Written by Anne Gilstrap

I would like to share a story with you that my two best friends related to me. Kathy, who had just had her fourteenth birthday, and Nan, her sister, went with their parents to their grandparents’ farm right outside Montgomery, Alabama. It had been a long, hot, boring ride from Atlanta, and having arrived at their grandparents’ farm, they were restless to do something besides watch Mom and Dad busy working to settle the estate.

As they wandered off into the cooler woods gathering wildflowers, they came to a clearing. There, in the middle of the clearing, was a small cottage, run down so badly even the shutters hung at an angle – never again to cover the windows that had lost most of their window panes – and a porch with tall grass, growing where there were no boards.

With a sudden burst of recklessness, the girls raced to the cottage. As they reached the half open front door, Kathy called out, “Is there anybody home?” And then they laughed, for of course, there was no one there.

As they came into the front room that at one time may have been pretty, they found it was full of dust and cobwebs, and stuffing falling out of the sofa cushions. Hurrying along to the next room, they found a kitchen with a table set for a meal, looking as if someone had hurriedly left the room, the chair being pushed half way aside at the table.

A growing sense of being watched overwhelmed the girls. They bolted from the room and down the hall.

As they reached the stairs, curiosity overcame their fear, and they climbed the stairs to the second floor. Kathy opened the door to the left of the hallway. “Whew!” she said as she viewed the pretty brass bed with a dirty old quilt that had become home for many different wild animals.

Closing the door, Kathy crossed the hall and gasped as she opened the door. Nan looked over her shoulder and saw a room as neat as a pin, no dust anywhere – a shining floor with an old worn rug, tattered curtains hanging listlessly at the open windows. And there in the middle of the room was a rocking horse, rocking back and forth very fast as if a child had just jumped off.

They watched with fascination as the horse slowed and stopped. As they looked around the room, they saw a child’s bed with a rocking chair beside it, and against the wall on the other side of the room was an old trunk. Quickly the girls moved to the trunk, knelt beside it and opened the lid. Kathy reached in and found a letter that gave her a hint of the occupants of the little cottage. The letter was from a soldier husband fighting in Virginia. He wrote, “I miss you and our little son so very much. It frightens me to think I might not be able to come back home to be with you.”

Putting the letter back, Kathy picked up another and started reading it out loud. Suddenly she grew silent, and Nan saw tears running down her checks. Taking the letter, Nan saw it was from the mother, and it read, “My dearest love, our precious son had pneumonia, and because the doctor was away with the troops, there was no one to save him.”

Nan put the letter back in the trunk, and as she did, her hand touched a piece of parchment. Drawing it out of the trunk, careful not to let the pieces fall away, she read a telegram that had been sent to the soldier in Virginia: “We regret to inform you your wife has taken her life.”

As the girls sat looking at each other through tears, there suddenly seemed to be a presence in the room, and the soft sound of a lullaby could be heard above the hum of the bees. Quickly and carefully, they put the paper back in the trunk, closed the lid, and hurriedly crossed the room. As Nan passed the closet, she felt something brush against her arm. Whirling around, she saw to her horror the rocking chair begin to slowly rock back and forth, and the sound of a lullaby became louder.

The girls frantically dashed down the stairs, out into the yard, and into the safety of the woods. Turning back to look at the little old cottege once again, they saw in the upstairs window a little blond boy watching them. Panicked, they ran through the woods, falling over broken limbs and being scratched by the briars.

When they arrived at the farm, they rushed to tell their father what they had seen. Father listened and then said, “Girls, the story is told that in anguish and grief, the solider, upon returning home, burned the cottage to the ground. The woods have long ago grown over the clearing where the little cottage once stood. There is no house.”

- THE END -

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Written by Craig Dominey

Have you ever heard someone use the expression, “My life flashed before my eyes”? People use it so much it’s become a cliche’. But such a thing really happened to me. Although it wasn’t my life that I saw.

When I was a young man growing up in Chattanooga, Tennessee, I was dating a girl named Melissa. She lived just over the state line in the small town of Lafayette, Georgia. When this incident happened, I’d only been seeing her for a couple of months, so I was still trying to impress her as best I could. So you can imagine my anxiety one Friday night – the night of a big date I’d been planning for days – when my car broke down right after I’d gotten off work. I kicked the tires so hard I almost broke my foot!

Well, I frantically located my big brother and coaxed him into letting me borrow his old beat up truck. Sure, it wasn’t the fancy chariot Melissa was expecting me to show up in. But all I cared about was finding four wheels that could take me straight to Lafayette – via Chickamauga Battlefield.

Now if you’ve never heard of Chickamauga – think of it as the Gettysburg of Georgia, but bigger. Chickamauga is actually an Indian word meaning “River of Death.” And it lived up to its name during the Civil War when a bloody battle was fought there. The Yankees were trying to capture Chattanooga, which was a major rail center at the time. The Rebels drove them back, but not before nearly 40,000 soldiers died.

Of course, the history behind the battlefield wasn’t important to me that night. What was important was getting to Melissa’s house, and I was already over an hour late. So I knew the quickest way to get there was the two-lane road that cut straight through the heart of the battlefield.

As I gunned my brother’s truck over the state line, a hard rain that had been falling all day was tapering off. But it left behind a thick and eerie mist that crept through the open battlefield like ghostly fingers. The park had closed for the night, and there were no cars in sight. The road was almost impossible to see. But I had used this park as a short cut a million times before, and knew it like the back of my hand.

As I was driving down the main road, I noticed the faint headlights of a car approaching in the distance. For a split second, I wondered if this was someone just like me, late for an important date with a Georgia beauty. I could only hope he saw me in the swirling mist between us.

But as the car drew closer, I noticed it was unlike any vehicle I had seen before. The headlights appeared to be a strange greenish color. I knew a thing or two about cars, but I’d never seen headlights like that. Maybe they helped the driver see in bad weather conditions, I thought.

The car drew closer and closer, and those green lights were burning at a wattage I’d never seen from any headlight. And they seemed to bounce up and down, and weave from side to side, as if the car was riding on springs. I politely tapped my horn, hoping the driver could see me in front of him.

But as the mystery car got closer and closer, the driver appeared to swerve further into my lane. This time I laid on the horn – what’s wrong with this guy, I thought, is he drunk? Then I saw something that really shook me. There were no beams shooting out of those green lights – they looked like two floating orbs, powered by some other source. They even looked like…eyes.

I frantically blared my horn again as the green lights drew near. And just before we passed each other, the driver suddenly swerved into my lane! I reacted quickly, spinning the wheel the opposite way. My truck flew off the road and onto the battlefield grounds, swallowed by darkness. I slammed into a tree, and the world turned black.

When I came to a few moments later, the battlefield was silent, save the hissing sound coming from the crushed hood of the truck. My headlights were smashed, and the only light was from the bright stars above. I felt the large bump on my head and groaned.

It was then I saw the green lights again, sitting silently in the darkness, observing me. I watched as the lights floated closer and closer toward my vehicle. In the silence, I could hear no car engine sputtering toward me. It couldn’t be a car that I had seen. But what was it?

Suddenly the lights disappeared. I began to tremble with fear for the first time. “Who’s out there?” I called out, but no one answered. I then heard a rustling sound against my car. I peered out the window, and in the darkness I could just make out a large shadowy figure circling me. I thought it was a large man, for it shuffled about on two legs. But as my eyes adjusted, I could see that it’s hair was long, right down to the waist. And it made a horrible moaning sound, the saddest sound I’d ever heard.

Just like that, the figure disappeared, and the night was quiet again. “Is anyone out there?” I yelled, but there was still no answer. After a long pause, I slowly reached for the door handle with shaking fingers.

Then something pounced onto the hood of my truck. I looked out the cracked windshield, and what I saw was no man. It was a beast, with long dirty hair and huge, mangled jaws from which two long, sharp fangs jutted out. And it had two burning green eyes, fueled by some otherworldy evil I couldn’t begin to comprehend.

I tried to scream but found myself mute, hypnotized by those green eyes. And as the creature and I stared at each other in silence, the battlefield began to transform around us. The darkness gave way to a strange green glow. There was no road, no cars and no monuments. Instead, I was surrounded by smoke, fire, scorched grass and the charred remains of warfare. The sickening stench of burning flesh filled my nostrils. At my feet were piles of bodies in blue and grey unforms, drenched equally in blood. Some were missing arms, others legs. There were heads without bodies, their eyes shut tightly as if afraid of their ultimate fate. And everywhere were the low and agonizing moans of pain and death, filling the skies along with the black smoke in a hellish symphony.

Suddenly, a curtain of darkness fell down on the battlefield. I could hear a car horn behind me. The creature leapt off my hood and disappeared into the night. It was then I realized I was back in the wrecked truck. A couple of rangers ran down the hillside to my aid. “Are you alright?” they asked.

“Did you see that animal that attacked me?” I asked them breathlessly. “The one with the green eyes?”

The two rangers looked at me strangely. “That’s a serious bump you got on your head, son,” they answered. “You must be seein’ things.”

“But something jumped on my truck,” I yelped. “I saw it!”

But the rangers never found evidence of any creature. Even when daylight broke, and my truck was towed away, not a single animal print could be found. And I soon gave up my argument about the creature, fearing that people would think I was crazy.

Believe it or not, in later years I ended up becoming a park ranger myself at Chickamauga Battlefield. The area was no longer just a shortcut between Chattanooga and Lafayette. To me it was hollowed ground, from which I could point out every military maneuver, every act of bravery, and every tragic defeat.

But as time passed, other folks insisted that they, too, had spotted the mysterious “Green Eyes” while driving through the park at night. And they would ask me what I saw that fateful night as a teenage boy. You know what I told them? I would say that what I encountered that night was no monster, but the shadow of death that creeps around every town, alleyway and battlefield where men go to war – and will keep doing so as a reminder of our tragic mistakes.

- THE END -

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Written by Craig Dominey

They say there are places on this planet which have seen such tragedy and sorrow that they are forever cursed. It’s as if the earth itself holds some dark supernatural force beyond our understanding. A few years ago, I found such a cursed place just a few miles west of Atlanta, Georgia – a tiny hamlet called New Hope. And even though many people don’t believe the story I’m about to tell, my visit there haunts my dreams to this day.

At one time, I was a 35-year-old small business owner living in a tiny town in rural Virginia. This town was so tiny and remote that it took us several years to finally discover a brand new invention that was already revolutionizing the world – the Internet. But once I was online, I quickly left my nine to five job and went into business for myself in the new “dot com” economy.

I didn’t have a brilliant business mind, but my father, a rabid Civil War enthusiast, had taught me to do one thing very well – hunt for Civil War artifacts. Bullets, belt buckles, coins, uniform buttons – the Virginia battlefields were full of them. So I quickly opened up my own Web site hawking Civil War memorabilia at high prices.

I’m a bit ashamed to admit it now, but profit was much more important to me in those days than respect for the dead. It didn’t matter to me if a battlefield was located on protected land or not. Under cover of darkness, I would sneak onto the property with my shovel and trusty metal detector, and would steal away as many artifacts as I could find. But it wasn’t long before other relic hunters got in on the act, and competition became fierce. Verbal threats and fistfights became common amongst rival hunters, and I knew it was time to hunt for relics elsewhere.

I remembered studying about Union General William T. Sherman’s devastating “March to the Sea” in Georgia, and figured that somewhere along that long path from Chattanooga, Tennessee, down through Atlanta, and south to Savannah there must be a treasure trove of artifacts. So that spring, I hopped in my truck and drove south to Georgia to see what I could find.

I was especially interested in a small town located near the Pickett’s Mill Battlefield called New Hope. It was here that one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War took place. And to understand my story, you must understand the carnage that took place there.

It was May 1864, and General Sherman had begun his relentless march toward Atlanta. His men were hungry and battle weary, but knew that to destroy Atlanta would mean destroying the heart of the Confederacy and finally bringing an end to this horrible war. Standing in Sherman’s way was a stubborn Confederate Army led by Joe Johnston. Johnston’s men resisted the Union onslaught, forcing Sherman into flanking maneuvers. But like a bloody chess game, Johnston countered each of Sherman’s moves, slamming his army into the Union forces day after day.

It was during one of these flanking maneuvers that Sherman’s men marched into the area of New Hope Church. What they didn’t know was that Confederate forces were lying in wait with sixteen cannons and some 5,000 men. As the Union troops struggled through the thick underbrush into the clearing, they were suddenly hit by a vicious firestorm of artillery. Confederate guns and cannons blasted away at them from behind makeshift log walls. The Union soldiers were sitting ducks.

As the battle raged on, legend has it that a vicious thunderstorm blew into the area – a storm unlike anything the men had ever seen. The skies turned black as night. Lightning flashed and thunder boomed around the battlefield, sometimes drowning out the relentless artillery barrage. Wounded Union soldiers desperately crawled through the torrential rain into a ravine to escape certain death from the Confederate guns. And it was said that, even with the storm and battle raging around them, one could still hear the agonizing moans of the wounded soldiers rising from the ravine.From that day forward, the Union troops gave a new name to the ravine near New Hope Church – “Hell Hole.”

Like other battlefields, New Hope was rumored to be haunted. It had a reputation amongst learned Civil War historians as being a creepy and unsettling place. But I had heard plenty of ghost stories about the battlefields in Virginia, and they had never stopped me before.

I drove into the town of New Hope just before sundown. It wasn’t as much a town as it was a country intersection, with a small auto repair shop, a couple of churches and a cemetery. But the historical markers lining the road betrayed its bloody past. I reasoned that the Confederate battle lines must have been spread out across the area where the cemetery now stood. There was a heavily wooded area beyond the graveyard that I reasoned must have been the location of the “Hell-Hole.” I spotted several homes on the other side of the woods, and decided to wait until nightfall to begin digging.

I parked across the street behind one of the churches and waited. An hour later, I was blessed with a beautiful, clear night sky and a full moon. As I crept through the cemetery with my equipment, I noticed that the tombstones seemed to reflect an eerie white light from the bright moon above. More fainthearted relic hunters might have turned back at that point, but not me.I reached the woods and soon found myself struggling through a thick jungle of thorn bushes, vines and trees. For a brief moment, I thought about what it must have been like to have been a solider back then, already weary and hungry and now having to fight your way through this hellish Georgia forest. But then my thoughts drifted back to the business at hand.

The ground suddenly sloped downward, and I figured I was on the lip of the ravine. Since I was now totally enveloped in the forest, I figured it was safe to use my flashlight. Shining it around the ravine, my heart sank. Some of the residents were now using the ravine as a garbage dump. There was plenty of scrap metal scattered about, including a rusted old car. But I had come this far, so I was going to at least give the place a try.I crept down into the ravine, chose an area that seemed the least polluted, and began clearing away some of the garbage. Once that was done, I swept the area with my metal detector and picked up plenty of readings. Whether or not this was from buried garbage I did not know, but I soon began digging in earnest.

In fact, I was so intent on my digging that I didn’t notice a strange noise – heavy raindrops plopping onto the thick canopy of leaves above. This seemed impossible to me, as the skies were beautifully clear just a few minutes before. But as the raindrops fell harder, I looked up into the sky and saw that a sudden storm front had blackened out the stars and moon, leaving me in total darkness.

A jarring blast of thunder shook the forest, and I quickly moved into the only shelter I could find – the inside of the junked car. I didn’t want to run out of the woods and be caught, and I hoped this was one of those hit and miss thunderstorms so prevalent in Georgia. But the storm grew louder and more intense, the booming thunder shaking the earth, and the torrential rain drenching everything, even through the thick trees.

It was then that I heard it – a low moan drifting out of the bottom of the ravine. At first I thought it must be some wounded animal, or perhaps a dog lost in the storm. But as it grew louder and louder, I realized the voice was definitely human. Soon other agonizing moans could be heard, seemingly feeding off the horrifying thunder crashing around me.Then I smelled a repugnant odor that I can only describe as the smell of rotted flesh. It must be from a dead animal, I thought, desperately trying to rationalize what I was experiencing. But the odor seemed to grow stronger and stronger as the moans grew louder.

A bolt of lightning suddenly illuminated the forest, and in that brief second I swore I saw a shadow darting though the woods – a human shadow. As the storm reached its crescendo, the intense lightning lit the forest like some harsh florescent light, the gnarled trees taking on odd and terrifying shapes. My blood ran cold as I spotted more of these shadows darting amongst the trees, as if fleeing in terror from the storm. And in the bright flashes of lightning, I began to notice details on the shadows – a military cap here, a rifle or bayonet there. They could only be one thing – soldiers.

But the worst was yet to come. The temperature seemed to drop twenty degrees around me, and I was hit with the most sick and agonizing feeling I had ever felt. I can only describe it as a feeling of devastating loss and pain, as if I had learned that my entire family had suddenly died at the same time. I couldn’t take it anymore – I kicked the car door open and hopped out into the storm. Then I was hit with a debilitating feeling of exhaustion that raced through my whole body, as if I had walked a hundred miles. I left all my equipment behind and desperately clawed and sputtered through the rain-drenched forest until the cemetery was finally in sight.

As I burst free of the forest, the storm inexplicably stopped. The clouds blew away, and I found myself standing in the midst of the glowing white tombstones. I had seen enough – I crossed the street and ran back to my car, only to spot the silhouette of a man standing beside it, peering into the windows. I stood frozen in my tracks until he yelled out in a warm, inviting Georgia drawl, “Hello there! I was getting worried about you!”It was the minister of the church. He had come out to check the building after the storm, and had discovered my car. Road maps and Civil War books scattered across the seats had betrayed me as the tourist I was.

I tried to avoid telling him what I was doing in New Hope by commenting on the thunderstorm that had passed, and how I had never experienced such a ferocious storm. The minister chuckled and replied, “Yeah, we seem to get them this time of year, especially on this date. Some folks think this place is haunted, but I don’t believe in such things.”

My blood suddenly ran cold, and I heard myself ask him, “What’s so special about today?”

The minister cocked an eyebrow at me and grinned. “Well, from all them Civil War books in your car, I thought you’d know. Today’s May 26th – the Battle of New Hope was fought 136 years ago today.” And that’s my story of the Hell Hole.

- THE END -

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Adapted from folklore by Sherry Norfolk

The Civil War had ended, and the weary, defeated Southern soldiers had straggled back home to what was left of their families and farms. The slaves had been freed, but some had stayed on in the places where the family had been kind, or where the family had scattered and never returned.

There was one such place in South Georgia – a once-beautiful plantation that had been abandoned before the war had even begun, and where the slaves had stayed in safety during the war, and had remained when freedom came. The land was rich, and Thomas, the young master of the plantation, had said it was theirs to farm and live off of until he came back came to claim it. So many of his former slaves chose to stay.

The memories and the story of the plantation had stayed, too. The story of the young master who had built the house for his beloved bride. The story of the sweet-smelling flower garden that his bride walked in every day from spring till fall.

The story of her ghost.

Melviny was only a young girl living in the slave quarters when Thomas lost his bride. She had held onto the memory of the young bride’s beauty and kindness throughout the dark and ugly years of war.

Melviny had held onto the other memories, too. The memories always began with laughter – happiness seemed to come out of the windows and doors of that house, seemed to be part of the very walls and floors. It was the happiness of Thomas and his bride that made the plantation a good place to be: happiness breeds kindness and gentleness, they say.

The story starts – and ends – in the flower garden of the big house. Every fine day, the young bride found time to come and sit in her garden, to smell the fragrant blossoms and cut the prettiest ones to decorate the house. Every day, Melviny worked in that garden, pulling the weeds and picking off the dead blossoms.

“Melviny,” the young bride would call, “just come and smell this rose! Isn’t it the prettiest thing you ever did smell?”

And Melviny would run to the rosebush and inhale deeply. “Oh, yes, ma’am, you’re right! It is the prettiest smell in all the world!”

Or, “Melviny, you take some of these dahlias to your mamma. She likes pretty colors and these are the brightest I’ve ever seen. Run, now!” And Melviny would run with the handful of brilliant flowers, grinning to her mama, who would put them in a jar of water on the mantelpiece.

But one evening, when the moon shone full and bright, a screech-owl began to make a terrible noise outside the cabin where Melviny and her mama lived. Melviny ran to her mama in alarm at the screeching, unearthly sound, and her mama held her close.

“Never mind, child,” she soothed. “Just an ol’ screech-owl calling to his kin.”

“But, Mama, I’ve heard the others say that when you hear a screech owl keep hollerin’ and carryin’ on like that, someone’s gonna die!”

“No, child, they’re just trying to scare you. Now you settle down and eat your supper. Nothin’ to worry yourself over.”

But Melviny wasn’t comforted. She watched everyone she loved, fearful of the screech-owl’s curse.

Two days later, as Melviny worked in the garden, she watched Thomas and his bride stroll out arm-in-arm. She saw the young lady bend to smell a new blossom, and she saw her drop to the ground in a dead faint.

Thomas cried out for Meviny, and she ran to his side, staring stricken at the lady’s pale face. “Melviny, run to the house and tell your mama I need her to bring smelling salts,” Thomas gasped. “And tell one of the men to go for the doctor! Run, now!”

And Melviny flew off to the house, while the master came behind with his bride in his arms. Melviny and her mama stayed at Melinda’s side with cold compresses and smelling salts, and they heard her weak voice when at last her eyes fluttered open: “Thomas, Thomas are you there?” Thomas hurried to her side. “Yes, my love, I’m right here. Are you feeling better? You gave us all quite a scare!”

“Thomas, I’m dying. It’s true – I know it is. But nothing can take me from you forever. Our love is too strong. Thomas, I’ll come back to you. I’ll come back as a white bleedingdove and live in the snowball bush in the garden.”

“No, my love, you’re not dying, you’re not!” Thomas pleaded.

But three days later, his young bride passed away without saying another word, and her grave was planted over with the flowers that she loved. Melviny and her mama felt sorry for Thomas, and watched him grieve until he himself was almost in the grave beside his bride. But finally his grief forced him to close up the house and to go away to Europe, where the sights and the scents and the very air would not remind him of his beloved. He told Melviny and her mama and all the rest of the slaves that the land was theirs to work and live off of until he came back. And he went away.

Melviny continued to work in that garden every day. And every day, she looked for the white bleedingdove, but it didn’t come. War broke out, and the master stayed away. Then freedom came, and Melviny and the rest of the slaves were freed. But Melviny and her mother stayed on at the plantation, harvesting a good garden crop that year and fixing their cabin snug against the winter winds. They had stopped expecting to see the master again, but they hadn’t forgotten the snowball bush, still living – though not blooming – in the otherwise ravaged flower garden.

Then one day a letter came, announcing that Thomas was returning with a new bride. Melviny and her mama made the house ready for his return – and Melviny did her best to straighten up the garden, pulling the biggest weeds and pruning back the rampant growth. She was surprised to see that the snowball bush was in full, glorious bloom – the first time it had bloomed since Melinda had died. But she didn’t have time to tell her mama until they stood together at the end of the drive, waiting to greet Thomas and his new bride.

“Mama, did you see it? The snowball bush is just covered all over with flowers this morning! You think maybe because Mr. Whitledge is coming home today? You think we’ll see the white bleedingdove?”

“Hush, girl, you can’t still be dreaming about that white bleedingdove. There’ll be no such thing. Look, now, there’s a carriage coming this way!”

And there was. Thomas stepped out, and helped his new bride from the carriage. And as she was lifted down a mournful sound came from the garden. Melviny turned to see a white bleedingdove, sitting amid the blooms of the snowball bush.

“Look, Mama! Just look there!” But her mama shook her head, and greeted the couple and ushered them into the house. The white bleedingdove came every evening after that, and sat moaning in the snowball bush. The sound could be heard plainly in the big house, no matter how loudly Thomas’s new bride played on the piano or how far away she tried to get. It seemed to pierce her heart, and she cried all the time, and she never went into the garden.

“Make it stop,” she pleaded to Thomas. “Make that bird stop crying!”

Finally, Thomas had had enough. He took his gun and marched into the garden. And when he came near the bush, the bleedingdove rose up out of the bush and fluttered right in the air above his head. He raised the gun, and fired.

“THOMAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” A human scream sounded over the garden, and the bleedingdove flew away with a red stain over her heart. That night, as Thomas lay in his bed, he died suddenly of a heart attack. His new wife left, her heart also broken, but with grief.

The old house is still sitting there, neglected and decaying. A snowball bush still blooms each summer in its ruined garden, the petals foiling like tears into the rampant weeds. And flying in and out of the broken windows, nesting in the snowball bush, are dozens of white bleedingdoves with red stains over their hearts, grieving all the time.

-THE END -

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Written by Craig Dominey and Scott Dupoy

One warm spring day, I left my home in Washington, D.C. and took a long drive through the rolling, peaceful farm country in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. I worked in the city as a tax accountant, but most of my co-workers didn’t know about my secret hobby – I was a Civil War collector. Ever since I was a child, I had collected old Civil War books, maps, clothing, and in later years, weapons. Now as a middle-aged man, my interest had grown to what some would call an obsession.

Although it’s hard to believe today, this peaceful Virginia valley was the scene of some of the bloodiest battles of the war. Driving through this historic land not only satisfied my hunger for history, but calmed my nerves far away from the hustle and bustle of home.

Some folks say that ghosts wander the earth in places where horrible deaths took place, their lives suddenly ripped away from them before they knew what happened. So it’s no wonder that so many Civil War ghost stories come from the Shenandoah Valley.

But the human tragedy of the war didn’t weigh heavily on my heart at that time. Although I knew that many young men had lost their lives, the war to me was a fascinating chess game of strategies, maps, attacks and counter-attacks. So while I found these ghost stories intriguing, my interest was in studying battlefields, not myths and tall tales.

That is, until I met the mysterious woman on the roadside.

I was so carried away with my travels that day that I stayed in the valley until nightfall. I gazed with wonderment at the bright, full moon overhead. The winding road suddenly plunged into a long, dense stretch of woods, and if it wasn’t for that bright moon, I certainly would have been swallowed up in the black darkness.

A few miles into the woods, the moonlight faintly revealed a figure running beside the road in the distance. At first I thought it was a runner getting a bit of exercise for the night. But as I drove closer, I was surprised to see that it was a young woman, dressed not in jogging clothes, but in a long, dark blue dress with a white apron hanging over it. The dress looked like something women wore in another time – the 1800s, I guessed. Her hair was pulled back tightly from her strikingly beautiful face – a face that I noticed wasn’t flushed from her run, but was as white as snow.She was obviously in a great hurry, running swiftly beside my car, oblivious to my presence.

Since we were miles from any town, I pulled over and asked if she needed any help. “Why yes,” she answered breathlessly, jumping into the passenger’s seat. “I’m on my way to meet some friends, and find myself in need of some quick transport.” She seemed excited and a bit nervous as she immediately looked behind her, as if she was afraid someone was following.

As I drove away, she was silent for some time. When I would glance over, she would stare intently out into the dark woods. After a few minutes of riding in silence, she suddenly pointed at a side road stretching into the woods and blurted out, “There! That break in the trees on the right. That’s where my friends are!”

I slammed on the brakes and aimed my car down the long, bumpy dirt road. It was then that I heard a strange and unbelievable sound – horses, lots of them. From what I could tell, they were galloping up rapidly behind me!I looked into the rear view mirror, and I saw a sight that chilled me to the bone. I was being followed by a dozen horsemen, all in military uniform, armed and shooting directly at us!

My palms started to sweat. I stepped on the gas, but as fast as my car was, the soldiers on horseback lost no ground. “Can’t you go any faster?” the woman said, her voice calm but her bright eyes shining excitedly in the moonlight. I could hear the bullets whizzing close by the car windows. One of the riders got close enough to the car that I could finally see what he looked like. I could swear that he wore a Union Civil War uniform, blue and slightly tattered. His skin was pale, and not just because of the moonlight. As he rode closer to my window, I could see the trees in the forest right through him, as if he were a patch of mist!

Seeing me, he pulled out a pistol and aimed straight for my head. I let out a yell and made a sudden turn onto another side road as he fired, the bullet whizzing past. I was really starting to panic now – what in the world had I gotten myself into?

The woman suddenly spoke up again: “Over there! That’s where my friends are!” I looked where she was pointing, and saw several campfires burning deep in the forest. I drove as fast as I could toward the fires. If these people are her friends, I thought, maybe they can get us all out of this mess. Suddenly a loud bang erupted from underneath the car – my tire had blown! I swerved off the road and sideswiped a tree. As the car sputtered to a halt, the mysterious woman looked over at me with an expression not of fear, but of annoyance, as if our death-defying chase was a nuisance to her.

“Thank you for your kind assistance, sir, but I think I’m better off on foot,” she said. Then she jumped out of the car and ran as fast as she could toward the campfires. The soldiers on horseback rode past me without even a glance in my direction, chasing her into the forest. As the woman gradually faded from sight, so did the horsemen and the campfires.

Then, just as suddenly as they had arrived, they were gone. Only the silent, black forest and the bright moon remained.

I sat in my car in stunned silence for the remainder of the night, scared to make any move for fear of the ghostly soldiers returning. When the sun rose the next morning, I saw no sign in the forest of any fires or people. There were no foot or horse prints anywhere to be found. Was it all a dream?

An hour later, a tow truck driver arrived to take away my banged up car. He was quite curious as to why I was stuck so far out in the woods. I was so delirious at that point that I went ahead and told him the story, figuring he would at least have a funny tale to tell his friends after work. To my surprise, he got strangely quiet and nodded.

“You weren’t seein’ things, mister,” he said as he slowly took a sip from his steaming coffee cup. “What you saw was the ghost of Belle Boyd.”

Belle Boyd – that name seemed familiar to me, but I couldn’t place her. “She was a spy for the Confederacy,” continued the driver. “She once lived a few miles down the road from here. The story I heard was that she used to eavesdrop on the Union troops that captured the towns around here. And she’d sneak their battle plans out to Stonewall Jackson and other Confederate generals out in the field. She’d run through the battle lines in a long dress and kitchen apron while the Yankee troops fired on her.”

“She helped the Confederate forces a lot, but the Union troops eventually took over this whole area. They wiped out a lot of the soldiers that Belle tried to help. Ol’ Belle got put in prison, and eventually escaped to England. But she could never get over all those poor boys dyin’. Some folks say she still runs up and down these roads, tryin’ to deliver battle plans to the Confederates. Sad thing is, the war’s long over.”

The driver then hopped into the truck and lifted my car out of the ditch. “You really believe that story?” I asked him. The driver shrugged his shoulders and replied, “There are a lot of ghosts ’round here, mister. I guess it’s a good thing. Keeps us all from forgettin’ what happened.”

After my experience, I never returned to that part of Virginia – at least at night. I became fully convinced that my ghostly passenger was the famous Belle Boyd. And sometimes at night, I think about Belle and hope she has delivered her last message to the Confederate troops in the forest. Perhaps then she can finally find peace.

- THE END -

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