Latest / The Grim: Haunted Cemeteries & Graveyard Tales / Pickett's Souls | Gettysburg National Cemetery
Transcript
- 0:13Kristin: Grim morning and welcome to the Grim.
- 0:16Kristin: I'm your host, Kristen.
- 0:18Kristin: On today's episode, we'll be opening the gate and entering Gettysburg National Cemetery, located in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
- 0:25Kristin: The aroma of coffee mingles in the air.
- 0:28Kristin: The gates stand open.
- 0:30Kristin: Step carefully.
- 0:31Kristin: It's time to descend into the hauntings of history.
- 0:35Kristin: Before diving into the stories of African American burial grounds, I felt it was important to first return to the war that was so fiercely fought in the name of freedom.
- 0:45Kristin: The burial ground that best marks that bridge between past and present sits in the beautiful town of Gettysburg.
- 0:51Kristin: In today's world, it's hard to imagine a cemetery without dedicated areas for veterans.
- 0:56Kristin: Cemeteries created solely for those who sacrificed their lives, or memorials built to mark the wars of the past.
- 1:03Kristin: Yet there was a time in the United States when national cemeteries didn't exist at all.
- 1:07Kristin: In many early battles, when soldiers died, they were buried where they fell, turning battlefields into graveyards that slowly faded from public memory.
- 1:15Kristin: But for America in the 1860s, that all changed because of one war.
- 1:20Kristin: The American Civil War, more commonly known today simply as the Civil War.
- 1:24Kristin: Ironically, depending on the era in which you live or even where you live, the war's name itself changes.
- 1:30Kristin: It's sometimes called the War Between the States, the War of the Rebellion, the Great Rebellion, or even the War for Southern Independence.
- 1:38Kristin: In a country that was tearing itself apart over human decency and the institution of slavery, it's not lost on me that Americans would even fight over the name of the war itself.
- 1:48Kristin: Whatever the name you choose, the Civil War, thought between 1861 and 1865 was a brutal and deeply personal conflict that resulted in an estimated more than 750,000 military deaths across both sides.
- 2:03Kristin: Historical records indicate that roughly 360,000 Union soldiers and around 260,000 Confederate soldiers died while in service.
- 2:12Kristin: These numbers give us only a partial understanding of the true human cost of war.
- 2:18Kristin: Many soldiers died after being discharged from wounds that never healed or from diseases contracted while in service.
- 2:24Kristin: Deaths under those circumstances were not officially counted as wartime casualties, leaving historians with incomplete records and a legacy of undercounting.
- 2:34Kristin: But why was this war so different from the wars that came beforein?
- 2:37Kristin: Wars where death was also a constant companion on the battlefield.
- 2:41Kristin: Nearly 80 years earlier, the American Revolutionary War, while perilous and bloody, didn't see casualties on this scale, nor did it create the same overwhelming crisis in how the dead were handled and remembered.
- 2:55Kristin: One reason lies in the military tactics that were carried forward into the Civil War.
- 3:00Kristin: The strategy of advancing directly toward an opponent, charging in organized formations wasn't new.
- 3:06Kristin: It was taught to generations of officers, including those trained at the United States Military Academy at West Point.
- 3:13Kristin: Many of the commanders on both sides of the Civil War had learned the same battlefield doctrine.
- 3:18Kristin: Regiments were trained to maneuver, to flank their opponents, and to pin enemy units in place.
- 3:24Kristin: This often created deadly conditions known as infilating fire, where soldiers were fired upon from the side, allowing bullets to tear through long lines of men.
- 3:32Kristin: In simpler terms, if one unit advanced toward the enemy, opposing forces positioned along the side could open fire directly into the length of the formation.
- 3:42Kristin: In earlier wars, however, this kind of fighting didn't produce the mass slaughter on the scale seen during the Civil War.
- 3:48Kristin: Weapons were notoriously difficult to load, slow to fire, inaccurate and limited in range.
- 3:54Kristin: By the 1860s, that reality had changed.
- 3:57Kristin: Technological advances introduced rifled muskets and repeating firearms, including weapons such as the Spencer repeating rifle and the Henry repeating rifle.
- 4:06Kristin: These guns could fire more quickly, with far greater accuracy, at a much longer distances than the smooth war muskets in earlier generations.
- 4:15Kristin: Old battlefield tactics were now colliding with modern firepower.
- 4:19Kristin: The result was devastating on both sides, something few military leaders had fully anticipated.
- 4:25Kristin: One of the most haunting examples of this failure to adapt can be found at Gettysburg.
- 4:30Kristin: On July 3, 1863, Confederate General Robert E.
- 4:33Kristin: Lee ordered nearly 12,000 soldiers to march across almost a full mile of open ground toward the Union line on Cemetery Ridge, an assault that would become known as Pickett's Charge.
- 4:44Kristin: The tightly packed formations that had once symbolized military discipline now made the soldiers devastatingly easy targets for new rifled muskets.
- 4:52Kristin: Entire ranks collapsed, men fell beside one another in waves.
- 4:56Kristin: Within less than an hour, more than half the men who participated were killed, wounded, or captured.
- 5:01Kristin: Old battlefield tactics had collided with modern firepower, and the fields outside Gettysburg had become a graveyard.
- 5:08Kristin: The battlefield of Gettysburg was undoubtedly the deadliest battle of the American Civil War, resulting in more than 50,000 casualties across both armies.
- 5:18Kristin: It remains the bloodiest single battle in American military history, fought not against a foreign enemy but against one another.
- 5:25Kristin: It stands today as a cornerstone of American memory, marked by Abraham Lincoln's iconic speech, by monuments and memorials, by reenactments, parades, and generations of military study.
- 5:37Kristin: Fought over three days, Gettysburg would become the turning point of the Civil War in favor of the Union.
- 5:42Kristin: Yet the cost of that turning point is still visible today in the quiet rows of Gettysburg National Cemetery.
- 5:49Kristin: The battle became a turning for the war largely because Robert E.
- 5:52Kristin: Lee's failed effort to carry the conflict north.
- 5:55Kristin: Union Major General George E.
- 5:57Kristin: Meade's Army of the Ponomac ultimately defeated the repeated assaults of Confederate General Robert Ely's Army of Northern Virginia, halting Lee's invasion of the North and forcing his retreat back into Virginia.
- 6:09Kristin: Following his earlier victory at the Battle of Chancellorsville in Spotsvania County, Virginia, in May of 1863, Lee led his army north through the Shenandoah Valley to begin what became known as the Gettysburg Campaign, his second major attempt to invade Union territory.
- 6:24Kristin: With Confederate moral high, Lee hoped to shift the focus of the summer fighting away from a war-ravaged Northern Virginia.
- 6:30Kristin: He believed a successful campaign in the North, possibly threatening cities such as Harrisburg or even Philadelphia, might weaken Northern support for the war and pressure political leaders to seek peace.
- 6:41Kristin: President Abraham Lincoln initially pressed Major General Joseph Hooker to pursue Lee's army, but only three days before the armies would collide, Lincoln relieved Hooker of command and replaced him with General George G.
- 6:53Kristin: Meade.
- 6:54Kristin: On July 1, 1863, as Lee's forces moved toward the town of Gettysburg in search of the Union Army, the two sides unexpectedly encountered one another, and the battle began.
- 7:05Kristin: Low ridges to the northwest of the town were initially defended by a Union cavalry division under Brigadier General John Buford.
- 7:13Kristin: His outnumbered forces were soon reinforced by two corps of Union infantry.
- 7:17Kristin: Two large Confederate corps attacked from the north and northwest.
- 7:21Kristin: Under the pressure of those assaults, the hastily formed Union lines eventually collapsed, and Federal troops were forced to retreat through the streets of Gettysburg, falling back to the high ground south of town.
- 7:33Kristin: On the second day of the battle, July 2nd, the Union Army formed a defensive line shaped like a fish hook.
- 7:39Kristin: Late in the afternoon, Lee ordered a powerful assault against the Union left flank.
- 7:43Kristin: Brutal fighting erupted around Little Roundtop, the Wheatfield, Devil's Den, and the Peach Orchard.
- 7:49Kristin: At the same time, Confederate attacks against Union right intensified, cultivating in fierce assaults on Colps Hill and Cemetery Hill.
- 7:57Kristin: Despite severe losses on both sides, the Union line held.
- 8:01Kristin: On the third day of battle, July 3rd, fighting resumed on Colps Hill, while cavalry clashes raged to the east and south of Gettysburg.
- 8:09Kristin: The main engagement of the day became Pickett's Charge.
- 8:12Kristin: Approximately 12,000 Confederate infantrymen advanced toward the center of the Union line on Cemetery Ridge.
- 8:19Kristin: As they crossed nearly a mile of open ground, they were met by devastating rifle and artillery fire.
- 8:25Kristin: The assault was repelled, and Confederate losses were staggering.
- 8:28Kristin: It became the high water mark of the Confederacy, the closest Lee's army would ever come to breaking the Union line on northern soil.
- 8:37Kristin: The following day, July 4th, Robert E.
- 8:39Kristin: Lee began his long and punishing retreat from the north.
- 8:42Kristin: By the time their armies separated, an estimated 97,000 soldiers from both sides had been killed, wounded, captured, or gone missing in just three days of fighting.
- 8:52Kristin: Some of the dead were first buried in nearby churchyards and in makeshift burial grounds beside field hospitals.
- 8:59Kristin: Others were left where they had fallen.
- 9:01Kristin: Many bodies were gathered into an area that would soon become known as the Valley of Death, lying unburied, exposed, and slowly decomposing in place.
- 9:10Kristin: The need for a permanent cemetery was painfully obvious, and it can no longer be ignored.
- 9:15Kristin: A few months later in 1863, landscape architect William Sanders was selected to help design what became first known as the Soldiers National Cemetery.
- 9:25Kristin: Sanders' design, unconventional for the Victorian era, was intentionally simple, yet quietly grand.
- 9:31Kristin: Union soldiers were grouped by their home states within the grounds, and the layout focused on the visitors' attention to a central monument at its heart.
- 9:39Kristin: The gravestones themselves were modest, plain unadored slabs, meant to invoke simility rather than triumph.
- 9:46Kristin: The central monument, the Gettysburg Soldiers National Monument, was erected after the burial grounds were established and took nearly four years to complete.
- 9:55Kristin: It now stands at the heart of Gettysburg National Cemetery.
- 9:58Kristin: Placed honor the soldiers who fought upon the grounds, the monument whispers a more unsettling truth.
- 10:03Kristin: That a nation was brought with blood, its promised peace and plenty rising from the wreckage of a so-called heroic struggle.
- 10:11Kristin: Beneath a freedom carved by suffering.
- 10:13Kristin: At the summit rises a single towering figure, liberty.
- 10:17Kristin: Encircling the pedestal below her are eighteen large bronze stars, representing the eighteen Union states whose dead were buried in the cemetery when the monument was conceived.
- 10:27Kristin: At each corner of the base stands a carved figure, each one shaping the meaning of war itself.
- 10:33Kristin: War is shown as the American soldier recounting the story of the battle.
- 10:37Kristin: Beside him stands history, quietly recording those events with a stylus and tablet, preserving both the struggle on the names of the dead.
- 10:45Kristin: Piece is represented by an American mechanic, his tools resting at his side, symbolizing the return to labor and ordinary life, and plenty appears as a female figure holding a sheaf of wheat and the fruits of the earth, offering an image of abundance as the soldier's final reward.
- 11:02Kristin: The monument also bears an inscription of the final lines of the Gettysburg Address, binding Lincoln's words permanently to the place where the dead were gathered.
- 11:10Kristin: The story of the monument itself soon began after the war.
- 11:14Kristin: In 1865, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts approved funding for the Gettysburg Soldiers National Monument Association.
- 11:21Kristin: That same year, local attorney David Wills invited veteran organizations to attend a 4th of July Cornerstone ceremony.
- 11:28Kristin: The monument was constructed in Rhode Island while the great figure of liberty was sculpted overseas in Rome before being shipped back to the United States.
- 11:36Kristin: The monument, still missing its final figures of peace and plenty, was formally dedicated in 1869.
- 11:42Kristin: The ceremony opened with a prayer by Reverend Henry Ward Beecher, followed by an address by General George G.
- 11:48Kristin: Meade, an oration by Senator Olive P.
- 11:50Kristin: Morton, and a poem read by Bayard Taylor.
- 11:53Kristin: Later the same year, the remaining statues were finally set into place.
- 11:57Kristin: Today the monument is often mistaken as standing on the very spot where Abraham Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address, but it doesn't.
- 12:04Kristin: Modern scholarship places Lincoln's speaking position roughly 40 yards east of the monument, and what was then part of the civilian cemetery, Evergreen, nearby, when Lincoln Spokey faced west, turtle flagpole that once stood near the location where the Soldiers National Monument would later rise.
- 12:21Kristin: The cemetery itself reflects one of the most quietly powerful choices without visitors even knowing with its layout.
- 12:28Kristin: Officers and enlisted men were buried side by side, a practice uncommon at the time, symbolizing the more Egglegarian ideas of the Union Army.
- 12:38Kristin: Surrounding the central principle are concentric semicircles of graves, divided into eighteen sections for the Union states, a section for United States regulars, and three sections for unknown soldiers.
- 12:50Kristin: Many of those buried were young men, and many were volunteers.
- 12:54Kristin: Most had entered the war with little, if any, formal military training.
- 12:58Kristin: For soldiers of the era, the only preparation for battle came on the field itself, where courage often collided with inexperienced and where countless brave untested men lost their lives.
- 13:09Kristin: Our history books often tell the story of a battle won for the Union, but far less about what happened to those who paid for that victory with their lives.
- 13:17Kristin: Death's role in war is always greater than we wish to admit.
- 13:21Kristin: At Gettysburg, though, that truth could no longer be hidden.
- 13:24Kristin: Evergreen Cemetery, the town's civilian burial ground, quietly became part of the battlefield itself.
- 13:30Kristin: During the fighting in July of 1863, it served as a rallying point for the Union forces, but its most enduring contribution came not from strategy or command, but from a woman who lived at its gate.
- 13:42Kristin: Its caretaker, Elizabeth Thorne, was left in charge when her husband enlisted in the Union Army.
- 13:47Kristin: She remained behind with three young children, and six months into her pregnancy when the battle swept into Gettysburg.
- 13:53Kristin: When the guns finally fell silent, Thorne returned to a damaged home that had been used as both a military headquarters and a field hospital.
- 14:02Kristin: The wounded filled its rooms, the dead played scattered across the surrounding ground.
- 14:06Kristin: In the oppressive heat of July, Elizabeth Thorne began the work no one else was prepared to face.
- 14:12Kristin: With only her elderly father to help her, she tended to the wounded, and then buried the fallen.
- 14:17Kristin: Within the first two weeks after the battle, they laid forty bodies into the earth.
- 14:22Kristin: By the end of summer, Elizabeth Thorne had buried nearly one hundred soldiers.
- 14:27Kristin: She did this before a national cemetery existed, before formal burials, before dedication ceremonies.
- 14:33Kristin: She received no additional pay.
- 14:35Kristin: For many years her labor and her quiet courage went almost entirely unrecognized.
- 14:39Kristin: But the work Elizabeth Thorne began could not remain hers alone.
- 14:43Kristin: Once the National Cemetery was established, workers began the grim test of exhuming the remains scattered across the battlefield and nearby burial sites.
- 14:52Kristin: One by one they were brought to newly consecrated ground.
- 14:55Kristin: Within the boundaries of Newgettesburg Cemetery, the fallen were reinterred, no longer abandoned to the battlefield.
- 15:02Kristin: Those who had been left behind in shallow graves, in open fields and along the edges of farm roads were finally gathered in dignity, buried in a place created to honor the lives that they had surrendered to the war.
- 15:14Kristin: Four months later, on November 19, in 1863, Abraham Lincoln stood before a crowd of nearly fifteen thousand people and gave voice to what that ground now demanded.
- 15:25Kristin: Forscore and seven years ago, the address lasted only two minutes.
- 15:30Kristin: At the time it was not widely regarded as extraordinary.
- 15:33Kristin: The principal oration of the day, delivered by Edward Everett, lasted nearly two hours.
- 15:38Kristin: Yet as the years passed on, Lincoln's words would become one of the most famous speeches in American history.
- 15:44Kristin: Drawing directly from the language and ideals of the Declaration of Independence, Lincoln confronted the immense loss suffered on both sides and formerly helped dedicate the grounds of Gettysburg in just two hundred and seventy-one words.
- 15:56Kristin: The brevity and the quiet moral weight of his words has allowed the speech to endure century after century.
- 16:03Kristin: The cemetery, though, only contains Union soldiers, which naturally raises the question what became of the Confederate dead?
- 16:11Kristin: Following the July 1863 battle, most Confederate soldiers were hastily buried in trenches or shallow graves where they fell, often marked only by crude signs.
- 16:21Kristin: Between 1871 and 1873, Dr.
- 16:24Kristin: Rufus Weaver was tasked with locating and disintering their remains.
- 16:28Kristin: Over 3,300 bodies were transported to Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, Virginia, while others were moved to Oakwood Cemetery in Raleigh, Laurel Grove in Savannah, and Magnolia Cemetery in Charleston.
- 16:41Kristin: Hollywood Cemetery's Gettysburg Hill became the primary resting place for these Confederate soldiers.
- 16:47Kristin: Despite these efforts, some soldiers are believed to remain in rocky or inaccessible areas of the battlefield.
- 16:53Kristin: Their final resting place is still largely undisturbed.
- 16:56Kristin: A few exceptions remain.
- 16:58Kristin: Two Confederate soldiers, Matthew Goodson and Hooper Caffey, are known to be buried in Evergreen Cemetery adjacent to the National Cemetery.
- 17:06Kristin: Today the cemetery rests within the Gettysburg National Military Park, part of the Greater Battlefield, and remains one of the park's most powerful and reflective spaces.
- 17:16Kristin: Today the cemetery rests within Gettysburg National Military Park, part of the Greater Battlefield, and remains one of the park's most powerful and reflective spaces.
- 17:26Kristin: Here Manufell and the surrounding fields lie at rest, encircled by a landscape that now appears almost painfully serene.
- 17:34Kristin: Sanders' design guides the visitors' movement with remarkable restraint, quiet, visual, and deliberate.
- 17:41Kristin: In its silence, the space becomes both beautiful and profoundly moving.
- 17:45Kristin: More than 3,500 Union Civil War soldiers are interred here, among them 979 unknown dead.
- 17:53Kristin: In the decades that followed, additional sections were added for veterans of later conflicts, including the Spanish American War and the First World War, as well as for spouses and children of veterans.
- 18:04Kristin: Today the number of burials within the cemetery exceeds six thousand.
- 18:09Kristin: Across the surrounding battlefield, monuments rise state by state, marking where men fought and fell.
- 18:15Kristin: Pennsylvania's memorials are the largest, but the landscape speaks for every Union state whose soldiers died here.
- 18:22Kristin: Stone walls, iron gates, section markers, and regional monuments stretch outward across the fields.
- 18:28Kristin: Yet one monument within this landscape tells a different story, not of victory, but of compassion, opposite uniforms, opposite causes, and if only for a moment, shared humanity.
- 18:40Kristin: Erected in 1991, the Friend of Friend Masonic Memorial stands within the cemetery as a tribute to an encounter that followed Pickett's charge on July 3, 1863.
- 18:50Kristin: It depicts Confederate Brigadier General Louis Addison Armstead, mortally wounded being aided by Union Army Captain Henry H.
- 18:58Kristin: Bingham.
- 18:59Kristin: Both men were Freemasons, a shared bond that briefly transcended the war raging around them.
- 19:04Kristin: After Pickett's charge collapsed and smoke still clung to Cemetery Ridge, Armstead was struck down.
- 19:11Kristin: As he was carried from the field toward a Union hospital on Spangled Farm, he encountered Bingham.
- 19:17Kristin: Knowing that Bingham served under General Winfield Scott Hancock, his close friend from before the war, Armstead entrusted him with his personal effects, spurs, a watch chain, a seal, and a pocketbook, asking that they be delivered to Hancock.
- 19:31Kristin: What Armstead could not have known was that Hancock himself had been wounded in the same battle.
- 19:36Kristin: The two friends would never meet again.
- 19:39Kristin: Armstead died two days later, leaving behind only the fragile act of trust, an act that would echo across generations.
- 19:47Kristin: For decades, the story survived quietly in letters, paintings, and memory.
- 19:51Kristin: More than a century later it was finally given a form in bronze.
- 19:55Kristin: The friend-to-friend memorial honors something far more fragile than triumph.
- 19:59Kristin: The courage to remain human, even in the middle of war.
- 20:03Kristin: Another story within the cemetery carries a different kind of weight, the Reynolds Memorial.
- 20:08Kristin: John F.
- 20:09Kristin: Reynolds, a career U.S.
- 20:10Kristin: Army officer, was widely respected by his peers and regarded as one of the most capable generals of the Union Army.
- 20:17Kristin: Earlier in 1863, he met with President Abraham Lincoln, who reportedly asked whether he would consider commanding the Army of the Pontimac.
- 20:26Kristin: Reynolds declined, insisting on independence from political interference, clearing the path for George G.
- 20:32Kristin: Meade to take command.
- 20:33Kristin: By the morning of July 1st, 1863, Reynolds commanded the left wing of the Army of the Pontimac, with operational control over the 1st, 3rd, and 11th Corps, along with Brigadier General John Bufer's Cavalry Division.
- 20:47Kristin: He arrived at Gettysburg ahead of the main Union force, quickly assessing the terrain and organizing a defensive line north and west of town.
- 20:55Kristin: He was also part of the Union forces that first fought against the Confederate.
- 21:00Kristin: Riding ahead into Herbert's Woods, Reynolds rallied the men from Brigadier General Lysander Cutler's brigade, shouting, Forward men, forward for God's sake, drive those fellows out of those woods.
- 21:12Kristin: In the opening clash of what would become the Battle of Gettysburg, Reynolds was struck in the back of the head or upper neck and killed almost instantly.
- 21:20Kristin: Though he was not the highest ranking officer on the field, his courage and decisiveness helped shape the Union position on Cemetery Hill and Cemetery Ridge, ground that would prove critical to the outcome of the battle.
- 21:33Kristin: His loss was deeply felt.
- 21:35Kristin: Soldiers and officers alike mourned a leader known for intelligence, bravery, and calm under pressure.
- 21:41Kristin: Reynolds Memorial in Gettysburg National Cemetery stances as restrained and dignified tribute to his service, and honors not only his leadership, but the men who followed him into the opening fire of the battle.
- 21:53Kristin: It reminds the visitors that even in devastation, decisive courage can shape both history and the ground between the world.
- 22:00Kristin: Our feet.
- 22:01Kristin: In the aftermath of the horrors of war, memory has a way of lingering in places shaped by mass death, and Gettysburg is no exception.
- 22:10Kristin: Many believe that ghosts and memories walk side by side here.
- 22:13Kristin: Some call Gettysburg one of the most haunted places in America, where others insist is not haunted at all.
- 22:20Kristin: Yet the cemetery and the surrounding battlefield remain places where 1863 still feels close.
- 22:27Kristin: Visitors speak of distant cannon fire carried on the wind, of faint cries and the metallic rhythm of marching boots.
- 22:35Kristin: Shadowy figures move between headstones, small lights drift through the darkness, and sometimes the air carries the sharp trace of gunpowder with a lingering scent of a cigar.
- 22:46Kristin: Among the cemetery's quiet rows, apparitions and glowing forms are said to appear, as though the dead linger nearest to those who come looking for them.
- 22:54Kristin: A short walk from the cemetery leads to Devil's Den, where a disheveled soldier in Union Blue is said to appear among the rocks, as if still guarding the field he once fought to hold.
- 23:05Kristin: Across town, Sax Covered Bridge carries a darker legend.
- 23:09Kristin: Three soldiers allegedly hung from its raptors as a warning are said to remain behind.
- 23:15Kristin: Visitors report shadowy figures, sudden cold spots, and the unmistakable sense of not being alone.
- 23:22Kristin: Paranormal investigators claim to have captured electronic voice phenomenon here, while others describe faint voices and unsettling physical sensations as they cross the bridge.
- 23:32Kristin: The historical record of such hangings can't be found, but that also doesn't mean it didn't happen.
- 23:38Kristin: Some historians know that execution by firing squad was far more common, causing doubts for many.
- 23:43Kristin: What is certain is that the bridge itself played a critical role during the fighting of July in 1863, carrying waves of retreating Confederate troops near Marsh Creek.
- 23:54Kristin: One soul, however, said to linger, isn't a soldier who fought on the battlefield, but a woman who lived on it.
- 24:00Kristin: Jenny Wade, the only civilian killed during battle, is said to linger, quietly bound to the home where her life ended.
- 24:07Kristin: Across Gettysburg, reports follow a similar pattern, distant drumming, sudden screams, full-bodied figures appearing without warning, and the uneasy sensation of being watched.
- 24:18Kristin: Here the past doesn't vanish, it waits.
- 24:21Kristin: In Gettysburg, the living and the dead share the fields, the buildings, and the silence between them.
- 24:26Kristin: And sometimes if you stop long enough, you may glimpse both, standing side by side, among the memories of courage, loss, and survival.
- 24:35Kristin: Before we close the gate on today's journey, I just wanted to take a moment to send a huge thank you to the amazing supporters of the Grim.
- 24:42Kristin: Recently, Moe treated the Grim to several coffees on our Buy Me a Coffee page, and earlier this year Zeggy did the same, but we didn't get the chance to properly thank you until now.
- 24:52Kristin: Your support keeps the Grim alive, covering our RSS feed, day-to-day costs, and little things that make this podcast possible.
- 25:00Kristin: Knowing that I'm part of your workday truly makes my day.
- 25:04Kristin: You're the reason I keep sharing these stories, and I can't tell you enough how much it means.
- 25:09Kristin: Thank you again.
- 25:11Kristin: For now the stories of Gettysburg slip back into stone, and the dead return to their uneasy rest.
- 25:17Kristin: Yet they're never silent for long.
- 25:20Kristin: Thank you for walking with us through the veil into Gettysburg National Cemetery, descending once more into the hauntings of history.
- 25:28Kristin: The gate is sealed, the veil drawn, yet death keeps no calendar, and so we shall return, as we always do, on the grim.