Gettysburg’s Hidden Haunted Hotspots: Spirits, Apparitions and Haunted Places on and off the Battlefield

By Mark Nesbitt

Veering from my normal format of writing about the well-known, often visited battle sites, I’ve expanded the scope of the ghost stories of Gettysburg to out-of-the-way places, not so familiar to the average visitor to the historic area. The town of Gettysburg, the outskirts of Gettysburg, as well as places dozens of miles away, were all part of the great military campaign that culminated in the battle at Gettysburg.
Journey to these less frequented locations steeped in just as much history and hauntings as those places you’ve heard of in the panoply of experiences we call Gettysburg.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Second Chance Publications
• Release date: May 19, 2022
• ISBN: 9780999579558

Mark Nesbitt

Mark Nesbitt is Honorary Associate Professor at UCL Institute of Archaeology, Visiting Professor at Royal Holloway and Senior Research Leader at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. His research concerns human-plant interactions as revealed through museum collections. His research addresses the histories of empire, medicine and botany and their relevance today.

Book preview

Gettysburg’s Hidden Haunted Hotspots

Spirits, Apparitions and Haunted Places on and off the Battlefield

by

Mark Nesbitt

Copyright 2022 Mark Nesbitt

Published by Second Chance Publications

P.O. Box 3126

Gettysburg, PA. 17325

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

WARNING! The stories herein are fully protected by U. S. Federal copyright laws. Unauthorized copying, reproduction, recording, broadcasting, derivative works and public performance, by any individual or company without written consent of the publisher and author are strictly prohibited. Federal copyright laws will be vigorously enforced and infringements will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, which can include damages and lawyers’ fees to be paid by the infringer of copyright.

ISBN 13: 978-0-9995795-5-8

Photos by Mark and Carol Nesbitt unless otherwise credited.

Discover other titles by Mark Nesbitt at Smashwords.com

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To Luke

From Pop-Pop

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 2: Battle of Fairfield

Chapter 3: Chamberlain Avenue

Chapter 4: Culp’s Hill and Spangler’s Meadow

Chapter 5: Pardee Field

Chapter 6: Culp’s Hill Angle Breastworks and Burial Sites

Chapter 7: East Cavalry Battlefield

Chapter 8: Hospital Woods

Chapter 9: Hospital Road

Chapter 10: Camp Letterman—Field of Dreams, Field of Pain

Chapter 11: Coster’s Last Stand

Chapter 12: Lee’s Headquarters

Chapter 13: Benner’s Hill

Chapter 14: Old Radio Shack/HACC Campus

Chapter 15: About the Author

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Chapter 1: Introduction

I was asked to speak at a conference and my wife Carol suggested a topic we had discussed on numerous occasions: Hidden, Haunted, Hotspots of Gettysburg, While the well-known sites on Gettysburg National Military Park are covered in my Ghosts of Gettysburg books, there are other sites, not necessarily on the park, that are paranormally active as well.

I compiled a list of the obscure sites I knew were haunted. I researched the history, found or took photos, and pulled together (or collected in the field) electronic voice phenomena (EVP) associated with each site.

Unfortunately, my talk was cut short due to unforeseen factors. I had all these sites compiled and still wanted to share this list of obscure but active haunted places. Again, Carol came up with the solution. She suggested a Hidden, Haunted, Hotspots of Gettysburg blog series.

The series was a success. I got a lot of positive comments about the sites, some of which were completely unknown to many visitors to Gettysburg. But blogs are fleeting.

Books, however, are not.

It has taken awhile, but Hidden, Haunted, Hotspots of Gettysburg has become a book! Veering from my normal format of writing about the well-known, often visited battle sites—Devil’s Den, Little Round Top, Seminary and Cemetery Ridge, and so forth—I’ve expanded the scope of the ghost stories of Gettysburg to out-of-the-way places, not so familiar to the average visitor to the historic area. Since many are quiet, inconspicuous places, I also slanted the format to facilitate paranormal investigations of the sites, giving suggestions for gathering evidence, such as EVP.

The fact that there are many sites—of which these are just a few—associated with the Battle of Gettysburg that are far-flung merely indicates that the battle was far larger and covered so much more ground than you probably realized. The town of Gettysburg, the outskirts of Gettysburg, other towns several miles from Gettysburg, were all involved in the fighting that became the great battle. As well, places dozens of miles away were all part of the great military campaign that culminated in the battle at Gettysburg.

If you plan to visit these places, keep in mind that some of the sites are on or near private property. In other words, be discrete; don’t visit at two in the morning and yell for ghosts to come and talk into your recorder. Also, don’t bring large groups of your closest friends on a ghost hunt to these sites.

A few of the sites are on National Park Service property, so mind the posted hours of entry.

Enjoy these out-of-the-way places steeped in just as much history and hauntings as those places you’ve heard of in the panoply of experiences we call Gettysburg.

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Chapter 2: Battle of Fairfield

Fairfield Battlefield

Afternoon, July 3, 1863. Gettysburg.

Historians always focus on the Confederate assault on the center of the Union line on Cemetery Ridge. An entire division, and parts of two other divisions of Longstreet’s and A. P. Hill’s Corps of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia, after a two-hour artillery duel, began their ill-fated march across nearly a mile of open fields.

The 12,500 Confederates who started the charge are slaughtered: 8,000 killed, wounded or missing in a time span of just fifty or so minutes. The assault comes down to us through history as Pickett’s Charge and becomes a synonym for valor wasted in a lost cause.

But while Pickett’s Charge gets all the attention when discussing July 3 at Gettysburg, three other smaller, but significant battles take place about the same time.

The cavalry battle three miles east of Gettysburg has garnered the most attention, probably because it was the largest and involved some of the cavalry stars of the war. Major General J. E. B. (Jeb) Stuart who commanded the Confederate cavalry during the battle east of Gettysburg; young Brigadier General George Armstrong Custer (later to sow infamy and reap death during the Indian Wars of the 1870s) was one Union officer who opposed him.

There was also a Union cavalry charge against Confederate infantry on the south end of the battlefield named after its young, martyred leader Brigadier General Elon J. Farnsworth: Farnsworth’s Charge.

But it’s the cavalry battle at Fairfield that qualifies as one of Gettysburg’s hidden haunted hotspots.

While Confederate cavalry leader Jeb Stuart gets the unwarranted post-war blame for leaving Robert E. Lee with no eyes or ears during the march northward in June, I believe I successfully defended Stuart’s actions in Saber and Scapegoat: Jeb Stuart and the Gettysburg Controversy. Stuart actually left Lee with more cavalry than he had taken with him in his scout/distraction to the east of the Union army. A brigade under Brigadier General William E. Grumble Jones was one of those several cavalry units he left directly under Lee’s command.

An 1848 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, Jones served with Jeb Stuart in the pre-Civil War Indian Wars where Stuart considered him the best outpost officer in the Army. When his bride died tragically in a shipwreck, Jones retired from the army and became a virtual hermit on his farm, a changed man. Dour, mean-spirited because of his loss, he received the cognomen Grumble Jones. When the Civil War broke out, he raised a unit of cavalry and served under Stuart at 1st Manassas.

After the June 9, 1863, Battle of Brandy Station opened what was to become the Gettysburg Campaign, Jones was ordered to guard the west flank of the invading Confederate Army of Northern Virginia while Stuart swung wide to the east, distracting the northern command and drawing off northern units to seek him out and discover his intentions. Threatening the northern capital, Stuart especially panicked the bureaucrats and military men in Washington worried about their own hides as evidenced by their daily panicked communications concerning his whereabouts.

After operations against the railroads in West Virginia, Jones was recalled by Lee to cross the Potomac and ordered to secure the Hagerstown Road at Fairfield, Pennsylvania, on July 3, as a precaution in the event Lee needed a route upon which to withdraw his army back to the Shenandoah Valley.

On that afternoon, the 6th United States Regular Cavalry, about 400 strong, was sent after a large Confederate wagon train rumored to be heading north from Fairfield toward Orrtanna and Cashtown. Once in the vicinity they received confirmation from townsfolk that the Confederate train was indeed heading toward Cashtown. Coming to within a couple of miles of Fairfield, the Yankees spotted some Confederate pickets watching from the mountains. Major Samuel Starr, commanding the Regulars, detached a squadron to the west to deal with any larger Confederate contingent on that flank, thus decreasing his strength from his original 400 troopers.

Riding through the countryside the Union cavalrymen were presented cakes, bread, pies and liquid refreshment by the locals. Starr sent a small group of troopers under Lt. Christian Balder off to find the wagons reported by the civilians.

Balder soon returned with a report that there were more Confederate cavalry guarding the wagon train—enough to drive off his advanced force. Starr decided to press