Civil War Ghost Trails

by Mark Nesbitt

  Some Federal officers later told Confederate prisoners that they had checked their watches as the rebel attack began, and from the time they began their advance until the firing ceased was one hour and forty minutes; but the most savage part of the fighting, once the Confederate infantry swarmed over the advanced entrenchments, was only forty minutes. Darkness normally brought on a cessation of hostilities during the Civil War. Communication between units was difficult enough during daylight; at night it was virtually impossible. But two more Confederate units arrived on the field, and Hood put them in to attack west of the Carter House and the firing continued after dark.

  Most reports have the heavy firing ending between 9 and 10 P.M. Overnight, the Federal Army slipped across the Harpeth River. Hood, apparently ignorant of the incredible losses his army had suffered, brought up all his artillery and planned to renew the attack at 9:00 A.M.

  Night brought additional horrors to Franklin. Capt. Theodrick “Tod” Carter was shot nine times in the arms and legs with a minié ball lodged in his brain above his left eye. Going into battle he gazed upon his boyhood home with its familiar brick smokehouse, wooden office, and garden, which he hadn’t seen in almost three years. One of the last things anyone heard him say was, “Follow me boys, I’m almost home.” The Carter family found him facedown in the fields just 150 yards southwest of the smokehouse and brought him home to die.

  Dawn brought the horrors of the night before to light. A Confederate artillerist who had come to see the aftermath claimed he’d never seen the carnage so thick as at the gap in the Union line where the Columbia Pike entered. He thought there were 2,000 Southerners piled in the gap. Another visitor noticed that nearly all of the Union dead, because of the nature of the head logs, were shot in the foreheads.

  The wounded were gathered in town. Forty-four buildings, from the female institute and college to the courthouse, businesses, churches, and private dwellings became hospitals.

  The Confederate dead were buried in long trenches on either side of the Columbia Pike. The 3rd Missouri, for example, buried 119 of their men in one grave between the cotton gin and the pike. Some graves were marked, many others were not. Dead Federal soldiers in the ditch had the earthworks pulled over them for their burial. The battle was fought on a Wednesday; on Saturday it rained. On the outside of the breastworks, where so many were killed, the water literally ran red.

  A large number of Confederates were later exhumed and taken to Carnton, the plantation home of the McGavock family, and buried in land donated by them. Hood visited the battlefield after the Federals had retreated. Witnesses say that he wept upon seeing the carnage. Some 2,500 Federals became casualties. The real horror was reserved for the Confederates. At least 7,000 (a sign on the battlefield indicates 9,500) Southern soldiers became casualties. Out of twenty-eight Confederate generals who participated in the fighting, fifteen became casualties. Sixty-five field-grade officers went down, and some units lost 64 percent of their strength. The Army of Tennessee was ruined.

  Franklin Ghosts

  Franklin has been called “Tennessee’s most haunted town.” If mass carnage and futile death are contributors to human spirits lingering in one area, Franklin certainly must live up to its reputation. Ghost tours of Franklin are available, presented by Ghosts of Franklin author Margie Gould Thessin.

  Carter House

  In winter of 2008, a man and his father were touring the Carter House, apparently the last of the day to do so. The tour was finished and their guide locked up the house. As they were walking to the welcome center and exit, they suddenly heard a door slam at the house. They looked back, but all the doors were closed. Then they saw a figure dressed in a Confederate uniform appear near the building walking slowly away from the house. A reenactor? Not likely. As they got a better look at him, they realized that he was missing his head.

  Poltergeist activity in the house has been attributed to Annie Carter, who has been identified by visitors from her photograph. She was seen by employees running across the upstairs hall and down the stairs. Staff has had clothing tugged, and a worker has heard her own name whispered in her ear, not once, but a number of times. While a tour was being conducted, a visitor saw a statue bouncing around on a dresser behind the guide.

  Other strange sightings have occurred in the Carter House. The staff has repeatedly seen the apparition of a little girl. Others have seen the wraith of a little boy who apparently died tragically in the house. Soldiers have been heard marching outside, and wounded soldiers have been seen inside. Perhaps most disturbing was the vision seen in the room where Tod Carter breathed his last. He was seen, more than once, sitting up on the edge of the bed in the room, apparently healed of all the hideous wounds he had taken during the battle. He sat for a few seconds and then vanished.

  A woman who was a guide and later became director of the Carter House was closing for the night when a young man dressed in brown woolen pants and suspenders approached the door and asked for a tour. As Alan Brown relates in his book Haunted Tennessee, she was giving her tour when the young man corrected some of her facts about the Carters and the house. She was a little miffed at being interrupted by someone who thought he knew more about the house than she did, but she continued the tour. They were about to descend into the cellar, where the Carter family spent their time as the battle raged outside, when the young man said, “We can’t go down there.” She turned to tell him that they were allowed into the cellar, when he promptly vanished before her eyes. Later, she was going through old photos of the Carter family and came upon the image of the young man to whom she’d given the tour. She suddenly realized why he knew so much about the history of the house and family. The young man was Tod Carter, who had lived and died in the house.

  Carnton Plantation

  It seems that General Cleburne’s spirit has not been at rest either for the last 150 years. At Carnton Plantation, where his body, along with three other Confederate generals, was laid out on the back veranda, heavy riding boots have been heard pacing the second floor of the rear porch while confused visitors and staff listen apprehensively. There seemed to be much activity during the 1980s when a security guard’s watchdog began to growl and bark at someone behind the house. As he searched with his flashlight, it finally illuminated a figure on the second floor of the porch. The guard saw that the man wore a long gray coat, much like those in the photos of Confederate officers he had seen. Of course, that would make him a ghost, and the security guard knew there were no such things as ghosts. He called to the man to halt and come down. Instead, the officer dematerialized.

  A local resident was driving up the driveway one night. As he approached the house, he saw a man in a long coat and hat sitting on the porch with his head drooped over the railing. As the driver watched, the man disappeared. The staff, while reluctant to talk about their ghosts, has named the recurrent shade “The General.” He has forced them to remove a key from a door, because if given access to the key, he locks the door. Others have seen Confederate soldiers meandering about the property when no reenactors are present.

  When standing at the graves of two brothers in the Carnton Cemetery you may have your ankles tickled or grabbed. The sound of a small hand running along the fence is attributed to the ghost of a little girl, perhaps one of the children, who died during the long history of Carnton. Some have seen soldiers in the cemetery, apparently guarding the graves. They follow visitors around until they leave.

  EVP Findings

  During a paranormal investigation in August 2011, I collected EVP near the site where General Cleburne was shot and killed on the southern edge of Franklin. During one recording (#1354), I ask, “General Cleburne, are you still here?” At 5.5 seconds into the playback you can hear a quiet “Yes.” Later I ask, “General Cleburne, do you regret fighting for the Confederacy?” At 15 seconds, you hear a two or three syllable answer that sounds like “_____ever.” Does he say “Never”?

  In a second recording (#1355), I say “
God bless you and your men, General Cleburne,” and at 10 seconds into the recording a woman’s or child’s voice says, “Let’s do this . . . for him.”

  Prisons

  At the beginning of the Civil War, the opposing sides were little prepared for the unexpectedly large number of killed, wounded, or captured. For those captured in battle, a prisoner exchange system was implemented, first by field commanders immediately after battles, then as a formal government-sanctioned practice. It was eventually realized by the Union that the manpower-short Confederacy benefited from having their soldiers returned to fight for the cause again. The exchange system was halted by the Federals, resulting perhaps in a shorter war, but the policy increased overcrowding and suffering for those stuck in the prison pens.

  Johnson’s Island, Ohio

  Over the years, Johnson’s Island, in Sandusky Bay, Ohio, has been a privately owned island, a pleasure resort, the site of a quarry operation, and a development for private homes. But its most notorious use was as a prisoner of war depot for Confederate soldiers during the Civil War.

  During the summer, the island can be a comfortable place to live, with water views readily available. Recently, the old quarry was opened to the surrounding Sandusky Bay, which itself opens into Lake Erie, and luxurious homes were built on the cliffs above the quarry. Private docks usually go with the homes, turning the quarry into a protective cove for sport fishermen and boaters who want to venture out on the Great Lake.

  But winters in northern Ohio, especially near Lake Erie, can be brutal. Icy winds can howl in off the lake, which itself can freeze out several miles from the shoreline. If you’re not used to the climate, the winter can be as effective a killer as any bullet; or, in Civil War parlance, it is as effective a killer as any minié ball.

  In 1862, Leonard Johnson leased forty acres of his island to the U. S. government, anticipating the internment of Confederates captured during the war. The fall of Fort Henry and Fort Donelson provided the first prisoners at the island on April 10, 1862. Early in the war, prisoners were treated relatively well, with adequate food and well-kept living quarters. Sutlers set up shop within the prison and sold food and other items that weren’t provided by the government. There was even a prisoner exchange system between the Union and Confederate governments, whereby a certain number of privates could be exchanged for an officer. But by 1864, the exchange system virtually ceased, and Johnson’s Island, like other prisons around the country, rapidly became overcrowded. The U. S. War Department cut rations by half and limited what was available through the sutlers.

  More than two hundred Confederate prisoners of war were buried in the Johnson’s Island Cemetery.

  Twenty-six Confederate generals and generals-to-be were imprisoned at Johnson’s Island, the longest internment being that of Maj. Gen. Isaac Trimble for fourteen months. In the spring of 1865, as the war was coming to its conclusion, some of the men signed an oath of allegiance to the United States and gained early release. Some chose to escape rather than “swallow the eagle.” Security was lax after the war, and some prisoners escaped by simply dressing as guards and making their way south. Yet by September 1865, when the prison was closed, some civilian prisoners and true-blue Confederates had to be moved to other prisons in the east.

  Over the course of its existence, some 9,000 prisoners were confined on the island. More than 200 Confederates will never leave: they rest in the Confederate Cemetery on the island.

  Johnson’s Island Ghosts

  Beginning in 1902, rock for breakwaters in Cleveland and nearby Cedar Point was quarried from the island. The workers had a small village with a school, post office, chapel, and tavern. Most were of Italian ancestry and spoke little English. They had their traditional songs, games, and entertainments from the Old Country, and being on an island with their own village, they maintained their traditions.

  As the story goes, one day a supervisor was observing the men leaving the quarry. On their way out they were humming a tune in unison. The supervisor stopped them and asked them where they had heard the tune. The quarrymen looked at each other and shrugged their shoulders. They had heard someone singing from the woods across the road from the quarry where the old prison camp used to be. They liked the catchy tune and adopted it. The supervisor was stunned, because it was something they never would have heard in their native Italy. It was “Dixie,” the old minstrel tune from the South.

  A story appeared in the Cleveland Plain Dealer by Grace Goulder recounting the experience of some of the Sicilians who worked in the quarry on Johnson’s Island. A thunderstorm blew in off Lake Erie with howling winds and driving rain. The workers were in the vicinity of the Confederate Cemetery and found shelter on the lee side of the monument erected by the Daughters of the Confederacy to the soldiers who must lie for eternity in Northern soil, far from their beloved homeland.

  Upscale homes now line the edges of the former quarry on Johnson’s Island.

  As they crouched behind the monument, suddenly they heard something odd rising above the screech of the wind: a bugle call. Their attention was directed to the cemetery behind the monument, where they began to see the impossible: Soldiers in gray and butternut, with shouldered muskets, rising from the graves. They formed ranks, and as they had braved the storm of Yankee musketry many years before, began to march off silently into the storm of wind and rain to vanish from view.

  The next day, those who witnessed the mustering of the dead rowed across Sandusky Bay and told their story to any who would listen. Some scoffed, but the fact that the workers refused to go back to the island convinced quite a few that they must have experienced something not of this world.

  Shadowy single figures have been seen in the cemetery and in the tree line near the old camp. A paranormal research group witnessed the figures during an investigation of the cemetery. They also took photos with what appears to be a misty figure in the background.

  On certain nights voices have been reported to have been heard emanating from the woods where the old prison camp once stood. In paranormal circles it is well known that when a historically significant site or building is being renovated, paranormal activity increases.

  Perhaps, with the building of modern homes on the edge of the old quarry and the archaeological dig across the street, the spirits of the Confederate soldiers who once suffered through the bone-chilling winter nights of northern Ohio have returned to manifest themselves.

  Point Lookout, Maryland

  In 1830, the first lighthouse was built at Point Lookout, Maryland, a peninsula created by the confluence of the Potomac River with the Chesapeake Bay.

  Point Lookout, Maryland, was the site of the largest Federal-run prisoner of war camp.

  After the Civil War broke out, Hammond General Hospital was established at Point Lookout in 1862 to care for ill and wounded Union soldiers. By 1863, it was determined that the point would be a good site for a prisoner of war camp. Camp Hoffman would be established and remain open until the end of the war, eventually passing as many as 52,264 Confederate prisoners through its gates. Of those, some 4,000 died of disease and malnutrition. It was the largest Federal-run internment camp in the North.

  After the war, the lighthouse was rebuilt in 1883 as a two-story, 40-foot-high edifice, the structure that exists today. And, although the current lighthouse was not there at the time of the prison camp, it has gained the reputation as the most haunted lighthouse in America.

  Point Lookout Ghosts

  Hans Holzer, the famous ghost hunter, did an investigation of the structure and recorded some twenty-four different voices (EVP) including the phrases, “Fire if they get too close to you,” seemingly from the prison years; “Let us not take objection to what they are doing,” an apparent endorsement for the investigation; and a woman’s voice saying, “My home,” attributed to Ann Davis, the first female lightkeeper. Ann Davis has also made herself known as an apparition. A woman has been seen at the top of the stairs dressed in a white blouse and a l
ong, blue skirt.

  More than one occupant has detected a foul odor, like rotting meat, emanating from one of the upstairs rooms. In addition, there have been more common auditory events heard, such as laughter, singing, snoring, and footsteps.

  I had an opportunity to work on a television production with Laura Berg, a former resident of the lighthouse who had experienced a number of the supernatural happenings while living there in the late 1970s. I was a talking head, brought in to give the historical background of the Battle of Gettysburg, which contributed to the overflow of prisoners in 1863 at Point Lookout prisoner of war camp. Laura then told her experiences in the lighthouse, which were chilling. I remember her talking specifically about the basement.

  The Point Lookout Lighthouse is alleged to be home to a number of ghosts.

  She had heard, upon moving in to the lighthouse, that strange things went on inside and outside. Gerry Sword, a park ranger who later became superintendent of the park, had lived there when he first came to the park. He had experienced lights turning on and off, doors banging, a wall in the kitchen begin to glow and remain glowing for ten minutes, someone invisible walking up and down the hallway and the stairs, loud disembodied voices coming from outside, and his dog being released from an outdoor pen while the pen, upon inspection, was still locked. It was Sword who invited Holzer and his team.

  During three other investigations, multiple witnesses saw a figure standing in the basement against a back wall. EVP was recorded that either asked for help to be let out or ordered the team out. Investigators have heard breathing and been pushed by an entity in the lighthouse.