S2 – 11: Three of the Bloodiest Days in American History

us as we explained our particular ideas about investigating. We had set before us a row of K two ms K two meters are little devices that light up when they detect electromagnetic fields. They're not always my favorite tool for investigating, but this night they would do something very strange. As I stood in the dark talking to the group before me, I looked down at the floor as the K two started lighting up one by one hed in

my direction. Almost a split second later, I felt a hand grab my hip and yanked me to the side. I almost fell over with the force of it. I let out a yelp and quickly looked around me. Realizing absolutely no one was near me who could grab my hip. I proceeded to sprint to the other side of the room, because I'm brave like that. But that wasn't the end

of my experience. Apparently, while I had been distracted by the little K two lights, the entire group had watched a shadow figure sprint toward me, lighting the K two's as it passed, and when it reached me, they heard me squeal. I have to admit my heart was thumping out of my chest in that moment. I'd like to say it was exhilaration, but let's be honest, it was mostly fear. And it's okay to admit that about ourselves sometimes.

That being said, we weren't investigating some old asylum or jail or someplace you would expect that sort of activity. We were investigating an old orphanage, an orphanage in a little town called Gettysburg. And that's just one of the many haunts in what I considered to be one of the spookiest towns in the nation. Want to hear more about it, I thought so. I'm Amy Brunei, and this is haunted Road. In the summer of eighteen sixty three,

things were not looking good for the Union Army. Two years into the Civil War, Confederate forces were advancing further and further north, hoping to attack Union troops on their own soil. Fresh office stunning victory in the Battle of Chancellorsville in Virginia, General Robert E. Lee headed north with

what he described as his invincible army into Pennsylvania. If the Confederates could defeat Union troops on their own soil, he reasoned, Northerners would abandon their support of Abraham Lincoln's war effort and weaken the U. S. Army's defenses. Union and Confederate troops clashed in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on July one, eighteen sixty three. What followed were three of the bloodiest days in American history, with an estimated twenty thousand people injured.

On July second alone, when the smoke cleared, more than seven thousand soldiers and one single civilian had died in the battle. All told, the dead and wounded amounted to over fifty thousand casualties. There is something in the air at Gettysburg, MB Henry wrote in A Ghost at Gettysburg. A heavy and sad energy lingers about those fields, and indeed across the entire town you can hear it in the breeze that wrestles through the tree is. You can

feel it when you stroll through the graveyard. The old brick and stone houses, some of which still have bullet holes, do loads of talking in the silence. What else is in the silence? Centuries upon centuries of ghosts who still linger in the town today, making it one of the most haunted places in America, filling the battlefields and historic

buildings with the whispers of their lives and their deaths. Gettysburg, in central Pennsylvania near the Maryland border, was established in seventeen sixty one, but had become a much more significant town in eighteen fifty nine when the completion of the Gettysburg Railroad station made stopovers and therefore trade and commerce

much easier. According to Battlefield dot Org, Lee set his sights on the area because he wanted to threaten northern cities, weaken the North's appetite for war, and especially win a major battle on northern soil, and strengthen the peace movement

in the North. But the general had another motivation for the move to His Army of Northern Virginia had exhausted its supplies locally and needed to move on from where it had just fought in Chancellorsville as the Confederates armies eighty thousand troops moved north when hundred thousand Union soldiers pursued them under the leadership of Major General Joseph Hooker. Hoping to stall their advances. Realizing the conflict was not far away, Lee centralized his troops around the supply rich

Gettysburg and readied for battle. The first shots were fired the morning of July one between a handful of Union and Confederate soldiers close to town. The sound of the altercation attracted the notice of the rest of the troops. By noon, it was a full on battle. Though the Confederates were outnumbered and in unfamiliar territory, they were at

an advantage at the beginning of the battle. Frustrated with General Hooker's inability to stop the Confederate troops from advancing north, President Lincoln had replaced him with Major General George Mead as the leader of the Army of the Potomac only three days before of the battle. That's right, Major General Meade won one of the most decisive battles in American

history and turned the tide of the Civil War. On his fourth day on the job, fighting raged for three days, with the Confederates showing an early advantage on the first day and the Union pushing back on days two and three to eventually prevail. Some of the most intense skirmishes happened in areas like Devil's Den, Little Round Top, the Wheat Field, the Peach Orchard, and Cemetery Ridge. Remember those locations because their places that today are reported the areas

of intensely concentrated paranormal activity. Cemetery Ridge, in particular, saw intense battle. Lee sent twelve thousand infantrymen to attack the Union line in what became known as Pickets Charge. The Union soldiers staved off the attack jointly with rifle and artillery fire, which devastated the Confederate forces. After their defeat on Cemetery Ridge, the remaining soldiers and their leader, Robert E. Lee, who was not captured in the battle, headed back to

Virginia battlefields. Dot Org estimates that the total number of killed or wounded soldiers was fifty one thousand, one hundred twelve. More than thirty one hundred Union soldiers and thirty nine hundred Confederate soldiers were killed outright, and another fourteen thousand Union and eighteen thousand Confederate soldiers were wounded, though it's unclear how many of those men eventually died from their wounds. More than ten thousand total men were declared missing in

action or captured as prisoners of war. There was also one single civilian casualty, Jenny Wade. Remember her name because we'll talk about her in a moment. With a total population of two thousand, four hundred people in eighteen sixty three, the massive influx of soldiers put enormous strain on the residents of Gettysburg, who were largely left with the gargantuan task of caring for the wounded, end of clearing away the corpses of soldiers. But there weren't just more than

seven thousand deceased people covering the battle fields. There were also more than three thousand horses killed in the conflict.

Lydia Lyster, the owner of the farmhouse that Major General Meade used as his headquarters to command the Union forces, reportedly found seventeen dead horses just in her yard alone by July four, and estimated six million pounds of human and animal carcasses lay strewn across the fields and the summer heat, says author Drew gilpinfaust and a town of twenty hundred grappled with twenty two thousand wounded who remained

alive but in desperate condition. While in the past there had been a custom of a battle's victors burying the dead, by that point in the war that custom had been totally dispensed with, not only because of heavy losses and injuries on both sides, but because of supply shortages. Items were in such short supply at Gettysburg that it was difficult even to find tools for civilians to use to bury the dead, and the dead were everywhere in Gettysburg,

with some decaying corpses laying on the battlefields. From July until the first frost in October. Civilians found remains not just in open fields, but on their own property. Civilian George Rose found fifty deceased Confederate soldiers in his fields, while John Forney found seventy nine dead soldiers, all in a single line on his farm. A barn owned by Joseph Shurfey had been turned into a field hospital before

it was burned in the ensuing battle. Jurfy was left with the burnt remains of soldiers limbs in his destroyed barn. When President Lincoln traveled to Gettysburg to dedicate the battlefield on November ninete of that year. His famous Gettysburg Address acknowledged the heavy emotions imbued in that land by the violent deaths on both sides. His words encapsulate the feeling of unknown outcomes, unfinished conflict, and the elusive easy rest

desired by both soldiers and civilians alike. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live, Lincoln said, according to the Bliss copy of the Gettysburg Address at the White House. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor

power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. Indeed, we haven't forgotten what happened over those three bloody days in eighteen sixty three, not just because of the way they affected American history, but because many spirits of people who perished in the

conflict allegedly linger on to this day. You probably won't be surprised to learn that with all this dark history, there are endless ounces of people claiming to have experienced paranormal encounters in Gettysburg. If you've watched Kindred Spirits, you know Adam Bury had an impactful encounter there, but we'll talk about that more later. In fact, there are so many reports of unexplained gun shots outside of town that local police used the code eighteen sixty three to identify

those calls. The Daniel Lady Farm, which is now a house museum that hosts Civil War reenactments, has many spooky stories attached to it. It was used as a Confederate headquarters in Field hospital during the battle, and pieces of the home were dismantled to use to help wounded soldiers. Doors were taken down to be used as stretchers, and furniture was dismantled to use as kindling or splints. According to the farm's website, bloodstains from the wounded and dying

can still be seen in the house. In Jeff Fisher's book Ghosts of Gettysburg, he writes that amputated limbs were stacked so high outside of the barn that they would reach the windows and horrify the soldiers being treated within. People have reported seeing the spirits of soldiers with amputated limbs in the house and throughout the property, as well

as hearing strange sounds and screams of pain. Guests at the Balladari End, located on what's now known as Hospital Road because so many of the homes on that stretch were converted into makeshift hospitals during the battle, often report hearing disembodied voices and phantom gunshots, which they attribute to these seven Confederate soldiers buried under what's now the tennis court.

In the Ends Primrose room, guests have repeatedly claimed to encounter a spirit named Jeffrey who rubs women's feet, whispers in their ears, and even tries to get into bed with them. In the Merrigold room, there are reports of a female apparition in eighteen sixties clothing, and of cold spots in the room, as well as doors opening and

closing on their own. It's unclear whether the fair Field in has some claim was a Confederate field hospital, but we do know for sure that there is an unmarked grave on the property that contains as many as eight hundred deceased soldiers. Over eight hundred of them were buried in the yard of the Fairfield in with no way of marking where they were or worse, who they were. According to Patty Wilson's Gettysburg Ghost Guide, the area of the inn that's now the dining room was once a courtyard,

which is reportedly the site of that mass grave. Wilson says that while the bodies were removed in the winter of eighteen sixty three, it's not known if all of the remains are accounted for. Paranormal reports in the inn include dishes and other objects moving on their own, unexplained footsteps and voices, and the shadow of an older man in the dining room. Remember Jenny Wade. She was the

only civilian casualty of the battle. At only twenty years old and engaged to be married, she was killed when a stray bullet struck her home. Today, the Jenny Wade House is a museum where people claim to witness objects moving on their own, to smell perfume, and to hear voices and footsteps. There's a sweet side to this story. Though.

Legend has it that when a woman places her finger into the bullet hole in the wall, she'll soon be proposed to, and many women who have put it to the test report back that they did in fact get engaged shortly after. Not to be a buzz kill, but it didn't work for me. Most claimed that Jenny wants to provide happiness via love and death, the very kind that she was mortally denied in life. What is likely the most haunted location in all of Gettysburg, though, is

the Farnsworth House. In built around eighteen ten, it was a private home until nineteen o nine, when the owners turned the building into a guesthouse to cater to visitors in the area. Barnsworth House has a unique history in the Battle of Gettysburg. It served as a headquarters for Union soldiers, but was later occupied by Confederates while the battle raged on Cemetery Hill and before returning to Union

control on July four, when the battle ended. When the owners, mother and daughter, Katherine and Elizabeth Sweeney, returned home, they found a truly gruesome sight. Broken windows, glass shattered everywhere, and a home filled with blood. Elizabeth reportedly followed a trail of blood down to the basement which is now called the catacombs, and found the bodies of two Confederate soldiers. One was in a shallow grave with a neck wound

that almost cleanly separated his head from his shoulders. The other, who according to some accounts, could be a Lieutenant Jackson, brought the dying soldier into the home and sang a song to his fallen comrade as he passed, which is sometimes heard in the house. Now In the cellar, there are many reports of a playful spirit named Jeremy, a boy who died in the home after a carriage accident. Jeremy is reported to often play tricks on visitors like

grabbing ankles, tugging pants, and untying shoes. There are also reports of an aggressive Confederate soldier, which could be Lieutenant Jackson, who was sometimes heard humming in the are a black room. There are reports of spirits so pronounced that they've been photographed appearing in windows from the street outside. In that room, guests report sounds of heavy objects being dragged across the floor and of a newborn crying. The young Jeremy passed

away of his injuries in that room. Supposedly, and investigators have captured e vps of someone saying Jeremy and referencing the red box of toys left for him to play within the house. Once, guests in the room witnessed a lamp turned on and off, only to discover that the lamp was never plugged in. When they jokingly called out to Jeremy to see if he was responsible, they heard

a child's laugh in response. In the Jenny Wade Room, guests have reported many strange phenomena, like waking up to a pile of wet towels on the floor of the bathroom when no one had showered, or hearing loud guests in the room above, only to find out the next morning that there is no room above the Jenny Wade Room.

Once a guest even reported seeing something strange happened to a piece of art in the room, which Bernadette Lawful Atkins recounted in her book Gettysburg's Haunted Address, Spirits of the Farnsworth House in I was unnerved by the painting of the Staring Monkey, the guests said. I woke up in the middle of the night and the monkey had

vanished from the painting. There's even one room, the garret room that's closed off to guests because people have reported seeing horrifying scenes of a room covered in blood, only to have the carnage disappear before their eyes. That room is reportedly the exact spot where Catherine and Elizabeth Sweeney returned home after the battle to find blood dripping down

the walls. Even spookier, some report that Confederate sharpshooters occupied the attic of the house during their time there, and that the bullets that hit Jenny Wade's house, killing her almost definitely came from those shooters. I could go on and on, but I think it's time we bring in an expert. Mark Nesbitt is a renowned historian who actually started his interest in Gettysburg when he was a park ranger there. Since then, he has authored many books on

the subject of Gettysburg's hauntings and history. He also runs the premier ghost tour in Town Ghosts of Gettysburg. We'll pick Mark's brain on all the local haunts and find out how you can experience them for yourself. That is coming up after the break. So I am joined now by Mark Nesbitt, who is an author and historian He also owns and operates the tour company Ghosts of Gettysburg and anytime you want to talk ghosts and Gettysburg, Mark

Nesbitt is the man, right. So so thanks for joining me, Mark, Well, thanks for having me any We were chatting a little bit before about how we are often doing events together. I've had you at strange escapes, or We've used you on various television shows as an expert, but we never get to just like checks, We're always so busy. I know, well, you know, you're on one end of the hall and I'm at the other end, and we don't get a chance to sit and talk. Well, this is our moment finally.

So Gettysburg I think comes up a lot as being one of the most haunted locations in the country, and I can vouch for that having had many experiences they're having investigated a number of locations over the years there. Why do you think that energy remains there? Why do you think it's so haunted? Well, of course, you had so much tragedy there and everything from emotional tragedy on

an individual level. You had high energy because the fate of the nation was on the line, and you know, you had so many deaths and injuries, casualties, casualties in just three days. The expanse was incredible. A lot of people just think they come to Gettysburg gonna want to know where the battlefield is. And if you can answer that question, the answer is you're on in the battlefield because the town itself was included. We still have a

lot of houses left from the battle. Out of four hundred that we're here at the time of the battle, two hundred remains. You've got the physical means for residual ghosts, and you had basically the perfect storm to create ghosts and remnant spirits to stick around during the three days of July on second and third of July three. So

that pretty much sums it up. I think that that is an important point you made about just like the emotional toll that that took, because we find that in many hauntings that you know, sometimes if there's emotions involved, those become kind of a more of a like a stronger energetic imprint or even the more intelligent type haunt. And to think, you know, you multiply that by tens

of thousands. You've got this piece of land, this area, this town that I think it just resonates there today, Like you can't walk down the street in Gettysburg and not just have this feeling of something different about it. So, in your years of exploring and researching, where do you think most of the hauntings are concentrated? Are there any areas that are more haunted than others? Yeah? There are, But you know, it's interesting any because it seems to change.

Ten twelve years ago, I got a lot of stories coming from the Spanglish Spring area, and then they kind of faded, and now I'm starting to get some more from the Spanglish Spring area. Definitely, there are some places that are more consistent with hauntings, and one of course would be Devil's Den, that huge jumble of granite rocks down there below a little round top, and then the field just adjacent to it, which would be the Triangular Field.

Those two places are pretty much go to places if you want to go out in the battlefield and experience of haunting. The other one would be Sacks Bridge. I don't like to send too many people out there because tons of people go out there already. In that area. You have the largest amount of flowing water in the Gettysburg area going right underneath that bridge, and as you know,

water has a lot of energy. You know, one theory is, as you know, the ghosts need energy to manifest and they need to borrow it from somewhere, and that seems to be one of the places that's most haunted. It's an original bridge, wouldn't covered bridge. So you know, those are some of the places. Those are the go to places. But you know, I hate to bypass the town because you're gonna be spending a lot of time in the town. And you're right, there is a special feeling once you

get to Gettysburg. Most people can't deny it. Yeah, and people always ask about investigating battle feel olds, like for us, even on various TV shows and things. And obviously Gettysburg is very protective of their battlefields and they don't allow people to go out onto them at night. But I always tell people you don't really need to investigate at night. People ask me all the time, why do you investigate at night? It's preferable because there's less traffic, it's quieter,

your senses are heightened in the dark. You can see certain light anomalies easier at night. But you know, if activity is happening reliably during the day. There's no reason why you can't investigate during the day. So I tell people, if you go go go out on the battlefields, bring a recorder. The only thing is I have definitely seen photos and some I guess I couldn't definitely UM dispute, but I've seen photos where people are like, there's a

there's a soldier in the background. But Bettysburg is crawling with reenactors, so you never know what you capture. Yeah, yeah, well, I agree with the honor for set that you don't have. I mean, yeah, your your sensors are a little bit more concentrated at night. But the statistics, I mean, I've collected well over a thousand stories from Gettysburg and they're split right down the middle between events that happened during the day and events that happened during the night. So

it can happen anytime, yeah, I mean. And then there are some famous um places that you can like the Farnsworth House. You can stay at the Farnsworth House and investigate there, like they have rooms available, and I stayed there. Unfortunately, by the time I went to sleep, I've been investigating until three am, so I was out like a light.

So if anything happened around me, I don't know. You having done so much research and be out and about a lot there, what is the most chilling experience you've had or just one that just really left you scratching your head? Well that the one that really got to me was an experience I had at the Daniel Lady Farm. I used to be on the board of directors of the organization that owns it, and that used to be a hospital. It was a hospital at the time of

the battle. The front room was a surgery room and the caretaker called me out one day and he said, if you want to see something paranormal happening, come on out now. I mean, who can turn that down? Right? So I got my gear and I went out there, and I literally walked into place with my video running, and I said, what's up? He says, we cleaned this place top the bottom yesterday because we had guests. But come in in the room here and take a look.

So I walked into the room that was the operating room. There on the floor, wooden floor, were screams of a rust colored liquid and they were probably five to eight ft long. Three or four of them drops of this colored liquid that was all around it. I videotaped the whole thing and I said, did you have a pipe break downstairs? And he says, no, this just appeared. I asked him for a tissue. I said, you have a kleenex, and so I stopped some of it up, and I said,

I don't know what to say. Says why I gotta go on the field. I can't clean this up now, I gotta go. So I left two and I had all that on videotape. Two hours later, I got another phone call from him. He said it's gone. I said what he said, It's gone. So I rushed out there again once again with a video camera going, and I got there's nothing on the floor, and of course, over in the corners are stains from the operating room that are a hundred fifty years old, and there is nothing

on the floor. And I've even got a video of him crouching down and saying, this is where it was, right and he picks up his hands and he's like, what the heck is this and it's dust on his hands, and I'm like what. And I said to Carol, my wife, I said, go see if the the sample is there, and she ran out to the car and sure enough it was okay. So this organization that owns the place

has some pretty good contacts. They contacted one or more prestigious forensic firms in the state and they did an analysis on it, and three weeks later the report came back and the substance the liquid was blood and the species was human. Oh my goodness, I'm like, what just happened? Was I in a some kind of time warp? They're still bloodstains from the battle on the They can't Mrs Lady couldn't get them out of her wood floor. So amy that was. That was the strangest thing that is wild.

That is truly wild. I mean, I don't know what to make of that. I've had a number of really strange experiences in Gettysburg when I talked about a lot, but I don't think I've talked about it on the podcast. But I had an experience in the basement of an

orphanage which was witnessed by a number of people. I I was investigating with Adam Bury and we were kind of leading an investigation group and they were probably I don't know, eight or nine people with us, and we had put a number of K two meters down on the floor, and these, you know, we used them sometimes to interact with spirits and they light up when he am at this present. Anyways, at one point they all lit up in a row. We had them lined up.

They just went don't, don't, don't towards me, and then something grabbed my hip and yanked me to the side, and I squealed and I ran across the room because I thought it was like a person, but no one was near me. I remember my heart pounding, like my voice was shaking, and apparently everyone watched this shadow figure sprint across the room towards me, and that lit up the K two's and then I got grabbed violently. It was very bizarre, and to this day, I'm always like

like that. It just startled me. I mean people always ask you, do you get scared, and I'm like, yeah, but like, even if a life person did that to me, that would be terrifying. So yeah, well, it's always scary when you get touched in an investigation. That's happened to me a number of times. The Cash Town, in which is another haunted place you're familiar with, I had my sleeve pulled. So yeah, that that's a it's unnerving without a doubt. Yeah, the cash town in is a really

great little spot too. Um. We investigated that on Kindred Spirits and had a lot of good luck there. There is this history to supposedly in the basement where they did all these operations or I think amputations. And how much history that you find in Gettysburg, how much of it is true and how much of it do you find is just kind of lore or rumors. Well, you know, that's the funny part about Gettysburg is that the history

keeps changing. You know, you know, you think you know everything and then somebody finds a paper or a letter or something that changes your whole outlook on the whole thing. But nevertheless, there's still some things that that stand the test of time. You have to go with those when you can. There are also professional debunkers out there. They like to Yeah, they just kind of tear apart everything about that what we know about the battle, and sometimes

it stands, sometimes it doesn't. But for example, the number of casualties when I was I used to be a park ranger as you know there, when I was giving talks, it was fifty one thousand casualties, which is incredible. That's like a Yankee stadium pull of people, you know, that on a sold out day. But then it went down to forty seven or something like that. Even the number of people who died because of the Civil War has changed because they changed their methods of counting. So the

stories keep coming up. The interesting part about the ghost stories is that my last book I had to put a chapter and called deja vous because I was getting stories of places, same place, same kind of stories from a whole virtually a whole new generation of people, stories that I collected fifteen, eighteen, twenty years ago that we're happening again, and you know, the people are other different people,

and so that was really a strange thing. Although it does tell us something about the ghosts that they stay in the same place, they gotta do repetitive bothers, some pranks that happened all the time, so you know that's part of the history as well. You know, it's folklore, so it's all part of the history, and it's people having experiences at Gettys were continuing experiences. Yeah, it was funny. One of the things we tried there when we were

filming Kindred Spirits. Was we asked in the Jenny Wade House about ghosts at the Farnsworth House, like we were asking and they seemed to be aware of each other, which was very strange. It was like they, you know, we were investigating this mirror at the Farnsworth House and we asked at the Jenny Wade House. We got an e v P where like there's something different at the Farnsworth House or I can't remember the exact wording that we said, but we got an e VP that said mirror.

So someone at the Jenny Wade House knew about this mirror at the Farnsworth House. And it just makes you wonder, like, is there this whole like society of ghosts that like gossip and talk to each other? Well, that could be. I mean, you know, they were all it was a small town only people at the time of the battle. They virtually knew each other. Everybody knew each other. Of course Farnsworth House was not called that at the time,

but people lived there and it's a historic house. Obviously our house, the one that we run the tours out of, was there at the time of the battle. Jenny Wade, you investigated the house she died in, But her birth house is just, oh maybe half a block from us, and how she lived in is about half a block from us, so she walked right past our house. People knew each other that you read the accounts, and they

talk about her brother. I guess his name was Samuel Wade, who knew Tillie Pierce, who lived across the way from us. So maybe they're still meeting each other and in the other the world. I don't know. Yeah, I'll never claim to know how it works, but I just find it fascinating.

So as someone coming to visit, what areas or what places would you recommend stops that for people if they want to go to Gettysburg and have a ghostly experience, well, I would definitely recommend obviously the battlefield those some of those places out there that I mentioned before are pretty active. But be sure you know any history. I always emphasized the history because that, as you know, has something to do with explaining why the ghosts are there in town.

I mean, you know, you name several other places to see. They might also want to go to some of the other bed and breakfasts there. I know that the balladari in Is. We use them as a haunted area there on Hospital Road. A lot of the hospitals were out there, so that's quite a quite an interesting place. Obviously, the seminary that's where the battle started out in that area, the Robert E. Lee's headquarters is now open and restored

when it was at the time of the battle. And as far as doing a paranormal investigation any of those places, even the battlefield, if you're if you're discreet about it, you can do an investigation anywhere. You can record video, audio recording, get a VP just about any place on the battlefield. Some places are more quiet than others. The best part also is that you have all those monuments with the names of the wounded and the dead. That's true, and you can use those if that's your method to

try and talk to some of these people. And I've had success doing that, So yeah, that's a lot of information is your friend when you're investigating. Like I tell people that all the time, like the more empowered you are with information and history, the more activity you'll get because it's something that the spirits recognize. So that being said, what can people expect as far as paranormal activity goes like, what do you think people experience more than anything else

in Gettysburg. Well, there there seems to be people getting video, especially at night, although some of that stuff can be debunked. I hate to do that if I'm not there on site watching the investigation, but the audio is almost to

me that's pretty fool proof. You know. If you ask the right questions and then do the protocol by just staying quiet for a little while, you'll probably not only record something, but you'll probably you may hear something to a lot of people here, Cannons going off, musketry being fired,

large groups of men shouting out on the battlefield. A lot of the pictures are tough because if you don't take more than one, you're likely to get the matrix type of thing going on with all the leaves on the trees because it is heavily wooded in some areas, you know. That's That's what I would say is if you want to actually capture something, you might want to

try Evie be audio out there, for sure. I know Adam Barry always references having had his first major, well not first major, but like what really got him into investigating was his experience in Gettysburg, and that's what the experience he had is he kind of went off the

beaten path. It was after dark. I think it was behind one of the schools or something, because like you said, everything was a battlefield and he was out there and he literally heard cannon fire and men, like he heard a battle, but it was like in the middle of the night. And so that was that moment for him where he I'm sure the story is more involved than that, but that was really like it was a big deal for him. That's what really got him into investigating because

he had no way to explain it. And we even went out there once with Greg and Dana new Kirk. We went out. I don't think it was on the episode, but they came out and helped us investigate. We investigated, We're Adam went we got permission from the school to go back there and we heard someone again. It's like two in the morning, and we heard, like I guess it's called like the rebel yell or something. We heard

that off in the distance. I mean, it could have been someone I guess being silly, but it was just very weird because it was the middle of the night. It was a very random thing to hear. Yeah, I mean, I don't want to say it's common, because it's not. It's weird. But I've heard those stories too from other people in other words, and that is not a strange thing. And I mean it's strange, but it's not a strange

thing in Gettysburg. And that's a nice part about town is that you know, even though you're restricted from going out on the battlefield, there are a lot of places in town that are battlefield. I just finished a book called Hidden Haunted Hotspots of Gettysburg, and it talks about the places in town that you can go that aren't closed after dark, like the like Koster Avenue, which is

what's known as the Brickyard Fight. There's an area behind Harrisburg Area Community College out on Route fifteen that used to be a radio shack, and the one who was there said, you gotta come in here and investigate this place. It's gone now. And I never did get a chance, but she told me a story of how she'd come in the morning and she'd hear a TV on in the back of the building, and so she would She figured the guy the night before was watching TV and

forgot to turn it off. So she walks to the back and she sees the TV on, but it closer she gets the picture fades and when she gets there, the TV has been unplugged. It wasn't even plugged in. That site is an area where before obviously the radio shack was built. Confederate troops swept over that area and they took casualties. I got so much t V p out there, it was just it was hard to understand. It was these roars. You know, you get roar every once in a while and you can hardly hear it.

So there there's another place that you can go to all night long, you know, or overnight, and several other places as well. When you're in town. I'll show you a couple of those places are kind of cool. Yeah, I'm planning on going back soon. I want to go back in the spring, just for a little long weekend moment. Now, Rushian, do you feel like the reenactors some sin activity or somehow instigate activity, like their presence or the cannon fire gunfire?

Do you think that ever makes anything happen? Oh? Yeah, I got I get a lot of stories from reenactors who are in camp. For example, and they'll be sitting there and all of a sudden they'll look up and they'll see another reenactor that they don't recognize. But he's dressed to the nines. I mean, he's perfect, and then all of a sudden, he'll, you know, maybe get a confused look on his face and disappear in front of him.

When they made the movie Gettysburg, from one of the fellas who was there, I got thirteen pages just of notes, four and five events on each page that the re enactors had experiences they had when they were filming, and some of them were very very strange, you know, seeing individuals writing horror is into their camp. The other thing you have to keep in mind too, And I always ask people when they say they saw a ghost out there. I'm always like, well, what time of year was it?

Because around the fourth of July, of course, we have our re enactment in Gettysburg, and sometimes the re enactors are the ghosts. They've kind of gotten into this thing where they'll hang out there a little bit and then slip behind a tree. I mean, I can't say that I wouldn't do that. That my why not? Yeah, I mean it's funny because when we're investigating sometimes we use

things like music or will dress up. We try to kind of bring up moments in history, and it acts is like this massive kind of triggering moment, I guess, and I just think about Gettysburg in that sense. How that just kind of keeps happening over and over again because people are constantly, you know, other than like obviously in the colder months, people are constantly re enacting the battle and talking about the battle and just bringing it up again and again, like it ever really gets a

chance to settle. If that makes sense, No, I agree, And you know it tell also tells us something about

the ghosts if we can see them occasionally. Can you imagine all of a sudden, you you know, you've been dead, and you're dressed in your uniform, and you look up and you see those bunch of guys that are all dressed like you, and you smell the coffee and you smell the bacon which you're gonna walk into the scene, and then all of a sudden you realize, gee, I'm not supposed to be here, and so the ghosts can see us too? Is what that tells? So interesting? Well,

I can talk about this all day. I know your time is precious and I do want, though, to make sure people know how to find you. So if people want to pick up your books that they want to go on the tours, how do they find Mark Nez? But well, our website is the best way to do that, and you can find the books. You can find our new app. We have a ghost app, ghost tour app of the battlefield that just came out, and it's Ghosts of Gettysburg dot com. It's plural Ghosts of Gettysburg dot com.

All that is fantastic. So, well, next time I'm in town and I'm not working, we'll definitely have to grab lunch or something, so we're not sitting across from each other at in a conference hall just waving in the distance. Well, I really appreciate it. If people are interested, definitely pick up Mark's books because there's so much more where this came from. There's so many stories. Gettysburg is fascinating. It's one of my favorite places to investigate and visit. And yes,

I really appreciate it. Mark, Thank you so much for taking the time any time. Any Gettysburg is a town that has completely embraced its history and ghosts. I've seen it turned many a nonbeliever into a believer, and even the most skeptical of people can't walk those streets and not feel that quiet home of energy and energy. I don't believe we'll ever leave. Even though the Battle of Gettysburg took place over one hundred fifty years ago. You feel it in your bones as though it happened yesterday.

It calls me back again and again, and it will do the same for you if you ever pay a visit. When you do, pay careful attention to any reenactors you see, they could very well be a ghost. I'm Amy Bruney, and this was Haunted Road. Haunted Road is a production of I Heart Radio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Mankey. The podcast is written and hosted by Amy Bruney. Executive producers include Aaron Mankey, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. The show is produced by rema Ill Kali and Trevor Young.

Research by Taylor Haggerdorn, Amy Bruney and Robin Miniter. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.