The Grove

Gettysburg, PA

The Battle of Gettysburg was the bloodiest battle ever fought in North America which took place from July 1-3, 1863. Nearly 170,000 men and 600 cannons waged war with an intensity that changed the course of history and made Gettysburg the "High Water Mark" of the Confederacy. After defeating Union forces at the Battle of Chancellorsville, Robert E. Lee decided to invade the North with 75,000 troops. Lee led his own troops to Gettysburg, a strategic crossroads.

On the first day of battle, the Union's General Meade advanced force under John Buford and held the site until reinforcements arrived. On the second day, the Confederates attacked Union lines at Little Round Top, Cemetery Hill, Devil's Den, the Wheatfield, and the Peach Orchard. On the third day, Lee sent 15,000 troops to assault Cemetery Ridge, held by 10,000 Union troops under Winfield S Hancock. A Confederate spearhead broke through the Union artillery defense but was stopped by a fierce Union counterattack on three sides. At night under cover of a heavy rain on July 4, Lee led his troops back to Virginia. Losses totaled about 23,000 casualties among 88,000 Union troops and over 20,000 casualties among 75,000 Confederates.

Most of the fighting in the area that surrounds the grove took place On July 2nd and 3rd, when confederate troops led by Richard S. Ewell crossed the grove and emerged from the woods at the bottom of cemetery hill to attack the union troops positioned at the top. Unfortunately for Ewell and his men, the Union troops had fully occupied the hill and built impregnable defenses, which resulted in heavy Confederate losses.

Gettysburg lays claim to a plethora of hauntings that have been witnessed. Everything from seeing Civil War era soldiers and people, to experiencing a ghostly reenactment of an actual war there are hundreds of things for which one may come across with a haunting in Gettysburg. There are also countless residual sounds that can be heard. There have even been reports of an apparition of a dog that was to have died during the conflict. In various surrounding buildings, there has been the smell of pipe tobacco, orbs, as well as random apparitions of people purported to have died in the war.