Green Eyes: A Local Ghost Story

Here is a tale that has been around for a long time and in many different forms. The one thing all these stories have in common is the terrorizing of visitors to the Chickamauga National Battlefield Park by a green eyed yahoo with a disagreeable attitude. Even some Park Rangers are reported to have seen the "Thing."

What it is, I have my guess as you may have your own after reading this but it has been around for quite some time. I will let the article's author tell his version of the most famous haunting of north Georgia.

"Wherever there has been great suffering, people are always seeing strange things."

These are the words of Edward Tinney, former historian and chief ranger at Chickamauga-Chattanooga National Military Park. Tinney, who worked at the park from 1969 to 1986 and also spent time working at the battlegrounds at Shiloh, Tenn., said ghostly sightings at the Chickamauga Battlefield or any Civil War site are not uncommon.

Tinney said the legend of Old Green Eyes, the ghost who is said to haunt the battlefield in various forms ranging from a Confederate soldier to a green-eyed panther, has been a part of Chickamauga Battlefield lore since the last shot was fired at the bloody battle that claimed 34,000 casualties Sept. 19-20, 1863. The tales of Green Eyes and other phantom sightings stem from the soldiers, who lived through the War Between the States, Tinney said.

"Green Eyes is rumored to be a man who lost his head to a cannonball, frantically searching the battlefield at night for his dislocated body," Tinney said. "History says ghosts in the bat-tlefield such as the Green Eyes tale began happening soon after the war in 1863.

"Those who lived after the war are the ones who started the stories," he said. "The more you get removed from the war or any kind of pain, the more glamorous it gets."

Tinney said wherever he has been — whether it is on a Civil War battlefield or in Europe where he fought in World War II — there are incidents and sightings that cannot be ex-plained by human logic.

One of the earliest ghost sightings shortly after the Civil War ended is documented in Susie Blaylock McDaniel's book "The Official History of Catoosa County."

Jim Carlock, an early resident of the Post Oak Community, writes in McDaniel's book about returning home from a centennial celebration on Market Street in Chattanooga in 1876, a mere 13 years after the bloody battle. Carlock writes: "Did you ever see a ghost? They used to see them on the Chickamauga Battlefields just after the war."


For the rest of the story, hit the link. http://www.catt.com/article.php?story=20031031151742448