{"id":2176,"slug":"cashtown-inn-cashtown-pennsylvania","story":[{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["Cashtown Inn watched the Confederate army pass twenty feet from its barroom. On June 29, 1863 — the day Lee learned the Union army was north of the Potomac and ordered his scattered corps to concentrate — A.P. Hill's Third Corps came down through Cashtown Gap and filled the Chambersburg Pike. Innkeeper Jacob Mickley watched it: 'the entire force under Lee passed within twenty feet of my barroom.' The 1797 stagecoach inn — named for first keeper Peter Marck's cash-only policy — became headquarters: Hill set up inside, Imboden and Heth quartered there, and Lee arrived the next day with his staff and his battle flags.","The inn paid for its strategic position — Mickley lost a horse, a steer, fifty chickens, a hundred apple trees, and 580 gallons of whiskey and brandy to the 'respect for private property' the Confederates had promised. The basement served as a field hospital once the battle began; the stable sheltered the wounded; Lee's supply wagons filled the orchards. Eight miles east, the war's largest battle started because the road west ran through Cashtown.","The haunting is the inn's second life — guests report the Confederate uniform in the hall, the rocking chair that moves in Hill's room, the sounds in the basement that was the field hospital. The movie Gettysburg filmed here; the inn sells itself as the campaign's headquarters — which it demonstrably was.","Cashtown Inn is the archive's barroom file — the 1797 stagecoach inn where Lee's whole army passed within twenty feet of the bar, Hill headquartered, and the basement was a field hospital, in the hamlet where Gettysburg was decided before it began."]},{"heading":"Why this file matters","paragraphs":["Cashtown Inn is the archive's twenty-feet file — the 1797 inn that was Confederate headquarters during the Gettysburg concentration, where Mickley watched Lee's army pass his barroom and lost 580 gallons of whiskey, and where guests report the uniform in the hall.","An inn the army passed keeps its bar — the file's suggestion being that Cashtown's hold is the twenty feet: the distance between Mickley's barroom and the largest Confederate army ever on Northern soil, in the inn that quartered its generals."]}],"name":"Cashtown Inn","aliases":[],"type":"INN","type_label":"Inn","cats":["DARK_HISTORY","HAUNTED_PLACE","HISTORIC_INN"],"groups":["dark-history","hauntings","lodging"],"desc":"1797 inn that quartered Confederate officers before Gettysburg.","full_desc":"Cashtown Inn is an inn in Cashtown, Pennsylvania, built in 1797. 1797 inn that quartered Confederate officers before Gettysburg. It sits in the archive under haunted places, dark history and historic inns. The dossier holds 1 reported claim, 1 legend and 1 documented fact — documented record and retelling kept side by side. It still takes guests.","address":null,"city":"Cashtown","county":null,"state":"Pennsylvania","postal":null,"region":"Northeast","lat":39.8836,"lon":-77.4925,"coord_kind":"EXACT","status":"ACTIVE","access":"PUBLIC","access_notes":null,"ownership":null,"website":null,"phone":null,"year_built":1797,"year_opened":null,"year_closed":null,"year_demolished":null,"designation":null,"current_use":null,"research_notes":"New record from encyclopedia/official-source pass; VERIFY task auto-queued for primary-source corroboration.","stage":"SOURCE_RESEARCH","quality":{"level":"MEDIUM","score":70,"dims":{"location_confidence":0.75,"identity_confidence":0.65,"historical_confidence":0.8,"source_quality":0.3999999999999999,"paranormal_claim_provenance":0.8,"coordinate_confidence":0.85,"current_access_confidence":0.7,"freshness":0.65}},"claims":[{"id":1438,"type":"NAMED_GHOST_LEGEND","description":"Guests report a soldier on the porch, sounds in the cellar and lights in the windows. The Cashtown hotel's reports are the kind old lodgings accumulate — footsteps after hours, presences in rooms, the house working the night shift. It survives as local folklore, which is to say it survives because people keep telling it. The name gives the haunting a face, and the sightings give the name a job.","evidence":"LOCAL_FOLKLORE","evidence_label":"Local folklore","entity":null,"where":null,"first_report":null,"approx_date":null,"confidence":0.8,"conflict_notes":null,"source":{"name":"Cashtown Inn","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cashtown_Inn","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4},"conflicting_source":null,"variants":[]}],"history":[{"description":"Built 1797; served as a Confederate headquarters and hospital during the Gettysburg campaign. Cashtown Inn's history is documented rather than told — this entry is part of that spine. It's verified history: the dossier's load-bearing detail. Sources including 'Cashtown Inn' carry the record. It's the sort of fact that gives the haunting reports their context.","evidence":"HISTORICALLY_VERIFIED","date_start":"1797","date_end":null,"confidence":null,"source":{"name":"Cashtown Inn","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cashtown_Inn","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}}],"legends":[{"name":null,"summary":"Guests report a soldier on the porch, sounds in the cellar and lights in the windows. Cashtown Inn, a hotel in Cashtown, Pennsylvania, has kept the story in circulation longer than most of its guest registers. It circulates as local folklore — the kind communities keep rather than verify. The account appears in 'Cashtown Inn'. The legend does what legends do — it explains the place in a way the records can't.","earliest":null,"evidence":"LOCAL_FOLKLORE","source":{"name":"Cashtown Inn","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cashtown_Inn","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}}],"entities":[],"events":[],"investigations":[],"encounters":[],"media":[],"persons":[],"visitor":{"tour_availability":"Verify before visiting","notes":"Site access varies; verify before visiting.","last_verified_at":"2026-09-18 11:32:55","source":{"name":"HauntHunt generic access guidance","url":"https://haunthunt.com/about#access-guidance","publisher":"HauntHunt editorial","type":"DIRECTORY","authority":2}},"sources":[{"name":"Cashtown Inn","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cashtown_Inn","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}],"conflicts":[],"wiki":{"title":"Cashtown Inn","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cashtown_Inn","desc":"Bed and breakfast in Cashtown, Pennsylvania","extract":"Cashtown Inn is a bed and breakfast in Cashtown, Pennsylvania, about eight miles from Gettysburg.","img":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c8/Cashtown_Inn_Present.JPG/960px-Cashtown_Inn_Present.JPG?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=api&utm_content=thumbnail","score":89},"counts":{"claims":1,"history":1,"legends":1,"entities":0,"sources":1}}