For something like thirteen years of marriage, Jenn dragged me (Scott) on ghost tours and I never really got it. Houses, cemeteries, spooky stories…not really my thing. Then about a year and a half ago we did one in Colonial Williamsburg, walking past George Wythe’s house, and it finally clicked. The ghost tour isn’t really about the ghost. It’s about the history nobody else bothers to tell you, dressed up so you’ll actually listen.
Gettysburg might be the best example of that we’ve come across. That’s why our full guide to Gettysburg calls out the ghost tours as something you need to do.
Haunted Spots to Visit
Go to Gettysburg early enough in the morning and you basically have the whole town to yourself…which is exactly when you notice how many of these buildings have a ghost story attached to them.
Take the old orphanage on Cemetery Hill. After the battle, so many kids in Gettysburg had lost their fathers that the town opened an orphanage to take them in. There’s a real story behind how it got started, too. A soldier named Amos Humiston died on the first day of fighting, and when they found his body there was nothing on him to identify who he was…except a photograph of his three children, clutched in his hand. They ran the photo in the newspapers, hoping somebody would recognize the kids. His wife did. She identified her husband from a picture meant for someone else entirely, and she ended up becoming the orphanage’s first caretaker.
That’s the real history. The ghost story is darker…a later caretaker was accused of abusing the children in her care, and locals say it’s those kids who still haunt the building.
A couple blocks over is the house where General Reynolds was carried after he was mortally wounded on the first day, the first Union general killed at Gettysburg. The story that gets told on the ghost tours is about his fiancée…they’d kept their engagement secret because he was Protestant and she was Catholic, and she came to Gettysburg to surprise him, arriving just as they brought his body in. She sat with him in the kitchen. People say you can still see candlelight back there some nights, and a woman in a nice dress.
Then there’s Dobbin House, built in 1776, which somehow survived the entire battle standing. Mr. Dobbin was the town’s preacher and ran a school out of the place…between his first wife’s ten kids and his second wife’s nine, they had nineteen children living upstairs. It was also a stop on the Underground Railroad. There’s still a bookcase on the second floor that swings open to a hidden room where they used to shelter people escaping slavery. Two ghosts are supposed to haunt the place now…a child who likes to stick fingers in unattended cake, and a young Black girl who’s been seen there as well.
First Hand Ghost Sightings
Take Devil’s Den. Jenn has a friend, Courtney, who used to jog the battlefield with her dad early in the morning…it’s close enough to DC, and Gettysburg opens at sunrise, so if you get there right when the gates open you basically have the place to yourself. One foggy morning, they passed what they assumed were two reenactors on the other side of the road. Dirty, torn clothes, grown-out beards, completely checked out…didn’t even look up when Courtney’s dad waved. They didn’t think much of it. Then that same night, on a ghost tour bus, the guide started describing the most commonly seen ghosts at Gettysburg…two older Confederate soldiers, walking away from the battle, right along that same stretch by Devil’s Den. The description matched what they’d seen that morning, detail for detail.
Funny enough, we heard the flip side of that story from a reenactor friend of ours, Eddie. He was in Gettysburg for the filming of the 1993 movie, still in full Union uniform, sword and all, walking out of the national cemetery at night after a long day. A newlywed couple staying at his hotel saw him coming out of the graveyard and bolted straight for the manager, convinced they’d seen a ghost. Eddie just laughed about it later. Somebody in that town is always getting mistaken for the other.
Then there’s William Miller, buried just inside the entrance of the Gettysburg cemetery. He disobeyed a direct order on July 3rd, led a surprise attack that historians credit with helping save the Union position, and received the Medal of Honor for it…possibly the first time in American military history someone was decorated for breaking rank. For decades, though, his tombstone never said Medal of Honor on it. That wasn’t unusual back then; it didn’t become standard practice until much later. The story the tour guides tell is that his ghost wandered the cemetery, unrecognized, until his marker was finally updated in gold lettering. Whether or not you believe that part, the man himself is real, and so is what he did.
The one that gets embellished the most, though, is General Reynolds. He was the first Union general killed at Gettysburg, shot on the first day of battle, and his body was carried to an old stone building downtown that’s now a photo studio. The tour tells you his secret fiancée, Kate Hewitt, arrived in town just as they brought his body in, and that she sat with him in the kitchen, weeping, and that you can still see candlelight back there some nights.
It’s a beautiful story.
It’s also not quite what happened. Kate didn’t even know Reynolds had died until his family found her name on a locket and a West Point ring among his things and reached out to her. Their engagement had been kept secret because he was Protestant and she was Catholic…real detail. She met his body for the first time at the funeral in Lancaster, not in a Gettysburg kitchen. The tour just moves her timeline up to make the tragedy land harder.
That’s the thing Jenn always says about a good ghost tour: the history has to be true, even if the ghost part gets a little romanticized along the way. Go dig into any of these stories afterward and you’ll find real people underneath…a soldier nobody could identify except by a photo of his kids, a man decorated for disobeying orders, a fiancée who found out the worst way possible. The ghosts are just how Gettysburg gets you to sit still long enough to hear it.