It is not the Walker County Republican Party with 269 fans, or the LaFayette Public Library with 331 fans, or one called Rossville Park Improvement with 276 fans.
You would be getting warmer if you guessed the Chickamauga Cherokee Teaching Council, a non-profit with 2,423 fans fascinated by Native American culture and history.
The correct answer is a page titled “Green Eyes, the Ghost of the Chickamauga Battlefield,” which currently has over 6,500 fans.
The page is the creation Elbert Tucker, a Class of ‘84 University of Tennessee at Chattanooga grad, who now lives in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Having grown up in East Brainerd and East Ridge in Tennessee, Tucker had heard the tales of Green Eyes as a Boy Scout camping in Chickamauga Battlefield.
“In the days when you were eleven or twelve years old, people talked about old Green Eyes before you crashed into the sleeping bag at night,” Tucker recalled.
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On March 15, Tucker’s interest in Civil War history and the childhood memories of Chickamauga Battlefield led to him to wonder if others had an interest in the ghost stories that were exchanged during visits to the park.
“If [the page] renews an interest in the battlefield then that is a great thing,” Tucker said, who hasn’t experi-enced any paranormal activity while in the park.
The page’s first post referenced a 2003 Catoosa County News article quoting Edward Tinney, historian and chief ranger from 1969 to 1986.
“Green Eyes is rumored to be a man who lost his head to a cannonball, frantically searching the battlefield at night for his dislocated body,” said Tinney. “History says ghosts in the battlefield such as the Green Eyes tale began happening soon after the war in 1863.”
Some posters to the page claim there are Cherokee tales of hauntings pre-dating the Civil War, describing a crea-ture known as “Old Green Eyes,” a head that floats amid the foliage with long hair and a distorted jaw displaying ferocious teeth.
In a month and a half, hundreds of postings have given “Green Eyes” and the Chickamauga Battlefield dedicated daily followers a wide range of topics to discuss.
Fans of the page have posted many stories they have heard, and a few detail their own experiences.
Tucker’s favorite is by Leah Ayers, a Chickamauga native who recounts several of her personal experiences with the “phantom fires” and the “infamous Bloody Pond area.”
Fan Dianne Fincher of Chickamauga claims to have once found a bone that she suspects to be human and ex-perienced a “weird sensation” while holding it.
Fans involved in two separate traffic accidents in the park during the early ‘70s claim that the glowing Green Eyes distracted them.
Discussions on the page also include restoration efforts in the park, references to the battlefield’s ghost in books and on websites, the park’s other reported ghosts, such as the “lady in white,” and Civil Way history.
When Tucker asked fans about ancestors who may have fought at the Battle of Chickamauga, he received dozens of insightful responses from family members who served during the Civil War, including one from Thomas Blair Lillard II.
Lillard’s ancestor, Col. John M. Lillard, commander of the 26th Regiment, was shot at the Battle of Chickamauga. He died the following day.
Tucker, a newsroom director for Cincinnati’s WKRC, says he loves to hear other people’s stories.
From the volume of posts, links and photos fans have added to the Green Eyes page, it seems local Facebook us-ers are also intrigued with the potential of social media for storytelling.
Regardless of whether the Green Eyes story is folklore, fact or fiction, the ghost’s ever-growing number of Face-book fans demonstrates that fascination with a good ghost story is alive and well.
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