Gettysburg

[00:00:02] The Late Night Call-In Podcast, where we delve into the world of the supernatural and explore

[00:00:20] the eerie and unexplained.

[00:00:23] I'm your host, Michelle Newman.

[00:00:27] This podcast features true stories from our callers that will send shivers down your spine

[00:00:34] and leave you questioning the existence of the afterlife.

[00:00:39] So grab a cozy blanket, turn down the lights.

[00:00:45] Hi, I'm Paige from Los Angeles.

[00:00:50] When I was a kid, I'm originally from Washington, D.C., we took a school field trip to Gettysburg.

[00:01:01] And this is in eighth grade, and I was suffering from a horrible bout of depression, the first

[00:01:09] real bout of it of my life.

[00:01:12] And I was really struggling to be around people and even to interact with my classmates.

[00:01:23] I was also not the world's most popular person to put it mildly.

[00:01:28] So the thought of spending time with my classmates on a fucking field trip to Gettysburg battlefield,

[00:01:38] you know, it wasn't super appealing to me.

[00:01:45] But I went.

[00:01:49] Anyway, I feel like it was in winter.

[00:01:52] So it was cold and rainy.

[00:01:56] And our bus full of these middle schoolers, you know, arrived at the battlefield.

[00:02:01] And we were taken on this really long tour all around, you know, the major parts of

[00:02:07] the battlefield, like little round top.

[00:02:11] We've been studying the Civil War in eighth grade.

[00:02:14] And so, you know, in some ways it was, I guess, instructive to be there.

[00:02:19] But for the most part I just felt really sick and cold and isolated.

[00:02:29] But there's one part of the battlefield called the Devil's Den.

[00:02:33] And the Devil's Den is this sort of group of rocks forming kind of like a punch bowl

[00:02:38] shape that was a pretty significant part of the battle.

[00:02:43] And basically the Union troops had been stationed at the top and there were Confederate troops

[00:02:49] that were advancing and there was like a multi-day battle in the Devil's Den.

[00:02:55] And a lot of people died.

[00:02:56] It was one of the bloodiest days of the Civil War.

[00:03:00] So I went there, you know, and they're talking about all this history.

[00:03:08] And I suddenly felt this presence.

[00:03:12] I don't know how to describe it, but it felt like there was this heavy weight around me

[00:03:18] and it felt horribly, horribly sad.

[00:03:23] Just, I felt so struck by the fact that I was standing amongst the dead in some way.

[00:03:31] I felt like I could hear the echoes, the distant echoes of this place and the people that had died there.

[00:03:44] And I, I cried.

[00:03:57] So when I tried to explain it to anyone, you know, I was, it was the weird girl, right?

[00:04:05] But when I got home, I learned that the Devil's Den was a place even before the war that people had their suspicions about.

[00:04:18] That it was haunted by a giant snake or a giant entity.

[00:04:24] And it was so evocative of a place that the Civil War photographer Gardner, I forget his first name,

[00:04:31] but something Gardner staged a really infamous photograph of a soldier, a Confederate soldier dead in the Devil's Den.

[00:04:40] And it's incredibly haunting.

[00:04:44] Even looking at that photograph, I feel it now.

[00:04:51] This misty weight of death echoing across time.

[00:05:04] So yeah, that's my go.

[00:05:15] Thank you Paige for your story.

[00:05:19] You mentioned this briefly. Locals believed that the crevices between the boulders were home to a large snake.

[00:05:27] People started calling this snake the Devil.

[00:05:30] Thus, the rock formation it inhabited became known as the Devil's Den.

[00:05:40] That's all we have this week, folks.

[00:05:42] Do you have a ghost story? Call 701-484-2666.

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[00:06:03] Was something particularly scary in this episode?

[00:06:06] Or maybe you've had a similar experience.

[00:06:09] Leave your comments via our Spotify page.

[00:06:13] Thank you for watching.

[00:06:15] And as always, I'm your host Michelle Newman.

[00:06:20] Signing off. See you next week.