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Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: And Welcome back to Coast to Coast George Noriy with

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Speaker 2: Courtey mcinvale. As we talk about her work Civil War

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Speaker 2: Ghosts of Georgia Volumes One and two. What brought you

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Speaker 2: to studying the Civil War specifically, Courtney?

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Speaker 3: So it was always an interest of mine, and my

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Speaker 3: father was an avid Civil War sort of you know,

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Speaker 3: I guess historian himself in history major, and when I

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Speaker 3: was young he had me memorize all the Southern generals

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Speaker 3: by the time I was age five by photograph alone.

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Speaker 3: So I was always fascinated in Civil War history. And

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Speaker 3: as I sort of researched the Revolutionary War in one

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Speaker 3: of my earlier books, I just kept coming back to

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Speaker 3: the Civil War. It was a four year period where

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Speaker 3: six hundred and forty thousand casualties took place, over ten

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Speaker 3: thousand battles, nearly three thousand soldiers. There was just too

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Speaker 3: much there to look away from.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, the tragedy with well over six hundred thousand as

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Speaker 2: your men fatalities, it was just horrible, and I would

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Speaker 2: guess with those amount of deaths, there's got to be

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Speaker 2: a lot of different places of hauntings all over the place.

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Speaker 3: Absolutely, you know, these battlefields, of course, are one of

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Speaker 3: the places that I gravitate to the most. That's where

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Speaker 3: all this energy resides from where they met their end,

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Speaker 3: but also where they were colliding with each other in

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Speaker 3: this tension, in this hand to hand combat, and a

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Speaker 3: lot of spirit activity seems to remain there.

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Speaker 2: Now with these hauntings, do you think these spirits don't

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Speaker 2: know that they've passed on.

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Speaker 3: It depends to be honest. You know, I'm the battlefield,

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Speaker 3: I think more than any other place I've ever investigated,

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Speaker 3: you can encounter those types of spirits who don't know

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Speaker 3: they've moved on. And usually you can tell that if

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Speaker 3: you're going out to gather evidence and you get voices

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Speaker 3: or EVP recordings and you hear someone saying hell or

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Speaker 3: I'm hurt or something like that. It's almost as if

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Speaker 3: they see you, but they think you're part of their time,

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Speaker 3: which makes me think that they don't know they're dead.

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Speaker 3: But more often than not, I think a lot of

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Speaker 3: the haunting activity is also residual that we're still hearing

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Speaker 3: sounds from that time. We're hearing the cannon fire the gunfire,

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Speaker 3: maybe their battle cries, but it's not necessarily an active haunting,

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Speaker 3: you know, where a ghost of saying hello, help me.

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Speaker 3: It's more the energy is staying there. I think both

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Speaker 3: happen on the battlefield a lot.

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Speaker 2: Would you say, though, that these war sites are more

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Speaker 2: haunted than other sites.

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Speaker 3: I would because of the way energy works. When you

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Speaker 3: have tens of thousands of folks who are in a

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Speaker 3: life or death situation and are dying here on these

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Speaker 3: battlefields or in the you know, surrounding houses that we're

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Speaker 3: serving as hospitals, that energy has to go somewhere, and

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Speaker 3: oftentimes it's going to go right into the landscape that

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Speaker 3: it's taking place in.

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Speaker 2: It is truly remarkable.

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Speaker 3: Yes, yes, it's fascinating. And you know, you can talk

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Speaker 3: to lots of folks who are just visitors tourists to

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Speaker 3: these places, a lot of them being national parks and

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Speaker 3: state parks, and they'll even say, even if they aren't

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Speaker 3: really paranormal enthusiasts or there for those sorts of reasons,

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Speaker 3: they'll say that they can feel it when they go

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Speaker 3: through there. They feel a reverence, they feel something somber,

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Speaker 3: they feel an anxiety. The energy changes when you drive

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Speaker 3: or walk through these places even today for everyone.

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Speaker 2: Have there been historical stories cordinly of hauntings or strange

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Speaker 2: things happening around Civil War sites?

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Speaker 3: Oh, my gosh. Yes. And the stories started happening with

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Speaker 3: the soldiers themselves. So we have to remember a lot

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Speaker 3: of these soldiers went into the war thinking they were

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Speaker 3: going to be out in months, maybe a year. This

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Speaker 3: was on both sides. And so they're going through this

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Speaker 3: war too, three four years in and they've lost lots

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Speaker 3: of people. So they start, you know, as they're going

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Speaker 3: through these battlegrounds, sometimes more than once, reporting that they

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Speaker 3: see the spirits of their fallen comrades, that they see

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Speaker 3: the spirits of generals that have died in the war

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Speaker 3: trying to lead them forward and help them. And one

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Speaker 3: of the most compelling paranormal stories that starts, you know,

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Speaker 3: in Gettysburg is the twentieth main reports that they saw

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Speaker 3: General Washington on his horse leading them, you know, to

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Speaker 3: the point where they're pushing Confederates down from Little Roundtop.

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Speaker 3: But they, of course couldn't have really seen him. He

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Speaker 3: died nearly one hundred years prior to the war, but

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Speaker 3: they report that he's there leading them his ghost, and

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Speaker 3: all the paranormal stories just start to abound from during

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Speaker 3: the battles, from before the battles and to.

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Speaker 2: The current day, stories of people seen and witnessing marching

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Speaker 2: soldiers who have all died.

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Speaker 3: Oh yeah, oh yeah. Gettysburg and Antietam are really sort

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Speaker 3: of two battlefields that are famous for that. Chickamauga. It

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Speaker 3: happens there as well. A lot of the folks that

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Speaker 3: report seeing this do happen to be reenactors, which kind

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Speaker 3: of gives an interesting perspective on it. So they're there

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Speaker 3: for living history engagements. They're dressed in the full gear,

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Speaker 3: and they will stay overnight and they'll report having encounters,

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Speaker 3: sometimes full fledged conversations with regiments they believe to be,

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Speaker 3: you know, other reenactors, only to wake up and find

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Speaker 3: that those folks are gone. They were never there. They'll

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Speaker 3: hear gunfire that they swear as another reenactor. But it's not.

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Speaker 3: That happened a lot at Chickamauga when I was writing

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Speaker 3: about it in North Georgia, and you know, they see

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Speaker 3: them as you know, vividly as they saw each other.

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Speaker 2: It must be sad to uncover some of these stories.

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Speaker 3: It is, I I will not lie. When I write

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Speaker 3: these books, I have had moments where I have had

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Speaker 3: to take a break and just there's tears in my

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Speaker 3: eyes because I'm reading stories of fathers looking for sons,

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Speaker 3: brothers looking for each other, best friends, losing each other,

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Speaker 3: animals that have died after you know, defending their men

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Speaker 3: in war. And you know, it tears at your heart

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Speaker 3: strings and and makes you feel for them as if

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Speaker 3: they're standing right with you, which maybe they are, but

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Speaker 3: it does, you know, it does pull out your heart strengths.

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Speaker 2: All this could have been avoided if they had only

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Speaker 2: realized that all people are created equal.

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Speaker 3: Yes, And you know what though, I would I would

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Speaker 3: venture to say, after writing about men from Connecticut and

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Speaker 3: men from Georgia on both sides of this, you know

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Speaker 3: American Civil War, that the men fighting it, they got that.

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Speaker 3: You know, I uncovered tales of them helping each other,

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Speaker 3: helping save each other on opposite sides of the lines.

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Speaker 3: It's these people who were at the top, pulling the

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Speaker 3: strings right, who were saying, this is what you need

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Speaker 3: to do, This is you know why this other side

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Speaker 3: is a threat to you. They're feeding this sort of

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Speaker 3: propaganda to them. But the men there, they saw each

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Speaker 3: other as humans. They didn't want to be doing this.

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Speaker 2: Now you've also looked at spirits versus time travel. Tell

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Speaker 2: me about that.

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Speaker 3: It was something that sort of occurred to me when

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Speaker 3: I was researching these battlefields, and when I was hearing dunfire,

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Speaker 3: when I was hearing drum music, when I was hearing

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Speaker 3: all of these things, or I was feeling as if

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Speaker 3: there were people rushing by me when I was there

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Speaker 3: on a quiet night, or when no one was there

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Speaker 3: during a rainy day. I thought, what if it's not

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Speaker 3: just a residual haunting of energy remaining, but what if

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Speaker 3: some of these places absorbed, you know, this energy and

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Speaker 3: almost become a time slip, and and we have these

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Speaker 3: paranormal encounters. Are we experiencing of thinness in the veil

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Speaker 3: between our times? Because time isn't linear, right, we just

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Speaker 3: put linear constructs on it to understand it. So is

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Speaker 3: it entirely possible that when we're at these places, we're

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Speaker 3: experiencing a step back in time? And that could explain

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Speaker 3: some of the encounters were getting, perhaps even better than

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Speaker 3: a residual haunting would explain them.

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Speaker 2: Has anybody ever said that they stumbled into a time

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Speaker 2: warp or a portal, yes, yes and no.

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Speaker 3: So during you know, different reenactors and even during the

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Speaker 3: Civil War, people would kind of report that there would

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Speaker 3: be a change of scenery, that things would look different.

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Speaker 3: They swear they saw things that were supposed to be

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Speaker 3: there and weren't, and then suddenly they snapped back to

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Speaker 3: when they were with their regular folks. And actually one

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Speaker 3: of the most compelling accounts of that is during the

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Speaker 3: filming of the movie Gettysburg, which was filmed in the

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Speaker 3: nineteen nineties and it was based on a book called

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Speaker 3: Killer Angels. There were some reenactors that were sitting up

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Speaker 3: at little roundtop and a man came and started handing them,

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Speaker 3: you know, musketballs and bullets, and they thought, oh, do

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Speaker 3: we need this. You know, the man was dressed like

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Speaker 3: they were. He looked a little rugged character. And they

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Speaker 3: finally brought it to their directors and producers. They said,

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Speaker 3: where did you get this, And they said, oh, this

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Speaker 3: man handed it to us. They looked all around for him.

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Speaker 3: They were in his time, he was in theirs. And

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Speaker 3: then they said, we didn't send these to you. And

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Speaker 3: they looked at their bullets, their musketballs, and they said

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Speaker 3: these are antiques, these are originals. There's no way you

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Speaker 3: could have had these a bridge between time.

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Speaker 2: Right there, you know, And where did he go?

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Speaker 3: Right right? You know? And for him the war was

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Speaker 3: still happening, it was still real. These were people he

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Speaker 3: was providing ammunition to. So who was in whose time

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Speaker 3: at that point? Were they in his or was he

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Speaker 3: in there?

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Speaker 2: How many people who participate in the tours have relatives

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Speaker 2: who may have died in the Civil War.

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Speaker 3: Oh, my gosh, so many. So it's really interesting for

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Speaker 3: me because I live in Connecticut and almost all of

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Speaker 3: my ancestors were Confederate because my dad was from Making Georgia,

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Speaker 3: And so all the folks that I meet up here

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Speaker 3: have ancestors who died in the Revolutionary War, who left

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Speaker 3: Connecticut and fought for the Union in the Civil War.

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Speaker 3: And I have my ancestors who are on the other side.

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Speaker 3: And sometimes I wonder if the spirits are laughing at

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Speaker 3: the other side, you know, about the juxtaposition of me

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Speaker 3: being in Connecticut with them being from Georgia in the South.

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Speaker 3: But every single person on my tours has ancestors, whether

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Speaker 3: they know it or not, who participated in some sort

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Speaker 3: of war, especially in early America.

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Speaker 2: Corney, do you get reports of other kinds of paranormal

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Speaker 2: activity around these sites, like UFOs or anything like that.

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Speaker 3: Yes, yes, a lot of times, especially if these battle

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Speaker 3: sites are near bodies of water, people do report those

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Speaker 3: sorts of things, and battle sites will often be near

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Speaker 3: bodies of water or rivers or something of the sort,

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Speaker 3: only because the men who were fighting had to have

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Speaker 3: a water source to be able to survive, and that's

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Speaker 3: how they helped navigate in many cases, and a lot

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Speaker 3: of times it's at these water sources that people report

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Speaker 3: seeing unusual objects and lighted objects in the sky, and

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Speaker 3: so that's compelling to me. But again, I have this

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Speaker 3: strange theory that, like you know, and I don't know this,

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Speaker 3: this is just something that came to mind, is what if,

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Speaker 3: you know, especially at these battle sites and things like this,

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Speaker 3: when people have an alien or UFO encounter, what if

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Speaker 3: those are also time travel just of the future, and

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Speaker 3: we're just not understanding what we see or how we're

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Speaker 3: perceiving people or things from the future, and it's just

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Speaker 3: another part of that time slip.

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Speaker 2: Has anybody ever captured any sounds on tape?

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Speaker 3: I have, so when I visit I you know, sometimes

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Speaker 3: I bring equipment, but oftentimes I just bring myself. Some

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Speaker 3: of the national parts don't love you to bring equipment,

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Speaker 3: so I just bring myself and my cell phone and

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Speaker 3: I'll usually put on my voice Memos app, and you know,

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Speaker 3: see what happens. And I have heard with my own ears,

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Speaker 3: drums playing, I've heard gun fire. I have recorded all

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Speaker 3: of this just with the voice Memos app on my phone,

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Speaker 3: you know, going in my pocket. It is as real

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Speaker 3: and as loud as if you were there in the time.

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Speaker 2: Cortney, would you say that other tragic areas and events,

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Speaker 2: not necessarily civil war, but maybe World War one, World

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Speaker 2: War two, or whatever catastrophes we have occurred, could also

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Speaker 2: be haunted.

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Speaker 3: Absolutely absolutely.

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Speaker 1: So.

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Speaker 3: One of my other passions, you know that I kind

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Speaker 3: of gathered when I was younger, was Irish history, Scottish history,

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Speaker 3: you know, my Celtic ancestors as well. I love sort

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Speaker 3: of genealogy, and when I was studying in Ireland, I

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Speaker 3: got really interested in Irish rebellions. And you know there's

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Speaker 3: a site there kill manhum Jail, you know, from the

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Speaker 3: Easter Rising, where a lot of these men were executed,

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Speaker 3: and that is a huge source of activity and energy.

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Speaker 3: I visited Scotland where the Battle of Kladen took place,

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Speaker 3: where the Scottish Islanders were rising up against the British,

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Speaker 3: and I had incredible experiences there. One of the things

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Speaker 3: that matches at all these locations, though, whether it is

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Speaker 3: kilmnhum Jail, whether it is the Battle of Kolad, and

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Speaker 3: whether it is the Battle of Gettysburg, a lot of

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Speaker 3: the most profound experiences happen during the times that the

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Speaker 3: battle actually happened. And I usually find that out after

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Speaker 3: the fact that if I hear or see something in

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Speaker 3: certain area look up later, that that's when that clash

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Speaker 3: actually happened, was during that time of day, which I

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Speaker 3: find really fascinating.

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Speaker 2: Do you ever get reports of divine intervention, angelic or

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Speaker 2: even higher.

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Speaker 3: Yes. Actually, there's a man from Georgia who he believes

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Speaker 3: he was a walking miracle, and he did believe that

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Speaker 3: angels and soldiers who had died saved him. He was

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Speaker 3: in the Battle of Antietam, and he was in a

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Speaker 3: place known as the Sunken Road, which more frequently is

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Speaker 3: known now as the Bloody Lane. He was shot five

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Speaker 3: times and he kept getting up time after time after time,

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Speaker 3: and then a bullet went through his cap and he

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Speaker 3: fell into his cap and he bled through it, which

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Speaker 3: means he didn't suffocate on his own blood. So he said,

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Speaker 3: the Yankees, you know, helped with that. But then when

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Speaker 3: he was brought, you know, to a hospital to die,

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Speaker 3: he immediately woke up and said, you think I'm going

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Speaker 3: to die, but I won't, and he miraculously recovered. He

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Speaker 3: spent the rest of his career studying near death experiences

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Speaker 3: and telling people that the other side helped them to survive.

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Speaker 2: What creates the difference when you write these stories, how

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Speaker 2: do you distinguish when what you're going to use?

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Speaker 3: Ah, that is? That is you know, one of the

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Speaker 3: hardest things is you have all of these souls, all

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Speaker 3: of these stories. So for me, it's a very spiritual experience.

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Speaker 3: I like to read through as many letters and accounts

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Speaker 3: as I can, and of course if something jumps off

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Speaker 3: the pages and they had an encounter, absolutely, but sometimes

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Speaker 3: and I got started even doing the Civil War books,

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Speaker 3: you know, really going forward with it after postponing it

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Speaker 3: and taking the idea around because I had a dream

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Speaker 3: where these two soldiers appeared to me in a dream,

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Speaker 3: and I had no idea who they were. I just

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Speaker 3: remember seeing two young boys and they were in Union uniform,

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Speaker 3: and they said they were brothers, and they had a

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Speaker 3: grave near where I lived. And I woke up and

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Speaker 3: I did find two brothers who died in Andersonville Prison

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Speaker 3: in Georgia, buried really next to where I lived, basically

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Speaker 3: in the cemetery close by. And sometimes I think those

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Speaker 3: boys helped make sure that I told their stories and

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Speaker 3: the stories of all these other folks.

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