Confederate Prison and National POW Memorial
760 POW Road, Andersonville, GA 31711
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free admission to the historic site and National Prisoner of War Museum
Access
Wheelchair OK
Paved walkways at the museum and cemetery; mostly level grass at the prison site
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1864 · Largest Confederate Military Prison · Henry Wirz Trial · Clara Barton and Dorence Atwater Burial Identification · National POW Memorial
Andersonville, officially Camp Sumter, was constructed in early 1864 to relieve overcrowding at Confederate prisoner-of-war facilities in and around Richmond, Virginia. The site in rural Macon County, Georgia, was chosen for its perceived security and access to food and water supplies. The stockade enclosed roughly 16.5 acres at opening; it was expanded to 26.5 acres in June 1864 as the prisoner population swelled past designed capacity.
During the 14 months of its operation, approximately 45,000 Union soldiers were held at Camp Sumter. Within the first seven months, roughly one-third of those confined had died, primarily from dysentery, scurvy, diarrhea, and exposure. The total death toll reached nearly 13,000. The dead were buried in mass graves dug along the prison's perimeter — the standard Confederate practice at the facility, conducted by fellow prisoners assigned to the burial detail.
The creek that bisected the stockade, used for both drinking water and waste disposal by the prisoners, became severely contaminated within weeks of opening. The Confederate guard force, drawn from the Georgia Reserve and Confederate regulars, was itself poorly supplied; many guards died of similar conditions during the prison's operation. Confederate Captain Henry Wirz, the prison's commandant, was tried by a U.S. military commission after the war's end, convicted of conspiracy to injure the health and lives of prisoners, and hanged on November 10, 1865 — the only Confederate officer executed for war crimes related to the Civil War.
Dorence Atwater, a Union prisoner assigned to record the dead, kept a duplicate copy of the burial register that he smuggled out at the war's end. Working with Clara Barton, Atwater used the register to identify and mark individual graves in the summer of 1865 — making Andersonville National Cemetery one of the first Civil War cemeteries with substantially identified marked burials rather than anonymous trench graves.
The site was designated Andersonville National Historic Site in 1970. The National Prisoner of War Museum opened in 1998. The Andersonville National Cemetery remains active, with more than 21,000 total interments. The site is administered by the National Park Service and is the only unit in the National Park System dedicated to American prisoners of war across all conflicts.
Sources
Andersonville is not typically classified as a haunted destination, and the National Park Service does not actively cultivate paranormal interpretation. The site's emotional gravity rests on the documented historical record rather than on ghost narratives.
Visitor accounts compiled in regional Civil War paranormal literature describe a generalized atmospheric weight at the prison site, particularly along Stockade Branch — the creek that served as the primary water source and primary sanitation channel for the prisoners. Some visitors report phantom footsteps along the reconstructed stockade corners and a sense of being watched in the area of Providence Spring, where prisoners discovered a fresh water source in August 1864 after a violent rainstorm.
The Andersonville National Cemetery section containing the original burial trenches — where Dorence Atwater and Clara Barton identified individual graves in 1865 — has been the subject of occasional reports of distant music, possibly bugle calls, heard at dusk. These accounts are not collected systematically by the Park Service.
Regional paranormal investigators have conducted limited work at the site, generally with the cooperation of after-hours staff and conducted with explicit respect for the site's commemorative function. Published findings have been modest: occasional EVP recordings interpreted as voices, temperature variations consistent with the open landscape and ambient conditions, and photographic anomalies that fall within the range of normal expected effects.
The site's primary interpretive frame is historical and commemorative. The Park Service treats Andersonville as a place of memory for American prisoners of war across all conflicts, with the Camp Sumter prisoner experience as the founding example. Visitors seeking a paranormal-tourism experience will likely find the site too sober for that purpose; visitors seeking to encounter a difficult chapter of American military history will find one of the most carefully preserved and interpreted Civil War sites in the National Park System.
Media Appearances
The 1998 National POW Museum interprets the captivity experience of American military personnel from the Revolutionary War through recent conflicts. Exhibits include personal effects, oral histories, and a dedicated gallery for the 13,000 Union soldiers who died at Camp Sumter.
Walk the reconstructed stockade corners and original earthworks of Camp Sumter, marked along a self-guided driving and walking loop. The adjacent Andersonville National Cemetery — still active, with more than 21,000 interments — contains the original burial trenches where the 1864-65 prisoner dead were laid in mass graves.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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