Episode 377 - Haunted Gettysburg | The Incredible Story of Tillie Pierce House Inn

The battle may have ended in 1863, but Gettysburg was left forever scarred, and forever haunted. This week, we’re stepping inside the Tillie Pierce House Inn, where guests encounter phantom soldiers on the stairs, children laughing, shadow figures roaming the halls, and a ghost cat that loves cuddles. At the center of it all is Tillie Pierce, a 15-year-old girl who witnessed the Battle of Gettysburg firsthand and spent days helping wounded soldiers as the town transformed into a living nightmare. We uncover her powerful story alongside the chilling paranormal activity still reported inside the inn today. Listen to episode 166 of National Park After Dark here. Watch the video version here. Have ghost stories of your own? E-mail them to us at [email protected] New Episodes are released every Thursday and Sunday at 12am PST/3am EST (the witching hour, of course). Corinne and Sabrina hand select a couple of paranormal encounters from our inbox to read in each episode, from demons, to cryptids, to aliens, to creepy kids... the list goes on and on. If you have a story of your own that you'd like us to share on an upcoming episode, we invite you to email them to us! If you enjoy our show, please consider joining our Patreon, rating and reviewing on iTunes & Spotify and following us on social media! Youtube, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Discord. Edited and produced by Jaimi Ryan. Original music by Arms Akimbo! Disclaimer: the use of white sage and smudging is a closed practice. If you’re looking to cleanse your space, here are some great alternatives! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Sabrina Deana-Roga?

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• 0:05Corinne Vien?

  It's honestly so important. It's like one of those things where getting older and aging has provided me so many anxieties about like what's going on.

• 0:12Sabrina Deana-Roga?

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• 0:47Corinne Vien?

  To learn more about Prenuvo and get $300 off your whole body MRI, go to prenuvo.com/tgog and use code TGOG. That's P-R-E-N-U-V-O dot com slash TGOG. Terms and conditions apply.

• 1:01Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Receive $300 off Prenuvo whole body scans and executive and comprehensive memberships through January 31st. For full details, visit Prenuvo's website to read their terms and conditions and privacy notice. Prenuvo gifted me a whole body scan. A Prenuvo scan is a screening service, not diagnostic. Diagnosis and treatment are determined by your healthcare provider.

• 1:17Speaker 02

  When you put your body in the hands of a surgeon, you assume your doctor will do you no harm.

• 1:23Speaker 03

  I'm looking at the surgery board for tomorrow going, these people are [BLEEP].

• 1:30Speaker 02

  But when your doctors end it just for the money, something absolutely insane happens.

• 1:36Speaker 04

  One doctor says, yeah, I did a lumbar fusion. My kickback was 25,000. And the other doctor's going, well, I only got 12,000 because I did a neck.

• 1:45Speaker 02

  This is a story about a massive web of fraud and deception. Dozens of doctors all over Southern California. A fraud worth over $1 billion.

• 1:57Speaker 05

  Patients were committing suicide, losing their homes, losing their marriages.

• 2:01Speaker 02

  From Sony Music Entertainment and Western Sound, this is Dr. Billions. Available now on The Binge. Search for Dr. Billions wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribers to The Binge can listen to all episodes all at once, ad-free.

• 2:39Corinne Vien?

  Hey.

• 2:39Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Hi.

• 2:40Corinne Vien?

  What's up?

• 2:41Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  It's Two Girls One Ghost.

• 2:43Corinne Vien?

  Two Girls One Ghost.

• 2:45Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And we are your ghostesses. That is Corinne.

• 2:47Corinne Vien?

  Hello.

• 2:47Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I'm Sabrina and I did something.

• 2:51Corinne Vien?

  I did something.

• 2:53Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  That's so ominous. It could be anything.

• 2:54Corinne Vien?

  I know. As I said it, I was like, I'm gonna make this traumatic.

• 2:59Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  What did I do?

• 2:59Corinne Vien?

  I couldn't, I couldn't begin to guess.

• 3:01Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  What the heck did Sabrina do?

• 3:04Corinne Vien?

  Everyone take to Reddit.

• 3:07Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I frickin' rebelled against the British and I threw tea into the harbor.

• 3:14Corinne Vien?

  You did the tea, the tea throwing.

• 3:16Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I did.

• 3:17Corinne Vien?

  The tea.

• 3:18Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  The Boston Tea Party experience.

• 3:19Corinne Vien?

  The museum or whatever it's called. I can't remember the name.

• 3:22Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I went.

• 3:23Corinne Vien?

  So cute.

• 3:23Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And it was the most fun. Like it was such a good experience.

• 3:27Corinne Vien?

  Their costumes.

• 3:29Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  You get, you get, you walk in, they give you like a little card of who you are. And it's based on like real people who attended the town hall and then like that night threw tea into the harbor. And I'm pretty sure, like, and they, you can like scan a QR code and learn all about your person. It was so cool.

• 3:47Corinne Vien?

  I've actually never done it. I've just seen, I've watched people do it, but I've never gone.

• 3:51Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Oh my God, highly recommend.

• 3:52Corinne Vien?

  Okay, it's gonna be on my bucket list.

• 3:54Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  It was so fun.

• 3:56Corinne Vien?

  It's so cute.

• 3:56Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Threw tea in the harbor along with the kids. I was like.

• 4:00Corinne Vien?

  You threw kids in the harbor?

• 4:04Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I told you, I did something.

• 4:06Corinne Vien?

  Didn't you see her on the news? All over.

• 4:09Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Woman throws children into the sea.

• 4:11Corinne Vien?

  Children into the harbor.

• 4:14Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  But it was such a fun experience. And I felt myself being like in a very historical mode. Like I was.

• 4:21Corinne Vien?

  Mood.

• 4:22Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Mood. The word is mood.

• 4:23Corinne Vien?

  Mood.

• 4:24Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Mood. I like to moo.

• 4:26Corinne Vien?

  Move it, move it.

• 4:32Corinne Vien?

  Ever since you threw the tea into the harbor, it's changed you.

• 4:35Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Also, ever since we ate our sandwiches and had a lunch break.

• 4:37Corinne Vien?

  Powered by Jersey Mike's. Three minutes ago.

• 4:41Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Chaos. My brain is awake and it's just spewing words out my mouth.

• 4:45Corinne Vien?

  I feel like a lot of people give crap to people who like do touristy things in their city, but Boston is impossible to not be a tourist in because it's so historic and it's there's so much like joy to the history and just like the fun things. Like I used to walk by every single day, the Great Molasses Flood plaque. And yes, I would stop and read it many times a week. It's impossible to ignore what's around you.

• 5:08Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And also like every place is historic. Like I went to the Union Oyster House. It's the oldest operating restaurant in American history.

• 5:15Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 5:15Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And John F. Kennedy used to go there. There's the Kennedy Booth. It's haunted.

• 5:20Corinne Vien?

  Right.

• 5:20Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And I give crap to those of you.

• 5:23Corinne Vien?

  I go to the bathroom, I go, Mr. President.

• 5:25Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  It's me.

• 5:26Corinne Vien?

  It's me.

• 5:27Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  But yeah, I give crap to anyone who mocks doing touristy things.

• 5:31Corinne Vien?

  What are you doing if you're not doing touristy things?

• 5:33Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Well, I think it's also like, what a way to add.

• 5:35Corinne Vien?

  Constantly eating at a restaurant?

• 5:36Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  What a way to add whimsy into your life.

• 5:38Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 5:38Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And to experience the like true part of your city. Yeah.

• 5:42Corinne Vien?

  And it's only touristy because we've deemed it to be touristy, but really you're just experiencing history.

• 5:47Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  It's historical, not touristy.

• 5:49Corinne Vien?

  Yes. You're learning something.

• 5:51Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah. And learning is great. And that's what we're gonna do today. But no, because I was feeling historical and also this episode comes out in June, right before 4th of July. And I wouldn't call myself the most patriotic person. Like I don't own any like red, white and blue striped situation. Like 4th of July, I'm wearing white, you know? Despite not being patriarch patriarchal. I'm also not patriarchal. I'm not the patriarch.

• 6:19Corinne Vien?

  I'm the patriarch. Men, children, tea, all in the harbor.

• 6:24Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Go in the harbor.

• 6:27Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  But it is the 250th anniversary of America coming up. So I was like, all of these things combined is what has created the perfect storm of what today's episode is. And we're visiting a very prominent place in American history, Gettysburg.

• 6:46Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And a very haunted place.

• 6:47Corinne Vien?

  The, like, what is not haunted in Gettysburg?

• 6:49Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Good question.

• 6:50Corinne Vien?

  It's a huge place. It's haunting every step.

• 6:52Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  That should be their tagline.

• 6:54Corinne Vien?

  Haunting every step?

• 6:55Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Gettysburg, haunting every step.

• 6:57Corinne Vien?

  Truly, though.

• 6:59Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, you know the name. It isn't just one of the most historically significant places in America. It is also widely considered one of the most haunted cities on earth. Today, it is a small, quiet town, rolling hills, old stone buildings, some of which have stood for centuries. But beneath that quiet facade, there's a dark history and over 50,000 deaths that took place on this town's land. Or I should say 50,000 casualties.

• 7:29Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 7:30Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  From July 1st through July 3rd, 1863, over 50,000 soldiers were wounded and killed in just three days. Over 50,000 casualties.

• 7:42Corinne Vien?

  That's so crazy.

• 7:43Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  The ground was literally soaked in blood and the town was drenched in sorrow. So it is not a surprise that, given its history, people are still encountering what was left behind over 160 years later. Battlefield, the churches, the hotels, the roads, nearly every single structure still standing from that time has a story, has a haunting or two, or three, or 10, or, like Corinne said, a haunting every step. And right in the heart of town, on Baltimore Street, stands a house that has absorbed the history and the energy of the past. Footsteps in the attic, a soldier pacing the stairs, night after night, a weeping woman, children laughing, and a ghost cat that likes to cuddle.

• 8:26Corinne Vien?

  Oh.

• 8:27Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  This is the Tillie Pierce House Inn. I'm so excited for this story because it's like an incredible woman and history and hauntings. It's got it all.

• 8:36Corinne Vien?

  It's got it all.

• 8:37Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  This isn't just a time capsule. It's a historical treasure and a Sabrina of Two Girls, One Ghost episode dream. That's what I wrote. Because it holds the story of one of the most incredible women in history, Tillie Pierce. A woman who wrote one of the most vivid and detailed civilian accounts of the Civil War and of Gettysburg. Tilly stayed to help the soldiers in Gettysburg instead of running away. And she was just 15 years old.

• 9:03Corinne Vien?

  She was only 15?

• 9:04Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Mm hmm. Isn't that wild? Okay. So before we do a deep dive into the hauntings of this incredible place, we're going to talk about the history of Tilly and everything. We briefly talked about Tilly and the Tillie Pierce House Inn when we did our collab with National Park After Dark back in August of 2023. But it was like literally a couple of sentences. And it was episode 166 of National Park After Dark's episode. So we never did it on Two Girls, One Ghost.

• 9:30Corinne Vien?

  Oh.

• 9:31Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 9:31Corinne Vien?

  Well, here we go.

• 9:32Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  They came onto our show and shared some like really great stories of unsung heroes, female heroes who fought or aided in the Civil War at Gettysburg. And then we shared hauntings on their episode. Okay. Context, love context. We're going to talk about the Civil War very briefly and what led to the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863. Again, going to be very brief. This is not a history lesson. I think the Civil War is like the most documented, written about, researched, like war in American history. So if you want more Civil War history, go somewhere else. You can find it.

• 10:06Corinne Vien?

  You should have been taught it in school already.

• 10:08Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yes. Unless you're from Europe. It's not, you know, although I feel like Europeans learn so much more.

• 10:14Corinne Vien?

  They might know more about American history than a lot of us.

• 10:18Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Okay, so just like very briefly, the Spark Notes version. The Civil War was fought between the United States of America and the Confederate States of America, the Union versus the Confederacy. There's a lot of reasons into as to why the war began, but the one word version of why? Slavery.

• 10:35Corinne Vien?

  Racism.

• 10:36Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Racism. The couple sentence version, the country had been tearing itself apart for decades over slavery. The Southern economy, which is the Confederacy, ran on it while the North, the Union, was opposed to it. And tentons were brought to a head when Abraham Lincoln was elected as president in 1860, and he had like run on the campaign of like abolishing slavery. So with his election, the Southern states were like, nope, we're out, we're gonna start our own country. They started the Confederacy. And Lincoln was like, no, no, no, I'm gonna nope your nope, like in Uno. And that's not how that works, and we're gonna start a war. So on April 12th, 1861, the American Civil War began. I am curious, in all of the writings about the Civil War, if anyone has used Uno as

• 11:19Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  a comparison to how it started? Because that might be a first.

• 11:24Corinne Vien?

  You heard it here. Actually, this is a history podcast.

• 11:27Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And this is an original experience. Okay, so yes, it started on April 12th, 1861, where General Robert E. Lee led the Confederate Army and Abraham Lincoln led the Union. By the summer of 1863, the war had been lasting for two years. It had been brutal, it was ongoing, tens of thousands had already died, brother was fighting brother, father was fighting son, battles were lasting days, and by the end of these battles, entire fields were just covered in bodies.

• 11:55Corinne Vien?

  Damn, East Coast has seen some shit.

• 11:57Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yes. It's at this time, in the summer of 1863, that General Robert E. Lee decides to move the fight into the North because he wanted to win on Union soil and win the war once and for all. Actually, this reminds me of at the Boston Tea Party Museum. It's such an incredible experience, like they take you through different rooms, you do different, it's very like hands-on, but then they have some videos that they show. And I'll just say the acting is... Leave something to be desired.

• 12:30Corinne Vien?

  In the videos?

• 12:31Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 12:32Corinne Vien?

  If we were, had ample amount of time and skill, I'd pitch us redoing it for them.

• 12:38Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  We dress up as the men?

• 12:39Corinne Vien?

  Yes. It's drunk history.

• 12:42Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I wanted to do, oh, that we should do for our anniversary episode.

• 12:50Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Okay, when, when you have your child, we have to do a Patreon episode where we have to try to remember, like, topics that we covered in the past, and we have to drink every time we can't figure it out.

• 13:04Corinne Vien?

  Okay.

• 13:05Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  We'll be very drunk. Wait, oh, that would be so fun.

• 13:10Corinne Vien?

  That's a good one. We'll have people pull topics.

• 13:12Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah, like, people, because all of you know way more about our podcast than we do.

• 13:16Corinne Vien?

  We remember anything.

• 13:17Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah. Um, okay. Robert E. Lee decides to move the fight into the north, and essentially one wrong turn led his army to the tiny town of Gettysburg. At this time, Gettysburg was a pretty small city, a town of just 2,400 citizens, and just 10 roads that led into the town. There were, at the time, 450 buildings that housed small but thriving businesses and homes. And it is here that a young 15-year-old girl named Matilda Pierce, or Tilly for short, called home. Tillie Pierce was born in Gettysburg in 1848. She grew up living with her family above her father's butcher shop on Baltimore Street, right in the heart of Gettysburg. And there is a photo of, like, the house from, I don't know what year it is, but back in the day.

• 14:02Corinne Vien?

  This feels like the beginning of a historical musical.

• 14:05Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Like Hamilton.

• 14:07Corinne Vien?

  Like Hamilton.

• 14:08Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I would watch.

• 14:08Corinne Vien?

  It's like Hamilton mixed with hairspray. Because you said Baltimore, so then immediately my, my brain went, "Good morning, Baltimore."

• 14:18Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Do you love that musical? Tilly was the youngest of four kids. She had two older brothers, James and William, who by the time the Civil War started, they had both enlisted in the Union Army. And then she had an older sister named Maggie. By the summer of 1863, Tilly was 15 years old, attending a finishing school for girls. And now, living in America at this time, everyone was aware of the Civil War. It was going on for years. Civilians were living in fear, awaiting news on their loved ones, and also in fear of the war moving into their homes. So for like, over the years, there were constantly rumors or concern that like, the battles would move into their home, or onto their land, or that military would show up and like, kick them out of their homes.

• 14:59Corinne Vien?

  Well, because that totally did happen.

• 15:01Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Exactly.

• 15:01Corinne Vien?

  Like, this was a war fought in people's backyards. Meetings did happen around people's kitchen tables.

• 15:06Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yes. I'm sure every town in what was America at the time had this like, fear and these rumors were constantly happening.

• 15:14Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 15:14Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  But up until this point, it was just rumor. That's all it was, until it wasn't. In June of 1863, roughly 75,000 men of the Confederate Army began to move north through the Shenandoah Valley and into Pennsylvania. As they were moving through, they would sweep through these towns. They would seize supplies, like steal things and supplies and things that were necessary from the townspeople, and send waves of panic through the communities. Now, the Union, when they heard the Confederate Army was making their move up, they were trying to intercept them. They were tracking Lee and the Confederate soldiers' movements for a long time, but not yet making a move. Like, they were plotting and trying to like, keep an eye on them. In mid-June, as the Confederates continued their march through the North,

• 15:58Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  young Tillie Pierce was at school, working on literary exercises, when suddenly her teacher interrupted their work in a panic. She tells all of the students to rush home, that the Confederate Army was like, emerging into town, and that everyone had to go home quickly.

• 16:14Corinne Vien?

  Which is so scary.

• 16:15Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  So scary. Tilly ran home to her house on Baltimore Street, arriving just as Confederate soldiers began to seize supplies in town. They stole horses, food, and other supplies. And the residents of Gettysburg, again, there's 2,400 of them and 75,000 soldiers in the Confederate Army, all they can do is comply. They give over all of their supplies.

• 16:38Corinne Vien?

  Yeah. It's just so hard for me to even wrap my mind around this war because I'm like, all this so you can keep another human being enslaved?

• 16:46Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Oh, it's horrible. Yeah. And the Union soldiers were not yet there to offer protection. So like, I can't even imagine how scary this is. Like 75,000 people, men.

• 16:56Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 16:56Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  About a week later, the Union troops made it into Gettysburg and Tilly wrote the following about that day. And again, like Tilly really documented all of this. Like, it's like a diary and there's a book that I'll mention later on. But so some of these are direct quotes from Tilly. She wrote this about the day that the Union troops made it into Gettysburg. "It was to me a novel and grand sight. I had never seen so many soldiers at one time. They were Union soldiers and that was enough for me, for I then knew we had protection and I felt they were our dearest friends. Desiring to encourage them, as we were told they would soon be in battle, my sister started to sing the old war song, our Union forever. As the day passed, the presence of the two armies became now more and more apparent."

• 17:39Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And then Tilly also wrote about the fear the Black community felt with the presence of the Confederate soldiers because, as you can imagine, they were terrified of the Confederates, whose sole purpose was to enslave their people. She wrote like of how the Black people would be screaming, crying and like grabbing their loved ones and their children and like, terrified that they were going to be killed on the spot.

• 18:04Corinne Vien?

  Because we have often said like, oh, I wish we could go back in history. I wish we could do this or that and like just see it. I don't want to see it.

• 18:12Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I feel like I would say like a hundred years from now, if we were living, I would say the same about this time period that we're in.

• 18:17Corinne Vien?

  That's true.

• 18:18Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  So then, on the morning of July 1st, 1863, almost by accident, a Confederate division that was moving toward the town of Gettysburg for supplies, ran into the Union cavalry. Shots were fired, reinforcements were called.

• 18:32Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And when Tillie Pierce and her friends heard that the Union reinforcements were on the move, there was almost like a giddy excitement based on the way they describe it. Like, they ran to watch the spectacle unfold on Washington Street. And according to Tilly's writings, it was between nine and 10 o'clock when they first noticed firing in the direction of Seminary Ridge. The sound was at first faint, but then grew louder. And soon, the booming of cannon was heard, and great clouds of smoke were seen rising beyond the ridge. So what started as like this, like, oh, my gosh, like, a shot was fired, like, the Union troops are going to, like, probably, they're like, oh, we're gonna kill the Confederates and win this war. But very quickly, but started with one shot fired, is now smoke clouds descending into

• 19:17Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  the town of Gettysburg. And before nightfall, there were stretchers and ambulances of soldiers being brought back into the town of Gettysburg.

• 19:27Corinne Vien?

  Which, like, how was there even enough people to help all the injured? Which there were not.

• 19:31Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  There were not. That's how. There were not. By day's end, what would be the bloodiest battle of the Civil War was in full force. And the residents of Gettysburg obviously were terrified because up until this point, yeah, the Confederate soldiers were, like, stealing their supplies and stuff, but there had been no fighting and no battle. And they were now terrified for their lives. So so many of the residents began to flee. And even Tilly's parents made plans to send Tilly away to a farm owned by a man named Jacob Weichert. I think that's how you say his name. He was the father of one of their neighbors and owned a farm outside of Gettysburg. And they thought this would be a safer place for 15-year-old Tilly to go. The only preparation Tilly made before she left was she carried

• 20:15Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  all of her best clothes down into the cellar so that they would be safe upon her return. She didn't even pack a bag of clothes for herself to go to the farm because she truly just didn't even have the understanding of what was going on or how long she was gonna be gone for. She, like, everyone kind of thought this would be over in a day. It was not.

• 20:35Corinne Vien?

  It's like when all of us got sent home for two weeks for COVID.

• 20:38Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Truly, yeah. Everyone's like, oh, 10 days, it'll pass. We'll be back in the office. I'm so excited. I'm getting my whole body MRI scan from Prenewvo in a couple of weeks.

• 20:50Corinne Vien?

  It's honestly so important. It's like one of those things where getting older and aging has provided me so many anxieties about like what's going on.

• 20:56Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I recently had some medical issues in my family and everyone in my family is like, let's just do everything we can to get ahead and take our own health into our own hands. Prenewvo's whole body scan is a radiation-free MRI designed to help provide a detailed, non-invasive look at your body in under an hour, and it helps evaluate across major organs and systems, including the brain, spine, abdomen, pelvis, and more. Prenewvo's whole body scan can help detect many cancers, aneurysms, and hundreds of other conditions. And they have memberships that bundle MRI scans, blood panels, and a personalized results review to track your health year after year.

• 21:31Corinne Vien?

  To learn more about Prenewvo and get $300 off your whole body MRI, go to prenewvo.com/tgog and use code TGOG. That's P-R-E-N-U-V-O dot com slash TGOG. Terms and conditions apply.

• 21:45Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Receive $300 off Prenewvo whole body scans and executive and comprehensive memberships through January 31st. For full details, visit Prenewvo's website to read their terms and conditions and privacy notice. Prenewvo gifted me a whole body scan. A Prenewvo scan is a screening service, not diagnostic. Diagnosis and treatment are determined by your healthcare provider. Tilly Pierce left for Jacob Weickert's farm around 1:00 PM on July 1, 1863. And she went with her neighbor, Mrs. Shriver, and her neighbor's children. And along the way, they have to pass Union soldiers who are clearly scared and tell them to hurry as fast as possible because they were in great danger of being shot and killed. The entire journey to the farm was dangerous, but the words of Tilly's parents echoed in her mind the whole time. Like, you're gonna be safe there. It's safer at the farm. Don't worry. It's safer at the

• 22:30Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  farm. She held on to that the whole journey to the farm, not knowing just how wrong her parents had been. Because the Weickert Farm sat right at the base of Little Round Top, which if you're familiar with the Battle of Gettysburg, that's basically ground zero for some of the most brutal fighting of the entire battle. The farmhouse was only 600 yards from the most intense clashes and bloodiest fights of Gettysburg. By some miracle...

• 22:56Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Tilly arrived to the farm safely, but within hours, reality struck as the first wounded soldier was carried to the farmhouse. The man was still alive, but had been hit in the head by artillery shrapnel, and blood was like oozing out of his head.

• 23:11Corinne Vien?

  Oh my god.

• 23:11Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  More and more soldiers began flooding the area, and 15-year-old Tilly was in shock. She had never even known fear like this before. And despite it all, she knew she had to do something. So she ran and grabbed a bucket, and in her words, hastened to the spring, and there with others she carried water to the soldiers over and over until the spring was completely dry. Yeah. More and more wounded arrived. This is day one of the battle. Some were limping, some had their heads and arms and bandages, some were crawling, barely hanging on to life. Others were carried on stretchers or brought in by ambulances, and before night fell, the barn was filled with shattered and dying heroes. Tilly wrote this. "Before night, the barn was filled with the shattered and dying heroes of this day's struggle.

• 23:57Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Nothing before in my experience had ever paralleled the sight we then and there beheld. They were the groaning and crying, the struggling and dying, crowded side by side while attendants sought to aid and relieve them as best they could." She's 15 years old. And this is day one of the battle. Day two, things got much worse. Shortly before noon, she observed soldiers lying on the ground just at the back of the house, dead. They had fallen, just where they had been standing when shot. Then came the, and I'm gonna mispronounce this word, but cannonading, which I'm, I wanna say cannoning, which I think it's the same thing, but the sound was so loud and so terrible that people in the farmhouse couldn't hear each other speak. That's how close this is.

• 24:41Corinne Vien?

  Well, and that's, also sorry if I'm spoiling anything, but like that's one of the common hauntings of Gettysburg is hearing cannons.

• 24:49Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  You're not ruining anything.

• 24:52Corinne Vien?

  Sorry. I think you could've guessed it too.

• 24:54Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  There's cannons in there. Yeah. Sometime between 4:00 PM and 5:00 PM, Tillie Pierce and those staying at the farm were literally caught between opposing forces. So now like the war has moved. To like the farmhouse is in the middle of the battle.

• 25:08Corinne Vien?

  Damn, that's so wild.

• 25:10Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  By night, the house and surrounding land and orchard were covered with the shattered and dying. The scene had become terrible beyond description. I think there's a photo and we'll include it. It's because it's such an old photo, it is hard to see all of it. But there's like horses and bodies just like on the ground. Then it came the amputating benches. Surgeons set up operating tables right outside the windows until he watched his limbs were literally sawed off and bullets were probed for and removed. And also like, there's not much time or they're not like putting these soldiers under anesthesia. They're like literally alive, feeling everything as their limbs are being cut off.

• 25:50Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 25:51Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  She and the woman who owned the farm tore bandages and gave them to surgeons. Just two days before, fifteen year old Tilly, all she had to worry about was like tests at school and like little drama with her friends. She is now bringing bread to the wounded and sitting beside dying men. Days passed and the sounds of cannons and gunshots slowly subsided. And as the smoke began to clear, Tilly waited at the farm, continuing to aid the wounded. There's a story of um, probably between like July second and third, there was a dying soldier who requested that Tilly stay with him. And she sat by his side and the next morning he was dead. Yeah.

• 26:30Corinne Vien?

  It's so sad. And there's just so many people, like, people can't even be like ID'd.

• 26:36Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  No.

• 26:37Corinne Vien?

  Well, I guess that's why we have the like mass graves.

• 26:39Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 26:40Corinne Vien?

  And cemeteries.

• 26:41Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Finally, on July seventh, eighteen sixty-three, Tilly was able to return home to Gettysburg. And on her journey home, she saw the true scope of damage and bloodshed, and it struck her. The place she had once called home had completely changed in a matter of week. Fences had been knocked over, buildings altogether were completely gone, demolished and ruined. And blood literally stained the ground. Tilly wrote, "The whole landscape had been changed and I felt as though we were in a strange and blighted land." And sure, yeah, the battle might have been over, but the work was not done. And the next couple of details I'm going to share are really gruesome. Just like, just the imagery and like, if you have an imaginative mind, like, it's hard to picture.

• 27:25Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  So from July 1st through July 3rd, 1863, the Battle of Gettysburg was fought between the Union and Confederates. It was hot. It was bloody. In those three days, 10,000 were killed, 30,000 were wounded, and another 10,000 were either captured or considered missing. And by the end of it all, it is believed that roughly 51,000 total casualties occurred over the course of three days.

• 27:50Corinne Vien?

  And there were 2,000 people here who lived?

• 27:52Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  2,400 people, yep.

• 27:54Corinne Vien?

  Before?

• 27:54Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Around 2,300 Union soldiers were killed, wounded, captured, or missing. Around 2,800 Confederate soldiers were killed, wounded, captured, or missing. And only one civilian had been killed by fire during the battle. One Mary Virginia or Jenny Wade. And like, that's a whole other episode about Gettysburg, who we did also briefly talk about in the episode with National Park After Dark. But to put this into perspective, the population of the town of Gettysburg was 2,400 people. Suddenly, they were surrounded by 21 times that in dead bodies or wounded soldiers. 24,000 residents of Gettysburg had to now band together to rebuild their city. But first, they had to attend to the casualties.

• 28:39Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  The immediate aftermath is horrific. Around 21,000 soldiers were receiving treatment in makeshift hospitals, and basically, the entire town of Gettysburg turned into a hospital. Churches, schools, private homes, including Tillie Pierce's home on Baltimore Street. And I do want to know, it's like, it's important to know that Tilly's not the only person who stepped up. Like, clearly, this entire town came together and was instrumental in coming to the aid of all these soldiers. But because of how detailed her story is, like, that she wrote all of this down, it really helps paint the picture and understand why Gettysburg has such a haunted reputation. Some 7,000 soldiers lay dead on Gettysburg soil, along with some 3,000 dead horses. It's July. It's hot.

• 29:22Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  The smell alone was unbearable, and this detail is gross. So again, skip ahead 30 seconds if you don't want to hear it. One soldier described passing the fields on July 4th, the day after the battle ended. And wrote that the corpses were swollen to twice their size. The pressure of gases caused them to burst. And the odors were so nauseating and deadly that men were vomiting.

• 29:45Corinne Vien?

  Oh, that's so gross.

• 29:48Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And the smell permeated for months. There was a New York Times report in November of 1863 that specifically said the smell still saturated the entire town of Gettysburg. And then keep in mind, this is also like the Civil War is ongoing. So the people who were in the armies that were still fit to continue had to keep fighting the battle. So they moved, they leave Gettysburg, leaving behind all these wounded soldiers and all these corpses for the townspeople of Gettysburg to deal with. So the townspeople built trenches and they dug and buried bodies in just like four inches of soil. So after any heavy rains, hands and feet and skulls were literally emerging out of the grounds. Despite that being so horrendous, they also have like 21,000 wounded soldiers that they're trying to care for.

• 30:33Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And that's priority over dealing with the dead bodies.

• 30:36Corinne Vien?

  Man, and out of the wounded, how many people are just still dying every day?

• 30:41Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right. A few days after-

• 30:43Corinne Vien?

  How do you even feed them? How do you feed yourself?

• 30:46Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Another great question. A few days after the battle, soldiers knocked on the Pierce family door, so on Tilly's family's home door, asking if they could bring their wounded Colonel into the home. The family said yes. The Colonel was brought into their home, suffering immensely. And surgeons wanted to amputate his foot, but this Colonel was like so stubborn and really attached to his foot, I guess.

• 31:09Corinne Vien?

  Maybe just also the fear of having your foot chopped off while you're fully-

• 31:13Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Well, they literally told him that if he didn't get his foot chopped off, like he would die. And he said, if his foot must go, he would go too.

• 31:21Corinne Vien?

  As someone who has a lot of medical fears, I could see myself also being like, all right, then I guess I just die, but I can't sit through getting my leg chopped off.

• 31:30Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I mean, the pain he's experiencing already from his foot probably is like unimaginable. But anyway, he really wanted to keep onto his foot because he had a foot career, modeling, only foots business coming up afterwards. Anyway, the Colonel stays in their home for months as he recovered. And as he was there, like for months, he became like a part of the family. They're tending to him, like helping re-bandage his wounds, bringing him food, sitting with him, talking to him. He becomes a member of the Pierce family. And I think it was some four or five months later, he was like recovered. So he didn't need to amputate his foot and he did survive. And he was well enough to actually leave.

• 32:13Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And Tilly writes about like how everyone cried when he left. Because they had become so endeared to each other. And then I guess Tilly wrote of a day, three years after the battle, where the Colonel, where all of a sudden like there was a knock on their door. And it was the Colonel returning to like pay them a visit and say, thank you again. Yeah.

• 32:32Corinne Vien?

  That's sweet.

• 32:33Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I know.

• 32:33Corinne Vien?

  Why does this feel like people who raise a lion cub? And then the lion grows up and, and like recognizes them again a year later?

• 32:42Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  It's kind of like that. Okay, but so before this Colonel got better, and the town is still trying to like attend to all of these soldiers. Tilly enlisted in helping with nursing duties at Gettysburg's Camp Letterman General Hospital, which had been like impromptu set up on the outskirts of town. Again, she's only 15 years old. And these wounded soldiers remained in Gettysburg for months. Around 3,500 soldiers were re-interred to a new cemetery on Cemetery Hill, which was dedicated on November 19th, 1863, when Lincoln gave the infamous Gettysburg Address. But the bodies of the Confederate soldiers weren't properly handled, in some cases for years.

• 33:24Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  They weren't relocated to southern cemeteries until 1871, 1873. Like almost 10 years after.

• 33:30Corinne Vien?

  Wow.

• 33:31Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  The battle. Some remains have never been found. Historians estimate that anywhere from eight hundred to a thousand bodies are still unaccounted for. And as recently as nineteen ninety six, a tourist was just like over by the railroad track when they stumbled upon a body, like skeletal remains. And through testing, they determined it was the remains of a soldier from the Battle of Gettysburg.

• 33:55Corinne Vien?

  Oh, my god.

• 33:55Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  In nineteen ninety six.

• 33:57Corinne Vien?

  I believe that there's so many.

• 33:58Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah. Safe to say, Gettysburg never went back to how it was prior to the horrors of the Battle of Gettysburg. And the horrors cannot be forgotten. One, because this history is so prominent in American history. But then, two, because the energy there is so palpable that history literally bleeds through timelines and spirits won't let us forget.

• 34:22Corinne Vien?

  Mm hmm.

• 34:22Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And then, three, because Tilly wrote this incredible book that she published of all of her writings and experiences. So we will never forget. So before I get into the hauntings, I'm just gonna wrap up Tilly's story because she's such a prominent part of this. After the war, she was reunited with her family, and both of her brothers did survive the war. In eighteen seventy one, Tilly left Gettysburg after meeting and marrying her then-husband Horace P. Allman. They built a life, had kids, became very active and patriotic organizations. And in eighteen eighty nine, twenty-five years after the Battle of Gettysburg, Tilly published her memoir called At Gettysburg, or What a Girl Saw and Heard of the Battle.

• 35:04Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And like I said, historians have called it one of the most outstanding eyewitness accounts written by any Gettysburg resident and is still in print today.

• 35:11Corinne Vien?

  Dang. All because of a fifteen-year-old journaling about her experience.

• 35:16Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah. So to anyone who wants to get back into journaling, here's your reason why. So it's also in this decade, in like eighteen nineties, eighteen eighties, that Tilly was given the deed to the house she grew up in, the house on Baltimore Street where she grew up, the place that housed her father's butcher shop, the place that witnessed the bloody battle, and the place where they even aided and attended to wounded soldiers. On March 5th, 1914, Tillie Pierce Almond died of complications from cancer. She was 66 years old and was laid to rest at the Trinity Lutheran Church Cemetery in Selinsgrove, PA, far from where she grew up, far from Gettysburg. But here's the thing, doesn't matter where you die, doesn't matter where you're buried.

• 35:58Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  You can haunt, well, we don't know the rules, but Tilly seems to have gone back to her home from childhood in Gettysburg and haunts it. And that brings us to the Tillie Pierce House Inn.

• 36:10Corinne Vien?

  Oh, it's an inn now?

• 36:11Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Mm-hmm.

• 36:11Corinne Vien?

  I was just gonna ask, is it a museum, is it private residence?

• 36:14Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  You can stay there. It is a place where past and future guests are wel- wait, this is literally taken from their website. On their website, it says, "A place where past and future guests are welcome."

• 36:25Corinne Vien?

  Yeah, opening the door for the spirits to come in.

• 36:29Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Not that they have much of a choice, it's like-

• 36:31Corinne Vien?

  That's true.

• 36:31Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  It's not like-

• 36:32Corinne Vien?

  They're just trying to get along with who's already there.

• 36:35Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  It's like, yeah, you're welcome because you're already here.

• 36:37Corinne Vien?

  Sure, because you have to be.

• 36:38Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And technically, it's your home. So as we know, this building stood witness to history, the bloodshed and the strength of human spirit that persevered to like get through the aftermath of the Civil War or Gettysburg. It was built in 1829, so prior to the Civil War, and it's still standing 200 years later. After Tilly's death, the house passed through different owners for years until eventually it was turned into a bed and breakfast and named after Tillie Pierce to honor her contributions and the things she witnessed when she called it home. And I'm sure that people noticed odd ongoings and hauntings in this building before it was an inn, but that is when, once it was turned into the Tillie Pierce House Inn, that's when people started to really document it.

• 37:19Corinne Vien?

  Oh, interesting.

• 37:20Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And document the hauntings, but there are many. Even if you go to their TripAdvisor page, like countless of the reviews were like, wow, this was such a great stay, like such a beautiful inn, and I loved the ghost cat who slept with me at night.

• 37:32Corinne Vien?

  Oh, cute.

• 37:34Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah, so it's chock full of firsthand hauntings.

• 37:36Corinne Vien?

  It is one of those crazy things where I feel like every place in Gettysburg is haunted, which means that if you're going to Gettysburg, just to like experience the cemeteries, the battlefields, the history, you don't get to just go sleep at night and be okay. Like, I don't care if you're at the Marriott or if you're at a local inn, like you're gonna be haunted.

• 37:58Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right. I don't care if you say ghosts aren't real, the ghost will be like, hey, actually, we are, tap, tap, tap, can I tickle your toes at night? Or walk through your room thinking they're still in the middle of battle.

• 38:09Corinne Vien?

  Yeah, walk through you right in the street, make you faint.

• 38:12Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Or that one listener story where like the soldier literally like took a sword to someone.

• 38:18Corinne Vien?

  Yep.

• 38:18Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yep.

• 38:19Corinne Vien?

  Sometimes it's not a residual haunting. It is some sort of glitch and they've got access to you.

• 38:25Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Who knows? Because there are a lot of hauntings, it is hard to like really qualify who is what, what is who. But over the years, they've kind of like whittled it down to like the couple of main types of hauntings.

• 38:41Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  So the first is the staircase soldier, and this is one of the most commonly reported hauntings. Guests report seeing and hearing a soldier walking down the stairs, opening a door as if the soldier's going into that room and like very quickly, followed by the footsteps going back up the stairs. It's like that same pattern.

• 39:00Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 39:01Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  It happens so often that people do believe it's a residual haunting, like a soldier either patrolling or like something really prominent happened in that moment and like made them run back upstairs. I don't know. Paranormal investigators have captured lots of EMF spikes and disembodied voices on the stairs. And then there's another couple of spirits that are in the hallway by the stairs. Ghost children, and they're running and playing. Multiple guests report hearing children playing in the halls and on the stairs, especially late at night or early in the morning. And every time they go to check, no one is there. And most often, when people go to like ask the front desk about the kids playing, there are zero children checked in and staying at the hotel.

• 39:38Corinne Vien?

  But doesn't it make you happy that there are some kids who are like actually enjoying the afterlife and having fun? And it's not just the spirits of people who had horrific ends to their lives?

• 39:48Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yes, I agree. And really, aside from the one soldier on the stairs, like there aren't all that many Civil War Gettysburg soldier hauntings in the Tillie Pierce house in. Like, there are a couple.

• 40:02Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 40:02Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  But that's like the most prominent one. And then the other ones are like the ghost children, a cat, a weeping woman.

• 40:07Corinne Vien?

  It's just ripe energy for any

• 40:10Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 40:10Corinne Vien?

  spirit to remain.

• 40:11Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right. I think just like how much bloodshed and like tragedy Gettysburg saw, it has become like this like energy vortex.

• 40:19Corinne Vien?

  And also, there's been 200 more years of people living there and dying there and.

• 40:24Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Totally.

• 40:24Corinne Vien?

  Life went on after the battle.

• 40:26Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Lots of life happened there, before and after. Okay, then there's another very commonly reported experiences at the inn is the sound of a woman crying, sometimes softly and sometimes very loud in like these weeping wails. It's usually coming from one of the upstairs bedrooms, but when people go to check, nobody's there. No one can really say for certain who she is. Some believe it's connected to Tilly herself, that she's crying and the trauma and everything she's witnessed. Others think it's maybe a mother of a wounded soldier who died in the house, or truly, it could be completely disconnected from the Civil War entirely. Hard to know for sure. But like I said, some people do think it's connected to Tilly.

• 41:10Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And regardless of that, people do believe Tilly haunts this home because guests report seeing a young girl in a white dress wandering the halls or gazing out the windows, kind of like a girl in her, like when she's 15 years old. So people are like, oh, is she returning in the form that she was when she was here? Is it residual? Hard to know. But her energy-

• 41:34Corinne Vien?

  What if, when people die and the like life reviews that happen where there's like big moments that like flash before their eyes as they're passing? What if each of those moments ends up being a haunting? So it's like their spirit goes back and sees it and then they move on, but like that moment still exists forever.

• 41:55Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Anything is possible. So that energy of like the woman, the girl in the white dress is most often seen in the Blue Room, which the Blue Room is very paranormally active. Like if you want to stay at this inn and you want a paranormal experience, highly recommend you stay in the Blue Room. And you might be like, why is it called the Blue Room? Can you guess what color the walls are painted?

• 42:18Corinne Vien?

  Blue.

• 42:19Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Blue. What if I said red?

• 42:23Corinne Vien?

  Does someone's colorblind?

• 42:24Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah. No, it's blue, but it's also called the Hetty Shriver Room. And Hetty Shriver was the neighbor in which Tilly went to the White Cart Farm with.

• 42:34Corinne Vien?

  Hmm.

• 42:34Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  It's a triple room, so three guests can stay here. It's en suite with a standard garden view and it's super historic looking.

• 42:42Corinne Vien?

  Oh, wow.

• 42:43Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Beautiful fireplace, brick fireplace in the room, lots of antiques and vintage furniture. But like I said, it's the most haunted room of the inn. It's believed to be inhabited by the soldier or soldiers that Tilly once cared for after the battle. And perhaps the Colonel himself, although people, again, it's like trying to take pieces that they know from the story and attribute it to it. But the Colonel never died here. Maybe, again, he had such a strong affinity and love for this family that like he has come back as a spirit.

• 43:12Corinne Vien?

  Who knows?

• 43:14Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  People hear footsteps in the attic above them or right outside the door of the blue room. Others report feelings of being watched, like they are not alone in the room. And some guests have literally seen the apparition of a soldier standing near their bed. Some guests have also woken up to the same soldier sitting down on the end of the bed.

• 43:31Corinne Vien?

  Hmm.

• 43:33Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And then people report seeing an apparition of a woman that they believe is Tilly herself. But wait, there's more.

• 43:41Corinne Vien?

  If the 12 ghosts weren't enough for you.

• 43:43Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Right. There is also a ghost that moves and steals people's possessions, little poltergeist activity. And then, of course, my favorite, there's a ghost cat too. This ghost cat will sometimes jump up onto people's beds and cuddle up with them. And the inn even has like a bowl of cat toys with like a little like note telling guests about the ghost cat. So they really are like paying homage and like welcoming guests of the past and present. With a place as infamously historic and haunted as Gettysburg and the Tillie Pierce Inn, there are countless YouTube videos or shows where people go and do paranormal investigations. I cannot, did not watch them all, but I did find a couple of notable things that investigators did capture.

• 44:26Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  So people have caught EVPs of voices saying, "I'm here," or "Help him," or "Don't leave me." Which I can imagine, like the moment Tilly talked about like the dying soldier who was like, "Please sit with me."

• 44:39Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 44:39Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  You know? The manager of Ghost City Tours, whose name is Andy, visited the house many times. And this is a quote that he said. There's something incredibly raw about the energy in that house. It's not malevolent, it's sad. You can feel it in your bones. I've had EVPs from there that made me stop recording all together for the night. One of them said, "Mama." And that was it, one word, but it stuck with me for years. Like a sad, like crying for your mom. Andy believes that there's a lot of emotional residue left inside the building that has left this lasting psychic imprint and that the spirits are begging to be heard.

• 45:18Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  The Inn was also featured on the TV show Ghost Detectives in 2015. I did not go down that rabbit hole, but encourage you to do so if you want. The investigators who did go through the building came out saying that haunted was an understatement.

• 45:32Corinne Vien?

  I believe that.

• 45:33Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  One guest reported the smell of lilacs accompanied with the feeling of someone watching them from the corner of the room. It dissipated.

• 45:39Corinne Vien?

  Thank goodness it's the smell of lilacs, not like the smell of the battle.

• 45:42Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Decaying bodies, yeah. That smell dissipated and then they went to bed and around 1 a.m. they woke up to the sounds of a woman crying. Safe to say, the Tillie Pierce House Inn is haunted, but are we surprised? Probably not. If you are, have you been listening to this episode? Do you believe in ghosts? And why are you here? If you don't.

• 46:04Corinne Vien?

  Who are you? Why are you here?

• 46:06Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Did you accidentally stumble upon this because you love history and love the Civil War? And you're like, "I didn't sign up for ghosts." Well, guess what? History means ghosts. You're welcome. Gettysburg as a whole is arguably the most haunted place in America. And I mean, just think about like what we talked about today. Over 50,000 casualties in just three days. Thousands of bodies left to rot on the ground in the midst of July heat, left there for months.

• 46:33Corinne Vien?

  Disgusting.

• 46:34Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  A small town of 2,400 residents came together, trying to rebuild, trying to aid to the thousands of wounded. They opened their homes, they dug shallow graves, and they witnessed death with their own eyes. They bandaged the wounded with their bare hands and inevitably they were never the same. That trauma is baked into the town, into the buildings, into the land. Everywhere you go in Gettysburg, there's a building, a field, a road with a story. And like Corinne said, the haunting every step. It's not just the Tillie Pierce House Inn, it is everything. But Tilly helped us remember what happened there. She wrote it all down, every detail. And even now, maybe she continues to linger in that house she grew up in, continuing to offer guests a slight glimpse into her past.

• 47:19Corinne Vien?

  I feel like this is the stuff that people don't hear about as much.

• 47:22Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Isn't Tilly amazing?

• 47:23Corinne Vien?

  You think about the actual battle and the reason for the battle, but there's so many characters like this.

• 47:28Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  100%. That's why I love these types of stories, because you are getting a different perspective.

• 47:34Corinne Vien?

  And she was 15.

• 47:36Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  15.

• 47:37Corinne Vien?

  Getting bread, getting water from the stream, staying with people until they pass.

• 47:42Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  When I was 15, I was sneaking out of my house and getting into the van of a very questionable drug dealer and going down to the end of my cul-de-sac and smoking a joint.

• 47:52Corinne Vien?

  It's a little different.

• 47:53Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  It's so different.

• 47:54Corinne Vien?

  Did you journal about it at least?

• 47:55Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  No.

• 47:56Corinne Vien?

  Well, you're podcasting about it now.

• 47:58Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah, this is my journal.

• 48:00Corinne Vien?

  A different version of it.

• 48:01Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  This is my journal.

• 48:02Corinne Vien?

  My god.

• 48:03Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Such a wild, wild story.

• 48:05Corinne Vien?

  It is wild. Damn. Okay, well, I first was looking for if we had any stories from this specific house, since people can stay there, but I did not find one. However, I did find an email called Gettysburg Haunted Girls Trip.

• 48:20Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Perfect. Tilly would love this.

• 48:23Corinne Vien?

  Tilly would want to go on this trip.

• 48:24Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah. She deserves a break after everything she went through.

• 48:27Corinne Vien?

  Well, this is much, too much of a break. Definitely not a paranormal break, we'll say that. Hi, Corinne and Sabrina. I'm currently sitting at a random Arby's on the side of the road on my way home from a girls' trip in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

• 48:38Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Oh, like this is being emailed like immediately after?

• 48:40Corinne Vien?

  Yeah. My best friend, Lacey, and I decided to stay at one of the most haunted hotels, the Gettysburg Hotel. The first night we were there, we crawled into bed after an amazing dinner at the Dobbin House, which I highly recommend checking out if you visit. And as I was drifting off to sleep, I felt someone sit on my bed. This has happened to me in the past, so it didn't really bother me. The presence didn't feel scary, so I just brushed it off. What was really spooky was Lacey's dream that she had that night. She dreamt that we were in an old farmhouse and I was telling her about the doors slamming shut upstairs. She then looks over at me and sees a shadow figure creep out from behind me and smile at her.

• 49:24Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Any smiling entity? Nope.

• 49:26Corinne Vien?

  Yeah, so creepy.

• 49:27Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Nope.

• 49:27Corinne Vien?

  I then turned towards her and yelled, "You need to breathe." As the figure begins to crawl over her arms.

• 49:35Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Oh, my god.

• 49:36Corinne Vien?

  She's then said that she gasped and woke up in the exact same position that she was in.

• 49:41Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  In the dream. No.

• 49:43Corinne Vien?

  Then she noticed the mirror in our hotel room was the same mirror behind me and the shadow figure in her dream. The mirror looked into another mirror in the hotel room. And we felt silly for not noticing this sooner because mirrors in a haunted hotel equals portals, right? So we ended up taking the mirror down. We put a pillowcase over it and the room felt so much better, so much lighter. We also heard a chair scratching on wooden floors above us and a ball bouncing on the wooden floor. What made this strange is that all of the rooms in the hotel are actually carpeted from Beth.

• 50:20Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  So again, like us slipping through time, experiencing something that wasn't happening.

• 50:26Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 50:26Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  In present day.

• 50:27Corinne Vien?

  It's so interesting because it's like Beth is in the dream being like, "You need to breathe." Like basically like wake up or like save yourself. All this other entities after her in a farmhouse.

• 50:37Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Ugh. I'm curious about the history of this hotel. Like, was it a farmhouse? At one point that did like aid soldiers? Because, you know, on top of all this trauma causing what is inevitably a psychic portal or like memory, hold all the memory of it. If anything, Wayberry Hills has taught us that so much tragedy also opens itself up to something negative coming in.

• 51:04Corinne Vien?

  Yep.

• 51:05Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And like feeding off that energy.

• 51:07Corinne Vien?

  Um, this was a makeshift Civil War hospital.

• 51:12Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Makes sense.

• 51:13Corinne Vien?

  And one of the big ones.

• 51:14Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Crazy.

• 51:15Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 51:16Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  There's so many also, like, if you go on Reddit, or if you go on YouTube and you look up like apparitions and EVPs from Gettysburg, it is, there are so many.

• 51:25Corinne Vien?

  That is convincing stuff, too. Like, I feel like if you don't believe in paranormal evidence, if you just, like, witness the stuff that comes out of Gettysburg, how can you say that there's not something to the paranormal?

• 51:38Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I want to go to Gettysburg.

• 51:40Corinne Vien?

  Gettysburg feels like a week-long trip. It feels...

• 51:42Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Because there's so many haunted locations.

• 51:44Corinne Vien?

  Yeah, hotels, restaurants.

• 51:47Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  The Jenny Wade, the Jenny Wade House, but you can, like, go in and tour.

• 51:51Corinne Vien?

  Yeah, museums, there's just so much.

• 51:54Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah.

• 51:54Corinne Vien?

  But also, it feels very overwhelming, because I feel like the people that we know who've gone have all been pretty affected.

• 52:01Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  I want to get haunted, you know? Like, not something "Follow Me Home" haunted, but like, I want to go experience something haunting.

• 52:09Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 52:09Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Which, at the time of this recording, we have not yet, but by the time this come out, we did do something.

• 52:15Corinne Vien?

  We did go to be haunted.

• 52:17Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And you'll find about it, find about it.

• 52:19Corinne Vien?

  Find about it.

• 52:20Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  You'll find about it, uh, find out about it sometime in October, probably.

• 52:24Corinne Vien?

  And we'll find out about it when we go.

• 52:27Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  We'll find out about it. But Gettysburg might be next on our list.

• 52:31Corinne Vien?

  Yeah.

• 52:32Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Because it's also not that far from us, so... Field trip!

• 52:37Corinne Vien?

  Check back soon.

• 52:39Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Yeah, we have so many plans. Getting you drunk is first on the list. Post-pregnancy getting you drunk and us doing a drunk history is on my list.

• 52:48Corinne Vien?

  Well, until then, which will be a while from now, please send us all of your hauntings and experiences at [email protected]. You can rate and review on Apple, Spotify, wherever you listen to podcasts. Tell other people about us. Pyramid Scheme still does exist and it works.

• 53:05Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  It sure as heck does. We have Patreon where you can get episodes one week early and ad-free, plus bonus content, plus campfire stories where you can come share your ghost story with us live every Tuesday, plus book hub, witch classes, so many things.

• 53:19Corinne Vien?

  Plus other things.

• 53:20Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  Plus, plus, plus, plus. It's just such a plus.

• 53:24Corinne Vien?

  Thank you to Jamie Ryan for editing and producing our podcast.

• 53:26Sabrina Deana-Roga?

  And thanks to all of you. We love you.

• 53:28Corinne Vien?

  And Viva. See you on the other side.