Ghost Hunting at Allatoona Pass Battlefield with Cartersville Museum City on the Battle's 162nd Anniversary

Your Morning Drive left the studio for this one. A few days before Halloween, Logan rode along in the Museum City van with Katlyn Southern, director of brand strategy and positioning at Cartersville Museum City, and Alex Machado, the team's content and communications coordinator, for a night at Allatoona Pass Battlefield in Bartow County. They brought some history, a bag of ghost hunting gadgets, and gas station snacks for a fifteen-minute drive. It's an episode best watched on YouTube.

An accidental anniversary

None of it was planned around the date. On the morning of the shoot, Alex was reading up on the battlefield and realized it was October 5, the 162nd anniversary of the Battle of Allatoona Pass, fought on October 5, 1864. She and Katlyn called Logan right away, and he assumed they were calling to cancel. When the group reached the memorial, they found a fresh wreath laid for the anniversary.

Memorials shaped like the states

The first stop was Memorial Field, where each memorial is cut in the shape of a state that fought there. According to the marker, units from five Union states and six Confederate states were present, most of the Confederate dead lie in unmarked graves, and many of the Union fallen are now buried at Marietta National Cemetery. The group walked the names from Illinois, Minnesota, Ohio and Wisconsin to Texas, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia, and Logan, who was born in Illinois, took a quick geography detour over which side Missouri was on.

Ghostbusters-style gadgets

Logan came equipped: an EMF meter with a light that drifts from green toward red when something is nearby, a spirit box that scans radio static for voices, and an infrared thermometer for sudden cold spots. Local reports promised soldiers' footsteps, apparitions, unmarked dead calling out their names and hometowns, and an overwhelming sense of dread. What the spirit box mostly found was radio, including Drake, Gucci Mane and a commercial, which led to the episode's running joke that the spirits at Allatoona have good taste in music.

The trenches and the railroad

Along the trail, the trenches climb almost straight up in places, and the group talked about how far the soldiers marched on foot, in full uniform. The railroad pass was the reason for the fight: it was a Union supply line, and Confederate forces were trying to destroy it. Alex shared her own Civil War field trip story from high school in Virginia, when her history club hiked about 20 miles across the Manassas battlefield to get "the full effect."

The grave of the Unknown Hero

The trail leads to the former burial site of the Unknown Hero. According to the marker there, local families recalled that a few days after the battle a wooden box addressed simply to Allatoona, Georgia, arrived at the station holding a Confederate soldier, and six local women buried him beside the railroad in a spot now lost to history. Historians believe the grave later marked here belongs to someone else: Private Andrew Jackson Houston of Mississippi, who died in the battle and was buried where he fell. In 1880 the site was given an iron fence and a marble headstone reading that he "died for the cause he thought was right." Railroad workers cared for it for years and moved it when the line was relocated. Today it sits about 1,000 yards south of the trail entrance beside the current railroad, maintained by Red Top Mountain State Park and the Georgia Department of Natural Resources.

White orbs on the way out

Most of the night was quiet: normal temperatures, no EMF spikes, and a lot of spider webs. Then, on the walk back, Katlyn and Logan both spotted a white dot down the trail that seemed to move and then vanish, and the thermometer dipped a few degrees. Alex didn't see it and remains unconvinced. Along the way they traded local ghost stories, from a house off Mission Road that Logan's friends swear had someone on the staircase to an antique store owner who came back after locking up to find the toy trains all over the floor.

Listen to the Full Conversation

Whether it was a spirit, a sign reflection or a flashlight down the trail, you can decide for yourself in the video. Learn more about Allatoona Pass Battlefield and everything else to do in Bartow County at cartersvillemuseumcity.com, follow @missmuseumcity on Instagram, and catch the NOTWORKING meetup on Tuesday mornings at the depot. Watch or listen to the full episode below.