Civil War Ghost Stories & Legends

"Ghost" Frightens New Englanders

0000 Whether the event that happened in May, 1863, at Batchelder 's Creek, near Kinston, was a natural phenomenon orfell in the realm of the supernatural did not matter. The Union soldiers would never forget it. 000 "GHOST" FRIGHTENS NEW ENGLANDERS Near Kinston, North Carolina "It is not to be supposed that the men forming the 25th Massachusetts Regiment, educated as they were in the schools of New England, and possessing all the general intelligence marking the New England character," modestly writes Captain J. W. Denny, in American Civil War Battlefield Sketches: Battlefield Echoes, "had gone down to North Carolina to be frightened by ghosts, owls or live rebels, or that they would be inclined to believe in stories about ghosts, fairies, witches and apparitions." To continue from the Federal records, "It was the latter part of May 1863 when General J. G. Foster at New Bern received information that Lee was preparing for an offensive across the Potomac and had urgent need for reinforcements from General D. H. Hill's command in North Carolina. This put Hill on the defensive and gave us another chance at the Confederates. Our efforts to whip them at Gum Swamp the month before had failed." Foster was eager to move inland and reach the Atlantic and North Carolina Railroad, and his first move was to order Colonel Richter Jones to head for Gum Swamp 170 171 "Ghost" Frightens New Englanders and try to surround the enemy. Gum Swamp was a Confederate outpost about eight miles below Kinston, which was the objective. Two of the regiments that reinforced Colonel Jones were the Massachusetts 46th and the 25th. The plan was for five regiments to converge upon the Confederate outpost at daybreak and make a joint attack from the front and the rear. The 25th Massachusetts had marched all day and into the night and had halted for a rest. It was an exceptionally dark, moonless night, and they were making their way through pine woods to Batchelder's Creek. The column 's aim was to go through the woods as quietly as possible in order not to attract the attention of enemy pickets. While the battalion stood halted in the road, something struck the flank of Company K which had the advance . It came like the rushing of a mighty wind, and suddenly the company opened to the right and left, and just as suddenly the men were in heaps in the ditches on either side of the road. There was no order or regard for rank. Captains and lieutenants, sergeants and corporals, men from the front ranks and men from the rear were all indiscriminately heaped together like piles of jack straws. As Captain Denny described it, "Each man's hair stood erect upon his head like quills from a fretted porcupine. The men scrambled up out of the ditch and regrouped. They hurried, for the men of the 46th Massachusetts regiment were now coming up close upon their rear. No sooner had they gotten themselves into some semblance of order when, to their astonishment, there was the same strange rushing sound, and the men of the 172 Near Kinston, North Carolina 46th Massachusetts Regiment dove for the ditches in as complete and chaotic disorder as they had done." Neither the sound nor the startled fright of these two regiments has ever been explained. There could have been no more precipitate flight had Colonel Mosby and his men suddenly appeared on one of their well known ambuscades, firing their revolvers at close range into the midst of them. The sudden rising of a wind and its quick cessation can be awesome and has sometimes been associated with spirits. Occurring twice in rapid succession in the same place and felt by two separate regiments of men seems to be unheard of. Ghost or not, it was an unforgettable experience for the New England regiments. ...