A Civil War Soldier In California Is Not A Mistake

 A Civil War soldier in California sounds like a glitch in the story we learned in school until you trace the footsteps back to Drum Barracks near the Port of Los Angeles. We take a listener’s sighting seriously and use it as a doorway into a forgotten piece of American history: California’s divided loyalties, the creation of Camp San Pedro (later Drum Barracks), and how thousands of troops moved through Southern California as the Union fought to hold the Southwest. If you’ve ever wondered why certain places feel charged, this one gives you the receipts and the reason.

 
From there, the tone shifts from historical to personal and unsettling. Drum Barracks is now a Civil War museum in Wilmington, and it carries a long list of reported paranormal activity: chains dragging across floors, footsteps and mumbling in empty rooms, sudden smells of pipe smoke, and the repeated appearance of a woman known as “Maria,” often linked to lavender and violet perfume. We talk about why museums, former posts, and old hospital grounds can become magnets for ghost stories, especially when so many lives passed through in a short span of time.
 
We also share a strange Queen Mary moment that leads to an “object story” we still can’t explain: an old hairpin that appears in a jacket pocket and later vanishes, plus a Civil War bullet box that doesn’t always stay where it belongs. If you’ve had a Civil War ghost encounter, a haunted museum experience, or the kind of event that raises the hair on your neck, we want to hear it. Subscribe, share the show with a friend, and leave a review so more people can find these stories and add their own.        https://spirittalesandmagic.blogspot.com/2026/04/a-civil-war-soldier-in-california-is.html