There is a scene in my first book that describes the paranormal plasma that rises from countless graves, burial sites and killing fields of the early American frontier. Instead of skeletons, the land pushes up the strife, grief, despair and fear of those interred. It materializes above ground like glowing bluish plasma. Wherever blood seeped into the land or bones lay smoldering within, it emerges each night. Flowing down mountain ridges into dismal hollows, it forms countless tributaries that eventually swell over the banks of the Shenandoah river. This spiritual flood courses above the river like a specter down towards Harpers Ferry and the mountain gap just beyond. Instead of passing through with the newly combined waters of the Potomac, it eddies and flows into a subterranean cavern deep within the surrounding mountains. Not sure why I got this haunting vision, or what it means but I am sure it is not articulated as well as I would like. Basically, I want to say that all the people who exercised their inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness often met a violent end as they clashed with native people. There was misery on both sides. While you can bury bones, I wonder how you can bury the emotional trauma that surely resulted. What happens to it, where does it go?
Then I came across a poem which does a pretty damn good job of describing the forgotten desperate plight of these historical figures. It is linked below.