Great Locomotive Chase · Civil War Hospital · National Register of Historic Places · Marietta Square History
The Kennesaw House was constructed around 1845, originally intended as a cotton warehouse serving the Western and Atlantic Railroad depot immediately adjacent. When Dix Fletcher purchased the building in 1855, he converted it into the Fletcher House hotel, positioning it to serve railroad passengers moving through the busy depot.
The building entered Civil War history on April 12, 1862. Union operative James J. Andrews led a group of disguised Union soldiers who spent the night at the Fletcher House before boarding the northbound General at the nearby depot — the beginning of the Great Locomotive Chase, one of the war's most dramatic intelligence operations. Andrews and his party were eventually captured; several were executed.
As Sherman's Atlanta campaign advanced in 1864, the building transitioned into a hospital and morgue serving both Confederate and Union forces. The accounts from this period are among the most documented in Marietta's Civil War record: surgeons operated in the lower floors with minimal anesthesia, and the fourth floor — used as the morgue — was partially destroyed when embers from the burning depot next door ignited it. Fletcher, a Union sympathizer whose son-in-law served as a Union spy, reportedly ensured the building was not deliberately destroyed.
The Kennesaw House survived Sherman's march and the broader destruction of Marietta. Significant renovations followed in 1920 and again in 1979. Since 2010, the entire three-story building has housed the Marietta History Center, with offices, museum store and rental space on the first floor, galleries on the second floor and collections storage on the third floor. The museum is open Tuesday through Saturday, 10am to 4pm, at 1 Depot Street.
Sources
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kennesaw_House
- https://www.mariettahistory.org/
- https://visitmariettaga.com/haunted-history-the-spooky-side-of-marietta/
- https://www.toursofmarietta.com/ghost-tours
- https://www.marietta.com/haunted-places-in-marietta-ga-the-kennesaw-house
ApparitionsResidual hauntingPhantom soundsSensed presenceCold spots
Some locations accumulate a single ghost. The Kennesaw House has accumulated what paranormal researchers and local historians estimate at 700 — a number that reflects both the scale of Civil War suffering within its walls and the persistence of reports across more than 150 years.
The most striking accounts involve the building's elevator and basement. Multiple visitors have reported descending by elevator and stepping out into what appeared to be an active Civil War field hospital: beds filled with wounded men, surgeons performing amputations, the sounds of suffering. These accounts were documented by PBS, CNN, and The History Channel in separate productions. A Civil War-era surgeon has also been seen on the elevator itself, dressed in period uniform, observed on multiple occasions.
Museum director Dan Cox documented what he described as ghostly figures captured on the building's security cameras. Paranormal investigators from the Ghost Hounds group recorded what they characterized as a ghostly figure of a woman on film during an investigation of the building.
The woman in the pink-trimmed dress is a recurring figure, identified most frequently by children. A field trip student once reported seeing a woman in a light blue antebellum-style dress with pink flowers at the neckline who smiled at her and then vanished. The student pointed to a portrait in the museum and identified the woman as the person she had seen — the portrait being of Mrs. Fletcher, wife of the former owner.
Staff members have reported unexplained sounds throughout the building during early morning hours.
Notable Entities
The Civil War SurgeonMrs. FletcherThe Lady in Blue
Media Appearances
- PBS (undated)
- CNN (undated)
- The History Channel (undated)
