Anatomy Of A Photo: The Tower Door

Today's photo includes a ghost story, because I love this sort of thing!

The Chickamauga Battlefield, known simply as "the Battlefield" to locals, is the site of a bloody three day battle during the American Civil War. Now a national park, it is home to an impressive amount of wildlife, history buffs, and monuments to the events that took place on site. The most impressive of the monuments is Wilder Tower, named after Union Col. John T. Wilder, who led a successful defense of the hill against Confederate forces. Standing an impressive 85 feet high, spiral stairs lead to the top of the tower, giving those who climb an unmatched view of the park.

Legend has it that on a summer night many years ago, several young people dared one another to climb the tower (as a local to the area, I can attest to the likelihood of just such a thing occurring. Think of it as an intro to many "Hold my beer." moments). One young man took the challenge and scaled the lightning rod, which led to a gun slot, where he entered. Upon reaching the turret, he shouted out to his friends, who were nearby. Basking in the glow of achievement, he began his descent down the stairs. Suddenly, his friends heard screams from inside of the tower. In a panic, the young man ran down the staircase and jumped out of what he thought was the gun slot through which he had entered the tower. He was wrong. Mistakenly jumping out of the gun slot situated above his point of entry, he fell about 25 feet onto the concrete base of the tower, suffering great damage, and becoming paralyzed for the rest of his life. What could have frightened him so greatly? We'll discuss that in a later posting.

Comments

Regarding Keeslyn

In January 2020, a young lady named Keeslyn Roberts disappeared from a fuel station near my home. The case remains unsolved. This post will examine the actions, and lack thereof, of those in authority, and how this contributes to the case remaining unsolved. But first, a little backstory. As a teen, I lived in the same neighborhood as the Roberts family. Keeslyn's father, Eric, is older than I, and I don't recall the two of us having much interaction. His sister, on the other hand, is the same age and we've been friends for over 40 years. It was she who told me about Keeslyn's disappearance and the family's frustrations with the lack of police action. To learn more of the specifics of the case, numerous podcasts and news stories are available online. To my understanding, the police reaction to the disappearance has thus far been little to no reaction. After no word from his daughter for several days, Eric went to the fuel station where her car was parked. He th...

Visiting Alice

Savannah, Georgia is one of my favorite cities. Younger than London, older than San Francisco, with a degree of quirk rivaled only by New Orleans, Savannah is a six hour (if Atlanta traffic is agreeable) drive from my home in the northwestern corner of the state. Comparing my region with that of Savannah is an exercise in futility; they are worlds apart. One is lower Appalachia, with rolling green hills and valleys, creeks and waterfalls. The other is coastal Georgia, low country, wetlands. Even the cultures and accents are sufficiently different as to make a new acquaintance appear surprised when they ask where you're from and you reply "Georgia." Something neither place lacks is ghosts, but you probably knew that, didn't you? View this YouTube video by Dixie After Dark for a bit of info on Georgia's first ghost, Alice Riley. I love writing about Savannah. I can almost see the Spanish moss and smell the pot of low country boil!

Dark Planes Over The Cumberland

Part 1: Treetop Flyer In the immediate pre-Covid era, when my son was 4 and 5 years old, he played soccer (at 4) and T-ball (at 5) in our small rural town in Georgia. Both years, two prop-driven airplanes flew over the fields the team was practicing or playing on. The plain, painted dark and with no clear tail markings, didn’t appear to be commercial aircraft, nor did they fly at high altitude; at times they seemed to be just above the tree tops. Needless to say, all action on the field stopped as the children and parents stopped in wonder to watch them fly by. Around this same time, a controlled substance arrest took place in an equally rural county across the state line in Alabama. Among the usual contraband of substances and paraphernalia was found a small amount of heroin. That last detail caught my eye as the area in which the arrests took place is even more rural than my own. When I lived in Sydney, heroin was a fact of life in the port city and was said to be quite easy to...

www.markholder.org

Search This Blog