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Reported phenomena — as catalogued
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America's Most-Reported Haunted Battlefield
1195 Baltimore Pike, Gettysburg, PA 17325
Research updated May 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Battlefield grounds and auto tour are free; Museum and Visitor Center film/cyclorama require a paid ticket.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Paved auto-tour road, gravel paths, and uneven rocky terrain at Devil's Den and Little Round Top
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1863 · National Historic Landmark · Civil War Turning Point · National Park Service Battlefield
The Battle of Gettysburg unfolded July 1-3, 1863, when the Army of Northern Virginia under General Robert E. Lee collided with the Army of the Potomac under General George G. Meade on the rolling farmland north and south of the Pennsylvania town. The first day pushed Union forces back through Gettysburg to the high ground at Cemetery Hill and Culp's Hill. The second day produced the most-photographed terrain in American military history: Confederate assaults on Little Round Top, Devil's Den, the Wheatfield, and the Peach Orchard, met by Union counter-attacks that held the southern flank at heavy cost. On the third day, Lee ordered the assault now known as Pickett's Charge against the Union center on Cemetery Ridge; close to half of the roughly 12,500 attacking Confederates became casualties in under an hour.
Combined casualties across the three days reached approximately 51,000 killed, wounded, captured, or missing. Lee retreated to Virginia on July 4-5 in heavy rain. The Confederacy never again mounted a major offensive into the North, and the battle is widely regarded as the strategic turning point of the war.
The Gettysburg Battlefield Memorial Association acquired key parcels beginning in 1864. The site became Gettysburg National Military Park in 1895 and was transferred to the National Park Service in 1933. The park now encompasses roughly 6,000 acres, more than 1,300 monuments and markers, and one of the most complete collections of preserved Civil War terrain in the United States.
Sources
Gettysburg may be the most-documented haunted landscape in the United States. Mark Nesbitt, a former NPS ranger turned author and tour operator, published the first volume of Ghosts of Gettysburg in 1991 and has since collected thousands of first-person accounts from visitors, residents, and park employees.
Devil's Den, the boulder field where Texas and Georgia infantry held position on July 2, is the most-cited hotspot. Visitors describe figures in period dress glimpsed among the rocks; camera malfunctions specifically associated with attempts to photograph the area; and the sense of a presence on the adjacent Triangular Field, which slopes west from Devil's Den toward Rose Woods. Long-form accounts collected by Nesbitt describe sharpshooters' silhouettes seen along the tree line, drum rolls heard in still air, and impressions of motion through the tall grass.
Little Round Top, the Wheatfield, and the Spangler Farm — used as a Confederate field hospital — appear frequently in collected reports. Pennsylvania Hall (now part of Gettysburg College) is the subject of a widely retold account from the late 1980s in which two administrators stepped off an elevator into what they described as a fully operational Civil War surgical ward. The account is reproduced in multiple published collections.
The National Park Service treats the paranormal interest as a sociological phenomenon: NPS does not endorse the reports, prohibits commercial ghost tours from operating inside park boundaries, and emphasizes the documented military and civilian history. Independent ghost-tour companies operate from the town and visit perimeter stops on public roads.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
Drive the 24-mile self-guided auto tour with stops at McPherson Ridge, Little Round Top, Devil's Den, the Wheatfield, Cemetery Ridge, and the High Water Mark. Park at each stop for foot-level exploration of Triangular Field, the Slaughter Pen, and the monuments.
Tour the Museum of the American Civil War, watch the orientation film, and view the 377-foot Gettysburg Cyclorama painting in its restored gallery.
Multiple commercial operators run evening walking tours of town and adjacent battlefield perimeters, retelling first-person accounts collected by Mark Nesbitt and other researchers. NPS prohibits commercial paranormal tours on park land itself; town-based tours visit accessible perimeter stops.
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