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And Welcome back to Coast to Coast George Noriy with Courtey mcinvale. As we talk about her work Civil War Ghosts of Georgia Volumes One and two. What brought you to studying the Civil War specifically, Courtney?
So it was always an interest of mine, and my father was an avid Civil War sort of you know, I guess historian himself in history major, and when I was young he had me memorize all the Southern generals by the time I was age five by photograph alone. So I was always fascinated in Civil War history. And as I sort of researched the Revolutionary War in one of my earlier books, I just kept coming back to
the Civil War. It was a four year period where six hundred and forty thousand casualties took place, over ten thousand battles, nearly three thousand soldiers. There was just too much there to look away from.
Yeah, the tragedy with well over six hundred thousand as your men fatalities, it was just horrible, and I would guess with those amount of deaths, there's got to be a lot of different places of hauntings all over the place.
Absolutely, you know, these battlefields, of course, are one of the places that I gravitate to the most. That's where all this energy resides from where they met their end, but also where they were colliding with each other in this tension, in this hand to hand combat, and a lot of spirit activity seems to remain there.
Now with these hauntings, do you think these spirits don't know that they've passed on.
It depends to be honest. You know, I'm the battlefield, I think more than any other place I've ever investigated, you can encounter those types of spirits who don't know they've moved on. And usually you can tell that if you're going out to gather evidence and you get voices or EVP recordings and you hear someone saying hell or I'm hurt or something like that. It's almost as if they see you, but they think you're part of their time, which makes me think that they don't know they're dead.
But more often than not, I think a lot of the haunting activity is also residual that we're still hearing sounds from that time. We're hearing the cannon fire the gunfire, maybe their battle cries, but it's not necessarily an active haunting, you know, where a ghost of saying hello, help me. It's more the energy is staying there. I think both happen on the battlefield a lot.
Would you say, though, that these war sites are more haunted than other sites.
I would because of the way energy works. When you have tens of thousands of folks who are in a life or death situation and are dying here on these battlefields or in the you know, surrounding houses that we're serving as hospitals, that energy has to go somewhere, and oftentimes it's going to go right into the landscape that it's taking place in.
It is truly remarkable.
Yes, yes, it's fascinating. And you know, you can talk to lots of folks who are just visitors tourists to these places, a lot of them being national parks and state parks, and they'll even say, even if they aren't really paranormal enthusiasts or there for those sorts of reasons, they'll say that they can feel it when they go through there. They feel a reverence, they feel something somber,
they feel an anxiety. The energy changes when you drive or walk through these places even today for everyone.
Have there been historical stories cordinly of hauntings or strange things happening around Civil War sites?
Oh, my gosh. Yes. And the stories started happening with the soldiers themselves. So we have to remember a lot of these soldiers went into the war thinking they were going to be out in months, maybe a year. This was on both sides. And so they're going through this war too, three four years in and they've lost lots
of people. So they start, you know, as they're going through these battlegrounds, sometimes more than once, reporting that they see the spirits of their fallen comrades, that they see the spirits of generals that have died in the war
trying to lead them forward and help them. And one of the most compelling paranormal stories that starts, you know, in Gettysburg is the twentieth main reports that they saw General Washington on his horse leading them, you know, to the point where they're pushing Confederates down from Little Roundtop.
But they, of course couldn't have really seen him. He died nearly one hundred years prior to the war, but they report that he's there leading them his ghost, and all the paranormal stories just start to abound from during the battles, from before the battles and to.
The current day, stories of people seen and witnessing marching soldiers who have all died.
Oh yeah, oh yeah. Gettysburg and Antietam are really sort of two battlefields that are famous for that. Chickamauga. It happens there as well. A lot of the folks that report seeing this do happen to be reenactors, which kind of gives an interesting perspective on it. So they're there
for living history engagements. They're dressed in the full gear, and they will stay overnight and they'll report having encounters, sometimes full fledged conversations with regiments they believe to be, you know, other reenactors, only to wake up and find that those folks are gone. They were never there. They'll hear gunfire that they swear as another reenactor. But it's not.
That happened a lot at Chickamauga when I was writing about it in North Georgia, and you know, they see them as you know, vividly as they saw each other.
It must be sad to uncover some of these stories.
It is, I I will not lie. When I write these books, I have had moments where I have had to take a break and just there's tears in my eyes because I'm reading stories of fathers looking for sons, brothers looking for each other, best friends, losing each other, animals that have died after you know, defending their men
in war. And you know, it tears at your heart strings and and makes you feel for them as if they're standing right with you, which maybe they are, but it does, you know, it does pull out your heart strengths.
All this could have been avoided if they had only realized that all people are created equal.
Yes, And you know what though, I would I would venture to say, after writing about men from Connecticut and men from Georgia on both sides of this, you know American Civil War, that the men fighting it, they got that. You know, I uncovered tales of them helping each other, helping save each other on opposite sides of the lines. It's these people who were at the top, pulling the strings right, who were saying, this is what you need to do, This is you know why this other side
is a threat to you. They're feeding this sort of propaganda to them. But the men there, they saw each other as humans. They didn't want to be doing this.
Now you've also looked at spirits versus time travel. Tell me about that.
It was something that sort of occurred to me when I was researching these battlefields, and when I was hearing dunfire, when I was hearing drum music, when I was hearing all of these things, or I was feeling as if there were people rushing by me when I was there on a quiet night, or when no one was there
during a rainy day. I thought, what if it's not just a residual haunting of energy remaining, but what if some of these places absorbed, you know, this energy and almost become a time slip, and and we have these paranormal encounters. Are we experiencing of thinness in the veil between our times? Because time isn't linear, right, we just put linear constructs on it to understand it. So is it entirely possible that when we're at these places, we're
experiencing a step back in time? And that could explain some of the encounters were getting, perhaps even better than a residual haunting would explain them.
Has anybody ever said that they stumbled into a time warp or a portal, yes, yes and no.
So during you know, different reenactors and even during the Civil War, people would kind of report that there would be a change of scenery, that things would look different. They swear they saw things that were supposed to be there and weren't, and then suddenly they snapped back to
when they were with their regular folks. And actually one of the most compelling accounts of that is during the filming of the movie Gettysburg, which was filmed in the nineteen nineties and it was based on a book called Killer Angels. There were some reenactors that were sitting up at little roundtop and a man came and started handing them, you know, musketballs and bullets, and they thought, oh, do we need this. You know, the man was dressed like
they were. He looked a little rugged character. And they finally brought it to their directors and producers. They said, where did you get this, And they said, oh, this man handed it to us. They looked all around for him. They were in his time, he was in theirs. And then they said, we didn't send these to you. And they looked at their bullets, their musketballs, and they said these are antiques, these are originals. There's no way you could have had these a bridge between time.
Right there, you know, And where did he go?
Right right? You know? And for him the war was still happening, it was still real. These were people he was providing ammunition to. So who was in whose time at that point? Were they in his or was he in there?
How many people who participate in the tours have relatives who may have died in the Civil War.
Oh, my gosh, so many. So it's really interesting for me because I live in Connecticut and almost all of my ancestors were Confederate because my dad was from Making Georgia, And so all the folks that I meet up here have ancestors who died in the Revolutionary War, who left Connecticut and fought for the Union in the Civil War. And I have my ancestors who are on the other side.
And sometimes I wonder if the spirits are laughing at the other side, you know, about the juxtaposition of me being in Connecticut with them being from Georgia in the South. But every single person on my tours has ancestors, whether they know it or not, who participated in some sort of war, especially in early America.
Corney, do you get reports of other kinds of paranormal activity around these sites, like UFOs or anything like that.
Yes, yes, a lot of times, especially if these battle sites are near bodies of water, people do report those sorts of things, and battle sites will often be near bodies of water or rivers or something of the sort, only because the men who were fighting had to have a water source to be able to survive, and that's how they helped navigate in many cases, and a lot of times it's at these water sources that people report seeing unusual objects and lighted objects in the sky, and
so that's compelling to me. But again, I have this strange theory that, like you know, and I don't know this, this is just something that came to mind, is what if, you know, especially at these battle sites and things like this, when people have an alien or UFO encounter, what if those are also time travel just of the future, and we're just not understanding what we see or how we're perceiving people or things from the future, and it's just another part of that time slip.
Has anybody ever captured any sounds on tape?
I have, so when I visit I you know, sometimes I bring equipment, but oftentimes I just bring myself. Some of the national parts don't love you to bring equipment, so I just bring myself and my cell phone and I'll usually put on my voice Memos app, and you know, see what happens. And I have heard with my own ears, drums playing, I've heard gun fire. I have recorded all of this just with the voice Memos app on my phone,
you know, going in my pocket. It is as real and as loud as if you were there in the time.
Cortney, would you say that other tragic areas and events, not necessarily civil war, but maybe World War one, World War two, or whatever catastrophes we have occurred, could also be haunted.
Absolutely absolutely.
So.
One of my other passions, you know that I kind of gathered when I was younger, was Irish history, Scottish history, you know, my Celtic ancestors as well. I love sort of genealogy, and when I was studying in Ireland, I got really interested in Irish rebellions. And you know there's a site there kill manhum Jail, you know, from the Easter Rising, where a lot of these men were executed, and that is a huge source of activity and energy.
I visited Scotland where the Battle of Kladen took place, where the Scottish Islanders were rising up against the British, and I had incredible experiences there. One of the things that matches at all these locations, though, whether it is kilmnhum Jail, whether it is the Battle of Kolad, and whether it is the Battle of Gettysburg, a lot of the most profound experiences happen during the times that the
battle actually happened. And I usually find that out after the fact that if I hear or see something in certain area look up later, that that's when that clash actually happened, was during that time of day, which I find really fascinating.
Do you ever get reports of divine intervention, angelic or even higher.
Yes. Actually, there's a man from Georgia who he believes he was a walking miracle, and he did believe that angels and soldiers who had died saved him. He was in the Battle of Antietam, and he was in a place known as the Sunken Road, which more frequently is known now as the Bloody Lane. He was shot five times and he kept getting up time after time after time, and then a bullet went through his cap and he fell into his cap and he bled through it, which
means he didn't suffocate on his own blood. So he said, the Yankees, you know, helped with that. But then when he was brought, you know, to a hospital to die, he immediately woke up and said, you think I'm going to die, but I won't, and he miraculously recovered. He spent the rest of his career studying near death experiences and telling people that the other side helped them to survive.
What creates the difference when you write these stories, how do you distinguish when what you're going to use?
Ah, that is? That is you know, one of the hardest things is you have all of these souls, all of these stories. So for me, it's a very spiritual experience.
I like to read through as many letters and accounts as I can, and of course if something jumps off the pages and they had an encounter, absolutely, but sometimes and I got started even doing the Civil War books, you know, really going forward with it after postponing it and taking the idea around because I had a dream where these two soldiers appeared to me in a dream,
and I had no idea who they were. I just remember seeing two young boys and they were in Union uniform, and they said they were brothers, and they had a grave near where I lived. And I woke up and I did find two brothers who died in Andersonville Prison in Georgia, buried really next to where I lived, basically in the cemetery close by. And sometimes I think those boys helped make sure that I told their stories and the stories of all these other folks.
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