It is the home of one of the most famous railways in American history, the site of a historically vital trade route along the Tennessee River and the gateway to the Deep South. Chattanooga has a storied past, a past that still lives through the spirits that haunt the city. Whether it is the ghost of the Delta Queen still lingering from the days of the river trade, the porter who forever roams the grounds of the historic Terminal Station or the restless souls that haunt from beneath the city in its elaborate underground tunnel system, the specter of Chattanooga's past is everywhere. Join authors Jessica Penot and Amy Petulla as they survey the most historically haunted places in and around the Scenic City. Jessica Penot, a Huntsville resident, is a behavioral health therapist with an MS in clinical psychology. As an award-winning fiction writer, ten of her short stories have been published in a variety or magazines and journals, and she has written a horror novel due out by the end of 2010. She writes a popular blog about ghosts and hauntings, averaging 150 hits a day, and she is a member of the American Ghost Society, the American Ghost Hunter's Society, the Horror Writer's Association and the Penn Writer's Association. Haunted Chattanooga By Jessica Penot, Amy Petulla The History Press Copyright © 2011 Jessica Penot and Amy Petulla All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-60949-255-7 Contents Acknowledgements, Introduction, Haunted Hales Bar, The Legendary Ghost of the Delta Queen, Chilling Chattanooga High, The Ghosts of Chickamauga, The Black Aggie and Bogeyman of Memorial Cemetery, The Angry Ghost of the Read House, The Ghosts Beneath the City, The Quarry Ghost, The Tennessee River Serpent, The Haunted Halls of Higher Education, The Haunting of the Hunter Museum, Never Checking Out of the Chattanooga Choo Choo, South Pittsburgh Hospital, The Ghosts of Lookout Mountain, Hanging with Heroes and Hooligans, Raccoon Mountain's Guardian of the Cavern, Eternal Denizens of the Valley, About the Authors, CHAPTER 1 Haunted Hales Bar AMY PETULLA You have bought a dark and bloody land, and it is cursed. –Dragging Canoe Those are the words attributed to aggressive and outspoken Cherokee chief Dragging Canoe about Tennessee and Kentucky land given up by the Cherokee to white settlers in a treaty signed in March 1775. Some say that the exact words were: "You have bought a fair land, but there is a cloud hanging over it; you will find its settlement dark and bloody," but in any event, it has been accepted by all as a curse put on the land by the famed warrior in disgust as he walked out of the meeting, having adamantly opposed the transfer of any portion of the land. Before this time, Chattanooga was continuously occupied by Native American peoples, beginning in the Upper Paleolithic Period (14,000–8,000 BC). Archaic, Woodland and Mississippian Indian sites have all been unearthed in and around Chattanooga. Cherokee Indians claimed the area in the late 1600s, after defeating the Shawnees occupying the region. In 1776, after the signing of the treaty, Dragging Canoe formed the Chickamauga Cherokee, urging likeminded tribe members to join him. They established — in an area near Chattanooga's present-day Brainerd Village shopping center — Chickamauga Town, which was destroyed twice by his enemies. After the second time, he moved his followers to a less accessible area and directed attacks from Running Water, Tennessee, near present-day Hales Bar. Under Dragging Canoe's leadership, they vigorously endeavored to stop white settlement by attacking settlers all along the frontier. A fierce warrior, sometimes called "Dragon" by his enemies and suspected by some of possessing supernatural powers, he and his men captured and killed thousands of white men, women and children. Dragging Canoe died in March 1792 at Running Water. The accounts of his death vary. Some say that he died from exhaustion or a heart attack, complicated by a small wound that became infected, after a night of celebrating and dancing after securing either a battle victory or an alliance with other tribes; some report it as a scalp dance after the killing of the Collingsworth family, with his brother, Turtle At Home, grinding a scalp in his teeth as he danced; and some say that he died in battle with John Sevier, who later became Tennessee's first governor. The reports of his burial likewise vary. While some say that he was buried in a sitting position, in typical Cherokee fashion, others say that his body was stolen and cut in half, with the pieces buried miles apart, to prevent him from rising from the dead. Perhaps those concerned about Dragging Canoe rising from the dead had a point. While at least one witness claims to have seen a cursing Indian ghost at University of Tennessee–Chattanooga (UTC), many folks insist that Hales Bar, just a couple of miles down the road from his death and burial site, is haunted and