Ghosts

The Battle of Gettysburg (July 1–3, 1863) resulted in over 50,000 casualties across three days — the bloodiest engagement in American history. Within months of the battle, locals reported seeing uniformed soldiers moving through the fields at night. These reports have continued without interruption for over 160 years.

Witnesses have described seeing Union and Confederate soldiers in authentic period uniforms marching in formation, sometimes vanishing mid-stride. Others report hearing cannon fire, drums, and screams with no source. Tourists have been touched or grabbed by unseen hands at Little Round Top. Multiple visitors have photographed what appear to be period-dressed figures that were not visible to the naked eye at the time of shooting.

The National Park Service has received thousands of reports. A study by historians found that the most active reported locations — the Triangular Field, the Devil's Den, and the Wheatfield — correspond precisely to the areas of highest battlefield mortality. Independent ghost investigation teams using audio, thermal, and EMF equipment have produced anomalous readings consistently in the same locations across multiple visits over decades.

Gettysburg is considered by paranormal researchers to be one of the most evidentially robust haunted locations in the United States, primarily due to the sheer volume of independently corroborating accounts from witnesses who had no prior knowledge of the location's history.

In August 1977, single mother Peggy Hodgson contacted police after furniture began moving on its own in her terraced house in Enfield, north London. The activity centred on her 11-year-old daughter Janet — and over the following 18 months, more than 30 witnesses including police officers, journalists, and SPR researchers documented what became one of the most thoroughly investigated poltergeist cases in history.

The phenomena escalated rapidly. Janet and her sister Margaret were photographed levitating from their beds. A voice that claimed to be the spirit of a former tenant — Bill — began speaking through Janet in a raspy, masculine register. The voice knew details about the house's history that the family could not have known. Objects flew across rooms, furniture dragged itself across floors, and Lego bricks and marbles materialised from nowhere and struck investigators.

SPR investigators Maurice Grosse and Guy Lyon Playfair spent over 14 months at the house. Both were initially sceptics. Grosse documented over 2,000 separate incidents. Voice recordings were analysed by audio experts who found the raspy voice produced by the forced exhalation of air over the false vocal cords — a sound that causes permanent injury if sustained and that an 11-year-old could not produce voluntarily for extended periods.

The case has been criticised by those who point to footage of Janet appearing to fake levitation by bouncing on her bed. Grosse maintained that this isolated incident of play did not account for the full 18 months of documented activity witnessed by adults. The Enfield case remains the benchmark against which all poltergeist investigations are measured.

In October 2003, staff at Hampton Court Palace in Surrey — Henry VIII's 16th-century royal residence — were repeatedly called to investigate a fire door in a closed wing of the palace that was setting off an emergency alarm by being forced open from inside. When they arrived, the corridor was empty with no one visible on camera.

On the third alarm, the palace's own CCTV footage was reviewed. The recording showed the fire door bursting open with considerable force from inside. A figure in what appeared to be a long, dark, period costume briefly filled the doorway before the doors swung shut. The figure was clearly not there on repeat viewings, and no member of staff or public was in that wing at the time.

Palace security described the footage as "alarming" and stated they could find no rational explanation. The footage was released publicly and attracted international media coverage. Analysts who examined it found no evidence of tampering, and the door's behaviour — swinging open with force from the secured interior side — was not consistent with wind, mechanical failure, or any identifiable physical cause.

Hampton Court is reportedly one of Britain's most haunted locations, with documented sightings of figures including Catherine Howard (Henry VIII's fifth wife, executed at the Tower of London) and a grey lady seen at the same locations over four centuries. The 2003 CCTV incident remains officially unexplained by palace management.