Allatoona Battlefield

On October 5, 1864, roughly 3,200 Confederate troops under General Samuel French attacked the Union garrison holding the Western and Atlantic Railroad pass at Allatoona, hoping to cut Sherman's supply line; the ensuing fight left more than 1,500 men dead, dying, or wounded and inspired the hymn "Hold the Fort." An Atlanta newspaper reported sightings of phantom soldiers running along the tracks through the pass as far back as the late 1800s. Visitors today describe gunshots, voices, and orbs of light near an unknown Confederate soldier's grave, a sudden 10-degree temperature drop in the old railbed, and the smell of gunpowder.