Haunted places guide · Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

The Haunted Gettysburg Battlefield: Ghosts, History and How to Visit

Over three days in July 1863 more than 50,000 men were killed, wounded, captured or went missing in the fields and woods around a small Pennsylvania town. The battlefield is now a national park, and it is the place most people mean when they call Gettysburg one of the most haunted towns in America.

By The Haunted Rooms Team · Updated November 2026 · How we rate places

4.5/5Haunted Rooms Score

1863Battle fought July 1 to 3

50,000+Casualties

Our nearest ghost hunt: Gettysburg AcademyMeet the ghosts

Gettysburg National Military Park protects about 6,000 acres of the ground where the Union Army of the Potomac and the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia met in the largest battle of the Civil War. It is open every day, free to walk and drive, and dotted with monuments, cannon and markers that show where each regiment stood. In 2025 it drew about 730,000 visitors.

Most come for the history. A good many also come for the stories: phantom gunfire at Devil’s Den, cameras that will not work in the Triangular Field, a barefoot man who points the way and is gone, and a Union soldier said to have handed out real musket rounds on Little Round Top. This guide covers the history behind each place, the ghost stories as they are told, and the park rules that matter if you want to see the battlefield at dusk.

History of the Gettysburg battlefield

Robert E. Lee led the Army of Northern Virginia into Pennsylvania in the summer of 1863. On July 1 his troops collided with Union cavalry and infantry west and north of Gettysburg, a town of about 2,400 people where a dozen roads met. By the end of the first day the Union army had been driven back through the streets to Cemetery Hill and Culp’s Hill, south of town, and both armies were pouring in. In all, roughly 94,000 to 104,000 Union soldiers under George G. Meade and some 65,000 to 80,000 Confederates fought here.

July 2 brought the fighting to the south end of the field. James Longstreet’s attack swept through the Peach Orchard, the Wheatfield, the boulders of Devil’s Den and up the slopes of Little Round Top. On July 3, after a huge artillery barrage, between 10,500 and 12,500 Confederate infantry crossed open fields toward the Union center in what became known as Pickett’s Charge. Nearly half of them did not return to their own lines. Lee retreated on July 4.

The cost was staggering. The armies lost more than 50,000 men killed, wounded, captured or missing, and nearly 8,000 of them were killed outright. The small town was left to care for about 14,000 wounded Union soldiers and 8,000 Confederate prisoners. The dead were buried quickly and shallowly in the summer heat, and more than 3,000 dead horses were burned south of town. On November 19, 1863, Abraham Lincoln delivered his 271-word Gettysburg Address at the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery on Cemetery Hill.

Preservation started almost at once. The Gettysburg Battlefield Memorial Association was founded in 1864 to buy land for memorials. Congress created the national military park in 1895 under the War Department, and the National Park Service took over in 1933. Today the park keeps nearly 400 cannon along the old artillery lines and about 43,000 Civil War artifacts. Its Museum and Visitor Center, opened in 2008, houses the Gettysburg Cyclorama, a 19th-century painting in the round of Pickett’s Charge.

The ghosts of the Gettysburg battlefield

Stories, not records

None of the battlefield’s ghost stories can be proven, and the National Park Service does not promote them. Most of the best-known accounts were collected by Gettysburg author Mark Nesbitt in his Ghosts of Gettysburg books and in the 2006 book Haunted Pennsylvania, which he co-wrote, and were later retold on TV shows such as Unsolved Mysteries. We give them below as they are told, with the history behind each place.

The barefoot man at Devil's Den

Devil’s Den saw some of the most savage fighting of July 2, and Confederate sharpshooters later fired from between its boulders. It is the battlefield’s most famous haunted spot. Visitors describe the sound of distant gunfire and screams, cameras that suddenly fail and figures that turn up in photographs.

The best-known figure is a scruffy man with long gray hair, torn buckskin-style clothes, a big floppy hat and no shoes. He is said to walk up to visitors, say something like “What you’re looking for is over there,” point toward the rocks, and vanish. Many people connect him with the Texans who fought here, though nobody has ever named him.

The Triangular Field

Just northwest of Devil’s Den is a small field bounded by stone walls, where the 124th New York held Houck’s Ridge against Confederate attacks on July 2. The regiment’s colonel, Augustus van Horne Ellis, stayed on his horse with his sword drawn until a bullet struck him in the forehead.

The field has a reputation for broken cameras. Visitors and authors describe cameras and recorders that will not work at the gate but work again once outside, battle sounds on recordings when the field is quiet, shadowy figures crossing the grass and the feeling of being touched.

The ammunition on Little Round Top

Little Round Top is the rocky hill that anchored the Union left on July 2. Visitors describe soldiers in uniform who vanish and the sound of musket fire.

The most famous story comes from the filming of Gettysburg in the early 1990s. As told on Unsolved Mysteries in 1996, re-enactors working as extras met a man in a worn Union uniform who handed them some ammunition, which they took to be movie blanks. Later they found the rounds were real Civil War musket balls in pristine condition, and the man was not part of the production.

The girl in the Slaughter Pen and the horseman on the road

In the Slaughter Pen, the rocky low ground between Devil’s Den and Big Round Top, stories describe a little girl in a white dress.

One of the oldest Gettysburg legends dates to the night before the second day. Nesbitt found accounts from Union Fifth Corps soldiers marching toward the town who saw a horseman in a Revolutionary War-era uniform appear ahead of them and disappear again, and some of them believed it was George Washington. As early as 1887 a writer named Emmanuel Bushman described “many unnatural and supernatural sights and sounds” around the Round Tops.

The two men from Mississippi

Nesbitt also tells of a woman who sensed two men approaching her in the woods behind the old battle lines and later gave their names, company and regiment, the 42nd Mississippi. He said he found that two men by those names had been wounded nearby and treated at that spot. It remains one of the stories he found hardest to explain.

Where to look

• Devil's Den: the boulder field at the south end of Houck’s Ridge, home of the barefoot man and the most reports of failed cameras.
• The Triangular Field: the walled field just northwest of Devil’s Den, below the 124th New York monument with its life-size statue of Colonel Ellis.
• The Slaughter Pen: the rocky ground between Devil’s Den and Big Round Top, where the girl in white is described.
• Little Round Top: the hilltop with views across the whole southern field, where the ammunition story is set.
• The Round Tops: the wooded slopes Emmanuel Bushman wrote about in 1887, best seen from the Little Round Top overlook at dusk.

Visiting the Gettysburg battlefield

Start at the Museum and Visitor Center on Baltimore Pike for maps, the film and the Cyclorama. The battlefield itself is free, and you can drive the auto tour, join a free ranger program, or hire a Licensed Battlefield Guide for a private tour. A licensed guide is required for any paid battlefield history tour.

Devil’s Den, the Triangular Field, the Slaughter Pen and Little Round Top are all close together on the south end of the field, linked by the park’s tour roads. Allow an hour or two to walk between them, and wear sturdy shoes for the rocks. Several towers and monuments, including Longstreet Tower, Culp’s Hill Tower and the Pennsylvania Monument, are open to climb during park hours.

The park’s grounds and roads open 30 minutes before sunrise and close 30 minutes after sunset, and the park does not allow people on the field after closing except at official programs. It also has a long-standing policy against organized paranormal investigations on the battlefield. In 2008 a planned ghost hunting summit in Gettysburg was called off for that reason. Drones are banned without written permission, and gravestone and monument rubbings are not allowed.

So the best haunted Gettysburg plan is a dusk walk at Devil’s Den or Little Round Top before the roads close, then one of the licensed ghost walks that run on the streets of town at night. If you want a real investigation, Haunted Rooms runs ghost hunts with an overnight option at the 1810 Gettysburg Academy, a Civil War field hospital in town, and at the Cashtown Inn, a Confederate headquarters eight miles to the west.

• Visiting National park, open to all
• Tours Ranger programs and licensed battlefield guides by day; private ghost walks run in town at night
• Hours and season Park roads open daily 30 minutes before sunrise to 30 minutes after sunset
• Tickets Battlefield free; museum tickets at the visitor center
• Ghost hunting No: the park closes after dark and has a policy against organized paranormal investigations

Tips for your visit

• Check the sunset time before you go: the last half hour before the roads close is the most atmospheric time to be at Devil’s Den.
• Bring a flashlight for the walk back to your car, and keep to the paths on the rocks.
• Respect the field: it is a place where thousands of men died, so no rubbings, relic hunting or climbing on monuments that are not open to climb.
• Visit in late June or early July to see the anniversary programs, or in mid-November for Remembrance Day.
• Stay in town so you can walk to the night ghost tours and back.

More haunted places nearby

• The Gettysburg Orphanage: the National Homestead on Baltimore Street and its cellar, with the Jennie Wade House up the street
• Haunted hotels in Gettysburg: historic inns in town to sleep in after a dusk walk
• Farnsworth House Inn: a bullet-scarred inn once used by Confederate sharpshooters
• 1810 Gettysburg Academy: a former field hospital where Haunted Rooms runs ghost hunts with an overnight stay
• Haunted places in Pennsylvania
• Haunted places in Gettysburg

Sources

Facts on this page are checked against the official website, historic records and news coverage. Ghost stories are reported as staff, visitors and investigators tell them, and we say where records contradict a story.

• National Park Service: Gettysburg Superintendent's Compendium
• National Park Service: Gettysburg operating hours
• Wikipedia: Gettysburg National Military Park
• Wikipedia: Battle of Gettysburg
• Wikipedia: Devil's Den
• Wikipedia: Augustus van Horne Ellis
• HISTORY: Gettysburg ghost stories from the Civil War battlefield
• History News Network: Gettysburg ghost-hunting summit cancelled (2008)