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Short Stuff: The Devil's Den · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck,
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: There's Jerry A. K. Lucifer the Lightbringer, and this is
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  Speaker 1: short Stuff, the Civil War Death Edition. That's right, and
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: it is uh, Halloween time. It is October, freak October.
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  Speaker 1: So we're gonna be peppering in some little spooky content
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  Speaker 1: here and there. I'm so psyched. This is one of
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  Speaker 1: my favorite holidays. I think we have this conversation every year,
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: but let's have it again Christmas and in Halloween. Isn't
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: Halloween your favorite of all time? Though, I mean they're
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: both up there, like from October on. I'm pretty I'm
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  Speaker 1: a pretty happy guy. I'm here. I'm so angry the
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  Speaker 1: rest of the year. I know it's kind of freaky.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: I'm so angry because we're in approaching mid September and
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: it's at the high nineties here in Atlanta. Still yeah, well,
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  Speaker 1: I mean that's Atlanta weather. It's weird, weird weather, and
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  Speaker 1: it has been forever. Do you want to talk Confederate
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: and young and soldier ghosts? Yeah? I don't want to,
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  Speaker 1: but I will um so the Battle of Gettysburg in particular,
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  Speaker 1: Chuck was I guess it was the bloodiest battle of
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  Speaker 1: the entire Civil War, I believe, so maybe the most.
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  Speaker 1: I don't I don't want to say the bloodiest battle
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  Speaker 1: in American history, considering all the other wars we've been in,
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  Speaker 1: but it was a bad one on American soil. I
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  Speaker 1: was certainly, Yeah, yeah, for sure. But over the course
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  Speaker 1: of three days at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania population at the time
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  Speaker 1: about two thousand, so it's actually probably a pretty decent
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  Speaker 1: sized town. Um, the Union troops and the Confederate troops
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  Speaker 1: about a hundred and sixty five thousand troops total, all
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  Speaker 1: gathered there at Gettysburg and said let's fight, and over
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  Speaker 1: three days, something like seven thousand people died, with fifty
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  Speaker 1: one thousand, one d and twelve casualties over three days. Chuck,
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: I did the math just with death's alone, almost two
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  Speaker 1: people died every minute if you count every minute over
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  Speaker 1: seventy two straight hours. Yeah, it was a blood bath.
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  Speaker 1: And of course because of that, a lot of people
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  Speaker 1: think Gettysburg is super haunted. There was one we're gonna
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  Speaker 1: talk in particular about a place called Devil's Den, which
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  Speaker 1: if you if you are near a computer and not driving,
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  Speaker 1: you should look it up Um. It's a really interesting place,
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  Speaker 1: these huge boulders. It's like a maze of boulders between
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  Speaker 1: a couple of other rocky hills, Big Roundtop and Little Roundtop. Sure,
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  Speaker 1: although it's spelled Little I'd like to call it Little Roundtop.
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  Speaker 1: They didn't get really fancy with the naming. No, it's
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  Speaker 1: a little straightforward, but okay, unless Big Roundtop is actually smaller. Yeah,
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: like Greenland and Iceland, but Devil's Den is this area
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  Speaker 1: sort of in between them, with these, like I said,
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  Speaker 1: these huge rocks, and because of the unusual sort of
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: topography of these huge boulders, because you know, you think
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  Speaker 1: about the Civil War is marching through these wide open
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  Speaker 1: fields and kind of shooting at each other. This was
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  Speaker 1: a nightmare scenario for a firefight because you've got boulders everywhere,
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  Speaker 1: you can't see around the corner. It was a really,
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  Speaker 1: really fierce, bloody fight with tons of deaths and casualties. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: and there was even a place um in between I
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  Speaker 1: think Little Round Top in the Devil's Den that was
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  Speaker 1: the worst of all, called the slaughter pen because so
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  Speaker 1: many people died in between this kind of open Noman's land.
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  Speaker 1: There is a lot of death around Devil's Den, but
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  Speaker 1: to make it even more kind of ghostly and freaky,
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  Speaker 1: like even still today, if you walk through Devil's Den,
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  Speaker 1: it's a little creepy. It's a little unusual, as as
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  Speaker 1: this guy named Mark Nesbit, who is a former park
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  Speaker 1: ranger out at Gettysburg turned paranormial investigator. As he put
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  Speaker 1: it's basically like a giant just dropped huge boulders the
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  Speaker 1: size of houses onto this one spot on the battlefield.
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  Speaker 1: It's really unusual, it's really weird, and it'd be really
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  Speaker 1: easy to hide just around the corner to be a
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  Speaker 1: really if you put yourself in the mindset of this
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  Speaker 1: three day battle, the bloodiest battle in American history, and
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  Speaker 1: American soil going on and you're having to fight around
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  Speaker 1: these boulders. The point is made by people who believe
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  Speaker 1: in such things that this kind of um horrific emotion
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  Speaker 1: endured by this many people collectively at the same time
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  Speaker 1: surely must have lent some sort of imprint to the area.
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  Speaker 1: And that's kind of given this idea that Gettysburg in
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  Speaker 1: the battlefield are one of the most haunted places in America.
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  Speaker 1: That's right. So on day two of Gettysburg, which like
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  Speaker 1: we said, was three days um about Confederate troops attacked
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  Speaker 1: the Union position on Little round Top. But remember Devil's
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  Speaker 1: Den lies between Big Top and Little round Top, so
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  Speaker 1: they had to battle it out at Devil's Den, and
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  Speaker 1: they were led by the Confederate First Texas put a
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  Speaker 1: pin in that very important and major General on bell
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: Hood was the commander of that unit. And here's what
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  Speaker 1: they did. They took three of the Union's four big
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  Speaker 1: heavy heavy artillery guns down, flushed the troops out from
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  Speaker 1: Devil's Den, and then had sharpshooters just picking these dudes
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  Speaker 1: off on Little round Top. Yeah, it was a big deal.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, the Confederate First Texas UM saved the day
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  Speaker 1: basically by by taking the Devil's Den, which is just
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's a that was a big deal overall, though,
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  Speaker 1: the Union was was considered to have won the Battle
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  Speaker 1: of Gettysburg because the next day there was Pickett's Charge,
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  Speaker 1: which was a Confederate full frontal assault on the Union troops.
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  Speaker 1: By full frontal assault, they mean that, um, they were
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  Speaker 1: all naked when they charged. But it didn't it did
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  Speaker 1: not work out, and the Union won. That won the
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  Speaker 1: Battle of Gettysburg overall, but taking the Devil's Den was
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  Speaker 1: considered a major Confederate victory in that in that larger
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: battle they said, don't fire until you see the whites
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  Speaker 1: of their butts. Right. Terrible, but all in all, in
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  Speaker 1: Devil's Den itself, I believe eight hundred Confederate soldiers died
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  Speaker 1: even though they won an eight hundred Union soldiers died.
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  Speaker 1: So in this relatively small area, that is twenty undred
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  Speaker 1: people losing their life. And we'll talk about the ghostly
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  Speaker 1: activity that resulted perhaps right after this. Okay, chuck, So
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  Speaker 1: the Devil's Den was this, this place of massive casualties,
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  Speaker 1: and it's a scary place on its own. It's an
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  Speaker 1: even scarier place if you're fighting somebody to the death.
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  Speaker 1: And then a hundred and fifty years later, it still
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  Speaker 1: remains a very scary place to people who are say
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  Speaker 1: paranormal investigators, ghost unners, or tourists who are into ghosts
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  Speaker 1: and things like that. Yeah, So here's here are a
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  Speaker 1: few of the stories. Uh. Once there was a young
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  Speaker 1: woman who was climbing in these boulders with a friend
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  Speaker 1: and she felt someone grab her ankle that was not
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  Speaker 1: her friend, and She looks down and there's a young
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  Speaker 1: man in a Civil War uniform. She screams for her friend,
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  Speaker 1: looks back down. He's gone. That would be so scary.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: Tell us about the helpful hippie, because this is a
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: good one. It is a good one. So there was
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  Speaker 1: a woman back when Mark Nez bit that the um
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: Gettysburg park ranger turned paranormal investigator who also he wrote
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  Speaker 1: like a multi volume book series called the Ghosts of Gettysburg. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: I think he at one point said, you know what,
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: park rangering, there's not a lot of money in that,
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: but you know what, there is a lot of money
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  Speaker 1: in ghost tours and write possibly double Yeah, I would
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  Speaker 1: think so. So Um he did uh make the leap
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  Speaker 1: over as so many park rangers due to ghost hunter. Um,
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  Speaker 1: but he was saying that while he was a park
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: ranger still a Gettysburg A woman came in and this
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  Speaker 1: was years and years ago, who basically said, Hey, I
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: just saw this guy in the Devil's Den. I was
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: turned around, I got kind of lost, and then out
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  Speaker 1: of nowhere, this kind of disheveled figure showed up and
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  Speaker 1: pointed off in the distance and said, um, that's the
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: place you're looking for and then kind of vanished, and
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  Speaker 1: the park rangers said, well, well, what did he look like?
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  Speaker 1: And the lady said, get this, are we taking a break? No,
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  Speaker 1: I was setting you up for the best part. He
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: already took our break, didn't we. Yeah, all right. He's
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  Speaker 1: wearing a floppy hat, shoulder length hair, he's barefoot and
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  Speaker 1: has ragged clothing. And the park ranger said, is there
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  Speaker 1: a fish concert nearby? And she said, who's ish? And
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  Speaker 1: he said it must have been a Civil War ghost. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: they they Mark Nusbit said, she basically just described what
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  Speaker 1: a first Texas Confederate soldier would have looked like at
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  Speaker 1: the Battle of Gettysburg. Case closed the end. Ghosts exist, right,
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  Speaker 1: and this one and he was helpful hippie because you know,
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  Speaker 1: he's telling everyone where to go, like, hey, you're lost,
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  Speaker 1: just go over that rock over there, you'll be fine.
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  Speaker 1: But he also looked like a hippie exactly right. So
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  Speaker 1: this is another good one. I think this was about
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  Speaker 1: twenty years after that one. Another woman comes up to Nesbit.
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  Speaker 1: This guy's got a lot of great stories. Well, sure,
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  Speaker 1: he collected him a multi volume series called The Ghost
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  Speaker 1: of Gettysburg. She said she was in the Devil's Den
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  Speaker 1: hiking around and a raggedy man with a floppy hat appeared,
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  Speaker 1: pointed she was a University of Texas graduate I think
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  Speaker 1: had a Texas sweatshirt on at least, and he pointed
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  Speaker 1: at it and said first Texas and disappeared. He went disappeared.
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  Speaker 1: She was like, uh, surely that was a first Texas
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  Speaker 1: Confederate soldier named the helpful Hippie. I think it was. Yep.
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  Speaker 1: She described it in the same way floppy hat, disheveled, barefoot,
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  Speaker 1: rob right, and again he was really into Texas. So
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  Speaker 1: I really feel like we're testing the boundaries of credibility
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  Speaker 1: here at this point. But that doesn't mean that there
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: are a lot of people that go to Gettysburg every year.
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  Speaker 1: Um who do say. I've had a weird experience there.
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  Speaker 1: I didn't necessarily see anything, but my camera didn't work
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  Speaker 1: on my phone, or my straight up camera didn't work,
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: you know, the original ones, the straight up camera or
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: the battery started to fail on my phone. But weirdly,
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  Speaker 1: once I left Devil's Den or the battle or the battlefield,
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: like my phone sort of working, my camera started working.
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  Speaker 1: It's like it didn't like to work there in that area.
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  Speaker 1: Mark did Mark Nesbit, being the author of a multi
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  Speaker 1: volume series called The Ghost of Gettysburg Um says, I
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: got it. I know exactly what's going on here. That's right.
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  Speaker 1: Are we taking a break? No, I'm setting you up again.
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  Speaker 1: So he said, there's this famous photo that was taken
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  Speaker 1: at Devil's Den of a falling Confederate soldier, uh lying
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  Speaker 1: at where he was positioned as a sharpshooter but dead,
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  Speaker 1: and he that you can look this picture up. I
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: looked it up. It's fairly creepy looking. It's very well
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  Speaker 1: known image, but it was found out to be staged. Um,
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  Speaker 1: not that this guy wasn't really dead, but this photographer
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: apparently dragged around this same dead soldier two different spots
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  Speaker 1: for different photo ops, and this was one of the
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  Speaker 1: places he dragged him. So Nesbit's idea here is this
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  Speaker 1: whole cameras won't work thing is revenge against the photographer. Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: From being he was basically like Jude Law and Road
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: to Perdition or something. I don't remember that movie well
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  Speaker 1: enough to get that reference. He was a crime scene photographer.
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: He murdered people. Oh um, pictures of him yeah, he's
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: a he's a bad guy. Um, I don't think this
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: guy murdered anybody, but surely dragging a body around it's
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: just bad karma, I would think so. But um so,
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: I guess that's about it. There's plenty of ghosts there.
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  Speaker 1: You can walk around Double's Den yourself and figure out
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: if you have camera problems, or if you have problems
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: with your phone, or if you see the helpful hippie
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: or somebody grabs your ankle, give it a shot. All
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  Speaker 1: you have to do is go to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. True.
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: And for the record, we should point out the American
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: Battlefield Trust, which is in charge of preserving that historic site, says,
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: by the way, no such thing as ghosts, right, no
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: such things. Because they said, um, I love this quote,
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: we gotta read it real quick. Okay, okay, they said that, Um,
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: by all means, believe what you want to believe. But
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: please know that if water gets on a camera lens,
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: it's water, not a ghostly orb. If sunshines into the
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: camera lens, it's called sunlight, not an energy sphere. They
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: dropped their microphone, that's right, locked off. Well, we're dropping
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: our microphone too. You can read a pretty interesting little
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: article on how stuff Works about this and in the meantime,
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: we'll see you around Short Stuff Say Audios. Stuff you
• 13:17
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• 13:20
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