At the same time Thursday, other groups of ghost hunters trailed after costumed guides from other tour companies, passing each other, well, like apparitions in the night, in dark alleyways.
The afterlife is big business around here.
Bolstered by an explosion of cable-TV shows, books, and conventions focusing on the paranormal, at least 11 ghost-tour operators are cashing in on what has been called one of the most haunted places in North America.
Such tours operate nightly from about March to November - likely numbering well over a thousand during the peak tourist season - creating crowds and controversy in the town.
The website HauntedAmericaTours.com, which urges people to "ghost-hunt responsibly," features "breaking paranormal news" and the latest information on tours in many cities: Philadelphia, Charleston, New Orleans, Chicago, among them.
Gettysburg, however, stands alone as the site of the bloodiest battle on U.S. soil, which left 7,000 dead over three days. There were piles of limbs in the streets, men dumped in shallow graves, and burning horses. Witnesses reported that the streets and creeks ran red.
Kime underscores those conditions by asking her charges as they sit on the steps of the town library, "What do you think we are sitting and walking on? A graveyard."
Certainly there is no shortage of "disturbed souls" that believers say manifest themselves as ghosts: Union soldiers were buried in shallow graves for months before being given proper burial at the national cemetery here. Confederate soldiers were left to decompose as long as nine years before their bodies were shipped to the South.
The tragedy, combined with an estimated 200 Civil War buildings still standing, makes for great storytelling.
