HauntBound archive · catalog record
Reported phenomena — as catalogued
General Longstreet's 1876 hotel, now a Civil War museum where the general reportedly still walks the halls
301 Bradford St NE, Gainesville, GA 30501
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
$
Museum access and ghost tours vary; see Gainesville ghost tour website for current pricing
Access
Limited Access
Historic multi-story building; limited accessibility information available
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1876 · Civil War History · Reconstruction Era · General James Longstreet
James Longstreet arrived in Gainesville, Georgia, in 1875, having spent the decade after Appomattox in New Orleans attempting to rebuild a cotton factoring business and entering Republican politics. His post-war career was extraordinary and divisive: he accepted a position as U.S. Marshal for Georgia, attended a White House dinner with President Grant, and openly supported Reconstruction, all of which drew sustained hostility from former Confederate partisans who blamed him for the Confederate defeat at Gettysburg.
In 1876, Longstreet opened the Piedmont Hotel at 301 Bradford St NE in Gainesville. The hotel served the commercial and social center of Hall County for the next three decades. Longstreet managed the property while simultaneously pursuing federal appointments, including a posting as U.S. Consul to Turkey (1880–1881) and later as U.S. Commissioner of Railroads under Presidents Cleveland and McKinley.
Longstreet died in Gainesville on January 2, 1904, at age 82. He was 77 when the New Georgia Encyclopedia's entry on Hall County was completed. The Longstreet Society eventually acquired and restored the hotel building, converting it to a museum housing artifacts from his military and civilian careers. The building is now part of Gainesville's downtown historic district and figures prominently in the city's heritage tourism programming, including the established Gainesville Ghost Tour circuit.
Sources
The paranormal tradition at the Piedmont Hotel centers on General Longstreet himself. The recurring account, documented by the UNG Vanguard and repeated across the Gainesville Ghost Tour, describes a fog-like male figure appearing on humid nights — sometimes visible through upper-floor windows. The figure's bearing is described as military, and those who report seeing it associate it with the general who owned the building for nearly 30 years.
A secondary phenomenon involves auditory reports: the sound of children rolling or playing marbles, heard in the building after hours with no evident source. Marble games were a common form of entertainment at commercial hotels of the late 19th century, and the connection to the hotel's operating period is part of how locals frame the account.
The Gainesville Ghost Tour has included the Piedmont Hotel as a featured stop, giving the accounts public circulation beyond local oral tradition. No formal paranormal investigation results for this specific building have been published in accessible sources.
Notable Entities
The Piedmont Hotel Museum is a featured stop on the Gainesville Ghost Tour circuit, which includes the downtown historic district's most documented paranormal locations. The tour covers the building's history under Longstreet's ownership and the specific accounts associated with the hotel.
The Longstreet Society operates a museum inside the former hotel with artifacts from General James Longstreet's life, military career, and post-war years in Gainesville. Exhibits draw on his tenure as the hotel's owner from 1876 until his death in 1904.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
Eureka Springs, AR
The 1886 Crescent Hotel was built as a luxury Victorian resort atop the Ozark mountains of Eureka Springs, Arkansas, then briefly operated as a women's college before its most notorious chapter: Norman Baker's fraudulent cancer clinic from 1937 to 1940. Baker charged dying patients for treatments that offered no medical benefit, and the hotel retains his intact basement morgue.
Arcadia, MO
Arcadia Academy was founded in 1846 by Methodist circuit rider Jerome C. Berryman as a high school in Arcadia, Missouri, in the Iron County Ozarks. The campus served as a Union hospital during the Civil War (1861-1863). In 1877 the Ursuline Order purchased the property for $30,000 and operated it as a girls' school until the final graduating class in 1971. The nuns continued to run a daycare on site until 1991, when they held a public auction and relocated to St. Louis. The campus is now under private family ownership, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and operates as a bed-and-breakfast retaining its 19th-century structures.
Statesville, NC
The Vance Hotel was built in 1922 on the site of the earlier Gaither Boarding House, where a young resident named Arlene Mitchell died of influenza in 1918. The hotel became a downtown Statesville landmark and was purchased by the city in 2012.