Old Green Eyes

Image by ♪_Lisa_♪ via Flickr

Scatted across the South and Mid Atlantic region are reminders of a bloody part of our history, the American Civil War.  Battlefields stretch from Pennsylvania to Georgia, and from Virginia to Arkansas.  Names like Gettysburg, Bull Run and Shiloh are just a few of the well known battle grounds.  At the southeast corner of Tennessee, where it joins with Alabama and Georgia, lie the twin sites of Chattanooga and Chickamauga.  In 1863 the Confederate army defeated the Union forces at the battle of Chickamauga which lasted for two days and claimed 35,000 causalities ( dead, wounded and captured) from both sides.  It was second only to Gettysburg in total losses during the war.  Later that year the Union forces won the battle of Chattanooga, effectively capturing all Tennessee for the North. Over 46,000 men were killed, wounded or missing in the two battles.  It is believed that most of the dead died not during the battle but afterwards from wounds received.  Its no wonder  battlefields  are considered some of America’s most haunted places.  Chickamauga is one of those places.  Chickamuaga’s haunted heritage doesn’t start with the Civil War though, it traces its origins back farther.

The Cherokee Indians named the creek running near the battlefield Chickamauga, which means “River of Death.”  One can presume that the site even then had a bloody history.  While there are many hauntings, and reports of strange activity, such eerie lights and music, and ghostly apparitions of soldiers, one haunting presence seems much older.   Old Green Eyes has been spotted many times over the years by visitors and park rangers alike.  There are two very different legends that attempt to explain Old Green Eyes.  The first story is that he is the spirit of a Confederate soldier whose head was blown off and his body destroyed.  Now his ghostly head roams the park at night looking for its lost body.