Camp Chase Confederate Cemetery

The story

In May 1861, Union forces carved out Camp Chase in Columbus's Hilltop neighborhood, naming it for President Lincoln's Treasury Secretary and former Ohio governor Salmon P. Chase. What began as a Union recruit staging post quickly transformed into a grim, overcrowded prison compound holding over 9,400 Confederate prisoners of war and political detainees. When the war ended, the timber barracks were torn down, but the soil kept its dead: a 1.4-acre walled rectangular lot at 2900 Sullivant Avenue holding the remains of over 2,200 soldiers who died in captivity from disease and harsh northern winters.

The weirdness here isn't just the jarring existence of a Confederate prisoner cemetery preserved in the middle of urban Ohio—it's the phantom mourner who never left. Local lore points to Louisiana Ransburgh Briggs, a 19th-century Columbus resident with Southern sympathies who sneaked onto the grounds after dark hidden beneath a black veil to lay flowers for the dead. Decades after her passing, visitors still report sightings of the 'Lady in Gray' weeping among the headstones, with fresh flowers inexplicably materializing at the grave of soldier Benjamin Allen of the 50th Tennessee Volunteers.