Ghosts Telling Tales

(above & below pictures: parts of my souvenir cemetery tour t-shirt - and Thank-You! That is a good job scanning that tee-shirt, isn't it? Even if I do say so myself)

While the Marietta City Cemetery is fresh on my mind let me tell you of a happening there the civic minded folks of Marietta had several years ago – probably five or six years ago.

They did it two years in a row. They sold tickets to tour the cemetery and also the Confederate Cemetery. I think the money went to the Cobb County Landmarks Society.

They had people in period costumes standing beside graves to sort of pretend to be the ghost of the person buried there. Each person that talked, talked in first person of how “I bought 20 heads of cattle the day our boys made those Yankees give up Fort Sumter in Charleston, so I gave them to my pa and went and enlisted and saw action in Mobile, Chickamauga, Lookout Mountain, and was finally shot dead near here in above Marietta at Kennesaw Mountain… yessiree!”

Or one lady took the part of a slave. Councilperson Betty Hunter was the ghost of some prominent citizen, the City Manager was the speaking ghost of Mr. Mc…. Who came from Savannah, and modeled the family vault just like the ones in Savannah and State Senator Chuck Clay stood in for his real great grandfather…. Other than getting some memorizing a date of the Civil War wrong they did a great job. The ghost that the City Manager possessed referred to when Sherman was here as the year 1884 instead of 1864… but that is the only error I heard.

The ghost of the first resident of the cemetery had his say. If I remember correctly he was a Montgomery and he owned a dry cleaning establishment.

The ghost of the only black person buried in the Confederate Cemetery was there. He was buried there because he went to war with his master to be his man-servant, but after his master was shot and returned home to heal the slave stayed to help the men in gray. I think he may have been their drummer also. Then after the war he got a job at the capital in Atlanta as a doorman and got to meet some influential Georgia leaders and convinced them to build a retirement home Confederate Veterans. Wow! Such a compulsive Uncle Tom! I did know his name, and when I did I did a google on him, and sure’nuff, all he said was there.

I went both years and learned something each time. I wish they would do it again. The last I heard Betty Hunter, who is no longer a councilperson was trying to get a drive started to get some pro-things for the cemetery, such as tours, signs of historical interest, etc.