HauntBound archive · catalog record
Reported phenomena — as catalogued
A Parkersburg hilltop park that served as a Civil War tent hospital struck by smallpox — a long-running stop on the Haunted Parkersburg tour.
1000 Quincy Street, Parkersburg, WV 26101
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free public park; the guided ghost tour that includes the site is separately ticketed
Access
Limited Access
Hilltop city park; sloped ground with some uneven walking
Equipment
Photos OK
Civil War tent hospital site (originally Prospect Hill) · Treated African American and Irish immigrant Union troops · Struck by a smallpox epidemic during the war
Quincy Hill, originally called Prospect Hill, rises over Parkersburg and served a grim purpose during the Civil War. The Union army used the high ground as a tent hospital, where wounded and sick soldiers were brought for treatment. Local history accounts describe a large camp on the hill caring for many men at a time, among them African American troops and Irish immigrant soldiers serving in the Union ranks.
Disease, not battle, was the deadliest threat in such camps, and Quincy Hill was no exception. A smallpox epidemic moved through the encampment, adding to the toll among men already weakened by wounds and the conditions of a wartime field hospital. The soldiers who died on the hill represent the ordinary catastrophe of Civil War medicine, where illness regularly killed more men than combat.
The site's documented history comes chiefly from local and regional research — including detailed Tri-State haunted-history work and West Virginia haunt-and-legend documentation — rather than from a formal battlefield record, since the hill was a hospital and camp rather than a battleground. After the war the high ground became a city park.
Quincy Park today is an ordinary hilltop green space, with its wartime role surviving mainly in local memory and on the Haunted Parkersburg tour. The hospital and the epidemic are the reasons the site carries the weight it does, and they are why it has remained a fixture of the city's Civil War storytelling.
Sources
Quincy Hill's reputation follows directly from its history as a place of wartime suffering. Local and regional accounts describe figures of soldiers seen on the hill and groans heard with no visible source, understood as echoes of the men treated and lost at the tent hospital and in the smallpox epidemic.
These reports come from Tri-State haunted-history research, West Virginia haunt-and-legend documentation, and the Haunted Parkersburg ghost tour, which has long included Quincy Hill among its stops. They are anecdotal accounts and tour lore rather than formal investigation results, and we present them as such, with respect for the soldiers — many of them sick rather than wounded — who actually died on the hill.
The site itself is a quiet city park. What gives the stories their hold is the documented history beneath them: a hospital camp where disease cut through men already in distress. Visitors can walk the park freely during the day, or take the guided tour to hear the hospital and epidemic history in full.
Notable Entities
Walk the hilltop city park that once held a Civil War tent hospital, where wounded and sick soldiers — including African American and Irish immigrant troops — were treated, and where a smallpox outbreak swept the camp. The park is free and open; interpretive context comes mainly from local history and the Haunted Parkersburg tour.
Quincy Hill's hauntings are a long-running part of the Haunted Parkersburg walking tour, which covers the city's Civil War hospital history and ghost stories. Tickets are sold through the operator's website.
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