A Visitor's Guide to Ghostly Gettysburg, including Devil's Den and the National Cemetery

The Draw of Gettysburg

You can be a new visitor or an expert on the area. No matter your level of expertise, you have surely experienced something while walking this hallowed ground. It may have just been a feeling, an odd sensation of oneness with the past, a trickle of sweat while pondering the fates of thousands of America's young and promising men. There is even a chance that it was something more; a glimpse of something fleeting away into the fog, a mysterious noise, the smell of gunpowder or wafting campfire aromas. Many Americans, probably far more than would be willing to admit it, have the indescribable feeling that something otherworldly remains here on this mighty field of destruction and chaos. 


During the first three days of July, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania was the scene of one of history's most hideous battles. The Union and Confederate men who either died or were wounded and missing here added up to about 53,000. These deaths were not only devastating to the families of the soldiers who fell here; the citizens of Gettysburg were themselves haunted by memories of the soldiers they nursed. Many of the town's homes became miniature torture chambers, filled with men who were more often than not deprived of the comfortable conditions they craved. 


Some believe that, although innumerable soldiers now rest in Gettysburg's National Cemetery, unnamed heroes lie still buried under the verdant grass of the battlefield. There is no way to know if, as it was meant to be, only Union soldiers are buried in the National Cemetery. There is speculation that a few Confederates may have been confused with their Northern counterparts in the chaos following the battle and thus laid to rest here. This in itself is enough to conjure up the image of the "restless spirit." Buried in Pennsylvania soil, in the very state whose men he bitterly fought, unable to return home to the Southland.