{"id":2816,"slug":"kennesaw-house-marietta-georgia","story":[{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["The Great Locomotive Chase began in a hotel room. On the night of April 11, 1862, James Andrews — a Kentucky civilian working as a Union spy — and twenty Union soldiers in civilian clothes slept at the Fletcher House Hotel in Marietta, Georgia. Before dawn, Andrews gathered them in his second-floor room overlooking the Western & Atlantic tracks and gave the order: 'Get seats near each other in the same car, and say nothing of our business. I will succeed or leave my bones in Dixie.' An hour later they boarded the northbound train; at Big Shanty, while the crew ate breakfast, they stole the locomotive General and started the most famous chase in railroad history.","The building had been a cotton warehouse — built in 1845 by Marietta's first mayor, converted to a hotel in 1855 by Dix Fletcher, a Massachusetts Unionist whose son-in-law was himself a Yankee spy. The hotel that hosted the raiders spent the rest of the war as a Confederate hospital and morgue, and then as Sherman's headquarters during the Atlanta campaign. When Marietta burned in 1864, embers took the fourth floor; the three-story building that remains is what's left.","It's the Marietta History Center now, and the Andrews' Raiders room is recreated to the night the spy gave his order — the room where twenty-two men slept their last night before becoming either heroes or corpses. Andrews left his bones in Dixie, as promised: he was hanged in Atlanta two months later."]},{"heading":"Why this file matters","paragraphs":["Kennesaw House is the archive's chase file — the hotel where the Great Locomotive Chase was launched from a second-floor room, by men who knew they were leaving their bones behind.","A hotel that hosted a war's most famous spy keeps his room — the file's suggestion being that the Kennesaw House's real history is the night Andrews chose the chase over the retreat."]}],"name":"Kennesaw House","aliases":[],"type":"MUSEUM","type_label":"Museum","cats":["LOCAL_FOLKLORE","HAUNTED_PLACE","HISTORIC_BUILDING","CIVIL_WAR"],"groups":["hauntings","institutions","legends"],"desc":"The 1845 hotel where the Andrews Raiders stayed—now the Marietta Museum.","full_desc":"Kennesaw House is a museum in Marietta, Georgia. The 1845 hotel where the Andrews Raiders stayed—now the Marietta Museum. HauntHunt files it with the Civil War, local folklore and haunted places. Its accounts name only a collective — the hospital dead. The dossier holds 2 reported claims, 1 legend, 1 documented fact and 1 named or described presence — documented record and retelling kept side by side. It operates as a museum.","address":null,"city":"Marietta","county":null,"state":"Georgia","postal":null,"region":"South","lat":33.953561,"lon":-84.542463,"coord_kind":"CITY","status":"ACTIVE","access":"PUBLIC","access_notes":null,"ownership":null,"website":null,"phone":null,"year_built":null,"year_opened":null,"year_closed":null,"year_demolished":null,"designation":null,"current_use":"Historic site / park","research_notes":"GA/TN batch; VERIFY task auto-queued.","stage":"SOURCE_RESEARCH","quality":{"level":"MEDIUM","score":59.4,"dims":{"location_confidence":0.75,"identity_confidence":0.65,"historical_confidence":0.8,"source_quality":0.3999999999999999,"paranormal_claim_provenance":0.8,"coordinate_confidence":0,"current_access_confidence":0.7,"freshness":0.65}},"claims":[{"id":2485,"type":"NAMED_GHOST_LEGEND","description":"The hospital dead are reportedly seen. Museums collect the dead's effects by definition; Kennesaw House's reports are the interpretation nobody scheduled. 'Kennesaw House' preserves the telling; the record keeps it filed where it belongs, as lore. Named ghosts are the ones that last — this one has lasted.","evidence":"DOCUMENTED_LEGEND","evidence_label":"Documented legend","entity":"The hospital dead","where":null,"first_report":null,"approx_date":null,"confidence":0.8,"conflict_notes":null,"source":{"name":"Kennesaw House","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennesaw_House","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4},"conflicting_source":null,"variants":[]},{"id":2486,"type":"APPARITION","description":"Reported figures in the building. Kennesaw House in Marietta, Georgia curates the past professionally; the reports suggest some of the past curates back. It originates in investigator claims — compelling inside the team's log, unverifiable outside it. The account appears in 'Kennesaw House'. The figure remains the site's most-repeated sighting.","evidence":"PARANORMAL_INVESTIGATION_CLAIM","evidence_label":"Investigation claim","entity":null,"where":null,"first_report":null,"approx_date":null,"confidence":0.8,"conflict_notes":null,"source":{"name":"Kennesaw House","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennesaw_House","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4},"conflicting_source":null,"variants":[]}],"history":[{"description":"Built 1845; the Raiders’ stay and the hospital are documented. The site's documented history is the record the rest of the file stands on. The record holds it as fact — documented, not retold. The record appears in 'Kennesaw House'. Documented ground is what separates this file from pure legend — this is part of it.","evidence":"HISTORICALLY_VERIFIED","date_start":"1845","date_end":null,"confidence":null,"source":{"name":"Kennesaw House","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennesaw_House","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}}],"legends":[{"name":null,"summary":"The hospital dead are reportedly seen. Museums collect the dead's effects by definition; Kennesaw House's reports are the interpretation nobody scheduled. The story is documented as legend — recorded and retold, never verified as fact. The report is preserved in sources like 'Kennesaw House'. It's the version the place will be remembered by, whether or not it's the true one.","earliest":null,"evidence":"DOCUMENTED_LEGEND","source":{"name":"Kennesaw House","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennesaw_House","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}}],"entities":[{"name":"The hospital dead","claimed_identity":"The hospital dead","verified":null,"summary":"The hospital dead are reportedly seen. The site's claim set is modest — appropriate for a building whose exhibits already do the unsettling work. The report is preserved in sources like 'Kennesaw House'. The lore has a face now: The hospital dead. The claim holds its place in the ledger. The account stays in the file — reported, retold, unresolved.","behavior":"The hospital dead are reportedly seen.","area":null,"first_ref":null,"source":{"name":"Kennesaw House","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennesaw_House","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}}],"events":[],"investigations":[],"encounters":[],"media":[],"persons":[],"visitor":{"tour_availability":"Verify before visiting","notes":"Museum; check the official site for current hours and admission.","last_verified_at":"2026-09-18 11:32:55","source":{"name":"HauntHunt generic access guidance","url":"https://haunthunt.com/about#access-guidance","publisher":"HauntHunt editorial","type":"DIRECTORY","authority":2}},"sources":[{"name":"Kennesaw House","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennesaw_House","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}],"conflicts":[],"wiki":{"title":"Kennesaw House","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennesaw_House","desc":null,"extract":"The Kennesaw House is a three-story historic building in downtown Marietta, Georgia. It houses the Marietta History Center. The building is west of the town square, adjacent to the CSX (originally Western and Atlantic Railroad) tracks.","img":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/77/KennesawHouse.jpg/960px-KennesawHouse.jpg?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=api&utm_content=thumbnail","score":104,"lat":33.95276,"lon":-84.55017},"counts":{"claims":2,"history":1,"legends":1,"entities":1,"sources":1}}