Stones River National Battlefield

The field's markers are as old as they come: the Hazen Brigade Monument, raised in 1863 by the survivors of a brigade that held the Round Forest — 'Hell's Half Acre' to the men who fought there — is the oldest surviving battlefield monument of the Civil War. Stones River National Cemetery gathered the Union dead; the town kept the railroad. The park also carries a Network to Freedom listing — the Union occupation and the vast supply depot of Fortress Rosecrans drew self-emancipating refugees to Murfreesboro — Fortress Rosecrans being the largest earthen fortification built during the war — and the ground holds that history too. Most of the battlefield itself was lost to Murfreesboro's growth; what the Park Service and preservationists hold is a fraction of the field.

The numbers that the haunting reports lean on are all in the record: a third of Sheridan's division, thousands under twenty years old, a scene Sam Watkins of the First Tennessee could only compare to a slaughterhouse — 'the ground was literally covered with blue coats dead.'

The headless horseman is the file's signature claim and the park's most-asked paranormal question: a rider — Garesche, the tellers say — seen near the railroad cut and cemetery where he fell. A marker stands at the spot; the legend supplies what the marker cannot.

The rest is distributed: apparitions of soldiers, cries in the Slaughter Pen — which investigators report runs ten to twenty degrees colder than the surrounding woods — lights in the cedar brakes, galloping horses, cannon fire at a distance, the smell of sulfur. One local investigator has been quoted estimating 'thousands of spirits' in the park, which at least has the virtue of matching the casualty returns. Reenactors who camp on the field file their own accounts; the cedars, apparently, do not distinguish between the armies.

The battlefield keeps its monuments and its ghosts on separate registers, which is the honest arrangement. What is documented here needs no haunting to justify the walk — a monument older than the Gettysburg Address, a pen of limestone still called by its soldiers' name, and a graveyard full of the arithmetic. The tours run on weekends; the Slaughter Pen keeps its own counsel; and the headless rider, per the file, has never once been asked to show his papers.