Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park
900 Kennesaw Mountain Drive
Kennesaw, Georgia
When the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain was fought in 1864, much of the area north of Atlanta was sparsely settled. Over the past few decades as the Atlanta Metro area has expanded, growth has even overtaken the quiet stillness of this place where tens of thousands fought to stop Sherman’s advance on Atlanta.
Residential and commercial developments have been constructed and roads cut across parts of the battlefield. It was along one of these roads that a father and son had an interesting experience one night in October of 2007. As the duo drove along, the driver braked as something appeared to start crossing the road in front of the car.
Both Civil War enthusiasts, they were shocked to see a horse with a rider emerge from the darkness. Dressed in the uniform of a Union cavalry officer, the rider held a saber aloft as if to make that point even more apparent. The specter passed through a fence on the opposite side and vanished.
The driver told Atlanta’s 11 Alive News, “My son and I were in a state of almost sheer panic, but we managed to maintain and get on the way home very quickly.”
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It has been noted that many residents living in homes built on the battlefield have experienced strange things. After this article appeared, one of these residents wrote in to the paranormal blog Phantoms & Monsters:
I’ve got a bad back and haven’t worked in over a year, so I spend a lot of time in bed. Earlier this year, late spring or early summer, I was in a half-awake state and I noticed the hazy form of what appeared to be someone in Civil War clothing on a horse standing in my bedroom. It was there for only a second and kind of dematerialized. I remember it being a kind of yellowish color.
I wasn’t scared and thought it was probably not so much a ghost but the energy of something that happened here during the Civil War. I am 3 miles from the epicenter of the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain and probably less than a mile from the cavalry battleground at Mud Creek.
Several years ago, I spoke with a family who lived in one of these haunted houses. After moving in and experiencing paranormal activity, they asked their neighbors about it only to find out that they lived with the same thing.
The wife told me that she took the trash out one night. As she rounded the corner of the house, she came face to face with a figure in the dark. Startled, she quickly realized that the figure was dressed in an old-fashioned uniform. Not knowing how to react, she dropped the bag of trash at his feet saying, “here you go!” and ran back into the house. She failed to mention if the ghost put the trash in the receptacle.
Sources
- Crawley, Paul. “Ghost rider at Kennesaw Mtn.?” 11Alive News. 1 November 2007.
- Strikler, Lon. “Mailbag: the Kennesaw Mountain ghost rider.” Phantoms and Monsters. 8 November 2009.
I live very near the battlefield. A few years ago we were hiking there on a very quiet, sunny weekday afternoon and kept hearing a disembodied yelling from the woods. Kept waiting for some kids to come out of the trees, but realized at some point the sound was not being made by kids. There was NOBODY around. I had taken out my phone to get some photos of my son, and decided to do a tape recording of the yells. I kept my recording going and later discovered voices. One man’s voice says, “there’s something here I don’t trust…” and a woman laughs. A couple minutes later, I ask my son, “Do you hear those yells?” and before he could say yes, a little boy’s voice (that sounded like it was closer to me than my son, who’d gone ahead of me a dozen feet) said, “Them soldiers is dead.” Clear as a bell. Also, later discovered a very deep voice, right after I said “hear”… repeats the word hear. We also heard sounds on the recording when it was quiet as we walked. According to my friend who was in the Marines, its cadence sounds like artillery fire; however the actual sound reminds me of that noise you hear when it’s very windy outside and you’re on the phone. It was a very still day and no wind…we tried to recreate the sound by walking, but could not, and again, friend says the timing reminds him of artillery fire. Months later, we went back one evening after having dinner nearby and I would swear something touched the back of my hair. The same friend smelled what he says was “wet canvas” when there was certainly none around. I haven’t been back since, but it’s truly a beautiful, reverent place and we are so lucky it’s been mostly preserved. In this area where we live, over 120,000 troops were mired in the mud in the month leading up to the battle, with skirmishes all around. I’ve studied the maps and can pretty much tell you that there is a pattern of places where paranormal activity has been reported that goes along with the activity in 1864. I can hardly drive through my area without envisioning the historic events of those long ago days.
I’ve Walked Through This Place At 3am It’s Creepy Felt Like I Was Being Watched But I never saw anything