Stones River National Battlefield

Outside Murfreesboro, Tennessee, the National Park Service keeps the ground where the Battle of Stones River was fought at the turn of 1863. A national cemetery sits inside the park.

The fighting ran from December 31, 1862 to January 2, 1863 and engaged about 81,000 soldiers. Roughly 23,000 of them became casualties, and about 3,000 were killed.

Stones River National Cemetery was established in 1865 and holds more than 6,000 Union graves. The Hazen Brigade Monument is the oldest American Civil War monument still standing in its original battlefield location.

Rangers, visitors, and re-enactors describe shadowy soldiers near the Slaughter Pen, at tour stops 4 and 6. In one account to WKRN, a soldier raised his hands in surrender, fell, and vanished.

Published battlefield-ghost books name a headless horseman as Lieutenant Colonel Julius Garesché, a Union officer killed by a cannonball in the battle. The same books place a soldier’s figure at re-enactors’ campfires.

The story is in print at least as far back as 2010, when Thomas Freese and Bryan Bush included Stones River in Haunted Battlefields of the South. Allen Sircy followed in 2020.

The park is free, and a self-guided driving loop links the numbered tour stops. Gates and the cemetery close at 5 p.m., pedestrians must be out by sunset, and metal detecting is prohibited.