The Legend of Old Green Eyes

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Even at 243 years of age, by comparison, the United States is still a fairly young country.

But despite its relative infancy, America seems to have been fighting in one war or another since it declared independence from Britain in 1776.

But none of the wars over the last two and a half centuries have left a scar on American history quite like the Civil War.

By the time the Confederate South surrendered to the Union North, it's estimated that over 600,000 men, an incredible 2% of the country's population at that time, were left dead.

Countless films and books have been written about the Civil War.

Maybe because the war was so close to home, on American soil, there is an entire culture that exists to preserve its history.

Every year, Civil War battle reenactments take place on the same fields where the war was originally fought.

The legacy of the men who fought is an enduring heritage for many families who continue to pass down the story of their ancestors' heroism or what they suffered.

In short, there is no end to the amount of Civil War stories you can read about.

But there is an aspect of the Civil War that remains widely unheard of.

the paranormal legends and encounters that came out of it.

From Gettysburg, Shiloh, Antietam, and many others, the battlefields where thousands of men shed their blood are notorious

for unusual activity.

Ghost stories are one thing.

This story is something entirely different.

It is said that during the Battle of Chickamauga in the state of Georgia, the intense fighting and bloodshed attracted something

sinister.

The fact is, nobody is really sure what to call it, it, but it's been seen by park rangers, visitors, and locals driving through the area at night, who then even wrecked their cars in terror.

Some say it's humanoid, wearing clothing like a cape or duster coat with wild waist-length hair.

Others have called it a beast-like creature with fangs.

There are many theories about what it might be.

But there is one defining feature that seems to connect all of these stories.

the color of its eyes.

From the stranger side of American Civil War history, this is the story of the entity known as Old Green Eyes.

I'm Luke Lamana,

and this is Wartime Stories.

When the sun rose over Chickamauga on September 21st, 1863, the once picturesque landscape of rolling hills and forests was now one of complete devastation.

The Union Army had just captured a vital railway hub in Chattanooga, Tennessee, just over the nearby state line.

They then launched an offensive into northern Georgia.

On September 19th, they were met by the defending Confederates near the small town of Chickamauga.

What followed over the next 48 hours was an appalling bloodbath, even by the standards of the already brutal Civil War.

By the time the Northern troops retreated, leaving the Confederates victorious, over 36,000 men lay dead or wounded on the battlefield.

As the war moved on, the citizens of the nearby town, as was so often the case, flocked to the battlefield in an effort to aid the wounded and, more strenuously, bury the tens of thousands of corpses.

Looking to help in any way they could, the nuns of a nearby convent volunteered their services.

The sisters offered spiritual support and even pitched in with carrying the bodies and helping to dig the graves.

The whole ordeal was a lot to take in.

It was unlike anything these these women or the local townspeople had ever experienced.

The disturbing scene was especially hard on one of the sisters.

She had gone from living a quiet, sheltered life of prayer and religious study, and now

this

Lord,

I know we are called to be patient,

but when you said there will come a time when you will wipe every tear from our eyes and there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain,

oh Father, if only that could be today.

These boys shouldn't be fighting a war.

That one couldn't have been a day over 13.

Oh.

Uh

hello?

Is

is someone there?

Do you need help?

While attending to the bodies of the men, the young nun wanted to pause for a moment to rest.

She excused herself from the group and walked away to find a more secluded, wooded area, possibly to pray, her motions being somewhat overwrought.

But as she tried to collect herself, she heard something moving in the forest a short distance away.

This woman is the first known witness to the thing that has stalked the area since the battle concluded, so perhaps she can be credited with the birth of the legend.

But whatever it was she saw, it was nothing short of horrifying.

Hunched over the body of a dead soldier was what she described as a demonic-looking creature.

What terrified her even more was when she realized it was eating the corpse, tearing pieces of flesh away with a mouth full of sharp-looking teeth.

Thinking at first it might be some kind of wild animal, she knew she wasn't safe and tried backing away from it.

But then she stepped on a branch and the noise caused the creature to look up at her.

That's when she saw its eyes.

They were bright green, and in the shadow of the trees, it looked like they were glowing.

She had never seen a demon, but this sure as hell looked like one.

She instinctively grabbed the crucifix she wore around her neck and began calling out to God, commanding the creature to leave.

To her astonishment, it actually seemed to work.

The creature, still staring at her with its massive green eyes, suddenly screamed and then faded into nothing.

It would be the last time she saw the creature, but far from the last time it was seen.

Hey, it's Luke, the host of Wartime Stories.

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Great.

Brother,

you need to start saving for a new truck.

This old bucket of bolts just ain't it.

Huh.

What kind of scooby-doo contraption are they driving?

Green headlights?

Wild.

This next story is often referenced in articles and message boards discussing the legend of old green eyes.

It centers around an anonymous young man.

We'll call him Mark.

Sometime in the 1970s or 80s, Mark was heading to see his new girlfriend just over the Georgia State line.

His night already wasn't going well.

Right as he finished work, his car broke down, and it was about to rain.

Not wanting to miss his date, he talked his older brother into lending him a beat-up old pickup.

Since he was now running late, he decided to take a shortcut down Lafayette Road, which which ran right through Chickamauga.

Now driving with thick woods on both sides, the heavy rain had finally stopped, but a thick fog had rolled in across the old battlefield.

As he drove the old truck through the fog, he then saw something weird coming towards him in the other lane.

At first, he thought it was just another car's headlights, but then he noticed they were green.

Mark thought it was odd.

He'd never seen green headlights before.

He figured maybe they were some kind of special bulb.

As Mark got closer, he saw the green lights were very bright.

Then they started moving back and forth on the road ahead.

Still thinking they were headlights, Mark tapped his horn, wanting to tell this crazy nut to watch out.

But that just made things worse.

At the sound of his horn, the lights seemed to swerve right into his lane, lining up his truck for a head-on collision.

Mark started to think this driver must be drunk, so he leaned even harder onto his horn.

The lights were approaching fast, the collision was going to happen at any second.

Mark slammed on his brakes and tried to swerve out of the way.

As the old truck careened off the side of the road, Mark suddenly saw that the green lights weren't attached to another vehicle, they weren't attached to anything at all.

It was just two large, green, floating orbs of light darting back and forth across the road.

Oh, my head.

Oh,

oh man,

John's gonna kill me.

When Mark came to after the crash, the first thing he saw was that his brother's truck was completely wrecked.

The front end was now firmly wrapped around a large tree stump.

Luckily, from what he could feel, the only injury Mark seemed to have was a bump on his head.

But that might just have been his adrenaline.

Unfortunately, the headlights were now smashed and he couldn't see.

Everything around him on Lafayette Road was pitch black, except for a faint green glow.

Turning his head, the next thing Mark saw were the orbs, like two glowing green eyes hovering in the fog over the road.

Mark began to feel an inexplicable sense of terror as he watched them.

Then, they suddenly faded away.

Now even darker than it was, Mark felt another jolt of fear.

Something was moving around just outside the truck.

Turning to look toward the trees, Mark spotted a figure moving through the fog, only dimly lit by the moon overhead, enough for him to make out an outline.

It looked like a man with long dark hair hanging all the way down to his waist.

As he was staring at it, he then heard it.

The figure started moaning.

As it paced around the truck, clearly watching him, it was making these low, ominous, somber noises.

Mark had no idea what was happening, but it was sending chills down his spine.

And then, as quickly as the green orbs had vanished, the figure seemed to disappear into the surrounding darkness.

It was quiet.

Mark waited a while to see if anything else would happen, before then trying to open the door to get out.

In an instant, the creature had pounced on the hood of Mark's truck.

Now sitting just feet from him behind the cracked windshield, Mark could see it.

It wasn't human.

The creature had long, dirty hair, a wide mouth full of razor-sharp fangs, and two glowing green eyes.

Mark said at that point he wanted to scream, but for some reason he couldn't.

If Mark's story couldn't get any more strange, it does now.

According to Mark, staring at the creature's eyes somehow lulled him into a hypnotic trance.

Everything around them, the road, the trees, seemed to melt away.

When the vision came into focus, Mark was shocked to see bodies lying around him.

The ground was covered with the bodies of men in dark navy and gray uniforms.

In the distance, he heard the sounds of explosions, cracking sounds.

The ground was scorched.

The air had an odor to it Mark couldn't describe.

He could hear men screaming in pain, moaning.

The blaring sound of a car horn was what snapped Mark out of his vision.

A park ranger patrol vehicle was now approaching Mark's wrecked truck.

The last thing Mark remembered seeing was the creature leaping off of the hood and vanishing into the fog.

Two rangers jumped out of their truck and approached him.

As they helped him out of the truck, Mark, visibly shaken, could only ask the rangers if they had seen the green-eyed creature that was just there.

The rangers exchanged glances.

Clearly, they thought this poor kid was probably suffering from a concussion.

The rangers tried to assure him nothing was there, but Mark was adamant, so much to the point that they decided to at least search the area just to humor him.

They found nothing.

But these two men wouldn't be the last of the Park Rangers tangled up in the story of old green eyes.

Oh man, I don't know if I'll ever understand these living history nerds.

Yeah, why is that?

Why are these Civil War reenactment people running around in wool uniforms in this heat, pretending to shoot at each other.

I could think of a few better ways to spend a weekend.

I mean, you were in the Army, right, Ed?

What would you rather do?

Spend your Saturday night with a cold beer, your girl, or, you know, sweating your ass off playing war during a Georgia summer?

Well, when you put it like that, I guess the answer's pretty easy, but

I didn't have a choice when I was in.

Yeah, for these guys, it's more than plain pretend.

It's about keeping history alive, you know?

Like stepping back in time to relive the experience those soldiers had.

Well, call me crazy, but I happen to appreciate our modern comforts like air conditioning.

Yeah, I guess you have a point there.

Oh,

who is this guy?

Huh?

One of the uh reenactors?

Wandering around in the dark at 4 a.m.

I knew these guys were kooky.

Dave?

What's that, Ed?

Something ain't right about that guy.

The story of the young man who got run off the road by old green eyes is certainly the most intense encounter next to the nuns.

But the encounter that seems to have introduced this creature to the wider paranormal world is the one reported by a man named Edward Tinney during a 1981 interview with a local newspaper.

Before becoming a park ranger, Edward was an Army paratrooper, serving with the 11th Airborne Division through both World War II and the Korean War.

With his military career behind him, Edward moved into the education field, where he worked as a teacher and school principal.

He was originally from Chattanooga, Tennessee, and had a great love for history.

Edward eventually became a park ranger and later the chief historian of the Chickamauga Battlefield Park.

The incident took place a few years prior in 1976.

Edward and a fellow park ranger were out on the battlefield conducting a late-night patrol.

There was some kind of living history event going on in the park, and the two men were making their way out to the reenactor's encampment to do their routine inspections, making sure the area was being kept clean and everything was in order.

According to Edward, it was about 4 a.m.

when something happened.

As they they walked along a stretch of empty road towards an intersection, they were approached by a tall, imposing figure of an unknown man.

The two rangers weren't sure why, but something about the stranger immediately put them on edge.

The man approaching on the road ahead of them appeared taller than the average man.

It looked like he had stringy black hair that fell well past his shoulders, and it looked like he was wearing an old black riding coat.

What really freaked the park rangers out was how aggressively he was walking towards them.

The closer he got, the more tense they felt about meeting him.

Hoping to avoid a confrontation, the Rangers crossed to the other side of the road to give this stranger plenty of room to pass by them.

He did just that, walking by them at a fast pace.

But as he did so, Edward glanced over and caught a look at his face.

When it passed me, I could see its hair was long, like a woman's.

The eyes

I'll never forget those eyes

they were

glaring, almost greenish-orange in color,

flashing

like some sort of wild animal.

The teeth were long and pointed, like fangs.

I didn't know whether to run or scream or

what.

Then the headlights of an approaching car came blazing through the fog, and

this thing disappeared right in front of me.

Wherever there has been great suffering, people were always seeing strange things.

If they have been told for the last 150 years, it really is no surprise that that stories about old green eyes have changed.

A children's game of telephone is enough to prove that even in a couple of minutes, people tend to add and subtract from the original story, either because they can't remember the original or felt like making it more exciting.

As is, the creature's exact appearance and purpose vary from one story to the next.

For the people that do put stock in the stories about old green ice, some speculate that the creature is a guardian of the battlefield, meant to frighten people away from the area for some reason.

Others claim his roots go back much further, linking him to the spirits of ancient native tribes who lived on the land even before the Cherokee.

However, because of the variations, it's possible that, because Old Green Eyes became something of a local legend, some of the encounter stories are simply cases of misidentification.

In the search for answers about old green eyes, there is an encounter that took place on Chickamauga that mentions something similar.

It can be found in the 1953 book, The Official History of Catoosa County, written by Susie Blaylock McDaniel.

It's the account of a man named Jim Carlock.

Jim's story takes place just a decade after the nun's harrowing experience.

The people of Chickamauga may have already forgotten about her story after all that time, but in the summer of 1876, they would start hearing rumors that there was still something strange going on around the old battlefield.

Oh, God.

Why do I let you talk me into these things?

It was for a good cause.

You have to throw a few back for old Georgie on the centennial, Jimbo.

I always say it.

Don't I?

Whiskey don't agree with me.

Never has, never will.

I can feel it burning a hole in my gut right now.

Now, that's that there's just you finally discovering your manhood is all.

Oh, shut up.

I'm starting to think it's

you're a bad influence on me.

You know that?

What?

Me?

A bad influence?

I'd like to think I bring out the best in you, Jimbo.

I think my wife would have something to say about it.

Hold on.

What's wrong?

You see that down yonder on the road?

It's making its way towards us.

Oh, yes, I do.

What in blue blazes is that?

Is that a person?

You've ever seen a person that tall before?

It was July 4th, 1876, and the United States was celebrating its centennial, its 100th birthday.

Jim Carlock and his friends, like millions of other Americans, had been celebrating and partying hard into the night.

After enjoying the centennial festivities up in Chattanooga, Jim and his buddies, tired and probably a little bit drunk, made their way back home on horseback.

The route took them right across the old Chickamauga battlefield.

Riding on horseback, Jim was riding up front with a good friend he identified as Mr.

Shields.

Together, the two of them led the way down a winding dirt road, followed closely by a wagon that was filled with the more drunken men, who couldn't be trusted to stay on their horses, some of their more badly inebriated friends.

As they rode through the battlefield, Jim and Mr.

Shields noticed something taking shape ahead of them on the road.

In the dim moonlight, they could see a figure slowly moving toward them.

At first, it didn't seem like anything to worry about, but the longer they watched, the more uneasy they felt.

Jim said the figure was at least 10 feet tall with wild, white, frizzy hair.

When they tried to talk to it, there was no response, and things got tense.

Mr.

Shields must have gotten scared because he rushed up to the figure and started hitting and kicking it.

During the attack, the tall figure let out a high, baby-like cry, begging to be left alone, and then ran off into the darkness.

The idea of kicking and hitting a spectral being and sending it off crying seems a bit odd, to say the least.

But Jim's retelling of the story gave no indication indication that it was supposed to be funny.

Even though it was hard to see, Jim said he was sure they had seen something supernatural.

The ghost of a black washerwoman, somehow tied to the battle that had happened 13 years earlier.

No mention of green eyes was made by Jim, according to Susie McDaniel's book.

But it's possible stories like this are how legends begin, with details then being added over the following years of retellings.

At the time, Jim was adamant that they saw what appeared to be a 10-foot-tall ghost of a black washerwoman, but it was dark, and given that they were coming back from July 4th festivities, it stands to reason that Jim and his buddies were more drunk than they let on.

Honestly, it sounds like they very likely just assaulted a very real, very innocent, and probably very confused black woman carrying a laundry basket over her head on a late-night errand.

Jim's supernatural encounter and its correlation to the old green eyes legend is enough to make us look more closely at the other stories about the creature.

First, there is the story of the young man getting run off the road by old green eyes.

Very vivid and a story that has you on the edge of your seat.

But after some digging, it is likely a work of fiction, a short story written by author Craig Domini for the Moonlit Road website.

Written from the point of view of someone recalling the encounter as a memory, it seems like people sharing it online have either knowingly or unknowingly started passing it off as a true story.

The animalistic depictions of old green eyes in this story, as well as the nuns, are often repeated as known descriptions by anyone writing about the creature.

Then we have the story of Edward Tinney, the former soldier and then park ranger slash historian.

Skeptics of Edwards' encounter point out that the Chickamauga Battlefield Park was struggling to attract visitors in the late 1970s and early 80s.

After Edward was interviewed, some dismissed his story as an obvious attempt to generate renewed interest in the park, to attract more tourists who had an interest in paranormal legends.

That sort of thing has long been a popular draw for other battlefields like Gettysburg.

Only Edwards knows what really happened that night, but it's hard to miss that each of the three most well-known Old Green Eyes encounters have a similar story structure.

A dark, foggy night, someone making their way down an empty road, and then they are approached by a horrible creature, which turns out to be Old Green Eyes.

Many urban legends share this kind of symmetry, with each new version seeming to build on previous ones while unfolding in different locations and periods, each ending in its own unique way.

Edward Tinney passed away in 2010.

Without being able to ask him about it ourselves, there isn't much else to go on, aside from the interview he gave in 1981 and a short segment aired on a local Chattanooga news broadcast in 1999.

Whatever the truth is behind the legend of old green eyes, there is still something sinister about the old battlefield at Chickamauga.

The depiction of war painted by the men who witnessed the carnage at Chickamauga is arguably more unsettling than any ghost encounter.

Confederate soldier Larkin Poe wrote in his journal about what he saw riding through the field after the battle had ended.

The moon was far down the west and cast a ghostly light over the woods and fields.

The stillness of the night was unbroken except for the sound of my horse's hooves and the hoot of some solitary owl.

I'd seen an old house near Jay's Mill filled with wounded and suffering men

and I'd hardly started till I began to see dead soldiers yet unburied lying in and near the road.

I rode on, turning my horse first to the right, then to the left, to avoid the thick-strewn bodies.

In places, I saw where great trees had been splintered by shells and riddled my bullets.

Just before reaching the Brotherton house, I came upon a scene of death and destruction noteworthy,

even on that terrible field.

I saw a piece of artillery, evidently a federal piece, which had been knocked from the wheels by a direct hit from our guns.

And apparently, most of all the horses and men belonging to the gun had perished there,

for their bodies lay in grotesque heaps around their piece.

Whether spirit, monster, hallucination, or whatever it might be prowling the blood-soaked grounds of Chickamauga, There really is no need to justify the existence of something like old green eyes.

Many people have claimed to see it, and maybe they have.

Even if it is just a legend, something meant to instill a feeling of dread to anyone who visits the battlefield.

Nobody denies that the Battle of Chickamauga happened.

It's enough that Old Green Eyes exists just to remind us of the unspeakable horror of what did happen there all those years ago.

Wartime Stories is created and hosted by me, Luke Lamana.

Executive produced by Mr.

Bollin, Nick Witters, and Zach Levitt.

Written by Jake Howard and myself.

Audio editing and sound design by me, Luke Lamana, and Alex Carpenter.

Additional editing by Davin Intag and Jordan Stidham.

Research by me, Jake Howard, Evan Beamer, and Camille Callahan.

Mixed and mastered by Brendan Kane.

Production supervision by Jeremy Bone.

Production coordination by Avery Siegel, additional production support by Brooklyn Gooden, artwork by Jessica Cloxton Kiner, Robin Vane, and Picada.

If you'd like to get in touch or share your own story, you can email me at info at wartimestories.com.

Thank you so much for listening to Wartime Stories.