Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park

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The Battle of Kennesaw Mountain, fought June 18 to July 2, 1864, is the source of the battlefield’s hauntings. Ghostly soldiers walk the grounds; gunshots and cannons are heard. Also reported here are ghost deer who run at the witness and then disappear when they get close. The smell of blood and gunpowder are also described by witnesses.

If you've had a paranormal experience here, or have any additional information about this location, please let us know!



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Geographic Information

Address:
900 Kennesaw Mountain Dr
Kennesaw, GA 30152
United States

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GPS:
33.9830769, -84.57802559999999
County:
Cobb County, Georgia
Nearest Towns:
Marietta, GA (2.7 mi.)
Kennesaw, GA (3.5 mi.)
Fair Oaks, GA (5.0 mi.)
Smyrna, GA (7.8 mi.)
Acworth, GA (8.1 mi.)
Woodstock, GA (8.8 mi.)
Vinings, GA (10.4 mi.)
Powder Springs, GA (10.5 mi.)
Mableton, GA (11.6 mi.)
Mountain Park, GA (11.7 mi.)

Contact Information

Web:
http://www.nps.gov/kemo
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Please note: It is your responsibility to acquire appropriate permissions before investigating any location listed on this site. Private property should be respected at all times, as should all posted signs concerning trespassing, hours of operation and other local regulations. Many "ghost hunters" have been arrested because they failed to contact property owners and/or local authorities ahead of time.

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Comments (33)

    • Once me and my dad saw a girl holding her baby in the back of his truck when we were leaving a hikeing trail im so into ghost but that scard me so much i hoped out of the truck

  2. While hiking during the hot summer months on the trail opposite pigeon hill, we had a unique experience. I grew up locally and have hiked those woods a million times but I have never had anything like this happen. We were remarking on the stagnant heat and humidity that day. Suddenly I heard some commotion to my right and I turned to look when a gust of cold air burst through. It enveloped me then whooshed on to the other side and into the woods. I whirled around and watched as the whatever slipped away, rustling the tree’s as it went. The odd thing was that the trees did not move above it. It was completely self contained. Weird!

  3. during a war noted for bloody frontal assaults, Sherman was famed for flank attacks-vision decades ahead of his contemporaries he would attack weak points of the enemie’s line, usually moving off to the flank forcing whole positions to be abandoned without much confrontation. Because of that his men trusted him, if he sent them into battle it was because there was no choice, not just because he was making noise.

    At Kennesaw Mountain though Sherman fior the first, and last time, launched a frontal assault on an entrenched position causing huge losses among his men. Although the south were moved off and he never admitted a mistake he never again launched a frontal assault.

    For their part the south was defending the last serious defensive position before Atlanta. if Atlanta and it’s rail yards fell, much of the south would be cut off from Lee’s army to the north.

    for both sides this was therefore a desperate battle and the sort to encourage hauntings.

  4. This is the scariest place period. During the daytime I drove through a long stretch in middle of battlefield. I felt dread .. so much .. I can’t explain. I felt so frightened. . I mean scared for no reason. Whatever happened there. I don’t know. But this was during the day! As soon as I crossed the border I was free

  5. My friends and I decided to go Ghost Hunting. We came across an ummarked field and began video, & audio recording, on separate devices, and also a lot of pictures. We heard guns and canons SEVERAL times and what sounded like medical supplies in the area we stood, on both devices. All the pictures I took have some kind of orb in them..no bugs..no dust being stirred up. It was too cold for either of those things. I won’t lie it was awesome!

  6. Hello I visited Kennesaw Mountain and had some great evps by the monument I had 2 names given to me on my digital recorder Albert Mustokey and a man who’s last name is Kiest

  7. One Spring morning, my wife and I were hiking the Kolb Loop Trail (I think that’s where we were) when on the other side of a thicket to our right we were startled by a sudden rustling sound. As we looked over and beyond the thicket, two HUGE shaggy grey bucks were kind of sparring at each other. Then we noticed the rest of the herd, half a dozen or so big shaggy grey deer. They had to have been at least 5′ at the shoulder. I think there was one more younger buck and a few does. They spotted us and as a group, ran past us, parallel to, but still on the other side of the thicket. I am 6’4″ and I was easily eye-to-eye with the two big ones. They ran off into the woods, and that was that. We spend a lot of time on the mountain and in the surrounding area, and we have never seen anything like that!

  8. My friend and I were almost seriously hurt when a large tree branch crashed to the ground where we just were 20 seconds ago – as we walked back to our car from the Illinois monument.

    Two years ago I had the exact same experience when walking thru the Alatoona battlefield – I was almost killed when a large tree branch crashed to the ground where I had just been 30 seconds ago. This occurred near the parking lot – again in an area where there was a lot of fighting.

  9. So recently I was hiking on the mountain with my family. Nothing out of the norm accept we did start at around 6:30. we made it to the top and were beginning our descent since it was beginning to get dark. We were about at the .4 mile mark and the visibility at this point was maybe 10ft. We continued walking making sure we were careful not to trip. Suddenly we stopped as we thought we heard someone yell HELLO? we all froze and and asked one another did you hear that? Then again only this time what sounded like a male voice said a more distinct HELP! not knowing exactly what to do we tried to call out to the cry by saying HELLO WHERE ARE YOU?!? but only after our reply was silence we stood there trying to call out to this person but no one responded. We then quickened our pace and left the trail as soon as possible. In the case that someone was hurt we did approach some hikers that came down about 20 minutes after us but none of them saw or heard anything except from deer.

  10. Hike here all the time. Always a very eerie feeling once you get past the first part of the mountain where there aren’t so many people. The last 4 mile or so drag is the creepiest. Constantly feel watched from the woods. Lots of strange smells and sounds. There is one clearing you can see from the trail towards the end that always gives me chills. There’s a random bench along the path that walks you up to the clearing. That’s usually when i start smelling strange things. The deer here are so relaxed around people it makes you wonder if it’s because they can see all the ghosts wandering around all the time. It’s unusual to see deer behave the way they do at kennesaw mountain. Sometimes we stop to take pictures of the deer. A few weeks ago I took about 7 photos and in some of them, even the deer appear to be phantom like in the photos. In several of them, part of the deer’s bodies seem to be transparent, and in others they just look normal. It does not seem to be an effect of lighting or anything like that. Maybe one day i’ll work up the courage to step into that clearing for an EVP!

  11. Last year I went hiking with a friend. We went late, so the sun was setting when we reached the top. We started quickly walking down and I had a very weird feeling (happens when I go near cemeteries and homes where people died). We saw someone walking upwards with a flashlight. I laughed and said “uht oh, we’re in trouble. They are kicking us out”. We continue to walk and I’m expecting a park worker to get onto us. The person walked off of the trail, but we still saw the flashlight. I started to get scared it was someone that would hurt us, so I intensely watched the light. As we got closer, it looked like someone turned the light off. I was really worried it was someone trying to scare us, but when we got to where I had seen it, no one was there (doesn’t mean much, but I could “feel” someone there). We thought we were crazy, but The light was real.

  12. This is absolutely true. I grew up in battle field west off cannon way. Stephanie court is named after me by my father the developer and builder of both neighborhood’s. Battle field west off of mount Calvary road is where my childhood home of 20+ years is. That land backs up to one large secluded portion of the park and was part of the battle grounds. As children we discovered not only old gun’s but a half a cannon ball and other things as our in ground pool was under construction and in digging in the creek. If your interested in more you may contact me. I have lots of old photos of the area.

  13. Stephanie,

    Before that was your childhood home, it was part of my grandfather’s farm. I am sure we could swap some interesting stories if your are interested. According to my grandfather, there was an Cherokee village there before they were moved to OK. You can contact me at kebramlett@gmail.com if you wish.

  14. I bought a house very close to the Kennesaw Battlefield. I lived there from 1995-2002. Almost as soon as I moved in I started to hear heavy footsteps going through the living room but only when I was in a different room. They seemed harmless and I didn’t feel any fear about them. However, more things began to happen. I started hearing a high pitched voice seeming to come from the fireplace. I still wasn’t really scared. I can’t explain why except that whatever it was seemed harmless. Then I was in the shower one day and the water went completely cold. I thought something was wrong with the water heater but when I turned to look the faucet had been turned all the way to cold. Then I started to get nervous. I am a Christian but I know many things in this world are still unexplained. The final straw was when I was in bed with my new husband and we heard a loud noise. We both thought it sounded like the refrigerator door being slammed. We got up to check doors, etc. The house was locked up. There is more to tell but this is getting too long. I started asking others for help and learned some prayers to say telling these spirits to go away and that they did not belong there. Someone also gave me some sort of incense to put along the door frames. Eventually whatever or whoever it was left.

  15. I grew up about 100 yards from the Kenn. Mt. battlefield park and had one very weird experience that still haunts me. When I was about 12 years old I was walking home as it got dark, from a friends house. I took a shortcut where I jumped a fence and went through a pasture, it got dark as I was walking through, when I got home I came in as usual and was walking down the hall to my room. when I turned the corner in my ear I heard a sigh, loud and like a whisper “hhhhhhhhuhhh”. I sprinted to my parents room and I was super freaked out. my dad said, nothing to worry about, calm down , all that. So then my mom says ok ill show you its ok, I have to lock up the house anyways. so she walked with me back through the house and it was fine, she locked the backdoor and then again the loud sigh, same spot as earlier, we both heard it and both immediately ran to the back bedroom. It was so freaky that when I remember that it was just a blur in my mind, scariest thing I’ve ever experienced. I found out the area around my house was used as a union camp and a hospital and the particular woods I hiked through had cannons set up from the Ohio battery. Sometimes the house (built in the 1980’s) will get a feeling where you feel like you need to leave, like get out. I’ve lived in so many places. houses, apartments now and I have never experienced it. That house has something up with it and I think that whole battlefield area has an energy to it. When i go back and stay sometimes I wake up in the night and just feel like I’m being watched, like someones standing over me. I also used to get horrifying nightmares that I couldn’t explain once I woke up. I don’t ever get nightmares like that anymore. I also used to say lots of prayers for whatever it was to go away, it seems to have worked somewhat but the place is very strange.

  16. I’ve been on a few of the trails and I had a strange happening. Not sure if it was paranormal per say but I was walking the Environmental trail listening to music and every time I got to a certain spot on the trail, my music would cut off and I’d hear this weird scratchy sound. Kind of staticy but when I looked at my phone, it only showed that my music had been paused. I still love the trails though. Beautiful place

  17. I grew up near Kennesaw battlefield and I don’t remember this but my parents said when I was 4 or 5 years old I was playing in the yard and I came inside and said Mom what is the man on the horse doing out there. She went to look and saw nothing and asked me what he looked like, i explained I saw a man on a horse and he was wearing blue and had badges on his shoulder and had a sword. She thought about asking a neighbor but then realized I likely saw a ghost. She saw a ghost when she was little and realized that kids are more likely to see them. He was looking out like off in the distance and evaluating a battle. We found out there were thousands of union troops moving over the area that was where I described the ghost. He must have been left over from what happened 150 years before.

  18. Reading some of these experiences has prompted me to share ours from 2006. We had just moved here from Burlington, VT and was training for the 60 mile three day walk that September. This was a humid stagnant heat type of day in mid August. We started our 12 mile walk in the morning and on our way back we had not one but two rather interesting experiences. The first was a cold burst of air coming out from the woods onto the battlefield and the other odd experience occurred near one of the confederate monuments we were talking about being from Vermont, Yankees per se, and all of a sudden a large tree branch fell from a large tree nearly hitting us. We were startled and decided not to discuss any north vs. south stories on our hikes. The park is beautiful, peaceful and lovely in the morning or dusk is the best time to see deer. Always have your dog on a lease for coyotes have also been sighted.

  19. My sister and me were hiking up the little kennesaw mountain and we heard cannon shots. I thought I was hearing things but my sister heard it too. True story.

  20. My eleven year old son and I took some time in September, 2015 on a weekday afternoon to walk up the trail to the Cheatham Hill/Illinois monument. I’ve walked and run the trails for two decades and have always had reverence and experienced “feelings” at certain places, and always expect that, no big deal. We started at the parking lot off Cheatham Hill Road (so we’d approach the monument from the bottom). Some firefighters had just finished a run and were leaving, but we were the only people walking the trail that we could see. We approached the treeline from the field area and I realized I was hearing some disembodied yells coming from the treeline. Thought it might be some other kids playing. The yells were infrequent, just sounds, not words. By the time we’d walked almost the whole way to the bridge at the bottom of the battlefield/monument area, I realized that no one had emerged on the trail and the yells were strange and decided to turn my I-phone recorder on (I’m older and hardly ever think to photograph or record things, so that in itself was unusual that I was recording). I kept the recorder on all the way to the top of the hill, and about half way up the hill finally asked my son if he’d noticed the periodic yells. He had. When we got to the top, we sat a few minutes and then went to look at the arched hole in the ground where the Union soldiers had tried digging. My son got down by the hole to look and we hiked back. The entire time, we never saw any other people on the trail or at the monument. It was a Tuesday afternoon about 2pm. When we got home, I listened to the recording. The yells were there, as well as some other sounds, which we’d not heard on the trail. My husband, a retired Marine, thinks they sound like artillery fire (he doesn’t believe in ghosts, but couldn’t explain this one). Later on, months later (I’m embarrassed to say) I figured out how to turn the volume up on the recording, and heard the following: At the bottom of the hill, near the bridge, a woman’s voice says “…save it..” and a man’s voice says, “…there’s some things here I don’t trust…” with another, lower man’s voice and words are indistinguishable. Then you can hear footsteps and my breathing on up the hill, and at one point I’d stopped for my dog to sniff around, and a man’s voice (barely audible) says, “dog.” Halfway up, when I ask my son if he hears the voice calling….before he answers on the recording, a voice that’s nearer to me than him says, “Them soldiers is dead.” It’s a boy’s voice, answering just before my son says yes. At the top of the hill, just before I’m heard telling my son not to crawl into the hole, another voice, maybe the same boy’s voice whispers, “did you find this?” I wonder if he was talking about my phone… And the final strange thing….I went back with my husband months later to walk off a great dinner at Chicken and the Egg….it was almost dusk and I lingered behind my husband after walking down the hill, so was walking back up alone, not recording this time. Upon reaching midway up, my breathing started getting really labored and I found myself with tons of anxiety. At first I was just thinking I’ve become so out of shape it was alarming…I’m 55. But since then have been back a few times and have not been able to replicate the distress I felt that evening. I’ve walked up and down that hill and others, and have never felt that out of breath again (or ever in my lifetime really). I am wondering if I was somehow feeling what some of the soldiers felt that terrible day. That’s about it. I have much respect for the site and don’t really want to go back with a recorder, because I’m slightly afraid to mess with it. But I believe there are many souls there who deserve our reverence.

  21. Late one afternoon during the summer a few years ago, I was hiking with my family and we were pretty deep in the woods on a trail we had never been on. I was hanging back from the rest of the group because I felt like something was watching me. I turned to my right and no joke, I saw a soldier in a gray uniform. He was young, like late teens or early 20s. He just winked at me and started to lay down in the woods. I walked over to see if he was still there… he was gone. A little bit later, still on the same trail(again, we had never hiked this trail before), my mom and I stopped at a small clearing in the woods and smelled cinnamon apples. Then she looked at me and said there was a house here. As we continued up the trail, we found a sign telling us that there had been a house there during the war.

  22. what do I need to do to get a permit to investigate here I lived about 15 mins from here and have always felt something Everytime I have went walking would love to see what I could find there.

  23. I’ve lived here for almost 6 years and I’ve personally never had an extreme paranormal experience but the areas where there are parts of buildings from the civil war I get weird vibes. The vibes that I feel aren’t necessarily bad they’re just weird if you know what I mean. My mother has said in a certain area of the trail she gets bad vibes and she either runs or quickly walks through it. The only thing that I guess you could say is paranormal that I know of is the grave of the unknown soilder. The grave of the unknown soilder is a grave that is off the side of the trail. Someone found the remains of a soilder from the civil war and buried them there and they put a headstone at the grave. That’s all I really know about it.

    • I have always felt the same on the trails, have walked and run them for over 20 years now Sydney. Once I just had to run. I was with another woman and just explained to her that I had an inkling that I wasn’t getting enough exercize by walking…had to run. I was too embarrassed to tell her that I was feeling basically scared out of my mind for no reason! I never feel it at that grave, however.

      • Sydney where is that grave? Are you speaking of Cheatham Hill? I have hiked Cheatham, Kennesaw, and the trails off Burnt Hickory. At Burnt Hickory, there are ruins of an old church, just boulders, but I am drawn to it, and I think that is called New Salem Church Trail.

  25. Sydney where is that grave? Are you speaking of Cheatham Hill? I have hiked Cheatham, Kennesaw, and the trails off Burnt Hickory. At Burnt Hickory, there are ruins of an old church, just boulders, but I am drawn to it, and I think that is called New Salem Church Trail.

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