Chickamauga, Chattanooga Tennessee

The Battle of Chickamauga was one of the most important battles in the Civil War. It was a confederate victory and is considered by historians to be the most significant Union loss of the war. The battle also saw the second highest casualties of the war, behind Gettysburg. In the aftermath of the battle 34, 624 Americans were killed and another 24,430 were wounded. In a twist of ironic foreshadowing the river that the battle is named for was named by the Cherokee Native Americans before the battle took place and can be loosely translated to mean “river of death”. But perhaps the Cherokee had their own reasons for calling it river of death.

The Chickamauga battleground is claimed to be the home of many paranormal entities. Some claim that one of these ghosts dates back to a time before the civil war. It is said during the battle that many of the soldiers claimed to see a six-foot humanoid on the battlefield. It is said that the figure would drag off the dead bodies and wounded, and some claim to have seen it eat the dead. The creatures most striking feature was its piercing green eyes. Sightings of Old Green Eyes as locals affectionately call him still continue to this day. Other apparitions are said to haunt the ground as well. A mysterious lady in a white dress is often seen wondering the battlefield; perhaps looking for a lost loved one. The most interesting of all these sightings, though, are those of whole cavalries.

David Lester is a Civil War buff that takes part in the yearly reenactments of the battle. He claims that about five years ago, he and several of his friends went to say hello to some fellow confederate soldiers that were camped nearby. Lester found their unwillingness to break character charming and admired their dedication to the reenactment. Lester and his friends returned to their campsite several hours later and turned in for the night. The next morning when they got up, the campsite they had visited the previous night was gone. So were the confederate soldiers they spent hours with. There wasn’t even a sign of a fire or stakes in the ground where the tents would have been.

Babenhausen Barracks

At the German Babenhausen Barracks (now a museum) the ghosts of German soldiers, some in World War II era uniforms, have been reported. Lights are said to turn off and on by themselves and voices are heard in the basement. Footsteps and commands are allegedly heard at night, supposedly without physical cause. Legend has it that if a soldier happens to visit the museum and pick up a telephone, a woman will at times be heard “talking backwards”, unintelligible, in neither German nor English. The town was the site of a witch burned at the stake in the 19th century, and her ghost is said to have seduced, and then killed, several German soldiers since then. Pictured above are two American Soldiers at the Barracks in 1974

The USS Hornet

The USS Hornet was a flagship vessel in the U.S. Navy during World War II and was one of the most highly decorated ships of that time period. She was also a pinnacle part of the Vietnam War and had the honor of recovering the astronauts returning from the moon in the Apollo 11 and 12 space missions. This success also has a dark side as this decorated warship has seen over 300 deaths. Most of which were men struck down in battle, but others died in freak accidents like snapping cables that decapitate sailors or men accidentally being sucked into air intake pipes. The hornet, for all its success, also has the highest suicide rate of all the ships in the Navy.

The ship was retired in 1970 and was docked in Alameda, California and was opened up to the public in 1998 as a museum. It was then that many of the visiting tourists and crew aboard the ship began having paranormal experiences. Doors opening and shutting with no visible force, disappearing tools, objects moving by themselves, and the apparitions of sailors carrying about with their duties as if it was still 1944 are among the paranormal claims. Some people even claim that the ghosts on board the ship can be hostile in nature with claims that some have been pushed and grabbed by an invisible force while on board the ship.

The USS Hornet is a ship rich and history and possible rich in paranormal activity as well. Perhaps the cause for all this activity is the tragic past and abundance untimely deaths. Regardless of the cause of the haunting, the ship is notorious for its historical value as well as its ghosts. It is often called the most haunted vessel in the American Navy.