General Lee's Headquarters

A Confederate soldier was buried alive in the barn cellar at the Widow Thompson house in July 1863. A priest left a cross inside a circle on the wall.

Robert E. Lee probably didn't sleep here.

The small stone house on Seminary Ridge has been pitched for a century as the Confederate commander's battlefield headquarters during Gettysburg, and a cannon monument sits out front to mark the supposed spot. Historian Harry W. Pfanz's research tells a less tidy story. Lee ate dinner at the Widow Mary Thompson's house on July 1, 1863, may have rested there briefly, and then returned to his tent. General Longstreet found him the next morning at a group of tents in an orchard nearby, not inside the house. Lee moved constantly during those three days. The Thompson house was one stop on a very short list of stops.

This doesn't stop the ghosts from showing up.

Mary Thompson herself was 69 years old and a recent widow when the Confederate army walked through her door. She refused to leave her house during the battle, cooked for Lee and his staff when they stayed, and watched her property get used as a hospital, a command post, and a temporary morgue. She lived another decade after the war and died in 1873 in the same house. Visitors to the restored property have reported a small older woman in a dark dress moving through the main room, usually in the late afternoon.

But Mary is not the ghost that made this site famous.

For most of the 20th century, the Thompson House operated as Larson's Motel, with a row of small lodging units built around the original stone structure. Motel guests over decades reported being jolted awake by explosions near their rooms, loud enough to rattle walls, with nothing outside that could account for them. Staff noticed objects moving in the main house after closing. One wing of the motel had a reputation among returning guests for a sudden temperature drop near the bathroom doorway and the sense of being sat on while trying to sleep.

The most specific story is also the most disturbing. According to accounts collected by Gettysburg historian Mark Nesbitt, a Confederate soldier was hastily buried in a barn cellar on the property in July 1863, beneath a layer of already-decomposing bodies. When his makeshift grave was opened, he was discovered to have still been alive when he was covered. He died shortly after. Poltergeist activity at that barn cellar became severe enough, the story goes, that a priest was brought in to perform a cleansing. He left behind a mark, a cross inside a circle, still visible on the interior wall.

The Civil War Trust bought the property in 2015 and tore down the motel, restoring the Thompson House to its 1863 footprint. The stabilization work turned up period artifacts, bullet fragments, and at least one bone fragment in the barn cellar area. The property is now part of the Gettysburg National Military Park and opens seasonally for walking access.

Gettysburg has more famous hauntings. Devil's Den, the Jennie Wade House, the Farnsworth Inn. Lee's Headquarters gets skipped on the standard ghost tour route, which is a mistake. The building is older than the battle, and whatever accumulated here during those three days in July went into the stone and stayed. A soldier buried alive in a cellar is not a subtle ghost. A widow who refused to leave her home for an invading army isn't one either.

Go at late afternoon. Look for the cross inside the circle on the barn wall.