This is one of the original Tell Me A Ghost Story calls from the early days of the show. Short, raw, and exactly where it all started. This call was later incorporated into a longer compilation episode with full host commentary if you want the complete experience.
Hey, it's Michelle, and this early episode belongs entirely to Paige, who called in with a true ghost story that begins with a middle school field trip to Gettysburg and ends somewhere considerably darker than any school permission slip prepared her for.
Gettysburg is one of the most extensively documented paranormal locations in the United States, and the reasons are not difficult to understand. In three days in July of 1863, more than fifty thousand soldiers were killed, wounded, or went missing on that ground. The sheer volume of violent, sudden death concentrated in one place over seventy-two hours created a paranormal landscape that researchers have been investigating and documenting for over a century. Gettysburg is not haunted in the way that an old house or a hotel is haunted. It is haunted in the way that a wound is haunted, pervasively, historically, and with a weight that visitors describe feeling before they know what they are standing on.
Paige was a middle school student on a field trip. She was there to learn about American Civil War history. What she encountered on that battlefield went significantly beyond the curriculum, and what she brought home with her afterward made clear that something on that ground had decided to come along.
The question the original description asks is exactly the right one for this episode. What could go wrong on a middle school field trip to Gettysburg? The answer is that Gettysburg has been answering that question for visitors for a hundred and sixty years, and Paige became one of them on a Tuesday afternoon with her classmates and a packed lunch.
One caller. One true ghost story from the most haunted battlefield in American history and a middle schooler who did not go looking for anything and found it anyway. This is where Tell Me A Ghost Story began.
If you have a real ghost story of your own, a haunting experience, something you heard, something you cannot explain, I want to hear it. Call 1 (701) 484-2666 or visit tellmeaghoststory.com to share your story.
You might end up on the show.
Support us with official merch at newmanmedia.shop, catch us on YouTube at @tellmeaghoststory, and follow along on Instagram at @tellmeaghoststorypodcast.
Theme music is Sexy Sax by Cool Cascade.
Production by Newman Media.
[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.
[00:05:51] Or go to tellmeagostory.com and leave your story there.
[00:05:58] Go ahead and leave me a five-star review wherever you get your podcasts.
[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.