Ghostly orb: Chattanooga Ghost Tours owner Amy Petulla says tour guide Ben didn’t realize until this photo was developed that he had a ghostly guest on his visit through Chattanooga’s famed Underground—here under the BlueCross BlueShield parking lot between Fifth and Sixth Streets. The “orbs” thought to signify ghosts are often more visible in photographs than to the naked eye, she says.

True tales of a tour guide

By Amy Petulla

Chattanooga Ghost Tours, Inc. is now approaching its second Halloween, and in the course of the past year, we have learned many things. The most interesting is that Chattanooga has a lot more ghosts than have ever been formally reported; at least one or two folks every tour have stories of their own ghosts. So for our “haunted Chattanooga” article this year, I thought we’d share some of these stories with you.

Ranger dangers

Some of the city’s most believable ghostly tales have been supported by reports from park rangers, a group not known for skittish flights of fancy. Many people are aware that the stories of “Ole Green Eyes” in Chickamauga Battlefield have been verified by park rangers there, but at least one other ghost in that park, as well as one of “our” ghosts, have also been documented by park rangers who occasionally come chat with us at our tour’s origin on Walnut Street Bridge. Our guides cover the ghost of the bridge, including mysterious shapes that are seen moving there on certain nights, and one of the visiting rangers affirmed that he had indeed been followed on the Walnut Street Bridge by a dark shape that subsequently disappeared.
Another park officer tells of going with a fellow ranger to Wilder Tower in Chickamauga Battlefield at night, when they saw a white cat. Wilder Tower is said to be one of the most haunted places of that haunted park, and there have been various reports of phantom felines in the battlefield. The two took a picture of the animal that night, but got a surprise when the picture was developed: The cat was transparent!

Guests’ ghosts

Our guests have sent us many wonderful photos over the past year. One of the best, now posted on our web pages at ChattanoogaGhostTours.com, was taken at The Stockades in Texas. Our guest snapped several photos of a horse show there with her digital camera, then immediately viewed the pictures on her screen. That’s when she noticed something unusual: Despite the fact that all of the horses viewable by the naked eye were a solid color, several of the photos showed a multi-colored horse in with all the others. Even more unusual, you could see right through the horse. If you looking at the pictures, you might think that they were double exposures—except for the fact that the only way a digital camera can take a “double exposure” is if the image appears elsewhere in the picture, which these did not. Our guest and her friend immediately went looking throughout the place for the horse, but alas, he wasn’t there—at least not in visible form.
I’ve also learned stories associated with other tourist venues in Chattanooga. A ghost named “Willie” haunts the spectacular Raccoon Mountain Caverns in Lookout Valley. His story is so detailed, we have included it on our upcoming CD (see sidebar). I would encourage any budding ghost hunters to tour the cave, because Willie has “appeared” multiple times, and because he is a “friendly” ghost.
My favorite story from a Ghost Tour guest has to be the one from a young lady who told me of the time she first visited her fiancé’s family home in the Hixson area. Before she could set foot inside the door, an elderly woman blocked her path and chewed her out for attempting to come into the house uninvited. Shaken, she chose to remain on the front porch. When asked why, she told her fiancé and his family the story. He asked her to describe the woman who had been so rude to her, and she obliged. The family members exchanged looks, then her fiancé went inside the house and came back with a photo, which he showed her. “Yes, yes, that’s her!” she replied. The woman in the photo, he explained, was his grandmother, who had died some years before. Shortly thereafter, the ghost reappeared to her and apologized, explaining she hadn’t realized that she had been invited. While the young lady appreciated and accepted the apology, nothing could induce her thereafter to enter the house.

Tour guide tales

Not to be outdone by our guests, a number of our tour guides have had their own ghostly encounters. Our guide Ben has a couple of stories associated with Ruby Falls, where he used to work. While Ruby Falls creates a “haunted cavern” for Halloween, Ben’s ghosts were not manmade. Ben says certain employees there have spoken of the ghost of a former employee, whose presence in a particular room of the cavern could be detected by the smell of sugar cookies—a treat he would bring to work during his lifetime. His ghost has reportedly unscrewed light bulbs, as well. Ben says he had another spectral encounter there last year. The ghost apparently took offense to his companion’s glow stick necklace, which suddenly—with no one else standing near—was yanked up over her head. Another guide, Adam, has described for our guests an encounter he had at the bottom of a stairway in the Hunter Museum, an incident he had never understood—that is, until he got hired as a Ghost Tours guide and read through the portion of our script dealing with the museum.
My favorite anecdotal ghost tale, though, involves my own home, which lies along the Tennessee River. Several years ago, my daughter came running up the stairs one morning, insisting she had heard a ghost twice say, “Hello, m’lady.” I explained to her that we had built our house, no one else had ever lived in the house, and certainly no one had ever died in the house, so there was no way she could have heard a ghost. But years later, when I was speaking to the curator of the Chattanooga Regional History Museum, I discovered that the area where my house is built had been the site of a Civil War battle, which could account for the ghost—and his old-fashioned language.