Happy Halloween: Here's a different take on an Alton ghost story

SHILOH, TENNESSEE – Alton is considered one of the most haunted towns in the entire United States, and on Halloween, which some may argue is the city's best holiday, it is town tradition to swap local ghost stories.

Here at Riverbender, we believe in expanding beyond the usual haunts of Mineral Springs, Milton Schoolhouse and McPike Mansion. It's not that those three M's aren't important. In fact, they are great historical reminders of Alton's past, and the well-documented ghosts are no exception. This, however, is a tale from where today's Alton merges with its past – most notably the brutal and bloody battles of the Civil War. No, this is not from the mass grave on Rozier. This is not the standing walls of the old prison at the foot of Williams Street. This is a tale of Alton ghosts, but it's not in Alton at all.

A lot of brave Altonians fought and died for the unity of this nation far from home. One of those places was Shiloh, Tennessee, where the 32nd Illinois fought valiantly. Of those men, Company F was a group created in Alton. Local Civil War re-enactor Zach Hardin went to the hallowed ground of that old battlefield to celebrate the brave boys from Alton who killed enough Confederates in a peach orchard it was said it could be crossed in its entirety without stepping on anything outside of a Confederate corpse.

When Hardin and his comrades left the path most traveled, they had an experience of the supernatural variety, which reminded them of home. It leaves one wondering if the ghosts of Alton are due to the limestone and river as many suggest, or if it is something else entirely. What if Alton is more than limestone and moving water and is a haunting entity of itself?

Here's Hardin's story as he told it to us early Wednesday afternoon on Facebook Messenger:

So, me and my buddies go to Shiloh for a living history on the anniversary this year...

The morning when we woke up, we decided to swap uniforms for federal uniforms. We were doing Confederate, and we wanted to take pictures with the Illinois monuments, because me and my buds are all Illinois guys.

I personally wanted to find where the 32nd Illinois fought, because they had a company formed in Alton – Company F.

They held the line against repeated and overwhelming Confederate assaults in the famous peach orchard. Taking heavy casualties. Grant later said you could walk across the field from one side to the other stepping on bodies without touching the ground.

Here is what U.S. General Ulysses S. Grant said of that orchard after the battle:

“I saw an open field, in our possession on the second day, over which the Confederates had made repeated charges the day before, so covered with dead that it would have been possible to walk across the clearing, in any direction without touching the ground.”

Here's where it gets weird:

So we're in uniform walking in these woods. We find an old marker nobody had been to in years – a long way out in the woods. It was the position of the 32nd and one of their temp burial sites. We kept walking around and we found this indentation in the ground. It looked like a dug-up burial trench. It wasn't marked, so we didn't know what it was.

Anyway, we sat down and smoked a pipe, and started talking about what these men went through and how different Alton is now and what they'd think about someone from Alton coming to visit where they bled. We get up and wander back toward the peach orchard and the old marker for the 32nd was right in front of us, and then all of a sudden, and this lasted for about two to three minutes and faded in and out with intensity, but we heard musket fire – clear as day.

All of us were like, "I've heard the that sound before - those are muskets."

[My friend Chris] said, "Yep, fire by file. They're firing in twos."

The reenactors were all gone, and there was nobody else in the woods but us. It sounded like fire by file, which means you go down the line, guy in front and back fire at the same time, then the next two, then the next two. It's a way to have a company continue fire without firing volleys and reloading at once.

We all just stopped and listened. Some booms were louder, like cannon shot, and they varied in their distance, as if some guys on the line were closer than others. I've reenacted since I was 13. I know musket fire. It has a very distinct sound. All three of us heard it.

Eventually, it stopped, and we were all without words. I just remember us trying to rationalize what we were hearing. Then we all realized it was nothing but musket fire.

So, we decide to leave the woods and head back to the peach orchard. When we stepped out of the woods, I was overwhelmed with emotion. The view was stunning. It was the only time I took a picture of the landscape and not just a monument the whole day. I took three photos. My two pals took out their phones too and also took pictures. We all had the same blown-away feeling.

If you zoom in, you can tell that green thing is moving. I have never been an “orb” guy, because I think typically it's dirt or a light refraction on a camera lens, but this is a neon green thing moving in all photos. There was nothing in the photos my pals took, but they weren't from Alton.

Hardin said he did not notice the orb in the photos until after he returned home. He also spoke to a friend who worked at Shiloh for years. She confirmed they believed what the men found to be a burial trench, but it was never in the records, so it was not marked.

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