Sleeping With a Ghost: Hotel Gettysburg in Pennsylvania [In-Depth Review]

Some 4 score and 7 days ago, my spouse brought forth upon our household a new idea, conceived in a lack of summer camp and dedicated to the proposition that a long weekend could be both educational and fun.

So, this past Fourth of July holiday weekend, looking for a fun but educational long weekend trip to take our young son on, not too far from New York City, my wife and I decided to head down to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, to visit the national battlefield and watch the reenactment of arguably the most important single battle of the Civil War.

In search of an equally historic place to stay that I could either spend or earn points on, we settled on the Hotel Gettysburg, a landmark building and local institution in the heart of this bucolic central Pennsylvania town.

Booking the Hotel Gettysburg

I knew I wanted to stay in the Hotel Gettysburg before I started looking, so there weren’t really other candidates for our stay. It’s a historic hotel that started as a tavern in 1797, served as a makeshift hospital during the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863, and served as an unofficial White House while President Dwight D. Eisenhower was recovering at his nearby farmhouse from a heart attack in 1955.

The Hotel Gettysburg isn’t part of a major chain and doesn’t participate in a traditional loyalty program, but it is bookable via Chase Travel. I wanted to book 2 nights for our family of 3, and I found a standard room with 2 queen beds on Chase Travel for $374 per night, amounting to $830 in total, the same as I would’ve paid if I’d booked with the hotel directly.

Chase Travel also allowed me to book the room for 55,352 Ultimate Rewards points total. The redemption would’ve yielded a value of 1.49 cents per point. That’s below our valuation of Chase Ultimate Rewards points at 2 cents apiece, so I paid in cash using my Chase Sapphire Reserve^®.

Instead of spending points, I decided to earn points, invoking the 8x bonus on purchases with Chase Travel on the card, meaning I earned 6,640 Chase Ultimate Rewards points on this Hotel Gettysburg booking.

Hotel Gettysburg Location

The Hotel Gettysburg is smack dab in the center of town, right on the central square that serves as the hub for the area.

It’s about 5 minutes by car from the Gettysburg National Military Park Museum and Visitor Center and about a similar distance from Gettysburg National Cemetery.

The closest airport is Harrisburg International Airport (MDT), about 45 minutes away by car. Gettysburg is 2.5 hours almost straight north of Washington, D.C., and 3.75 hours west-southwest of New York City.

We drove from New York City to Gettysburg, making it a leisurely trip with a stop at the Eisenhower National Historic Site on the way into town.

The Hotel Gettysburg doesn’t have parking, but there is a town-managed parking structure behind the hotel in Racehorse Alley, almost directly in front of the hotel’s back entrance. Parking there costs $18 per full day with drive-in, drive-out privileges.

Checking In

Even though the hotel is nearly 200 years old, it was thoroughly modernized within, at least when it came to the common areas we saw. No creaky floorboards, musty smells, dim corners, or sweating through your clothes for lack of central air conditioning on a sweltering July day.

Right outside the front entrance was a plaque marking the building’s historic significance.

Inside, the foyer right inside the main entrance split off in each direction, with the hallways to the guest rooms directly ahead, a sitting room to the left, and the check-in desk (and another sitting room) to the right.

The hotel building also houses a Starbucks, and a hanging banner in the foyer reminded you of that every time you entered or left the hotel.

While the rest of my family waited in the car in a 20-minute parking space out front (we hadn’t figured out where the Racehorse Alley garage was yet), I checked us in inside.

The clerk confirmed our reservation, handed me a pair of room key cards, printed out a map of the area and a list of events in Gettysburg for the Fourth of July weekend, and told me where and how to park.

In this part of the lobby, there was a side table with cold, lime-infused water and a shelf of board games.

The Hotel Gettysburg was big on sitting rooms — definitely more so than most modern chain hotels.

If we’d gone left at the foyer upon entering the main entrance to the hotel, we would’ve been in another sitting room, the one with the most exterior light.

The hallway to the guest rooms led to a pair of elevators and was where the luggage trolleys hid out when they weren’t in use.

The decor consisted of carpeting that was certainly purchased from wherever hotels and airports get the kind of maximum-efficiency polyester floor coverings that are easy to clean, camouflage stains that can’t be cleaned, and look like that bizarre mixture of unicorn puke, moss, and a cross-section of geologic rock strata.

The wall decor was stylized portraits of important figures in Gettysburg’s history. The dead presidents included Abraham Lincoln, for obvious reasons, and Dwight Eisenhower, who bought a farm that’s now the historic site for his retirement from the presidency.

If, instead of heading straight to the room, we’d gone to the right and through the check-in lobby and followed that hallway, we would’ve passed the hotel bar and restaurant, One Lincoln, and ended up in yet another sitting area at the back of the hotel. This is where the back entrances to both the hotel and Starbucks were, and the way to the meeting rooms and ballroom.

It was also where you could see vestiges of this part of the building’s former life as a bank. The hotel expanded several times over the years, including taking over what is now the ballroom but was previously the Gettysburg National Bank, founded in 1814.

Since we were only on the second floor, we often used the stairs instead of the elevators. They opened up to a small, unremarkable door off the main, first-floor hallway to the guest rooms. Judging by how dusty the stairs were, we figured most people used the elevators rather than do the short climb up and down.

Standard Room, 2 Queen Beds

We were on the second floor, in room 209. We had to make a couple of turns to get to it, including past an ice machine, but we got there. The hallways were quiet, and we never saw any other guests or heard noises from inside the room.

Room 209 faced the back of the hotel, looking over Racehorse Alley.

We keyed in and opened the room to see a small entry corridor that led straight into the bathroom and a bedroom with 2 queen beds. It was somewhat cramped — about the size of a typical hotel room in New York City or any other older, big city with a premium on space — but nothing that involved elbows in faces or contorting ourselves or our luggage to fit. In other words, it was a standard size for an older hotel building, and we had no complaints.

There was central air conditioning, a closet, and a small hanging mirror with a shelf that was actually great for leaving car keys, hotel room key cards, and all those little bits of detritus I inevitably end up collecting almost immediately and throughout a trip somewhere, somehow. Like “special” rocks and pennies my young son picks up and tasks me with holding onto for the rest of our lives.

Both beds were comfortable, of medium firmness, and had hospital corners.

Somehow, they managed to stick a small desk in the corner, which held a tiny coffee maker, lamp, and box of tissues. The wall decor was clustered here and — you guessed it — was of the vintage, old-timey, Civil War-ry variety.

The nightstand between the beds held a Hotel Gettysburg-branded notepad, a pen, a glass lamp whose shape I’m still trying to figure out (Venus of Willendorf? Latios? Latias?), a landline telephone, and an alarm clock.

Each side got its own wall-mounted power outlets, including standard U.S. electric and USB-A.

The closet between the bathroom and room doors contained an iron, an ironing board, and 2 luggage racks.

The window overlooked the roof of the hotel’s rear sitting room, a few trees, and the back of a building across the way on Racehorse Alley. (You can probably tell by now that I really like the name Racehorse Alley.) The window needed a serious clean, as it was streaky and dust-covered enough that I assumed no one had wiped it in years. I was tempted to, but I couldn’t figure out how to open the window.

Also, though the room was kept clean throughout our stay, I did notice a stray bit of trash under the window when we first got in. Picking this up, I also took note of the minor scuffing on the kickboard, which seemed about what you’d expect for any hotel room, and the fraying of the carpets at the edges near the wall — cleverly camouflaged by those sneaky, earth-tone patterns of the carpet from the Hotel Carpets Mega-Lots site, or wherever they get these.

Bathroom

The bathroom was small but functional, modern, and clean.

The sink was laid out with a washcloth and hand lotion from Whish, a brand I wasn’t familiar with but that I’ve learned is owned by Whish Beauty, a California company that specializes in natural and organic products.

The tub was small — so small that I think it would’ve barely fit our 7-year-old if he’d decided to take baths instead of showers.

The shampoo, conditioner, and body wash, also from Whish Beauty, were mounted on the wall. They were very mildly scented and seemed to do the job of, you know, cleaning.

One issue we had with the tub was that, whenever we took a shower, the water somehow funneled off the shower curtains (we think) and leaked onto the floor, forming relatively large puddles.

Bottom Line:

We slept well in the beds and had no complaints about noise, though my wife said she could clearly hear my son and me making a racket in the room from all the way down the hall. So maybe it was one of those cases where the ghost hunters turn out to be the ghosts.

Amenities

Ghosts

Speaking of which, the most important amenity of the Hotel Gettysburg for a certain type of guest is its alleged ghosts. According to legend, the third floor is the site of spooky sightings and supernatural events like the sounds of people running up and down the hallways. Room 311 is especially known for purported hauntings and is said to be the favorite hangout of a ghost known as Nurse Rachel, who tended to wounded Union soldiers in the hotel during the Battle of Gettysburg.

Like I said, we heard absolutely no noise from beings living, dead, or undead during our stay on the second floor in room 209. We didn’t get a chance to explore the third floor, but we heard no one complain of ghost sightings up there, and it’s not like any iteration of the Ghostbusters ever busted into the hotel at any point we were there.

Hot Tip:

Ghosts aren’t real. (Probably.)

Ballroom

But if you want to talk about breathing new life into something long gone, we did explore the hotel ballroom, which is what the hotel converted the old bank wing into. It had a gorgeous, recessed wood ceiling, and the way the light filtered in through the curtains was actually quite lovely. I’m sure it’s a popular venue for weddings.

Vault Room

Attached to the ballroom, the vault had been repurposed into an intimate meeting room behind the massive steel vault door. It was available to rent separately from the ballroom.

Gym

Though the Hotel Gettysburg did have a 24/7 gym, it seemed more like an afterthought. Even more of an afterthought than at most hotels. (Yes, we know you didn’t really work out on vacation, even though you made a big point of saying you got up early every morning to do so. How were those $15 caramel macchiato frappes from the lobby cafe, by the way?)

First, we found the gym entirely by mistake. Exploring the stairwell, we opened the door in the basement to find ourselves in a service corridor of the hotel that led to the laundry and this space.

Once we entered the door into this little hallway, we were locked out of the service corridor, so we forged ahead into what turned out to be the gym by going through one of the brown doors in the photo above.

The gym was small, even for a hotel gym, but it had all the basic equipment, like treadmills, stationary bikes, and dumbbell-style free weights. However, since there was so little space to maneuver around in, I wouldn’t have felt safe using the free weights with other people in the gym.

There were fully stocked shelves with towels (it was apparent no one had actually used the gym in a while) and a water cooler. But when I went to check out the water cooler, the front of the machine popped open. I hadn’t even touched it — merely walking within 3 feet of it caused it to spill out.

Or, I suppose, you could say it was Nurse Rachel with a grudge against cool water, say it was a ghost, and pretend this was included under the section about ghosts as an amenity above.

Board Games

Finally, the shelf in the lobby by the check-in desk was stacked with board games. We didn’t try any out, but they had a heartier selection than the usual Rummikub, dog-eared Uno, and Scrabble missing the Z and X.

Wi-Fi

The rare times we used Wi-Fi at the hotel, it was reasonably steady but not something you’d use to stream a movie or conduct critical financial transactions.

Later, grabbing a coffee at Starbucks on the way out of town, I figured out why the Hotel Gettysburg Wi-Fi would probably never be speedy: Basically, everyone in town had access to it, since the Starbucks printed out the password and posted it for anyone to use.

Food and Beverages

There was a proper restaurant in the hotel and a Starbucks. Breakfast wasn’t included with our stay.

One Lincoln

The hotel had a single restaurant, not counting the Starbucks.

One Lincoln was a bar on the inside but also served food and had seating that spilled out onto the sidewalk, overlooking Lincoln Square.

We had a quick breakfast on the sidewalk patio at One Lincoln on our last day in town.

I ordered a French toast, which came covered with fresh fruit and whipped cream but was made with regular sliced bread instead of something fancier, like challah. Still, it was sweet and filling, fine for a quick burst of energy.

My wife ordered the 2-egg breakfast, which came with hash browns, marble rye toast, and a pair of pale chicken sausages. It, too, wouldn’t have won any awards but was just what was needed for our getaway back to New York.

Starbucks

The Starbucks in the hotel had 2 entrances. One faced the street right off of Lincoln Square.

And the other was inside the hotel’s rear sitting room, so hotel guests could get their caramel macchiato frappes without ever having to venture outside on their way to 300 squats, 900 overhead presses, and 1,200 minutes on the incline at the gym.

You could also leave your car at Racehorse Alley, walk into the hotel via its back entrance, enter the Starbucks via its interior entrance, and then leave out the back way again, never once having to set eyes on Lincoln Square, if the sight of old-timey cars and motorcycle clubs roaring around in circles all day started to annoy you.

Service

Besides checking in, our interactions with the Hotel Gettysburg staff were fairly minimal. They were polite, friendly, and answered questions with alacrity. When I asked them about things like directions to the Gettysburg National Military Park or Daniel Lady Farm, their answers were detailed, clear, and accurate, even though we knew on both sides that I was going to plug them into Google Maps as soon as we got in the car anyway.

Final Thoughts

Our stay at the Hotel Gettysburg was pleasant, comfortable, and mostly ghost-free. If you’re a Civil War buff or have friends or family who are into it or other aspects of American history, this is a fine place to spend a couple of nights while exploring one of America’s most historically significant places.

Though it may not be a points-and-miles mainstay, it’s still worth considering if you’re both a history geek and want to rack up a few extra Chase Ultimate Rewards points.