A Ghost Story -- Fox's Gap, South Mountain, Maryland

This is a mirror on a tree at Fox's Gap, directly across the road from where Wise's cabin once stood. It is on the stretch of road here reflected in the mirror that Daniel would have seen the ghostly soldier approaching.

Late in the summer of 1862, more than a year after the start of the Civil War, Army of Northern Virginia General Robert E. Lee decided that it was time to carry the war into the North. Sentiment toward the war in the border state of Maryland was diminishing, and the Federal Army had just suffered a surprising defeat in Manassas. Furthermore, Lee was desperate to feed and supply his impoverished army. It was nearing harvest time in Maryland when Lee's army made its first of two forays into the North, crossing the Potomac into the Blue Ridge foothills of Maryland.

The Battle of South Mountain was not a huge battle, and was quickly overshadowed a few days later by the nearby Battle of Antietam, which resulted in the loss of 23,000 men in just one day. Still, a total of more than 5,000 men were either killed, wounded, or missing in action at the end of the day on September 14. Lee's army was positioned to the west of South Mountain, and General George McClellan's Army of the Potomac needed to cross South Mountain to pursue them and drive them back to Virginia. This battle was fought over control of three gaps in the mountain through which the Union Army needed to pass: Turner's Gap, Fox's Gap, and Crampton's Gap (from north to south.)

At the crest of the mountain on the road through Fox's Gap was the farm of Daniel Wise. A widower with two children, he awoke to find his farm overrun by frantic North Carolina soldiers on the morning of September 14 as they transformed it into a fortress to withstand the Union Army, quickly approaching from the east. Wise was advised to gather what he could and leave as quickly as possible, which he did, just as the battle began behind him.

This is a gap in the foliage along the stone wall behind which the North Carolina troops waited for the Union brigades to approach across the field ahead.

Within about two hours, the Union Army had gained possession of the Gap. Hundreds of dead and dying men, including one General from each side, were strewn over the fields of the Wise Farm, right up to the walls of the cabin. Although victorious and exhausted, the soldiers still had hard work ahead of them. They would have to bury the dead. They buried their own first, in the already-worked soil of Wise's fields. It was more difficult to figure out what to do with the Confederate dead. The ground at Fox's Gap was full of rocks and boulders, and digging into it was backbreaking work. Finally, exhausted, the burial crew dumped the last 58 dead Confederates into Daniel Wise's well, in the front yard of his cabin. They moved on.

On September 18, Daniel Wise and his son and daughter returned to the farm. Their harvest was destroyed, the fields full of fresh burial mounds, while other dead were buried in shallow trenches right against the cabin walls. The smell of decay was everywhere. Worst of all was the well, now ruined by its horrible contents.

A few days after his return, Daniel Wise was sitting on his front porch at the end of the day. He saw a solitary young man coming up the road from the west. Watching the young man approach, he felt a cold chill creep up his back. For some reason, the sight filled him with an odd feeling of dread. As the young man drew closer, Wise noticed how deathly pale his skin was....and the blank expression on his face. Finally the young man stepped into Wise's yard. It was at this point that Wise realized he could see right through the young man's body to the road and the trees behind him. When he asked the young man who he was, he was met with silence. Not even a bird was heard on the ridge at Fox's Gap in those long moments. Finally: "Our lives were stripped from us and we were not even given a proper burial. Be sure that I will return here every night until we are honored as fallen soldiers." The apparition then slowly turned to look at Daniel's well. Daniel's eyes followed his gaze, and when he looked back, the young man was gone. In a panic, he ran toward the well, inexplicably hoping to find the dead Confederate, to tell him that he was not the one responsible for his improper burial. Lifting the cover from the well, the stench literally knocked him over backwards. After struggling to his feet and hastily replacing the cover, he staggered inside the cabin and slammed the door, shaking like a leaf. As he had leaned over the well for that brief moment, he thought he heard voices coming from the depths.

This is the path along the stone wall just across the road from where the Wise cabin stood.

Maybe it was the stress of being caught in a battle zone, or anxiety over the fate of his farm and harvest. Maybe it was the panic over how his family would survive the winter that was creating strange effects in the farmer's mind. Maybe he was beginning to lose his mind. There was little time to wonder. He began to dread the evenings, and found it difficult to sleep. Still, every day was full of the customary work of a farmer. And yet finally, as the sun began to sink and it was time to relax on the porch with a pipe, the ghost of the young man continued to return. Daniel began to avoid the porch in the evenings, but found that even inside the house he thought he could feel the soldier's presence as he gazed over the fence into the yard, at the house, and at the old well.

This is Fox's Gap on a winter evening near sunset. This clearing, now a parking area, is where the Wise cabin once stood. The road is to the right. We are facing west, the direction from which the dead young man approached.

Daniel began writing letters to Washington, complaining bitterly about the mess the Union Army had left of his farm, and about the corpses resting at the bottom of his well. He continued his correspondence for years, although he never got a response from the government. He didn't mention the ghost in his letters, but the tale of the dead young man's ghost had begun to travel through the county. Other people started keeping an eye out for the dead soldier along the road at sunset, and some claimed to have seen him. This continued even after the war was over. Finally. In 1874, 12 years after the battle, the US military sent in an army detail to clean up Daniel Wise's farm. The remains in the well were removed, and the men buried elsewhere on his property were taken away for proper burial. Daniel never saw the apparition of the dead soldier again.

Daniel Wise was allowed to live out the rest of his life knowing that he had finally managed to see the right thing done for the soldiers that had been buried on his farm. After his death, the tale of the soldier's ghost became local legend. Although the cabin is no longer there, the fields are abandoned, and the well is long since filled in, the story of the casualties at Fox's Gap and their unorthodox burial remains one of the more gruesome footnotes of the Civil War.

The battlefields of South Mountain are now preserved within South Mountain State Park, Gathland State Park, and the Appalacian National Scenic Trail (which runs through all 3 gaps.)

http://www.friendsofsouthmountain.org/index.html



Self portrait at Fox's Gap. If you look in the mirror, I am standing on the edge of the clearing where the cabin once stood.

Although I have known the history of Fox's Gap for some time, and have visited several times, I did not know about this ghost story at the time...so, visits should be even more interesting in the future :)

~All photos above taken by Me~ .......except the one below. I was not able to find out the date of this photo, or the name of the photographer.

...Wise Farm at Fox's Gap...