Est. 1864 · Civil War · Atlanta Campaign · Sherman's March
By late June 1864, General William T. Sherman's Union forces had been pushing south through Georgia for two months, maneuvering Confederate General Joseph Johnston's Army of Tennessee out of successive defensive positions. At Kennesaw Mountain, Johnston chose to stand.
The Confederate line stretched across Kennesaw Mountain and the lower ridgelines south of it, with Kolb's Farm anchoring the Confederate right. Sherman, frustrated by weeks of flanking maneuvers and the slow pace of the campaign, ordered a direct frontal assault on June 27, 1864. The result was predictable: Union troops advanced uphill into entrenched Confederate fire and were repulsed with roughly 3,000 casualties. Confederate losses were significantly lower.
Sherman resumed his flanking strategy after the failed assault, and Johnston eventually withdrew south toward Atlanta to avoid being cut off. Despite the tactical Confederate victory at Kennesaw, it could not alter the strategic outcome: Sherman captured Atlanta in September 1864.
The campaign's eighteen days near Kennesaw produced approximately 5,000 total casualties on both sides. Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park, administered by the National Park Service, preserves the mountain, the Kolb's Farm site, and associated terrain. The visitor center is open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Vehicle fee is $5.
Sources
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennesaw_Mountain_National_Battlefield_Park
- https://www.nps.gov/kemo/index.htm
- https://civilwartalk.com/threads/haunted-kolbs-farm-marietta-georgia.190103/
- https://www.hauntjaunts.net/lewis-powell-ivs-haunted-georgia-a-primer-series-part-3/
ApparitionsPhantom soundsPhantom animals
The most frequently cited paranormal account from Kennesaw Mountain involves Kolb's Farm, the antebellum structure that stands at the southern end of the battlefield. A father and son, visiting separately at different times and unaware of each other's experience, both reported encountering a Union cavalry officer on horseback. In both accounts, the mounted figure rode directly through a wooden fence — the kind of thing horses and riders don't do — and then was simply gone. The accounts' independent corroboration and their geographic specificity to the Kolb's Farm site gives them more weight than most battlefield ghost stories.
The ghost deer are a stranger phenomenon. Hikers on the mountain trails have reported deer that behave unlike any living animal: running directly toward observers at full speed, and then vanishing before making contact. The accounts share the detail of the animals' trajectory — toward the person, not away — which inverts the usual behavior of wild deer.
Battle sounds — cannon fire, what sounds like musketry — have been reported on still evenings by neighbors and visitors. This is a common category of battlefield paranormal report, less distinctive than the visual accounts.
Notable Entities
Union cavalry officer
