About 10 years ago, my parents and I went on a one-day bus trip to Gettysburg.

We had three guides walking us to different places.

The first site was across the street from the orphanage which later became a museum.

Suddenly a lady in our group collapsed. Another person gave one of the guides his cellphone, but when the guide tried to call 911 the call would not go through. The call for help was tried again with the same results. Finally on the third try, the call went through.

After that, the guide talked about the orphanage during the Civil War and the ghost children reportedly seen up to the present day in the museum.

Children are seen looking out windows when the museum is closed.

Some people report having their clothing tugged or hearing the children laugh.

I do not know if this was “wishful seeing” but out of corner of my eye, that day, I saw a shadow child walking down the sidewalk.

There were, however, no children that size or age in our tour group.

Next, we went to a battlefield near the present high school.

My dad and another person wanted to take photos of huge pine trees.

But, as with the cellphone, the camera flash wouldn’t go off.

The flash would not go off the first or second tries. On the third try, the flash worked.

When my dad’s photo was developed, there was nothing on it. The photo looked like when cable TV goes off the air.

The tour group next went to the Farnsworth House Inn where the guide told us about the boy who was hit by a horse and wagon and later died in the house.

The guide left but said he was coming back. I don’t know if what followed was real or not, but everyone soon heard footsteps on the stairs.

In another instance of unexplained events, Dad always carried loose change and a laser pointer on a key chain in his front pants pocket.

A couple of days before our trip, he put in new cell batteries and the pointer lit up red. He had it in his pocket on the walking tour, but several days later, after the walking tour, he tried the laser but it would not light.

He opened it and saw that something did not look right, but he could not put his finger on it.

Finally it dawned on him, the batteries were in upside down.

He put them in the correct way and the laser worked.

Dad then asked Mom and me if we had fooled with the pointer.

Now for the really eerie part. The pointer, which Dad lost years later, was the same size, shape, color and had two indentations (rings) on the bottom akin to a bullet (Minie Ball) from the Civil War era.