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     SARATOGA'S
  HAUNTED RAVINE

Saratoga_National_Historical_Park_entrance_sign,_New_York.jpg

Before the American Revolution, there was only one way that gentlemen fought on land.  Soldiers were ordered to line up on a field, look the opposition in the eye, then charge, hack, stab, blast, shoot, or stampede the other side to death.  The side with the most men standing won the day.  British General John Burgoyne sailed to Canada in the Spring of 1777, set on capturing Albany.  When he started his march, Burgoyne’s train held British army regulars, German Hessian mercenaries, American and Canadian Loyalists, Native American allies, and various servants, wives, female camp followers, and astonishingly, children. 

 

As Burgoyne’s men chopped their way through first-growth forests and dragged heavy cannons along primitive roads, British cool gave way to terror as they saw their officers systematically picked off by invisible, stalking riflemen.  Burgoyne was incensed.  These were Indian tactics, not the way civilized men fought.  By the time his army reached Saratoga its confidence was shattered, and some of its top officers were dead.

 

On a September day many years ago, before I trained as medium, the Revolutionary War buff in me took a day trip to Saratoga, visiting every marker on the battlefield.  By the time that I got to marker ten, “General Fraser’s Grave,” it was late afternoon. Fraser was one of Burgoyne’s most valuable assets,  destined to die at the hands of an American rifleman at the height of the second battle from a bullet aimed by one of American Colonel Daniel Morgan’s best.  Morgan’s Riflemen were a battalion of 500 frontier sharpshooters from western Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, querulous, uneducated, unruly, and invaluable.

 

Fraser’s monument sits across from a field where a contingent of Hessians camped, but as I hopped out of my car, I missed the marker and mistakenly headed down the steep path to my left following a ravine, bounded by woods on both sides.  It was a pretty walk but dark in the late afternoon light, and deathly still.  Something was off.  The atmosphere on the path was different from the rest of the park, but I kept walking.  Then, in an instant, my world plunged into pandemonium.  All of a sudden, my senses were slammed by a chattering crowd of people all around me; the muffled sound of franticly running feet; and the cries of voices calling out to a world that couldn’t hear them and couldn’t see them.  Invisible bodies brushed close to my side, bombarding me with questions that I couldn’t understand.  I felt women, children and bewilderment, theirs and mine.  When a strong male presence emerged on my left and began to keep pace with my every step, I started to panic but forced my mind to concentrate on nothing more than one shoe setting foot in front of the other.  Finally, finally I reached the bottom of the hill where the waters of the Hudson sparkled in the distance, and the atmosphere changed to clear and peaceful.  I took a deep breath.

 

After a five-minute respite, I forced myself to turn around and stare back up the hill, toward the dusk-filled ravine from where I had just come.  I had to make haste before the sun went down but stalled, sensing the shadowy inhabitants milling ahead of me.  Eventually, I sucked in a lungful of air, fixed my eyes on my shoes, and began marching back up the path as fast as I could, this time picturing a reflective, chrome egg surrounding me.  It helped.  When I reached the ghostly crowd my mind’s eye still saw boots and rustling hems, but this time they stayed a foot or two away.  I scurried uphill as fast as I could, concentrating on nothing more than one foot in front of the other.  When I reached the car I jammed the key into 

​​the door, threw myself into the driver’s seat, and hammered down the lock as though a couple of bolts could keep them out.  Then I tore away.

 

I couldn’t wait to leave, but I couldn’t wait to return, this time with mediums.  Since my encounter occurred years before I began my mediumship studies, I called on the elders.  It’s one thing for a medium to sit in a parlor and chat with transitioned loved ones, but another to face a rabble of uneasy spirits, occupying a haunted wood.  I had to laugh when a seasoned medium shot me a deer-in-the-headlights look and said, “Oh no, I don’t do that,” when I mentioned my haunted battlefield. Eventually, though, I tracked down a few pros willing to meet me at the battlefield one gray Sunday afternoon.  It happened to be October 16th, nine days after the anniversary of Burgoyne’s second pivotal battle, and one day before his surrender on the 17th.  Spirits are known to revisit a significant place as an anniversary draws near. 

 

When we got to Fraser’s Grave, the eldest medium walked ahead.  “So, you feel them, the earthbounds,” I said.

 

“Oh no, they’re not earthbound. They’re conflicted.” She began. “They keep revisiting this spot.  They’re hovering.” 

 

As we made our way down the path, another medium noted, “This was a British escape route.  They were guarding it carefully.  I see people hiding in the woods, but they want me to know that they’re here in peace.  They’re telling me that they did what they had to do.”   It's interesting to note that historians tell us that Morgan’s riflemen stalked those woods, and Burgoyne’s moored his escape boats along the river.  

           

The older medium continued, “I get confusion coming down the trail.  I feel that a Gerard or a Bernard made a huge mistake or a judgment call that created chaos and turned things backwards, everything that they had done previously.  I feel that they were on the crest of success, but then this Bernard or Gerard ...” she trailed off.  “You are in the middle of the woods, and you have guns that don’t fire correctly.  Everything was turned upside down.  I’m getting this confusion, and I feel that the spirits keep revisiting thinking ‘if only, if only.’  It’s like they want a redo because, in an instant, things flipped.  I don’t know what went on here, but the battle had been moving in one direction, and then in an instant it reversed itself,” adding, “I’m feeling people encamped around that bend, in dark colors, not red.” 

 

The mediums continued down the path.  “At this corner I’m feeling incredible energy and people stumbling, somebody wounded.  They were trying to carry him.  There is so much confusion.  They thought they were safe.  I feel that in the moments leading up to what happened, they were walking up the path singing and happy.” 

 

“This Bernard or Gerard managed to shift the blame for his bad decision to someone else, and it’s this person who won’t rest until he clears his name.  This man’s spirit is relieved that we’re here.” 

           

We reached the bottom, turned around and gazed up the path.  The older medium looked up toward the steeply sloping hill to our left.  “This is where they brought down the wounded.  This is where they set up their hospital.”

“It’s peaceful down here,” the other medium continued, “because the wounded found relief here.  I see them pulling the wounded down on sleds made of small trees tied together.  They brought the fallen all around where we are standing.”

What do Saratoga memoirists, historians, and experts say about battlefield mistakes, confusion, panic, stalking,

riflemen, and the presence of females

around the woods and the ravine?

           

According to Saratoga historian John Luzader, loyalist Joshua Pell wrote that three British regiments “were posted in a wood with a deep ravine to their front.  The fire was so hot that they broke, but by the spirited behavior of the officers rallied.  Major Agnew with the 24th Regiment advanced into the woods to flank them.  On the first onset the rebels retired in confusion.”  Luzader adds that during the September battle, Morgan’s riflemen fired so violently on the British 9th Regiment that half of its officers died instantly but countering, the British felled a good number of Morgan’s men as they ran onto the field.

 

In her memoirs, Baroness Frederika von Riedesel – accompanying her officer husband along with her maids and three young daughters -- wrote, “On the 7th fifteen hundred men marched out of the camp.  The enemy impetuously attacked our left wing, and the British grenadiers posted in the wood were defeated. Lieutenant Colonel Specht commanding the centre made a good stand and would have maintained longer had not Lord Barcarras on his right, been recalled through some mistake.  From that moment the enemy rushed forward from all sides.”

 

Luzader calls the Hessians invaluable partners to the British, building Breymann’s Redoubt at the top of the ravine where they held out against the Americans until their Lieutenant Colonel was killed, and the remaining Hessians were forced to run for their lives.

           

Christopher Ward writes that moments before Fraser’s death, Burgoyne ordered Sir Francis Clarke to ride out with orders to retreat, but Clarke was shot before he could deliver the message.  Clarke’s death, along with the news of Fraser’s death, spread panic along the British German lines.

 

The Bernard-Gerard story may always remain a mystery.  Eighteenth-century authors tend to omit first names favoring titles, and neglect the deeds of soldiers, preferring officers.  Park historian Eric Schnitzer wrote me, “Assuming that the man named Bernard-Gerard was on the British side (since it was felt from within the British lines), and assuming it was a proper given name (and not a nickname), I don't think it could have been the decision of an officer.  I don't think there were officers by that name in Burgoyne's Army.  It could have been a soldier and soldiers certainly made decisions, but not usually ones of military significance.  Could it have been something personal?”  While I could not find a British or German officer named Bernard or Gerard, according to the Johannes Schwalm Historical Association three Hessians: Bernhard Schellhass, Gebhard Wiechmann, and Philipp Gerhardt fought at Saratoga and remained in America. 

Regarding the presence of females, according to Eric Schnitzer there were quite a number of females travelling with the British army.   As he wrote, “Burgoyne’s army had about 300 women and a few hundred children.”  It’s difficult for the modern mind to fathom wives, girlfriends, and children travelling with an army, but in Europe in that era, it was standard practice.

 

Who are the spirits who revisit the ravine?  Since the path abuts the former Hessian camp, possibly more Germans than British along with spectral American riflemen still stalking the woods; women, forever asking after their men; and panic-stricken children.  But regardless of how many first-person accounts there are to read, we can never know everything that happened atop of the plateau or along the path by the ravine.  But we do know one thing for certain: every now and then, men, women, and children attached to both armies return to relive the tragic hours they spent in that place.

© Medium Gail, MediumGail.com

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