Haunted Gettysburg

The Civil War battle that was fought at the small town of Gettysburg in July 1863 was the greatest conflict of the war. The fighting raged not only in the woods, fields, and hills around the town but up and down the streets and in the homes of the people who lived there. 

After three days of intense fighting with cannon, guns, and men often engaged in vicious, brutal, desperate hand-to-hand mortal combat, there were almost 7,100 dead, 34,000 wounded, and 11,000 missing (captured or dead with body not found). When both armies pulled back, they left behind streets and fields littered with the bodies of the dead slowly decaying in the heat of the Pennsylvania summer. The people of Gettysburg were left with thousands of wounded to attend to and homes and businesses were turned into field hospitals. One local woman recalled, "Wounded men of both armies were brought into our homes and laid side-by-side in the halls and rooms. Carpets were so saturated with blood as to be of no further use. Walls were hideously bloodstained as were books which were used as pillows for the suffering men. In the streets and fields, the rotting corpses, swollen to twice their original size, actually burst asunder. Outside a home, several human, or inhuman, corpses sat up against a fence, with arms extended into the air and faces hideous with something very like a fixed leer." There are still many places throughout the town of Gettysburg where spirits from the battle are said to linger: homes, shops, hotels, and restaurants are said to be infested with ghosts and the unexplained. 

People have on numerous occasions told of smelling peppermint in the air while walking around the area known as Cemetery Hill. Most have no idea that on the first day of the battle, the Confederates routed a large group of Northern soldiers who retreated through the town to a piece of higher ground where they made a desperate stand. The place where many of them died by the end of that day was Cemetery Hill. As the battles raged on for two more days, the bodies were left to rot in the hot July sun. After the battle was over, Gettysburg citizens had to retrieve and bury the decayed, rotting corpses. They were only able to withstand the awful stench by covering their noses with handkerchiefs containing pieces of peppermint. 

The small college now known as Gettysburg College is a quiet place today, but in 1863, the college campus found itself in the middle of the fighting. Consisting only of 3 buildings then, it was used as a field hospital for the wounded and dying. The buildings still bear the scars of fired bullets from those terrible three days. Constructed in 1837, Pennsylvania Hall, a large stately building with tall white columns was originally a dormitory. Today it houses the campus administration offices. The Confederates captured the building after a skirmish and used the tall cupola as a lookout as well as a field hospital. Men were stationed as lookouts and even General Lee himself climbed the stairs to the top in order to keep an eye on the progress of the battles. Students and staff alike have reported seeing the figures of soldiers pacing back and forth long after the building has been closed and deserted for the night. 

The terrible conditions of the field hospital are what have left the strongest impression on the old building. Many times people have reported hearing what sounds like men screaming. Most staff members refuse to work in the building after sundown. Two professors, both known to be honest, forthright, and avowed disbelievers of the supernatural, did work in the building late one night up on the 4th floor. When they entered the elevator to go down to the 1st-floor exit, the elevator for some reason passed by the first floor to the basement. The doors opened on a terrible scene. The basement storage room had vanished and in its place was the blood-spattered operating room during the battle. Wounded men were writhing in pain as doctors and orderlies in blood-soaked clothing operated on them with no anesthetic, dealing with bullet wounds by the preferred treatment of the time, amputation. Off to the side of the room was an area where men who could not be saved were laid, waiting to die. Next to the dying lay hundreds of amputated legs and arms. The professors said there was no sound, but in their heads, they could hear the horrible wails, groans, and screaming. They frantically punched the buttons of the elevator to shut the doors on the horrible scene, but they wouldn't close. Then, one of the doctors looked up after severing a leg and, while holding his saw in one hand and the amputated leg by the foot in the other, looked directly at the professors. He gestured for them to come assist in the operations that were taking place. The professors, frozen in fear, couldn't move. The doctor dropped the leg and his saw and began walking toward them. Mercifully, the elevator doors closed just before he reached them. The professors, although thoroughly shaken by their experience, continued to work in the building after that, but neither of them ever took the elevator again, preferring to exit the building by way of the stairs.

A widow lady by the name of Mary Thompson lived on a farm on the north side of Chambersburg Pike. During the battle, her home was used as headquarters by General Robert E. Lee. The house was also used as a field hospital for the wounded. The dead were moved into a barn across a dirt path from the house until they could be given a proper burial. As the battle raged, so many bodies were moved into the barn that they were "stacked up like cordwood," newer bodies piled on top of the previous ones in a grisly pyramid of the dead. Unfortunately, not every body piled there was dead. One of those men, so grievously wounded he was thought to be dead, was thrown onto the pile and soon became trapped beneath dozens of his comrades. At some point, he awakened to find himself alive but being almost suffocated beneath the weight of the grizzly remains. When the battle was over and northern troops began removing the bodies one by one three days later, one of them tugged on the leg of a body to disentangle it from the others. He was astonished when he finally tugged it free and the man's eyes popped open, his arms and legs began to twitch and terrible screams came from his lips. He had been alive, trapped beneath all those rotting bodies for four days, slowly going mad. A doctor was summoned, but nothing could be done. The man screamed and cried out incoherently for almost a week. He never regained his senses and died crying. 

In the late 1800s, the widow Thompson died and the barn burned down. New owners built their home over the barn site. Shortly after moving in, the family began reporting odd sounds coming from their basement which were not the usual creaks and groans of a new house settling. One night, a loud explosion, "like a furnace exploding," came from the basement. Then the whole house began shaking as if it was in an earthquake. "The appliances, dishes, glasses, and cutlery were shaking violently and falling off the shelves. Furniture in the hallway was moving from one side to the other." Loud noises continued to come from the basement so the family members went to open the door leading down. Before opening it though, the door began to bow outward as if there was a great force on the other side. It sounded as if someone with a sledgehammer was pounding it. This was enough for the family to flee in terror. 

The family refused to ever return to the house that had frightened them so badly. They did seek spiritual help from an old priest though and he went to bless the house. After his visit, he told the family that he had some experience with sending spirits on their way and he felt the need to perform a ceremony that would do this. He said he felt the house was haunted, not by an evil entity, but rather one they should pity. The spirit trapped in the house was a terrified young Confederate soldier who was desperately trying to free himself from the horrible place he was in before he died. A short time later, the priest performed the ceremony and marked the cellar door with a white cross with a circle around it. The family still refused to return to the house though and later sold it. The new family reported they never heard any suspicious sounds. The house is now owned by the Lutheran Seminary in Gettysburg and it remains quiet.

Another particularly sad story is associated with the old Jacob Hummelbaugh house. Located on Taney Town Road, it was just behind the Federal battle line. It was set up as the 2nd Corp field hospital. A Confederate general by the name of Barksdale was mortally wounded while leading his men in a charge against the northern troops. After repulsing the charge, Yankee troops collected the wounded and he was taken, still alive, to the Hummelbaugh house for medical treatment. According to written documentation, Doctors determined nothing could be done to save him so he was moved to the front yard and left to die. He repeatedly called for water so a young orderly fed water to him with a spoon until he passed. 

Several weeks later, General Barksdale's wife came to retrieve her husband's body to return him home in Mississippi for burial. Along with the wife and her male helpers on the trip was the general's favorite hunting dog. Once the shallow grave of General Barksdale had been identified, the dog smelled around for a few seconds then laid down and began a mournful howl. Even after his master's body had been dug up and removed, the dog continued to lay next to the grave and refused to leave it. Finally, with the body readied for travel, the wife felt she had no choice but to leave the dog behind. Over the next days, the faithful dog became a familiar fixture. He would occasionally let out a pitiful, heartbreaking howl that could be heard all around the area, but in spite of offers of food and water, he refused to eat or drink or leave the gravesite. He eventually died of hunger and thirst, stretched out over his master's now empty burial place. Over the years since, every July 2nd, the anniversary of Barksdale's death, it is reported that an unearthly howl echos during the night as the faithful dog still grieves from a place beyond this world.

Peace Cemetery - Haunted Grounds

Outside of Joplin, Missouri is where you will find Peace Church Cemetery. One of the oldest graveyards in Jasper County, it dates back to 1855, ten years before the Civil War. There was a church next to the cemetery originally, but Peace Baptist Church burned to the ground long ago and now the dead and buried are all that remain.

For many years after the church burned, the cemetery was abandoned and forgotten. The old gravestones were covered in weeds that reached 6 feet tall. Briars and thick brush made it almost impossible to enter. Locals told of strange sounds and a feint, bobbing light late at night that could be seen through the trees. Along with the weeds and brush, the stories helped ensure everyone stayed away.

Eventually, the building of new homes and stores in the area have led the 2-lane road in front of the cemetery to become very busy. Most of the drivers passed right on by, intent on their daily lives and never knowing the intriguing stories of Peace Cemetery.

On July 5, 1861, the Civil War began in Missouri with the Battle of Carthage in Jasper County just a few miles from Peace Cemetery. Before the war ended, hundreds of men from the area were dead and most of the locals were forced to leave the county. A large number of men killed in area fighting were buried in the graveyard, sometimes multiple bodies were buried together with nothing but a small pile of rocks to mark the location. One of the most gruesome events happened on May 18, 1863, at the farm of a family named Rader, less than 300 yards down a dirt road from Peace Cemetery.

Major Thomas Livingston was commander of a Rebel guerrilla unit of about seventy men that ambushed a Union foraging party that was holding the Rader family at gunpoint and taking all the corn from the Rader Farm to feed soldiers at Fort Blair in Baxter Springs, Kansas. African American soldiers from Fort Blair, commanded by white soldiers of a Union artillery battery, were moving the corn from the barn to wagons when Livingston’s soldiers attacked from the woods as they came up from Peace Church Cemetery. The whole area was a field of bloodshed as Union soldiers scrambled desperately for their weapons, sought cover or tried to escape from the devastating surprise attack. Half of them would be gunned down. The Rebel troops, in desperate need of provisions themselves, stripped the bodies of clothing, shoes, weapons, and canteens. In their anger and battle frenzy, some of the dead bodies were mutilated.

A few Union men escaped and made their way back that night to the Baxter Springs outpost. The next morning, seeking retribution, hundreds of Union soldiers rode through the cemetery to the site of the ambush. Their commander, Colonel James Williams, was enraged to find some of the bodies of his ambushed troops mutilated. Because of the warm weather, the colonel decided it would be best to simply cremate the gory remains. The corpses were placed in a pile inside the Rader house, but before the flames were ignited, one of the Rebels who had apparently participated in the ambush the day before was captured and brought before the colonel. The colonel had him marched into the house, shot and thrown on the pile of mangled soldiers. The whole house was then set ablaze. Unfortunately, the Rebel prisoner had only been wounded and his screams of agony were heard until the roof of the burning house fell down.

Since then, there have been numerous reports in the area of moaning sounds, agonized screams, shadows that seem to move quickly from tree to tree and even ghostly apparitions appearing to be dressed in civil war uniforms. Perhaps the events at the Rader farm were so gruesome that the poor victims have been damned to never have peace, to forever wander the area in eternal suffering.

In late 1928 or early 1929, just outside Joplin near Peace Cemetery, William Cook was born. The last of 8 children born to an alcoholic father and an abused mother, Cook had a deformity in his right eye which caused it to be an odd shape and the lid would never close, even when he blinked or slept. His family and others soon gave him the nickname "Cockeyed," a name he hated but was stuck with throughout his brief, troubled life.

At age 5, Cook's long-suffering mother died and his dad moved all 8 children into a cave. A year later, his father deserted them, leaving the kids to make do as they could. The children were discovered by the authorities and moved into an orphan home. His brothers and sisters were all adopted, but Bill's eye, which caused him to look sinister, and a bad temperament prevented his adoption. Eventually, he went to live with a foster mother, but she only wanted the money the state provided for his care and vacillated between abusing and ignoring him, often neglecting even to provide food for him. Two years in a row, he was given a bicycle for Christmas, which he proudly showed the caseworker who came by to check up on how he was being treated. Both times, the bike would soon be repossessed for lack of payment.

Before his 13th birthday, Bill began running around the streets at night, stealing various items. He was arrested and told the court he wanted to go to reform school rather than back to his foster mom. Six months later on the same day he was released, he robbed a cab driver of $11. He was found and arrested that night and spent the next 5 years back in reform school. He often got into fights with the other kids because they made fun of his droopy eye. He almost beat one kid to death and so was transferred to the Old Missouri State Prison. While there, he got into another fight when an inmate joked about his eye and Bill beat him so bad with a baseball bat the man spent a month in the hospital. 

Released in 1950 at age 22, Bill went back to Joplin and looked up his father. Being rejected by him again, he then traveled cross-country to California. He managed to stay out of trouble for a few months, working as a dishwasher, but it wasn't long before he acquired a .32 caliber handgun and began traveling around the country and into Mexico. His method of travel was to kidnap people and make them drive him from one place to another. For reasons he never really explained, some of the people he would kill, but others he let go without harm. 

In New Mexico, the auto he had stolen from one of his kidnapped victims ran out of gas. A car driven by Carl Mosser with his wife and three children stopped to help the stranded motorist. Bad mistake. Bill pulled his gun and made the family drive him all the way back to his old stomping grounds in Joplin. Along the way, he robbed stores and gas stations and shot anyone who tried to stop him. Once back in Joplin, Bill ordered the family out of the car and shot all five of them, finishing them off, even the children, with a shot to the head. He then threw the bodies down an abandoned mine shaft near the cave where his father had abandoned his children.

Bill took the Mosser's car and headed back toward California. The car broke down and he kidnapped a deputy sheriff who had stopped to help him. He left the unharmed policeman handcuffed in a ditch a few miles later. Changing cars in the next town, he shot and killed the new car's owner. He drove this car to California where he shot and killed several more men, taking their cars. He headed south, robbing along the way, until crossing into Mexico where the police chief in Santa Rosaria recognized him from a wanted poster. Casually walking up beside him, he suddenly pulled Bill's gun from the waist of his pants and arrested him without a fight. Sent back to California where he was tried for his crimes in that state, he was found guilty and executed in San Quentin’s gas chamber on December 12, 1952. 

The area outside the cemetery fence where "Cockeyed" Cook

is supposedly buried in an unmarked grave.

"Cockeyed" Cook's body was sent back to Joplin for burial, but once there, nobody claimed it and no cemetery would allow him to be buried in their consecrated grounds. An agreement was finally made with Peace Cemetery for him to be buried outside the graveyard's fence with no marker to indicate the location. The graveside service and burial was held in secrecy under the cover of darkness with the aid of flashlights and lasted less than 10 minutes. It is said that just as the last shovel of dirt was thrown over his grave, the cry of a small child was heard whereupon the preacher and grave diggers hurriedly left.

Today, through the supreme efforts of a few volunteers, Peace Cemetery is once again accessible. The underbrush has been cleared, the weeds are kept mowed and the old gravestones are visible. Along with the souls of the civil war damned, does  Cook’s lonely, pain-ridden ghost haunt Peace Church Cemetery? Stories of the supernatural still abound in the area. Visitors still report seeing strange lights and hearing disembodied voices at night. Some claim to have seen what looks like a man standing in the woods outside the cemetery fence watching them. Many believe the mysterious man is the ghost of Billy Cook trying to make it into the cemetery and finally find some peace. Who knows for sure? Only the ghosts themselves.

The Haunted Battlefield of Chickamauga

Chickamauga National Park
(photo courtesy NPS)

It shouldn't come as a surprise that Civil War battlefields are some of the most haunted places in America. With so much fear, death, destruction, suffering and sorrow concentrated in one area, it would be a surprise if they were not.

For four long years, brother fought brother and families fought families. When the two sides clashed at Chickamauga, Georgia in September of 1863, the battle became the second bloodiest engagement of the entire Civil War.  For two days in September, almost 125,000 men fought fierce close-quarters and hand-to-hand battles. When it was over, there were 37,129 casualty's and the fields and woods were strewn with the dead and wounded. In some places, the dead lay where they died, stacked so high "a tall man couldn't see over them." After the battle, many of the dead were not found for days and many wounded died agonizing deaths as they lay unfound. For weeks afterwards, nameless dead combatants were buried in hastily dug trenches, sometimes Confederate laid next to Union, covered with dirt and soon forgotten.

Chickamauga Creek (the battlefield is now a National Park) is located close to Chattanooga near the Tennessee-Georgia border. The first Indian inhabitants of the area gave it the name Tsïkäma'gï . The Cherokee who came later continued to call it by that name and when the white man came along, they pronounced it Chickamauga. According to the Indians, the meaning of the word Tsïkäma'gï is "river of death." It is a name the area has surely earned. Over the years, untimely death seems to happen much more often here than can reasonably be expected. In 1898, Chickamauga became a training camp for soldiers headed for the Spanish-American war. Disease repeatedly swept through the camp, killing more men than died in the war itself. The woods and thickets over the centuries have been an unofficial burial ground for the Indians, Civil War troops and many other's. For some reason, many sick and disturbed people are drawn to  this place where they end their lives by their own hand.

Not long after the great battle, area residents began to report hearing strange things after dark - gun shots, soldiers marching, men moaning and crying out in pain, horrifying screams. Mysterious flickering lights were seen along with black shapes that disappeared when the viewer tried to get a closer look.


(photo courtesy NPS)

One day a lady dressed in a white dress showed up at the battlefield. She walked and walked among the grave mounds, over the blood-stained soil, across fields and into the woods. She was there to find the body of her husband, her childhood sweetheart whom she had recently married while he was on leave, just before he returned to his unit in time to fight in the battle. Years later, it is said she lost her mind there, beaten down by her grief. She supposedly refused to come back to her boarding room at night, refused to eat, and refused to leave the site. One day she wasn't there. No one saw her leave, a body was never found, but through the years and occasionally today, visitors who tarry in the park after dark report seeing a ghostly female apparition dressed in a flowing white dress wandering through the fields and woods, forever looking for the body of her lost love. Even in death, she has found no rest.

Another apparition seen over the years is a headless horseman. He is thought to be Lieutenant Colonel Julius Garesche, who was killed by a cannonball during the battle. He was well respected by his men and during a lull in the fighting, they buried him in a shallow grave on a nearby hill. A letter by General William Hazen described his remains when he found him - "I saw but a headless trunk; an eddy of crimson foam had issued where the head should be. I at once recognized his figure, it lay so naturally, his right hand across his breast. As I approached, dismounted, and bent over him, the contraction of a muscle extended his hand slowly and slightly towards me. Taking hold of it, I found it still warm and lifelike." Evidently, his decapitated ghost remains at Chickamauga, galloping through the woods at night.

Perhaps the most famous and often seen apparition is "Old Green Eyes," a strange, otherworldly creature, half man, half beast. He walks on two legs and has long, stringy hair reaching down to his waist. Some have reported him to have huge jaws with two long, sharp fangs sticking out. Others report him to be wearing some kind of dark cape around his shoulders and the cape appears to be blowing in the wind even when there is not even a gentle breeze.  The one thing everyone agrees on however, is his glowing, green eyes which shine in the dark.

It is one thing for visitors to announce strange, unexplained sounds and sightings, but when a down-to-earth park ranger admits to seeing a ghost, one has to take it rather serious. Several years ago, Edward Tinney, a chief ranger at the park reported, "One day at about four a.m., I went to check on some battle reenactors who were camping out in the park. I was walking near Glen Kelly Road when I saw a tall figure, over 6 feet in height, walking toward me. It seemed human, but at the same time, it wasn't. It had shaggy, stringy, waist-length black hair, green eyes and pointed teeth that resembled fangs. Feeling extremely threatened by this presence, I quickly crossed to the other side of the road. As he - or it - walked by me, he suddenly turned and kind of smiled at me, but it was a very devilish sort of grin. At that moment, a car came down the road and as its headlights hit the figure, it vanished right before my eyes."

(photo courtesy NPS)

A recent visitor, a Civil War buff and amateur military historian, had a run-in with Old Green Eyes. He emphasized that he was not in any way a believer in the paranormal, he was visiting Chickamauga Battlefield purely for the military history experience. It was just after sunset as he was heading back to his car to leave when he heard a low moaning sound from the woods he was walking near. Thinking someone was hurt, he hurried into the trees. He had no sooner reached the edge of the woods when he felt a strong sense of foreboding. Suddenly, he saw "this floating head with glowing, piercing green eyes which came bursting out of the trees! This thing wasn't scary - it was terrifying! I just yelled and ran like hell! When I got back to the road, I glanced behind me and saw nothing. I stopped and turned around and saw bushes moving just to the right of where I came running out, but nothing seemed to be following me. I ran the rest of the way to my parked car and sped out of there. I'll never forget what I saw and I doubt I'll ever go back there. I no longer discount the many stories of ghosts that haunt battlefields either."

Feel free to join the thousands of visitors who, during the day, come to Chickamauga Battlefield National Park with its tree-lined tranquil paths, stately manicured grounds with cannons, monuments, and other reminders of the War Between The States. Visit the museum, the visitor's center and go along on one of the ranger led tours. Just be warned though, it's probably not the kind of place you want to hang around in after the sun goes down.