about the personalities of ghosts because I don’t feel, if there are any, that each are bloodthirsty or hold grudges. The ghost story that stuck with me most after reading the first part in this book was the ghostly encounter with a protective Union soldier—

A single mom of two boys, ages 4 and 2, moved into a supposedly haunted home in eastern Pennsylvania that was built near a battlefield where Union soldiers fought Confederates.
The two boys shared a bedroom and told their mom a man in blue visited them every night and stood at their door only when it was closed.
The mom thought her sons were being imaginative, but when she saw the man in blue walk down the hall to her sons’ room, she recognized him as a Union soldier.
Instead of panicking, she asked the specter to not hurt her boys, just to protect them.
The boys told their mom the man in blue would watch over them and always be at the door if they woke up and would occasionally smile at them.

—So, hearing that story makes me think that not all “ghosts” are dark or have bad intentions; they instead have personalities individual to each of them. That Union soldier could’ve been a father of two boys and wanted to protect the woman’s two boys like his own. To me, that isn’t scary; that’s a beautiful example of otherworldly love beyond scientific understanding.

One of the ghost stories that was both beautiful and sad spoke of the loyalty between two brothers that had my heart aching in all the brightest and saddest ways. My brother and I are lifelong hikers and go camping often. Our dad taught us how to tell direction without compasses and make use of the North Star if lost anytime and how to retrace our steps if ever lost, so this story had me thinking about how protective I’ve always been of my brother (much to his irritation, at times, ha-ha!) from the time we were tiny hiker kids rarely seen apart ourselves. Anyway, the story goes—

A young couple had four children, two older boys and two younger girls.
The dad went hunting, and his sons followed him in secret to surprise him.
The mom thought the dad knew the boys were following him, but he thought they were still home with their mother.
The brothers were fiercely protective of each other and were rarely, if ever, seen apart. The boys got lost in the forest, but family friends believed the brothers wouldn’t separate.
When the parents were reunited, they realized their sons were lost, and a search was carried out to explore forest, but they searched in the wrong area, so days passed, then weeks, and all knew the boys were most likely dead.
The boys’ parents had friends who started dreaming about them, and in the dream, the boys were hugging beneath a birch tree (I forget if the tree was a birch, so fact-checking me on this would be a good idea), and when the parents went to the birch tree, they found the boys hugging but no longer alive.
The boys were buried together and not once separated, but it’s believed the boys’ innocent souls reached out from the other side to guide their parents to them and give them a shard of peace, even though their family would never be whole again.

Another story that stuck with me but in negative regards was of an angry old drunk whose ghostly dogs haunted him to the end of his life. The story, in short—

He got drunk and took his aggression out on his dogs, the only beings who truly loved him and hurt them permanently, including his beloved Maggie, the matriarch of his dog pack.
When he came out of his drunkenness and realized what he’d done, he was horrified and regretful and lived the remainder of his days all alone because human friends of his family heard what he did to his dogs and excommunicated him from their friend group.
I believe he deserved every amount of torture after what he did to his loyal dogs, and for the rest of his life, he heard his dogs howling and died in misery.

—I think, having faith and believing in Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell, God sentenced the man justly and made him feel all the pain and agony he inflicted on his dogs. Justice in this life is nothing compared to that which is given in the afterlife, or so I believe.

I felt nothing but intrigue and fascination in reading this book over a twenty-four-hour time span. I was thrilled by all the ghost stories, captivated by the details, and jealous in a humorous sense that I haven’t experienced even one-fourth of these ghostly encounters when I visit Gettysburg. Jeez, I was even jealous of my dad for having gone to the forests of Hawk Mountain, where a serial killer in the 1840s was said to have buried his many victims. I want to explore and possibly excavate the forests of Hawk Mountain, too, just like my dad did!

The only things I’d say I disliked in reading this book can be narrowed down to two specific points. One, I wasn’t the one personally experiencing these unexplained phenomena for myself despite all the times I’ve visited the haunted parts of Pennsylvania; and two, that I haven’t been to all the places mentioned in this book myself, like Hawk Mountain, where my dad has been many times. Dare I say I’m jealous of my dad for that? I want to explore the burial grounds where 1840s serial killer Matthias Shambacher hid his slain victims! Not all Matthias’s victims were discovered, and even though this is a cold case from almost 200 years ago, I’m still unbelievably fascinated!

This book was definitely a page-turner! I read this in just one night, from dusk till dawn, even with the power in my house going out for four and a half hours during a storm. The stories were short but remarkably detailed, and the way Mark and Patty wrote the book made me imagine each story as though I was the one experiencing it myself—so cool! Despite being a native Jersey girl, I have a fierce love for ghost stories out-of-state, Pennsylvania, specifically; possibly because I visit yearly and have already been to so many haunted places in New Jersey. Call me a ghost hunter hobbyist, but if I had my way, I’d live in some isolated forested part of Pennsylvania (if I couldn’t live in Gettysburg, specifically!) with my family and love it! Unexplained phenomena doesn’t scare me; it fascinates me, so if I lived in a haunted house or property, I’d probably love it while raising my kids to be respectful of the ghosts who lived there long before we entered the picture, like my mom did, in part, for my brother and me.

I wouldn’t want to be the author of this book, The Big Book of Pennsylvania Ghost Stories, in place of Mark Nesbitt and Patty A. Wilson, but I would absolutely love to sit down with them and talk to them about their own experiences dealing with the paranormal, if any. I’m fascinated by anything science can’t explain, which either turns into a conspiracy theory or is under the umbrella term of the paranormal, but I’d love to learn from Mark and Patty myself.

Finishing my review—I wouldn’t say this book was a mix of specific books but instead two authors coming together with detailed ghost stories from statewide communities of people who experienced the paranormal side to life in Pennsylvania, not having anything to do with an actual book-and-other-book mix. I was hooked reading this from the first page and could barely put the book down, even if I wanted to. I’d recommend this book to thrill-seekers everywhere and rave to cryptid-enthusiasts to read this book and explore the wilderness and haunted areas of Pennsylvania as soon as possible. Will I read all the other books by Mark Nesbitt and Patty A. Wilson’s? Absolutely! Am I planning yet another trip to Pennsylvania? Yes again! I’m in for ghost-hunting in Pennsylvania anytime and all the time! This fearless, cryptid-seeking, explorative thrill-seeker is up for it all!

[Bill Tress · Rating 3 out of 5]

The decision to read this book was because I watched a TV show called, “PA. Books” where the authors discussed their experiences with ghosts. There were two authors, Mark Nesbitt and Patty Wilson. The show got my attention when one of the authors, Mark Nesbitt discussed an encounter he had with a ghost. He stated that while in a house looking for ghosts, he saw a female ghost dressed in black, just out of the corner of his eye. He then stated that everyone knows that you can’t look directly at a ghost because they will disappear, so he watched for a few seconds until his curiosity got the better of him and he looked directly at the ghost which than disappeared. I did not know that there were rules about dealing with ghosts, so I wanted to investigate further, so I would know what to do when the time came that I encountered a ghost. Ghosts, poltergeist and all things that go bump in the night have always been of interest, yet, this reviewer is skeptical of most ghost stories.
The book starts off quite slowly, and I began to question the judgement I made to read the book. The stories initially centered in Eastern Pa. primarily in Philadelphia. The stories were from the seventh century and usually involved abuse and death, thus justifying the ghost. Many of the stories were common knowledge, such as, the Eastern State Penitentiary. This institution was noted for its brutality and was pointed out by none other than Charles Dickins as an example of the decadence of American society because of how we treated our prisoners.
In the telling of each ghost story, it becomes clear that most old hotels, Inns and restaurants in the Philadelphia area have ghost stories and you must wonder, is this an advertising gimmick? These stories are repetitious and redundant, someone is killed, and their spirit remains to haunt the place of the murder.
The section on Central Pennsylvania became more interesting because this reviewer is familiar with a few of the stories. The story of the murder at the Accomac Inn was such a story, the murderer was a man with a simple mind who was attracted to a pretty servant girl and when she rejected his advances, he murdered her. The story in this book states that he was found guilty of his crime and was hanged, and the murdered girl and the murderer may still haunt the Inn!? Yet, there was much more to this story that the author did not see fit to present in this book! The murderer’s family had the means to appeal the decision of the court all the way to the Supreme Court, yet, the verdict of hanging was finally executed. This story line is far more compelling then a simple murder case and possible haunting, so the story was found wanting by this reviewer.
Another Central Pennsylvania murder was the case of the Hex murder. The author took the same approach in this story, focusing on the murder and then speculating that the home was haunted. This case, like the Accomac Inn case got national attention in the press. The press position was that the Pennsylvania Dutch of Central Pa. were an ignorant, unsophisticated people who were obsessed with witchcraft and superstition. This case like the other was a murder that in this reviewer thinking had little to do with ghosts.
There was a point in the Central Pa. section that I found quite humorous despite the authors efforts. In the telling of the ghosts in the Eutaw House, the author states that Edgar Allen Poe visited this site and got the idea for his famous poem, “The Raven” while staying there. Further on in telling the ghost story of the General Wayne Inn, the author tells us that Poe penned “The Raven” while staying at this Inn! This reviewer had recently finished a biography of Charles Dickins where it is stated that when Poe met Dickins while Dickens toured the United States, he got the idea for the poem from Dickens pet Raven. So, go figure when and why did Poe write his poem about a Raven? Each Inn lays claim to the poem, does that make the food or accommodations better?
Finally, the section on Ghost in Gettysburg arrived! Written by Nesbitt who is a battlefield guide. Nesbitt presents his stories in a well written pragmatic way. In most instances, he describes the battle or the location quite well. Since, I am attached to Civil War stories these became of interest and some of the golden nuggets presented have not been found in the many books on the Gettysburg Battle.
In the story, The “Cavalryman finally rests” Nesbitt claims that Lee angrily chastised Stuart on his late arrival at the battle. I have not heard of this strong reaction by Lee before and wonder how accurate it is. Also, when Stuart makes his end run trying to get behind the Union Army just before Pickett’s charge it is a little-known captain of Union cavalry, William Miller who disobeying orders and attacks Stuart’s rear thus ends the engagement and possibly brining on the defeat of the Southern Army. Most history books give the credit to General Custer, for this information alone, the book was worth reading!
Most people have ghost story to tell. Mine happened when I was about 9 or 10 years old and on the second floor of my home, I heard the front door open and I heard the voices of my cousins, Dick and John. I was so happy to hear them that I raced down the hall and leaped down the steeps to the first floor only to find that no one was there, and the front door locked. Fifty plus years later, I will swear that I heard them, what does this mean, to me it means that our mind sometimes plays tricks on us. I believe that there are people that are of a sensitive nature and they feel and sense things that others don’t, I am not one of those people. There are too many ghost stories to discount all of them, yet, I remain an agnostic until that day when I hear that bump in the night. This book was entertaining and would make good bedside reading material, if you dare!

[Briar Campbell · Rating 4 out of 5]

About half of the book is about Gettysburg and Civil War era ghosts.

In fact the stories and legends are laid out in an in-depth but accessible manner, depicting a lot more about the Civil War than you may have learned in school. So much lore surrounds Gettysburg; it was easy to see how passionate at least one of the authors is about the subject, that I could not help but be drawn in.

It did not skim on acknowledging the terrible cost the war exacted on the people who fought it. History tends to focus on the survivors, but Nesbitt and Wilson tell the tales of those that didn't survive. Stories of farmhands hearing the sounds of battle soon after the war ended, ghostly images of the injured and amputees in former infirmaries, and soldiers still trying to find their way back to their loved ones are told without the glitter of romanticization. Instead they convey the sheer expendability of the soldiers who gave their lives and well-being in this war.

Some of the other areas in the state seemed shallow and disparate in comparison, though the diligent research pops up again once in a while with some stories, like the history of Eastern State penitentiary and buildings that had acted as key places for spies in the American Revolution.

[Mars G. · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is MUCH, MUCH better than the other book that these authors collaborated on. There are some stories that are the same but written in a much better way, and some welcome additions.

I do have some complaints: most importantly, the portrayal of some people of color. I understand that there were tensions between natives and colonizers but there's no need to mention "savages" etc. The other thing that bothered me was the layout of the book. One would think that it would start with Pittsburgh and go east or Philadelphia and go west, but the regions covered jump around weirdly. The other thing is that Gettysburg takes up around 1/3 of the book. I'm not necessarily bothered by that, but it claims PENNSYLVANIA ghost stories, so it would have been nice to see some of the more skimmed over regions represented better.

[Ursula Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Large Number of Haunted Locales

This is a great collection of ghost stories covering many locales in Pennsylvania. The book is organized by region and the stories are interesting. The audio book has great narration of the stories. A brief history of the locale is provided, then the major events are related and details of the haunting. Great for history buffs and paranormal fans.

[Robi A · Rating 5 out of 5]

The BEST True Ghost Collection

I've read LOTS of ghostly stories in my time, but this anthology was totally fascinating. The authors also taught Pennsylvania History in small bits, which greatly enhanced the stories and their historical origins I wish all ghosts were so well explained.

[Sandi Turner · Rating 5 out of 5]

Actually this surprised me with interesting facts. I enjoyed reading the many stories associated with this book. If the authors thought the story was made up or they could not find evidence to support it, it was noted.

[Linda E. Clark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great read!! Loved the stories!!

[Erin Merrill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting stories, lots of repetition in the Gettysburg section. Makes me want to visit these places and see what what I can see!

[Rebecca Hill · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fun read! I enjoyed it.