Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: Hey brain Stuff, Lauren vobam. Here in the summer of
Speaker 1: eighteen sixty three, more than a hundred and sixty five
Speaker 1: thousand Union and Confederate troops amassed in the rolling farmland
Speaker 1: around the town of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The battle that took
Speaker 1: place over three blood soaked days, would claim more than
Speaker 1: seven thousand lives and tally an astounding one hundred and
Speaker 1: twelve casualties, including the dead, wounded, and missing. Although more
Speaker 1: than a hundred and fifty years have passed since that
Speaker 1: epic battle, the bloodiest of the Civil War and a
Speaker 1: key turning point for the Union cause, the emotional imprint
Speaker 1: of so much death, suffering, and mourning is hard to erase.
Speaker 1: Some believe that the painful memories seared into the soil
Speaker 1: and streets of Gettysburg have made it the most haunted
Speaker 1: town in America. One particular battle field site is legendary
Speaker 1: with ghost hunters and paranormal investigators. Known as the Devil's Den.
Speaker 1: This boulder strewn maze, located between the rocky hills known
Speaker 1: as Little Roundtop and Big Roundtop, was a site of
Speaker 1: fierce fighting and heavy casualties and is rumored to be
Speaker 1: home to several restless Confederate spirits, one of whom hates cameras.
Speaker 1: The name Devil's Den predates the Civil War, though the
Speaker 1: origin is uncertain. As still it's not hard to imagine
Speaker 1: why the spooky moniker stuck before the article. This episode
Speaker 1: is based on How's to Work. Spoke with Mark Nesbitt,
Speaker 1: who worked as a park ranger in the Gettysburg National
Speaker 1: Military Park before starting a second career as a paranormal
Speaker 1: investigator and owner of Ghosts of Gettysburg Tours. Nesbitt says
Speaker 1: that he used to get the Willie's when he had
Speaker 1: to do security checks on the otherworldly landscape after dark.
Speaker 1: He said, the Devil's Den looks like some giant just
Speaker 1: dropped these huge boulders the size of how is down
Speaker 1: onto this one spot on the battlefield. On a sunny day,
Speaker 1: it's not too bad. On a cloudy day, it's kind
Speaker 1: of ominous. At night, it's just ridiculous. The fighting at
Speaker 1: Devil's Den was intense and dictated by the unusual topography.
Speaker 1: On the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg five thousand,
Speaker 1: five hundred Confederate troops attacked the left flank of the
Speaker 1: Union position on Little round Top, and to get there
Speaker 1: they first had to take Devil's Den, where the maze
Speaker 1: of boulders, many some twenty feet or six meters tall,
Speaker 1: made it nearly impossible to see the enemy, and Nesbit
Speaker 1: said it would have been scary. You turn a corner
Speaker 1: and there's somebody with a bayonet. The turning point of
Speaker 1: the battle for Devil's Den came with a siege from
Speaker 1: the Confederate First Texas Regiment under the command of Major
Speaker 1: General John bell Hood. The famously rag tag group of
Speaker 1: soldiers faced heavy casualties. Hood himself was shot in the arm,
Speaker 1: managed to silence three of the Union's four heavy artillery
Speaker 1: guns and flush the remaining Union soldiers from Devil's Den.
Speaker 1: Once in position, the First Texas installed sharpshooters between the
Speaker 1: boulders to pick off Union officers on Little Roundtop. Casualties
Speaker 1: from the fighting at Devil's Den totaled more than one
Speaker 1: eight hundred for the Confederates and more than eight hundred
Speaker 1: for the Union. One swampy section of open land between
Speaker 1: the boulders and Little Roundtop earned the name the slaughter
Speaker 1: Pen for how many soldiers from both sides were gunned
Speaker 1: down in crossfire. The battle for Devil's Den is considered
Speaker 1: a Confederate victory, although the South would ultimately lose the
Speaker 1: larger Battle of Gettysburg the next day after the failure
Speaker 1: of the infamous full frontal assault known as Pickett's Charge.
Speaker 1: Gettysburg is full of ghost stories. Half of the town's
Speaker 1: original four hundred buildings are still in use, including many
Speaker 1: that doubled as makeshift morgues and hospitals for the tens
Speaker 1: of thousands of war dead and wounded who flooded the
Speaker 1: town in the days after the battle. According to residents
Speaker 1: and visitors, many of these troubled souls have hung around
Speaker 1: a Nesbit has chronicled hundreds of paranormal tales in his
Speaker 1: multi volume Ghosts of Gettysburg book series, including several unexplained
Speaker 1: encounters that occurred at Devil's Den. One young woman was
Speaker 1: climbing around the boulders with a friend when she felt
Speaker 1: a hand to grab her by the ankle. Reaching up
Speaker 1: from a darkened fissure below was a young man in
Speaker 1: a Civil War uniform. She screamed for her friend, but
Speaker 1: when she looked back down the man was gone, and
Speaker 1: more than one visitor to the Devil's Den has claimed
Speaker 1: to meet a mysterious figure known to some as the
Speaker 1: Helpful Hippie. According to Nesbitt, years ago, a woman told
Speaker 1: him and his fellow park rangers that she had gotten
Speaker 1: turned around during an early morning visit to the Rocks
Speaker 1: when a man appeared behind her, seemingly out of nowhere
Speaker 1: and pointed off the distance, saying, what you're looking for
Speaker 1: is over there, and then he vanished. When Nesbitt's coworkers
Speaker 1: asked what the man looked like, she described a disheveled
Speaker 1: figure in a floppy hat, shoulder length hair, bare feet,
Speaker 1: and ragged clothing, and Nesbitt said, us park rangers are
Speaker 1: sitting there going, I can't believe she's describing exactly what
Speaker 1: a Texan looked like at the Battle of Gettysburg, and
Speaker 1: she wouldn't have known that as a tourist. Another woman
Speaker 1: approached Nesbit at a book signing and said that she
Speaker 1: had had a similar experience. Twenty years later, while exploring
Speaker 1: the Devil's Then alone, a raggedy man in a floppy
Speaker 1: hat suddenly appeared and pointed to her. University of Texas
Speaker 1: sweatshirt first, Texas, he exclaimed, before disappearing as quickly as
Speaker 1: he came. Other visitors to Devil's Den and nearby battlefield
Speaker 1: sites have complained that their camera and phone batteries inexplicably
Speaker 1: fail when in the area, only to start working again
Speaker 1: when they leave. Nesba has a theory for the technical glitch,
Speaker 1: which he himself has experienced more than once. The culprit
Speaker 1: Nesbitt believes is a famous photo taken at Devil's Den
Speaker 1: of a fallen Confederate soldier lying beside his sharpshooter position.
Speaker 1: The well known image, it was later discovered, was staged
Speaker 1: with a real corpse. Historians found a numbered sequence of
Speaker 1: images featuring the same dead soldier in a different location.
Speaker 1: Some enterprising Civil War photographer saw a photo op and
Speaker 1: dragged this poor kid forty yards or about thirty six
Speaker 1: meters to pose as a sharpshooter, and Nesbitt said, if
Speaker 1: there's a disgruntled spirit in Devil's Den that has animus
Speaker 1: towards photographers, it certainly would be this guy. For its part,
Speaker 1: the American Battlefield Trust, which preserves historic Civil War battle sites,
Speaker 1: gives little credence to Gettysburg ghost stories. It claims that
Speaker 1: these ghost stories only started circulating in the nineteen nineties
Speaker 1: when folks realized they could make money off of ghost
Speaker 1: tours and books. In an article on their website debunking
Speaker 1: myths and misconceptions surrounding Gettysburg, the American Battlefield Trust wrote
Speaker 1: by all means believe what you want to believe, but
Speaker 1: please know that if water gets on a camera lens,
Speaker 1: it's water, not a ghostly orb. If sun shines into
Speaker 1: a camera lens, it's called sunlight, not an energy sphere.
Speaker 1: Today's episode is based on the article the Ghosts of
Speaker 1: Gettysburg's Devil's Den on how st works dot com, written
Speaker 1: by Dave Brous. Brain Stuff is production of by Heart
Speaker 1: Radio in partnership with how stuff works dot com, and
Speaker 1: it's produced by Tyler Klein. For more podcasts from my
Speaker 1: heart Radio, visit the heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite show.