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

Episode Date: October 9, 2019

The Devil's Den is the sight of one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War. Is it haunted? Nope. But still creepy.  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck, there's Jerry, aka Lucifer the Lightbringer,

and this is short stuff, the Civil War Death Edition. That's right, and it is Halloween time. It is October. Freaktober. So we're gonna be peppering in some little spooky content here and there. I am so psyched. This is one of my favorite holidays.

I think we have this conversation every year, but let's have it again. We love it. Christmas and Halloween. Isn't Halloween your favorite of all time though? No, I mean, they're both up there. Like from October on, I'm a pretty happy guy. Sure, same here. I'm so angry the rest of the year.

No, it's kind of freaky. I'm so angry because we're approaching mid-September, and it's at the high 90s here in Atlanta still. Yeah, well, I mean, that's Atlanta weather. It's weird, weird weather, and it has been forever. So you wanna talk Confederate and Union soldier ghosts? Yeah, I don't want to, but I will. So the Battle of Gettysburg, in particular, Chuck,

was, I guess it was the bloodiest battle of the entire Civil War. I believe so. Maybe the most, I don't wanna say the bloodiest battle in American history, considering all the other wars we've been in, but it was a bad one. On American soil, I would say, for sure. Yeah, yeah, for sure.

But over the course of three days at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, population at the time about 2,000. So it was actually probably a pretty decent-sized town. The Union troops and the Confederate troops, about 165,000 troops total, all gathered there at Gettysburg and said, let's fight. And over three days, something like 7,000 people died

with 51,112 casualties. Over three days, Chuck, I did the math. Just with deaths alone, almost two people died every minute if you count every minute over 72 straight hours. Yeah, it was a bloodbath. And of course, because of that, a lot of people think Gettysburg is super haunted.

There was one, we're gonna talk in particular about a place called Devil's Den, which if you are near a computer and not driving, you should look it up. It's a really interesting place. These huge boulders, it's like a maze of boulders between a couple of other rocky hills, Big Round Top and Little Round Top.

Sure. Although it is spelled little. I like to call it Little Round Top. They didn't get really fancy with the naming. No. It's a little straightforward, but okay. Unless Big Round Top is actually smaller. Yeah, like Greenland and Iceland.

But Devil's Den is this area sort of in between them with these, like I said, these huge rocks. And because of the unusual sort of topography of these huge boulders, because you think about the Civil War is marching through these wide open fields and kind of shooting at each other. This was a nightmare scenario for a firefight

because you've got boulders everywhere. You can't see around the corner. It was a really, really fierce, bloody fight with tons of deaths and casualties. Yeah, and there was even a place in between, I think Little Round Top and the Devil's Den that was the worst of all called the Slaughter Pen because so many people died

in between this kind of open no man's land. There was a lot of death around Devil's Den. But to make it even more kind of ghostly and freaky, like even still today, if you walk through Devil's Den, it's a little creepy. It's a little unusual as this guy named Mark Nesbitt, who's a former park ranger out at Gettysburg turned paranormal investigator.

As he put it, it's basically like a giant just dropped huge boulders the size of houses onto this one spot on the battlefield. It's really unusual. It's really weird. And it'd be really easy to hide just around the corner. So it'd be a really, if you put yourself in the mindset of this three day battle,

the bloodiest battle in American history and American soil going on and you're having to fight around these boulders, the point is made by people who believe in such things that this kind of horrific emotion, endured by this many people collectively at the same time, surely must have lent some sort of imprint to the area. And that's kind of given this idea

that Gettysburg in the battlefield are one of the most haunted places in America. That's right. So on day two of Gettysburg, which like we said, was three days, about 5,500 Confederate troops attacked the Union position on Little Round Top. But remember, Devil's Den lies between Big Top and Little Round Top.

So they had to battle it out at Devil's Den. And they were led by the Confederate 1st, Texas, put a pin in that, very important. And Major General John Bell Hood was the commander of that unit. And here's what they did. They took three of the Union's four big, heavy artillery guns down,

flushed the troops out from Devil's Den and then had sharpshooters just picking these dudes off on Little Round Top. Yeah, it was a big deal. I mean, the Confederate 1st, Texas saved the day, basically, by taking the Devil's Den, which is just, I mean, that was a big deal. Overall though, the Union was considered

to have won the battle of Gettysburg because the next day there was Pickett's Charge, which was a Confederate full frontal assault on the Union troops. By full frontal assault, they mean that they were all naked when they charged. So it didn't work out for them. It did not work out.

And the Union won the battle of Gettysburg overall, but taking the Devil's Den was considered a major Confederate victory in that larger battle. They said, don't fire until you see the whites of their butts. Right. Terrible. But all in all, in Devil's Den itself, I believe 1,800 Confederate soldiers died,

even though they won, and 800 Union soldiers died. So in this relatively small area, that is 2,600 people losing their life. And we'll talk about the ghostly activity that resulted, perhaps, right after this. MUSIC On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s, called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude,

bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever.

Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper,

because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass.

The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, OK, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place,

because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, god. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me.

Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody,

about my new podcast, and make sure to listen, so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. OK, Chuck, so The Devil's Den was just a place of massive casualties, and it's a scary place on its own. It's an even scarier place if you're fighting somebody to the death.

And then 150 years later, it still remains a very scary place to people who are, say, paranormal investigators, ghost hunters, or tourists who are into ghosts and things like that. Yeah, so here are a few of the stories. Once there was a young woman who was climbing in these boulders with a friend, and she felt someone grab her ankle that was not her friend, and she looks down,

and there's a young man in a Civil War uniform. She screams for her friend, looks back down, he's gone. That would be so scary. Tell us about the helpful hippie, because this is a good one. It is a good one. So there was a woman back when Mark Nesbitt, the Gettysburg park ranger turned paranormal investigator, who also, he wrote a multi-volume book series called The Ghosts

of Gettysburg. Yeah, I think he, at one point, said, you know what, park rangering, there's not a lot of money in that, but you know what, there is a lot of money in ghost tours and ghosts. Right, possibly double. Yeah, I would think so. So he did make the leap over, as so many park rangers do,

to Ghosts, Hunter. But he was saying that while he was a park ranger still at Gettysburg, a woman came in, and this was years and years ago, who basically said, hey, I just saw this guy in the devil's den. I was turned around, I got kind of lost, and then out of nowhere, this kind of disheveled figure showed up and pointed off in the distance

and said, that's the place you're looking for. And then kind of vanished. And the park ranger said, well, what did he look like? And the lady said, get this. Are we taking a break? No, I was setting you up for the best part. We already took our break, didn't we? Yeah.

All right, he's wearing a floppy hat, shoulder-length hair. Right. He's barefoot and has ragged clothing, and the park ranger said, is there a fish concert nearby? And she said, who's fish? And he said, it must have been a Civil War ghost. Yeah, Mark Nesbitt said, she basically just described what a first Texas Confederate soldier would have looked

like at the Battle of Gettysburg, case closed, the end ghosts exist. Right, and this one, and he was helpful hippie, because he's telling everyone where to go. Like, hey, you're lost, just go over that rock over there, you'll be fine. But he also looked like a hippie. Exactly, right.

So this is another good one. I think this was about 20 years after that one. Another woman comes up to Nesbitt. This guy's got a lot of great stories. Well, sure, he collected a multi-volume series called The Ghosts of Gettysburg. She said she was in the Devil's Den hiking around, and a raggedy man with a floppy hat appeared,

pointed she was a University of Texas graduate, I think, had a Texas sweatshirt on at least, and he pointed at it and said, first Texas and disappeared. He went, disappeared. She was like, surely that was a first Texas Confederate soldier named the helpful hippie. I think it was. Yep, she described it in the same way,

floppy hat to shovel barefoot. Goes by Rob. Right, and again, he was really into Texas. That's right. So, I really feel like we're testing the boundaries of credibility here at this point. Okay. But that doesn't mean that there are a lot of people

that go to Gettysburg every year who do say, I've had a weird experience there. I didn't necessarily see anything, but my camera didn't work on my phone, or my straight-up camera didn't work. You know, the original ones, the straight-up cameras, or the batteries started to fail on my phone. But weirdly, once I left Devil's Den or the battlefield,

like my phone started working or my camera started working, it's like it didn't like to work there in that area. Mark Nesbitt, being the author of a multi-volume series called The Ghosts of Gettysburg, says, I got it. I know exactly what's going on here. That's right. Are we taking a break? No, I'm setting you up again.

So, he said there's this famous photo that was taken at Devil's Den of a fallen Confederate soldier lying at where he was positioned as a sharpshooter, but dead. And he, you can look this picture up. I looked it up. It looked creepy looking. Sure. It's a very well-known image,

but it was found out to be staged. Not that this guy wasn't really dead, but this photographer apparently dragged around this same dead soldier to different spots for different photo ops. And this was one of the places he dragged them. So, Nesbitt's idea here is this whole cameras won't work thing is revenge against the photographer from beyond.

He was basically like Jude Law and rode to perdition or something. I don't remember that movie well enough to get that reference. He was a crime cinematographer, but he murdered people. Oh, to take their picture. And took pictures of them, yeah. Gotcha.

He was a bad guy. I don't think this guy murdered anybody, but surely dragging a body around us just bad karma. I would think so. But so, I guess that's about it. There's plenty of ghosts there. You can walk around Devil's Den yourself and figure out if you have camera problems

or if you have problems with your phone or if you see the helpful hippie or somebody grabs your ankle. Give it a shot. All you have to do is go to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. True. And for the record, we should point out the American Battlefield Trust,

which is in charge of preserving that historic site. Says, by the way, no such thing as ghosts. Right. No such thing as ghosts. They said, I love this quote. We got to read it real quick, okay? Okay. They said that, by all means,

believe what you want to believe, but please know that if water gets on a camera lens, it's water, not a ghostly orb. If sun shines into the camera lens, it's called sunlight, not an energy sphere. And they dropped their microphone. That's right. Mocked off.

Well, we're dropping our microphone too. You can read a pretty interesting little article on how stuff works about this. And in the meantime, we'll see you around. Short stuff say, adios.