Old Green Eyes
still from WRCB news segment (1999)
Origins:
Old Green Eyes is a spirit of differing origins, most of which place its birth at the Battle of Chickamauga, the second bloodiest battle of the American Civil War. Located in the far northern edge of Georgia, close to the Tennessee stateline, the battle was named after the nearby Chickamauga Creek (though the town of Chickamauga is not far off).
This is a tangent, but this "fun fact" is often brought up in Old Green Eyes stories: Chickamauga is said to be the Cherokee word for "River of Death," though this etymology is doubtful. Assuming that meaning is true, it's suggested that the name was borne from a smallpox outbreak. Other possible meanings are "Stagnant Water" (Cherokee), "Fishing Place" (Algonquian), and "Good Country" (Chickasaw), the latter of which is most likely.
Old Green Eyes has 3 basic origin stories:
1) An Sasquatch-esque creature of Cherokee legend that has long-stalked the region before finding a home amongst the corpses left on the battlefield
What good American ghost story doesn't include an "old Indigenous Peoples legend"?
As explained by Mark Fults, in his book "Chattanooga Chills (2012), Old Green Eyes is a creature older than the days of colonization, a regional protector of sorts with large gnashing teeth, long hair and luminous green eyes, with which it used to locate the still-living post-battle to feed upon (though it wasn't adverse to dead corpses either).
More details can be found in "More Haunted Houses" (1991), written by Joan Bingham:
The [...] legend says that Old Green Eyes roamed the area long before the Civil War and was seen moving among the dead at Snodgrass Hill during a lull in the fighting. One of the bloodiest battls took place on Snodgrass Hill and maybe that has some bearing on the sighting. Many people visiting the park near duck have heard an agonizing groaning that sends shivers up and down their spines.
[...]
[Chief Ranger] Ed Tinney has seen Old Green Eyes on several occasions. He saw it one foggy night while walking along one of the trails that wind through the park. He said the shape was humanlike but not human. When he first saw it, it was less than twenty feet away and passed right by him. He described the hair on the 'thing' as long, like a woman's hair, with eyes almost greenish-orange in color. Its teeth were long and pointed like fangs, and it was wearing a cape that seemed to flap in the wind, even through there was no wind. The next thing he knew, it just disappeared right in front of him.
Charlie Fisher, another ranger [...] interviewed, added more to the Old Green Eyes story. In the 1970s, Fisher said, two different people wrecked their automobiles against the same tree. Both of them swore they had seen Old Green Eyes just before the crash.
Ed Tinney's story can be found with additional details in an 2003 article in the Rome News-Tribune:
[Ed Tinney] said that one day in 1976, about 4 a.m., he went to check on some battle re-enactors who were camping out in the park. He said that while walking near Glen Kelly Road, he encountered a man over 6 feet tall, wearing a long black duster, with shaggy, stringy, black, waist-length hair, walking toward him. From the man's body language, Tinney feared he was about to be attacked, so he crossed to the other side of the road, he said. When the man became parallel with Tinney he turned and smiled a devilish grin, and his dark eyes glistened. Tinney said he turned to face the man and began to back-pedal, as his companion did as well. At that moment, a car came down a straightaway in the road, and when its headlights hit the apparition it vanished, he said.
Since Tinney's sighting 27 years ago, several residents have experienced unusual activity in the park they cannot easily explain.
The same article has further information on Charlie Fisher's story as well:
Fort Oglethorpe resident Denise Smith said she encountered a ghostly being with green eyes on a cold foggy night in the park in 1980. Smith said she had just gotten off work at the Krystal Restaurant in Fort Oglethorpe and was taking a shortcut through the park on her way to her home on Cleo Drive. She crept her '71 Roadrunner slowly through the fog-enshrouded park about a half-mile from Wilder Tower.
"It was raining and foggy, so I was going real slow," she said. "I was going through the S-curve past Wilder Tower, when I saw something big in the road about eye level, and all I could see were these big green eyes. It was so foggy I couldn't see a body. I got closer and it just disappeared."
Smith said she always thought the tale of the ghostly green-eyed beast was a myth and never would have "believed it in a million years," but now she says she won't step foot in the park after nightfall.
2) The ghost of a dead soldier (or in other instances, just his head)
More from "More Haunted Houses":
One [legend] is that a Confederate soldier's head was severed from his body, which was blown to bits from a cannon ball. All that was left to bury was his head and, according to legend, on misty nights it roams the battlefield, moaning pitifully, searching for the body.
More from the Rome News-Tribune article:
Laura Gilstrap, a lifelong Fort Oglethorpe resident, said that when she was 16 years old in 1990, she and about 10 of her friends were enjoying a hayride inside the battlefield when the unexpected happened.
She said around dusk, the group decided to take a break around Wilder Tower. Off in the field near the tower they spied a flaming torch that would disappear then mysteriously reappear again. Suddenly, the kids heard a horse's hoof beats, and a skeleton in a Confederate soldier's uniform appeared to dismount from a ghostly horse with green eyes, Gilstrap said. She said the skeleton constantly repeated the name "Amy" before disappearing for good.
3) A large cat-like creature
Last but not least, there's been a recent association with a large cat, dark-furred and green-eyed. According to “Ghosts of the Southern Tennessee Valley” (2006), written by Georgiana C. Kotarski, states it takes the shape of a big dark tiger that keeps watch atop Snodgrass Hill since the battle ended. Where it came from and why it's watching isn't really addressed to my awareness.
Despite such disparate origin stories, Old Green Eyes has a much more simple source. Per Jim Ogden, chief historian for the Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park:
A former National Military Park employee who began working here in the late 1960s maintained that he was the one who started a ‘Green Eyes’ story connected with the Battle of Chickamauga. [...] When I came here in 1982, it was something that was already going around.
The ranger in question? Ogden doesn't give a name, but I wonder if that man is Ed Tinney (the same one quoted above in "More Haunted Houses", and can be found as a chief source in many other articles written about Old Green Eyes). As stated in the 2003 Rome News-Tribune article: Since Tinney's sighting 27 years ago, several residents have experienced unusual activity in the park they cannot easily explain.
Interesting use of words! And while the dates don't immediately match up, I have found that the year of his sighting varies by a good bit, depending on the source (ranging from late 60's to the early 80's).
As for documented dates, there are many accounts collected in the James T. Callow Folklore Archive, in which Old Green Eyes first appears in 1964 in its Civil War soldier form:
Green Eyes (of Chickamauga Battlefield) is supposed to be a Yankee soldier that was shot, left to die, and never buried during the Civil War. His spirit is out for revenge.