Fort Nathan Hale

At Fort Nathan Hale in New Haven, Connecticut, the thing people report most is a green glowing orb that drifts across the old earthworks. They've reported it for more than a hundred years, along with soldiers crossing the ramparts and voices with no one attached to them. The strange part is that the soldiers don't all match. They come from different wars.

That's because three forts have stood on this same rock above New Haven Harbor, one after another. The first was Black Rock Fort, thrown up in 1776 to guard the port.

On July 5, 1779, it got its fight. British General William Tryon landed roughly 3,000 troops — the 23rd Royal Regiment, a Hessian regiment, a Loyalist unit called The King's Americans — under the naval command of Commodore Sir George Collier. Holding the fort against them were nineteen local militiamen under a lieutenant. (Accounts split on his name.)

They fired on the British and Hessians coming up the beach until the fort ran out of ammunition. Then, rather than hand over working guns, they spiked their own cannons — hammered metal into the touchholes — and were overrun. The British burned the fort's barracks. The town itself was mostly spared; legend has it a British general called New Haven too pretty a place to burn.

The fort was rebuilt for the War of 1812, and then again. In 1863, with Confederate raiders on the mind, the Army built a second fort beside the first — earthen ramparts, bombproof bunkers, eighteen guns. It never saw a single battle. After the war they tore part of it down.

So you have one stand that ended in spiked cannons and capture, and one fort built for a fight that never came. Both sit on the same twenty acres, rebuilt now with a drawbridge and a moat you can walk.

A 2015 visitor said she recorded a voice answering a question she'd asked aloud. A 2014 visitor wrote it plainer: "i've seen and heard voices and the green orb." Author Garrison Leykam built a chapter around the obvious question — what are the voices trying to say.