Kennesaw House

One of Marietta's oldest buildings, originally a cotton warehouse in the 1840s before becoming an inn. James Andrews and 18 disguised Union soldiers stayed here the night before the Great Locomotive Chase in 1862.

The Kennesaw House was built in 1845 as a cotton warehouse by Marietta's first mayor, John Glover. In 1855, Massachusetts businessman Dix Fletcher purchased it and converted it into the Fletcher House hotel. It was here that one of the Civil War's most daring operations was launched.

In April 1862, James Andrews and his group of Union spies gathered at the hotel to plot the Great Locomotive Chase - their attempt to steal the Confederate train "The General" and destroy the Western & Atlantic Railroad supply line. The mission failed, but the story became legendary, inspiring multiple films.

When the Civil War reached Marietta in 1864, the hotel was converted into a Confederate hospital and morgue. The wounded and dying filled every room, and surgeons worked around the clock performing amputations. Later that year, the Union Army took the hotel, and General Sherman briefly used it as his headquarters.

The ghosts of over 700 soldiers are said to haunt the Kennesaw House. PBS, CNN, and The History Channel have documented accounts of visitors who descended to the basement elevator, only to emerge into a crowded hospital room frozen in time - men screaming in agony, blood everywhere, and weary surgeons removing limbs without anesthesia. Then, just as suddenly, the vision vanishes.

A ghostly Civil War surgeon, believed to be Dix Fletcher's nephew Dr. Wilder, rides the elevator in his bloodstained uniform. The elevator moves between floors on its own after hours, doors opening to empty hallways. A woman in an antebellum dress smiles at children before disappearing. Today, the building houses the Marietta Museum of History, where the spirits of those who suffered and died here still roam the halls.