MURFREESBORO, Tenn. (WKRN) – It’s a place for history buffs, but those who fought in one of the bloodiest battles in the Civil War are said to still haunt Murfreesboro.
Medical Center Parkway is on the rise, but beneath growth and development lie spirits from some of the heaviest fighting in the Civil War.
The battle began at the intersection of Gresham and Highway 96 and stretched four and a half miles past Murfreesboro Road.
“Thousands of people were killed or lost limbs, got their arms shot off, war is brutal,” said Allen Sircy, the author of “Southern Ghost Stories Murfreesboro: Spirits of Stones River.”
“There’s a lot of homes off Medical Center Parkway that were used as hospitals. They were bulldozed and businesses were built there, so naturally, the people that work there and operate their businesses have weird stories and things that happen to them,” Sircy said.
An employee at a storage facility told Sircy he believes there is a union soldier on the third floor that’s trying to help him. When he goes upstairs, the lights come on.
Staff members at a convenience store on the busy roadway claim to hear strange things inside of the building since they first opened last year, especially at night.
“She said ‘well I was working late and I heard somebody calling my name in the cooler,’ and she was the only person in the store,” Sircy said.
Only 15% of the fighting took place at the Stones River National Battlefield on North Thompson Lane. Mark Walsh from Rutherford County Paranormal Investigations has had countless interactions with spirits, especially near the slaughter pen.
“We’ve been out there a hundred time and we’ve heard cannon fire, musket fire and we’ve seen soldiers walking across the battlefield at night,” Walsh said. “Every time I go out there, I always ask ‘do you know who the President is?’ and every time, it says ‘Lincoln.'”
Sircy says he plans to publish more haunted stories from across Middle Tennessee.
You can read more haunted tales from Murfreesboro in Sircy’s book. It’s available for purchase here.
