Andersonville Ghosts

[NH Civil War Gal]

This is a LONG ghost story that I condensed from "Civil War Ghost Stories & Legends" by Nancy Roberts. @Gary Morgan do you have any opinion on it?

One Saturday in July, 1990, Currie McClellan and Bill Blue headed down Highway 75 out of Atlanta and took the Highway 49 exit leading to Andersonville, nine miles northeast of Americas. Bill was a native Southerner. Currie, a Vietnam veteran and displaced Northerner, upon moving to Atlanta had developed an intense interest in the Civil War. Trips like this one had formed strong bonds of friendship between the two men, despite their differing sympathies.

"I've heard that the ghost of Captain Wirz has been seen walking along this road," said Bill as Currie sped toward the Andersonville Historic Site in his silver Dodge Caravan. Currie didn't reply.

"Did you hear me?"

"I'm not into superstition, Bill. I'm here to learn as many facts as I can about what this place was like a hundred and twenty-five years ago. How it was for the men who lived here."

"Yeah. I know wha you mean. I wasn't serious."

They stopped in Andersonville to get a Coke at a filling station, then passed the railroad depot where incoming northern prisoners de-trained from the Southwestern Railroad (now Central of Georgia) to march the quarter mile to the Prison Park.

"Well, we're here!" Exclaimed Currie. He found himself giving a slight shiver. "Hard to realize thousands of Union prisoners died at this place."

"About thirteen thousand I think."

"My great-great-grandfather Currie was here. His stories came down in the family. Prisoners got something like a half pint of broth with a few cow peas in it, a little meat and moldy cornbread."

Bill was irritated. "What do you think the Confederates soldiers were eating? Fried chicken, salad greens, and biscuits? I think these fellows were lucky if they still had their boots and blankets when they got here. They were captured by Confederates who had nothing themselves."

"We're going to have to decide on a campsite soon. You realize the sun's about to set? Let's decide where to camp," Bill suggested.

"Why not go into the village, get something to eat, and then come back and park just outside the gates? Think they'd let us do that?" "Far as I know."

Two hours later they had eaten country ham and fried chicken at the historic old Windsor Hotel, stopped at a store to buy some milk and cereal for breakfast, and returned. They parked about a hundred feet from the cemetery gate.

They looked around and found the Raider's grave markers. Willie Collins, the ring leader dubbed himself Colonel Mosby after the Confederate guerrilla raider. Currie spat on Collin's grave. "Hell's fire is too good for them." Bill was shocked at his outburst but said only, "They sure didn't deserve to rest in peace, did they?"

They both fell asleep in the van. Not long after midnight, Currie awoke and discovered what may have been the reason for feeling restless — an unusually pungent odor.

He looked at the sleeping man beside him and was instantly ashamed of his thought. It couldn't be Bill! The smell became more odious by the minute. It smelled like human excrement. Was the odor stronger outside? He slid the van door back and went outside . The stench overwhelmed him. Perspiration born of fear broke out on him. In China he had been told that odors sometimes signified the presence of an evil spirit. Ridiculous!

There was something familiar about this experience, however. He managed to place it—Vietnam, like the conditions of a military hospital—odors of gangrene, running sores, scents of putrescence wounds.

He could hear the hoarse rasp of men's voices. He thought he'd better wake Bill up, but to his surprise, when he got back to the van Bill was awake and the terrible odor had woken him up too.

Bill laughed a bit uneasily. "We shouldn't have camped near a graveyard!" "Do you hear that noise? What in h-e-l-l is that? Like the murmur of a crowd getting bigger. I'm getting my shotgun."

They could see mist all around them and they could hear distant murmuring of "hang them…hang them…hang them…"

Eventually the sound faded. Both men were horribly shaken and they were not ready to talk about the sounds they heard. The odor was still there but was fading. There was a puddle on the ground and they smelled the water and it was horrible.

The next morning they asked the park personnel who seemed puzzled. They said that kids around there believe that Wirz walks the roads in that area.

 

[Gary Morgan]

This is a LONG ghost story that I condensed from "Civil War Ghost Stories & Legends" by Nancy Roberts. @Gary Morgan do you have any opinion on it?

Interesting. The first thing that jumped out at me was that they said they bought a coke at a filling station in Andersonville. As far as I know, there was never a gas station there, but then again, my first trip was in 2012, long after the events in this story. Also curious why they would eat at the Windsor Hotel, which is decidedly posh, then go camp by the side of the road.

If they were camped by the cemetery gate, they would have been closer to where the guards were buried than where the prisoners were. The guards' remains were moved when the Women's Memorial Association decided to build a brick fence around the prisoners graves, which would have left the 100+ guards who died there outside the fence and by the side of the highway.

The 1880 Relocation of the Remains of Andersonville Guards | Prisons & Prisoners

I'm back to Andersonville Easter weekend to talk about the letters connected to two of the guards who served there as part of the 3rd Georgia Reserves - 17 year old Sgt Joseph Dunlap and 48 year old Pvt Joseph Williams. My research is still a work in progress, but since no one EVER looks at the...

civilwartalk.com

Kevin Frye, who's more knowledgeable about the prison than I am, says that he's never experienced anything weird at the cemetery - just a sense of peace, but that the stockade site in another matter all together. That's been my experience as well. With the exception of a bird that came to visit me in the cemetery just before I left last time, all of the stuff that made me go "Huh!" was in the stockade site.

(The bird story - I got into this adventure via the letters of a sailor who died at Andersonville. In a letter home from the Housatonic while he was in Charleston Harbor, he wrote at great length to his 7 year old daughter about a little brown bird with a yellow back that hung out on the rigging of the Housatonic for a while before flying off, and ever since, I looked for this type of bird - a yellow rumped warbler - every time I was in NC, but to no avail. The last time I was down in Andersonville in April, 2022, I went out to the cemetery to say good-bye to my sailor before heading back to Massachusetts, and there, two rows away from his grave, was a yellow rumped warbler, sitting on a grave marker! Four days later, I found out I have cancer, so I have always considered that sighting as a sign from Fred the sailor that I had done all right by him and the others who I wrote about. I haven't made it back there since.)

I HAVE talked to a few different people who've had strange experiences on the road inside the park that connects the stockade site and the cemetery - not the highway, but the path the bodies would have taken in order to be buried. There was a guards' camp in that general area, and I'm told one woman heard the guards talking while she was walking there. But I never had any strange experiences there myself.

Do I think the prison site is haunted? Yup. Do I think the story above is true? I've never heard it before, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen.