Civil War Prison Where 13,000 Union Soldiers Died
496 Cemetery Road, Andersonville, GA 31711
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free admission. No parking fee.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Paved paths through the prison site; National Cemetery accessible; some uneven terrain in open field areas
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1864 · Civil War · Prisoner of War History · National Historic Site · War Crimes · War Crimes History
Camp Sumter opened in February 1864 as a Confederate facility for holding Union prisoners in southwestern Macon County, Georgia, adjacent to the railroad station at Andersonville. The site was chosen partly for its rail access and partly to disperse the growing prisoner population away from Richmond, Virginia.
The design — a 26-acre open-air stockade with no shelter provided — rapidly proved catastrophically inadequate. At peak capacity in August 1864, more than 32,000 Union soldiers were confined in a space designed for 10,000. The stream running through the stockade, the only water source, quickly became contaminated with waste. Scurvy, dysentery, diarrhea, and gangrene spread without check.
Approximately 45,000 soldiers passed through Andersonville across the facility's existence. Roughly 13,000 died there. The death rate — nearly 29 percent — made Andersonville the deadliest military prison in American history.
Henry Wirz, the Swiss-born commandant of the prison's interior, was tried by a military tribunal after the war. Convicted of conspiring to injure prisoners and of murder, he was executed in Washington, D.C., on November 10, 1865 — one of only a handful of individuals executed for war crimes following the Civil War.
The site was preserved as a National Historic Landmark and today encompasses the prison grounds, the National Cemetery where 13,714 Civil War-era graves are maintained, and the National Prisoner of War Museum. Park grounds are open 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily; the museum operates 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. daily, closed on Thanksgiving and Christmas. Admission is free.
Sources
The scale of suffering at Andersonville provides the foundation for a substantial paranormal reputation. Where nearly 13,000 soldiers died over approximately 14 months in a space the size of a few city blocks, the landscape carries a weight that visitors consistently report as palpable.
Paranormal accounts cluster around auditory phenomena: eerie sounds including what have been described as distant gunshots, the rhythmic sound of marching, voices talking and moaning, and — most consistently — cries and whispers in the open stockade area. Multiple visitors have described hearing distinct sounds with no visible source.
Visual reports include figures walking in the morning fog that settles on the prison site, described as moving with purpose before disappearing. The identification of these figures as Union soldiers in period dress appears in multiple paranormal compilation sources.
Olfactory phenomena — a persistent smell in the general area of the former stockade — are mentioned in enough independent accounts to be notable.
The town of Andersonville itself, with a population under 1,000, carries a broader reputation as one of Georgia's most haunted small communities, a designation driven almost entirely by the weight of the prison's history rather than any specific documented incidents in the residential area.
The National Prisoner of War Museum at Andersonville documents the history of American prisoners of war across all conflicts, from the Revolution to the present. Open daily 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The museum opened in 1998 and uses artifacts, oral histories, and exhibits to convey the experience of captivity.
Walk the open grounds of Camp Sumter, where approximately 45,000 Union soldiers were held in a 26-acre stockade. Nearly 13,000 died here from disease, malnutrition, and exposure. Interpretive markers indicate the site of the stockade wall, the Dead Line, and Providence Spring. The National Cemetery adjacent to the site holds 13,714 Civil War-era graves, most marked by small white stones arranged in orderly rows.
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