Walking up the long walkway of Waverley Mansion, tourists may feel like they’re visiting a set from “Gone With the Wind.” Adorned with beautiful white columns and a yard straight out of Better Homes and Gardens, the antebellum home stands among a thick layer of mystery. Within the walls of Waverley, secrets of ghosts prove disbelievers wrong every year.
Just down the road, some say an old woman walks the railroad tracks waiting for the return of her husband and son from the bloody battles of the Civil War.
Built in 1852, Waverley served as the home to Colonel George Hampton Young and his 10 children.
The house is located between West Point and Columbus, south of Miss. Highway 50.
It survived the Civil War and stood abandoned from 1913 to 1962. Upon its purchase by Robert Allen Snow in 1962, strange things began to happen.
The oldest son of the Snow family, Allen Snow, remembers growing up in the mansion and hearing strange, loud noises in the night. Although Snow never had a personal encounter with a ghost, his mother experienced something very different.
“My mom was the one who heard the ghost on several occasions. Usually it was the voice of a little girl calling out to her. Then, on two separate occasions, she and my sister actually saw the form of a little girl in a long white gown on the stairs,” Snow said.
Every time Mrs. Snow heard the voice it said “Mama.” This continued for about two years before Mrs. Snow made another startling discovery.
“Every day in the late morning and afternoon my mother began to notice a small indention on one of the freshly made beds upstairs. It was the perfect size and shape of a small child,” Snow said.
However, Mrs. Snow is not the only one who has noticed the imprint of the girl. On many occasions, visitors and tourists have noticed the obvious indention on the large canopied bed.
Snow said the family tried to research the possible origin of the “little girl ghost,” but never discovered who she might be.
George Hamilton Young had 10 children, but none died in the house. Snow suggests that perhaps one of Young’s grandchildren died in an accident.
The little girl of Waverly does not haunt the Golden Triangle Area alone. She has a companion just 20 minutes up the road that some say lets its presence be known.
According to legend, during the Civil War, a young wife lived with her husband and son close to a railroad track outside Columbus. After the beginning of the war, her husband and son said their goodbyes and left to defend the South. Sadly, they never returned and the young wife grew old walking to the railroad tracks every night with a lantern to check for their return.
MSU student Ashley Dodgen says she first experienced the strange encounter with the Columbus ghost a year ago. Since then she has seen the orange glow moving down the railroad tracks twice.
“I found out about it through friends and just out of boredom one night we decided to go out there. We drove for a while outside of Columbus on a gravel road in the woods until we came to a railroad track. Next, we rolled down our windows, honked the horn three times and then we saw it,” said Dodgen.
She describes the light as a glow from an old gas lantern that moves closer and closer while getting brighter. Dodgen says that it’s a creepy experience because you’re sitting in the woods, in pitch-blackness on top of railroad tracks when the light appears out of nowhere.
However, Dodgen, now a believer, is not alone in her experience. Fellow State student Courtney Knop has also recently seen the moving glow.
“I went about a week ago with some friends of mine,” Knop said. “We parked on the tracks and then saw the light moving towards us from the other end of the tracks. After it disappeared, we actually got out and walked around, but we didn’t find anything.”
The jury is still out on whether or not these sightings are actually lost souls searching for peace. But, between Waverly Mansion and the Civil War ghost of Columbus, the area has ghost stories covered.