Devil's Den: Is Gettysburg Haunted?

twelve casualties, including the dead, wounded, and missing. Although more than a hundred and fifty years have passed since that epic battle, the bloodiest of the Civil War and a key turning point for the Union cause, the emotional imprint of so much death, suffering, and mourning is hard to erase. Some believe that the painful memories seared into the soil and streets of Gettysburg have made it the most haunted town in America. One particular battle field site is legendary

with ghost hunters and paranormal investigators. Known as the Devil's Den. This boulder strewn maze, located between the rocky hills known as Little Roundtop and Big Roundtop, was a site of fierce fighting and heavy casualties and is rumored to be home to several restless Confederate spirits, one of whom hates cameras. The name Devil's Den predates the Civil War, though the origin is uncertain. As still it's not hard to imagine why the spooky moniker stuck before the article. This episode

is based on How's to Work. Spoke with Mark Nesbitt, who worked as a park ranger in the Gettysburg National Military Park before starting a second career as a paranormal investigator and owner of Ghosts of Gettysburg Tours. Nesbitt says that he used to get the Willie's when he had to do security checks on the otherworldly landscape after dark. He said, the Devil's Den looks like some giant just dropped these huge boulders the size of how is down

onto this one spot on the battlefield. On a sunny day, it's not too bad. On a cloudy day, it's kind of ominous. At night, it's just ridiculous. The fighting at Devil's Den was intense and dictated by the unusual topography.

On the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg five thousand, five hundred Confederate troops attacked the left flank of the Union position on Little round Top, and to get there they first had to take Devil's Den, where the maze of boulders, many some twenty feet or six meters tall, made it nearly impossible to see the enemy, and Nesbit said it would have been scary. You turn a corner

and there's somebody with a bayonet. The turning point of the battle for Devil's Den came with a siege from the Confederate First Texas Regiment under the command of Major General John bell Hood. The famously rag tag group of soldiers faced heavy casualties. Hood himself was shot in the arm, managed to silence three of the Union's four heavy artillery guns and flush the remaining Union soldiers from Devil's Den. Once in position, the First Texas installed sharpshooters between the

boulders to pick off Union officers on Little Roundtop. Casualties from the fighting at Devil's Den totaled more than one eight hundred for the Confederates and more than eight hundred for the Union. One swampy section of open land between the boulders and Little Roundtop earned the name the slaughter Pen for how many soldiers from both sides were gunned

down in crossfire. The battle for Devil's Den is considered a Confederate victory, although the South would ultimately lose the larger Battle of Gettysburg the next day after the failure of the infamous full frontal assault known as Pickett's Charge. Gettysburg is full of ghost stories. Half of the town's original four hundred buildings are still in use, including many that doubled as makeshift morgues and hospitals for the tens of thousands of war dead and wounded who flooded the

town in the days after the battle. According to residents and visitors, many of these troubled souls have hung around a Nesbit has chronicled hundreds of paranormal tales in his multi volume Ghosts of Gettysburg book series, including several unexplained encounters that occurred at Devil's Den. One young woman was climbing around the boulders with a friend when she felt a hand to grab her by the ankle. Reaching up from a darkened fissure below was a young man in

a Civil War uniform. She screamed for her friend, but when she looked back down the man was gone, and more than one visitor to the Devil's Den has claimed to meet a mysterious figure known to some as the Helpful Hippie. According to Nesbitt, years ago, a woman told him and his fellow park rangers that she had gotten turned around during an early morning visit to the Rocks when a man appeared behind her, seemingly out of nowhere and pointed off the distance, saying, what you're looking for

is over there, and then he vanished. When Nesbitt's coworkers asked what the man looked like, she described a disheveled figure in a floppy hat, shoulder length hair, bare feet, and ragged clothing, and Nesbitt said, us park rangers are sitting there going, I can't believe she's describing exactly what a Texan looked like at the Battle of Gettysburg, and she wouldn't have known that as a tourist. Another woman approached Nesbit at a book signing and said that she

had had a similar experience. Twenty years later, while exploring the Devil's Then alone, a raggedy man in a floppy hat suddenly appeared and pointed to her. University of Texas sweatshirt first, Texas, he exclaimed, before disappearing as quickly as he came. Other visitors to Devil's Den and nearby battlefield sites have complained that their camera and phone batteries inexplicably fail when in the area, only to start working again when they leave. Nesba has a theory for the technical glitch,

which he himself has experienced more than once. The culprit Nesbitt believes is a famous photo taken at Devil's Den of a fallen Confederate soldier lying beside his sharpshooter position. The well known image, it was later discovered, was staged with a real corpse. Historians found a numbered sequence of images featuring the same dead soldier in a different location.

Some enterprising Civil War photographer saw a photo op and dragged this poor kid forty yards or about thirty six meters to pose as a sharpshooter, and Nesbitt said, if there's a disgruntled spirit in Devil's Den that has animus towards photographers, it certainly would be this guy. For its part, the American Battlefield Trust, which preserves historic Civil War battle sites,

gives little credence to Gettysburg ghost stories. It claims that these ghost stories only started circulating in the nineteen nineties when folks realized they could make money off of ghost tours and books. In an article on their website debunking myths and misconceptions surrounding Gettysburg, the American Battlefield Trust wrote by all means believe what you want to believe, but please know that if water gets on a camera lens,

it's water, not a ghostly orb. If sun shines into a camera lens, it's called sunlight, not an energy sphere. Today's episode is based on the article the Ghosts of Gettysburg's Devil's Den on how st works dot com, written by Dave Brous. Brain Stuff is production of by Heart Radio in partnership with how stuff works dot com, and it's produced by Tyler Klein. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite show.