Chickamauga & Chattanooga National Military Park

The site of the second bloodiest battle of the Civil War after Gettysburg. On September 19-20, 1863, over 34,000 casualties occurred. The Cherokee word "Chickamauga" means "River of Death."

The Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park preserves the site of one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War -- a two-day engagement on September 19-20, 1863, that produced approximately 35,000 casualties and left the surrounding woods and fields choked with dead and wounded soldiers. The battle was a Confederate victory, but the cost was staggering on both sides, and many of the Union dead were left unburied for weeks in the dense Georgia woods near the Tennessee border. The makeshift graves that eventually received them are scattered throughout the park's grounds, and to this day, human remains are occasionally discovered during maintenance work.

The park is haunted by multiple distinct entities, the most famous being Old Green Eyes -- a creature whose legend may predate the Civil War itself. Accounts of Old Green Eyes vary dramatically. Some describe a decapitated Confederate soldier searching desperately for his head, which was taken by a cannonball during the battle. Others describe something that seems barely human: a tall figure with long scraggly hair, a hairy body, fang-like teeth, and glowing green eyes that flash with the brightness of headlights. Park historian Edward Tinney reported a close-range encounter with the entity, describing a tall man in a long black duster with hair that fell past his shoulders and eyes that were 'glaring, almost greenish-orange in color, flashing like some sort of wild animal.' When a car's headlights illuminated the figure, it vanished. In the 1970s, park rangers and local residents reported a wave of similar sightings that reignited public fascination with the legend.

The Lady in White is the park's second most reported spirit. She is believed to be a woman who came to the battlefield searching for her husband among the thousands of dead and wounded. Witnesses say she first appears as a bright, floating light before materializing into a full-bodied apparition of a woman in white. She is most frequently seen between sunset and midnight near Brotherton Cabin, where some of the heaviest fighting took place on the second day of battle.

Beyond these named spirits, the battlefield generates a constant stream of paranormal reports. Ghostly soldiers are seen moving through the tree lines and across the open fields, sometimes mistaken for reenactors until they vanish. The sounds of gunfire, cannon blasts, and distant screaming carry across the park on still nights. Cold spots descend suddenly over areas where the fighting was most intense. Visitors have captured unexplained figures and lights in photographs, and many report an overwhelming sense of sorrow and dread that intensifies as evening approaches. The park remains one of the most visited -- and most haunted -- Civil War battlefields in America.