It reminded him of how many men had suffered and died here. What was it his great-grandmother in Ohio once said? Something like, “Your great-gran-daddy fought in a terrible battle at a place called Franklin.” He was walking over the same ground where his ancestor had fought. Wasn’t it a strange coincidence that today was the anniversary of that struggle? It had lasted just five hours, but what a bloody, disastrous battle it had been.
Paul walked without considering the time, for he was in no hurry to return to the motel. He found the pressures of his work beginning to leave him. Almost automatically, his feet followed a path that led from the house across the fields. Where was he going? Did it matter?
Finally, the path brought him around to the back of the house, and near the porch he saw the figure of a man getting on a horse. If the fellow paused, Paul decided he would speak to him. On second thought, he would take the initiative and hail him.
“Hello, there. Nice horse.”
“Yep. Had my own horse shot from under me. But I suppose it doesn’t matter. Whether you ride or whether you go on foot, you are still at their mercy tonight.”
This was strange talk. Paul wasn’t frightened, but he did find himself tingling slightly.
The man spoke again. “If you’re coming with me, you had better find a pistol or a carbine; otherwise you won’t last long out there. But not many of us will live through tonight, anyway.”
What was he talking about? thought Paul, now close enough to see the man fairly well. He had a mustache, a short beard, and eyes that bored straight through you, and he sat there in the after-dusk, humming to himself.
“We are a band of brothers and native to the soil, hm, hm, hm, hmm . . . And when our rights were threatened, the cry rose near and far, hurray, for the Bonnie Blue Flag that bears a single star.”
Good lord, thought Paul, they must be having one of those battle reenactments out there today, and this fellow thinks that I am part of it. From his dress, Paul assumed that the man was an officer. His hat was black cloth with small gilt buttons on the sides; strands of gold braid met in the front in a four-leaf clover without a stem. He wore it with the leather visor pulled down, almost as if he were trying to protect his face. At his belt were not only a carbine and pistol but a stout sword as well.
“What kind of carbine is that you’re wearing?”
“It’s an Enfield .577. What do you have?”
“Me? Nothing. Man, I’ve just seen them in books. I never shot one, or a pistol, either. A sword? I wouldn’t know what to do with that.”
The stranger raised his eyebrows in surprise. “You had better go over to the Carter house then, or into town. This is no place for you tonight. That fool Hood thinks he’s as brilliant as Lee, but he’s sending my men to be slaughtered!”
Then he seemed to be talking to someone by his side. The officer’s voice rose in anger. “They have three lines of works, and they are all completed.”
If there was a reply, Paul didn’t hear it. But he did hear the officer’s voice once more, and above the rustle of autumn leaves, the words floated back to him strong and clear.
“Well, Govan, if we are to die, let us die like men!”
With that, Paul saw the stranger, who had never bothered to introduce himself, fling his cap furiously into the air and then ride off. From the distance came the shout, “Charge men! Charge! Do you hear me, do you hear . . . ” And the sound of the voice faded away in a maelstrom of shot and shell, musketry and cannon. Then smoke, or was it mist, seemed to lie all about him. Paul thought he heard a regiment band strike up the strains of “Annie Laurie.”
A few seconds later came the most awesome sound that Paul had ever heard. A veritable chorus of men’s voices shattered the air with the fierce, blood-curdling attack cry that Union troops had quickly learned was the Rebel Yell.
Paul Levitt did what many raw recruits had done when they heard that yell: He began to run. As he ran, his heart pounded. He seemed to be surrounded by the fire of thousands of small arms and the roar of shells. Death pervaded the very atmosphere. He thought he was heading back to his car but, losing his sense of direction, he found himself stumbling about in the graveyard not far from the house. It was a cemetery provided by Carnton shortly after the battle, because a day later more than 1,700 Confederate men lay dead in the fields near this home.
Finally, Paul made his way back to his car. What was it his friend Carter had said? That “on this ground the rows of dead once stood six men deep, so close they could not fall.”
Paul slept poorly, for all night long he dreamed that he was in the midst of one furious charge after another. But early the next morning, he was out at the house again. If he had been part of some supernatural experience or seen a ghost, as he believed he had, he wanted to understand it.
He was fortunate to arrive on a day when Bernice Seiberling was there. Mrs. Seiberling, a delightful, gray-haired lady with a thorough knowledge of the history of Carnton, had long been guiding visitors through the house.
“I would imagine that a house with this much history has some ghost stories connected with it,” Paul said tentatively, as a way to introduce the subject.
“Oh my, yes,” said Mrs. Seiberling, not reluctant to share stories of some of the spirits. And she began to talk about a former cook at Carnton during Civil War days and the ghost’s ways of getting attention.
“I had been aware of her for quite a while, for I would hear glasses clinking in the kitchen as if someone were washing dishes. Then I began to hear her in other areas of the house. One day I had a tour going, and it sounded as if rocks were being thrown at the windows and breaking them.
“Most of the noises were coming from one room. When we reached it, we found a framed picture of the house lying face up on top of the heater, its glass shattered in a million pieces. It was as though someone had carefully placed it there. One of the men on the tour took his camera and made a picture of it, for, he said, ‘It’s impossible for that picture to have fallen in such a way.’
“On another occasion,” Mrs. Seiberling continued, “I was here alone on a cold winter day and kept hearing a noise in a small enclosed porch at the back of the house, so I went to investigate. We keep a box of old glass panes on a shelf there. I found two panes of the thin old glass, unbroken, one lying on each side of the door. The box, of course, was still on the shelf. It’s as though the spirit has a sense of humor and likes to play tricks on me. We had all heard things but had no idea what was causing them until one day a descendant of the Carnton family said, ‘You know there was a murder in this house, don’t you?’
“It seems that one of the field hands murdered a young girl in the kitchen in the early 1840s or before, probably due to some motive such as jealousy. There was prejudice on the part of house servants toward those who did the heavy work on the plantation, and the girl may have rejected the field hand or had another sweetheart.
“Sometimes it sounds exactly like dishes are being washed. One night ten of us were all in the dining room having our regular board meeting of the Carnton Society. The lady sitting beside me turned to me and said, ‘I think I hear someone in the kitchen.’ I just answered, ‘No.’ She turned to me again in a few minutes and said, ‘I know someone is in there,’ and this time I said, ‘There is no one in the kitchen.’ But she got up and went back there.
“When she returned and sat down, she had the strangest expression on her face. ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘No one is there.’ I told the other members of the board about hearing the cook and her antics, and they believed me. Even many visitors who come here ask me if we have spirits in the house. It amazes me that strangers seem to feel it, although when there are lots of workmen around, we don’t hear the spirits as much.
“A workman told me he saw a beautiful girl with dark hair in the upstairs hall. His eyes were huge, and his face was white; he won’t work up there now unless someone is with him. Whether he saw one of the two surviving Carnton children who had grown
into womanhood, or not, I don’t know. The Carntons lost three children out of five in infancy. That seems shocking to us, but many people didn’t even live to middle age a hundred or so years ago.”
Paul had begun to doubt that he would hear any story relating to his own experience, when finally Mrs. Seiberling changed the subject.
“I hope you won’t think I am silly when I tell you something else that has been reported to us here. Visitors say they have seen a Confederate soldier who walks the perimeter of this property. I don’t laugh at them anymore, for there have been times in the late afternoon, especially in fall, when I have heard my own ghost soldier or, should I say, the sound of heavy footsteps. When I hear those striding feet, I hurry to look out, but the back veranda is always empty.
“This house was used as a hospital after the Battle of Franklin, and the bodies of four Confederate generals were placed on that back porch. The most loved general was the Irishman Pat Cleburne, and all the next day, men who had survived the battle filed past, paying their last respects to him. It is said that when Cleburne died, the South lost a general second only to Stonewall Jackson. Before he was buried, Mrs. Carrie McGavock, mistress of the plantation, took the general’s cap, later presenting it to the State of Tennessee Museum.”
“What did the cap look like?” Paul asked.
“It was a round, black cap with little buttons on each side. I don’t know how many. And there were strips of gold braid that came up to the front and ran into a four-leaf clover. Poor General Cleburne. They say he was a very brave man.”
Black with gold braid, a four-leaf clover—Paul remembered that cap, and as Mrs. Seiberling went on talking, he missed part of what she was saying about the names of former residents of Carnton.
“People who have lived here and others in the area have reported hearing a Confederate soldier pace to and fro on the front porch. They come back and ask if I have heard him. I tell them, yes, I have heard him many times.”
Struck by the similarity of the cap on the officer he had seen and the one belonging to the general, Paul had heard what he had come to find out. He believed that the stranger he had seen the evening before was none other than the spirit of General Pat Cleburne. But how could he tell Mrs. Seiberling such a story? He simply let her talk on.
“I warn you, this house has a pull about it, and if you ever visit it, you’ll come back,” said Bernice Seiberling. “People return again and again.”
“Return again and again” echoed in Paul’s mind. It may be that spirits do, too, he thought.
Carnton is a timeless place. It is a place where “the dead once stood . . . so close they could not fall,” where bullets came thick as rain, and where soldiers pulled their caps down over their faces in a desperate, futile attempt to protect themselves. It is a place to shudder at men’s ferocity toward other men. It is probably Tennessee’s most haunted house.
Carnton Plantation is in Franklin, Tennessee, not far from Nashville. The house is open seven days a week, Monday through Saturday 9 am to 5 pm, and Sunday from 11 am to 5 pm. Classic tours are offered throughout the day. The plantation’s twenty-two rooms contain much of the original furnishings, which are from the period 1820 to 1860. All the woodwork is wood-grained to resemble mahogany or rosewood. The house was decorated not long after the excavation of Pompeii, when mustard yellow, soldier blue, and Pompeii red were in vogue. Visit boft.org/carnton or call (615) 794-0903.
THE FREE SPIRIT
ASHTON VILLA, GALVESTON, TEXAS
Miss Bettie was a free spirit—so free that there are some who believe that even after death she was able to return to beautiful Ashton Villa.
James Brown of Galveston was a proud man. He was proud of the fortune he had made in the hardware business, of building the first brick house in the state, of being a Texan, and of his daughter Bettie.
But as time went on, it appeared that Bettie had a tragic flaw.
Her home was the palatial Ashton Villa—fortunately completed in 1859, for, due to the Civil War, nothing was built from 1861 to 1865. Galveston was blockaded during the greater part of the war, first captured by the Federals in October 1862 and then recaptured three months later by the Confederates.
Born in 1855, “Miss Bettie,” a lovely, golden-haired child, lived in an exciting atmosphere. During the war years the house served as a hospital for Confederate soldiers, and, as Galveston was alternately in the hands of both armies, served as a headquarters for both. Union and Confederate generals came and went. Over and over again it has been said in Galveston that the swords of surrender were exchanged between the North and South in the Gold Room, Ashton Villa’s ornate, formal living room.
Soon after the war ended, Galveston began to regain its prosperity. Wharves were again crowded with ships laden with merchandise, old stores were remodeled, and new ones were opened. Wartime damage was repaired, and returning soldiers came home to resume their trades and professions. It was a bustling port. The late 1800s arrived, and Galveston became a celebrated trading center. Ships from around the world dropped anchor in its busy harbor. Fortunes were made overnight, and The Strand, the business district of this seaside city, became “the Wall Street of the Southwest.”
One of the most picturesque and romantic cities in the South, Galveston was the perfect setting for a beautiful woman. Here Rebecca Ashton Brown, the favorite daughter of financier James M. Brown, lived an adventurous life, the likes of which most Victorian ladies did not dare even imagine. A legend in her own time, she scandalized many with her liberated ways. She often traveled alone, smoked in public, and never married—shocking for a woman of her day.
Miss Bettie, as she was most often known, was the epitome of the frivolity and opulence that the period exuded. A free spirit, she traveled to Munich, Dusseldorf, and other art centers of Europe. Preferring travel and adventure to giving up her freedom, Miss Bettie had many beaux but rejected marriage. One fellow even quaffed champagne from her gilded slipper.
Nine years after the end of the Civil War, a fashionable summer resort for the wealthy opened in Waukesha, Wisconsin. It was called Fountain Spring House, and the arrival at its doors of a Southern belle from Galveston, Texas, was reported in the Milwaukee Journal. “She made her appearance with sixteen trunks filled with such finery as Waukesha never before beheld on one woman; and with her carriage, her liverymen, servants, a coachman, and coal-black horses.” The other guests at the hotel were stunned by such a display.
Her beauty was emphasized by her magnificent gowns, and it was said that Miss Bettie often appeared in three different costumes in one day. It was always she who led the grand marches. At one Christmas ball she wore a handsome, black-velvet princess gown. On its train were leaves embossed in solid gold, and in her hand she carried an enormous ostrich fan studded with real pearls. That night her golden-haired Grecian beauty was a striking contrast to the appearance of her escort, an arrestingly handsome man with black hair and a beard. This was one of the few nights when Miss Bettie seemed to laugh delightedly and talk attentively to her escort. In repose, her face had come to look more and more unhappy.
Her frequent trips abroad were an occasion to collect art objects and curios, paintings, and tapestries from many foreign lands. Among her favorites were costumes and a collection of unusual fans. These treasures were kept in a small alcove in Ashton Villa’s ornate living room, called the Gold Room, where she often entertained.
In 1920 she died, still a mysterious and enigmatic woman. The mansion once so full of life became a museum. The house was beautifully restored with Miss Bettie’s paintings and her furniture. The Gold Room is as beautiful a show-place today as it was when she was alive.
The villa’s carriage house has often been used as living quarters for a caretaker. This is where Terry O’Donohoe stayed one weekend to fill in for a friend named Don Ross, the tall, darkly handsome young man who was then caretaker of the mansion. Illness in the family necessitated Ross’s being away overnight. Nothing was said to
anyone: O’Donohoe simply took Ross’s place. It is doubtful that anyone even knew O’Donohoe was not the regular caretaker.
Just before O’Donohoe went to bed that night, he noticed some heat lightning and the oppressive stillness of the air outside. “We’re going to get some rain,” he thought. Buffy, Ross’s dog, was behaving peculiarly, following him everywhere and underfoot constantly. What was wrong with the animal? Perhaps Ross was used to this, but it was getting on O’Donohoe’s nerves. He decided to put the dog outside.
Sometime after midnight he was awakened by an ear-shattering crash of thunder, followed by smaller volleys close by. The dog was barking wildly. O’Donohoe’s first thought was that someone was trying to break into the mansion, and, mindful of his duty, he hurriedly threw on his clothes. Outdoors the rain lashed at him angrily, and one bolt of lightning after another erupted over his head. It was a devil of a night. He dashed under the canopy of huddled trees near the villa, but nothing was any protection against the storm, and he was drenched.
Inside the villa, O’Donohoe’s first impression was that the house could not have been any quieter. He had turned on the lights and already checked two rooms, however, when he heard people talking. It was a man and a woman, their voices raised in angry argument. Shrinking back against the wall, O’Donohoe had almost convinced himself that someone with a right to be in the house had come back unexpectedly when he realized that all was again quiet.
O’Donohoe waited for about five minutes, then he decided to continue his check of the house. When he reached the Gold Room, he was certain that he heard a rustling sound coming from within the room, but what could it be? His fingers found the light switch just inside the door, and for a moment the room was ablaze with light. To his astonishment, he saw a woman seated at the piano and a man looking down at her. He flipped the switch off instantly.
He was sure that the pair had seen him, and at any moment he expected them to come after him. How could he explain who he was and what he was doing there at one o’clock in the morning? They would summon the police. He quickly stepped behind a screen. On the other hand, what were they doing there in the darkness? But even as he wondered, he had a strange feeling, a feeling that somehow they belonged there and he did not.
Haunted Houses Page 7