Episode 22: The Ghost Army

Send us Fan MailWelcome to the Tennessee Ghosts and Legends Podcast. My name is Lyle Russell. I am your host, and I love a good ghost story. Today, have I got a ghost story for you. However, this episode is a little different from what you're used to hearing on this podcast. There are no plantation spirits, no cryptids in the tree line, no UFOs landing in Nashville, and no lights floating over haunted railroad tracks. The story you are about to hear is stranger than any of those things because this ghost story is true. Every word of it. And it started right here, in the woods east of Tullahoma, Tennessee, in the winter of 1944. Welcome to the Ghost Army.Before we get into the story, I want to tell you something about how this episode came to be. Over the 2026 Memorial Day Weekend, I had the privilege of bringing author and documentary filmmaker Rick Beyer to Tullahoma to kick off our city’s America 250 celebration, Along with his wife, Marilyn, and his sister, Catherine, Rick presented his research on this amazing story he has spent over 20 years documenting and bringing to public attention. Rick is the author of The Ghost Army of World War II, co-written with Elizabeth Sayles, and the producer of the 2013 PBS documentary of the same name. He is the foremost authority on this story, and he was gracious enough to share it with our community and to allow me to draw on his research for this episode. What I'm about to tell you is deeply informed by Rick's work, and I am grateful to him for keeping this story alive so others could hear it.