Soldiers' National Cemetery and Site of the Gettysburg Address
1195 Baltimore Pike, Gettysburg, PA 17325
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free to enter the cemetery grounds; daylight hours only.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Paved walkways and mown grass
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1863 · National Historic Landmark · Site of the Gettysburg Address · Civil War Soldiers' Cemetery
Following the three-day battle of July 1-3, 1863, an estimated 7,000 soldiers lay dead across the Gettysburg fields. Hasty battlefield burials and shallow graves prompted Adams County attorney David Wills to lobby Pennsylvania Governor Andrew Curtin for a permanent national cemetery. Wills acquired seventeen acres adjacent to the town's Evergreen Cemetery and engaged Scottish-born landscape architect William Saunders to design the grounds.
Saunders arranged the Union graves in a semicircular sweep around a central monument site, with markers grouped by state. Reinterment from the battlefield trenches began in October 1863 and continued for months. The cemetery's formal dedication on November 19, 1863, drew an estimated 15,000 people. Edward Everett delivered the principal oration; President Lincoln followed with the ten-sentence address that became the most-quoted speech in American political history. Lincoln spoke from a wooden platform near the present-day Soldiers' National Monument, though the exact location of the platform has been debated by historians and likely sat slightly inside the adjacent Evergreen Cemetery.
The Soldiers' National Monument was completed in 1869. Confederate dead were not interred at Gettysburg — most were removed in the 1870s to cemeteries in Richmond, Raleigh, Savannah, and Charleston. The cemetery was transferred from state administration to the federal War Department in 1872 and to the National Park Service in 1933. Burials of veterans from later wars continued into the twentieth century until the site reached capacity. The cemetery is a National Historic Landmark and contributing element to Gettysburg National Military Park.
Sources
Gettysburg's reputation as the most-investigated American haunted site rests partly on the cemetery, though most paranormal commercial attention focuses on the broader battlefield. Reports collected by tour operators and visitor journals describe soft weeping or whispering near dusk, particularly along the Union state plots; faint percussion or bugle phrasing carried on the wind; and lantern-like points of light moving through the graves at night, attributed in folklore to soldiers walking sentry.
Visitors photographing the Soldiers' National Monument frequently report camera malfunctions, drained batteries, and unexplained light artifacts that they read as orbs. National Park Service interpretation acknowledges the strong emotional impact of the site and the long tradition of reported anomalies but does not endorse a paranormal interpretation.
Formal investigation of the cemetery is restricted: NPS prohibits commercial ghost tours from entering the grounds, and most photo-and-audio reports come from daytime visitors. Evening walking tours describe the cemetery's lore from sidewalks along Baltimore Pike and Taneytown Road.
Media Appearances
Walk the concentric arcs of Union graves arranged by state, visit the Soldiers' National Monument, and read the bronze Gettysburg Address tablet near the rostrum where Lincoln spoke on November 19, 1863.
Several Gettysburg evening walking-tour operators include the cemetery exterior as a stop. The cemetery itself closes at dusk; tours discuss the site from the adjacent sidewalks.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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