Ghost of a Confederate Prisoner of War
“Home. I want to go home,” the story begins of a Confederate prisoner of war. A friend’s grandmother, age 76 and a worker at the historic society, tells a story of Point Lookout. During the Civil War, the Union had a prison for captured Confederate soldiers near Point Lookout. With a warm and friendly voice that shows the sign of age, the storyteller joyfully recollects the story. She has the tale in book, but recalls it from memory. She knows the story so well that one could hardly tell it was not being read word for word. When speaking the voice of the ghost, she softens her voice, making the voice sound afraid and evoking sympathy for the unfortunate boy.
Point Lookout was originally a hospital for the Union. Shortly after the war had begun in full swing, a few prisoners were sent to Point Lookout to be kept under guard. The numbers kept on growing, with a huge increase after the battle in Gettysburg. At its peak, there were 50,000 captured soldiers held prisoner on the site, and a total of at least 4,000 died (Point Lookout, MD., Prison Camp). Point Lookout was close enough to the battlegrounds to send captured soldiers there with ease, yet was surrounded on three sides by water, thus making it difficult to escape.
Johnny Moore, a Boy Scout from troop 748, is on a camping trip in Point Lookout, a site frequented often by campers and nature enthusiasts. But Johnny Moore’s experience was different. In the middle of the night, Johnny is awoken by a voice calling for home. Usually this is fairly common, as the young scouts will miss home fairly easily and call out in the night. Most of the time the scout masters tend to these issues fairly quickly, however the callin...
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...e leaving the audience wondering about the details of exactly how Benjamin Goode died. The story can be read in a scary fashion, or in a calm and peaceful matter. Subtle twists or additions could easily be made the story more hostile. The connections to actual historic characters make this story more believable and draw the audience in even more. Specific details, such as the soldier's name and background, make the story more personal and more memorable.
Works Cited
Harriot, Ray. Stories for Around the Campfire. Campfire Publishing Company: Laurel, MD, 1986.
"Point Lookout, Md., Prison Camp." The University of Michigan. 9 Apr. 2006 http://www.clements.umich.edu/Webguides/Schoff/NP/Point.html.
Coleman, Dorcas. "Who's Afraid of Ghosts?." Department of Natural Resources. 9 Apr. 2006 http://www.dnr.state.md.us/naturalresource/fall2001/ghosts.html.
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