13 Hidden, Haunted, Hotspots of Gettysburg #12 – Update
It never fails. I had no sooner publish my most recent 13 Hidden, Haunted, Hotspots of Gettysburg #12 blog entry on Benner’s Hill and Major Joseph Latimer, when I ran across two fascinating adds to the original blog.
I ran across a story by L. B. Taylor, whom I once introduced as “The Dean of Virginia Ghost Stories,” about what some people believe to be young J. W. Latimer’s ghost haunting the house in Harrisonburg where he died.
But first, a correction. Although one source I used has Major Latimer buried at Virginia Military Institute, thanks to L. B. Taylor in his Ghosts of Virginia, Volume XIII, he relates a story that located Latimer’s grave in Woodbine Cemetery, Harrisonburg, Virginia.
After young Latimer died in the home of Confederate Colonel E. T. H. Warren, he was taken to Woodbine Cemetery in Harrisonburg, where some 250 other heroes of the Confederacy are buried. Kate, the daughter of the Warrens, not much younger than “The Boy Major,” placed a small slate with his name upon the grave, so that he would not be forgotten. In 1915, over fifty years later, there was another more formal commemoration for the young artillerist that included local citizens, the Corps of Cadets from VMI, and the dedication of a fine marble memorial shaft bearing the inscription, “The boy Major. Erected by grateful hearts to the memory of one of the South’s most heroic soldiers. Love makes memory eternal.” The ceremony was led by Kate Warren who, a half-century later, still remembered the young soldier who died in her home.
[image error]Photo of Latimer Memorial by Ser Amantio di Nicolao – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=73226641
The Warren House is now known as the Warren-Sipes House. Today it houses the Virginia Quilt Museum, but from 1978 and into the 1990s it was the headquarters for the Harrisonburg-Rockingham Historical Society. During the time it served as the historical society headquarters, one member saw an apparition whom he identified as the deceased “Boy Major” standing on the landing of the stairs leading to the second floor. Another member of the society saw a very young man in uniform, frail in appearance, descending the stairs slowly. Others admitted to feeling a strange “presence” in the building.
According to Taylor’s book, even while the Virginia Quilt Museum resides in the building, the haunting by the same young, frail individual continues. A psychic visited the museum in 2006 and detected a faint presence on the stairs and in a hallway upstairs. In June 2007, the director of the museum was leaving for the night with two other tourism professionals from Harrisonburg. One saw a small figure walking through the building. The figure suddenly vanished in the second she looked away and then back, which backed up the story of the frail figure who has been visiting the house since Latimer’s death.
L. B. Taylor’s books on Virginia Ghosts are an absolute must read for anyone interested in the paranormal.
