THE TRUE STORY OF ANDREW JACKSON’S FORGOTTEN HUNT FOR THE PARANORMAL SPIRIT OF AN AMERICAN INDIAN. TOLD THROUGH RARE ARCHIVES OF NEWSPAPERS, LETTERS AND DOCUMENTS.

Terminology note: In accordance with current norms, as expressed by the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, this story uses the terms American Indian or Indian, as well as tribal names, over the use of Native American.

The whistling came from nowhere, sending chills through those who claimed to hear it inside their rustic cabins or in the middle of the dark woods. These encounters were said to strengthen and empower the unseen spirit until the whistling allegedly evolved into a woman’s whisper. Locals insisted that the whispering continued to intensify, becoming clear speech, as the spirit reportedly began to stalk and torment them. While these accounts indicated she could be heard clearly, her physical form was a different story. She “was here and there and everywhere, like the mist of night or the morning sunbeams, was everything and nothing,” mused Martin Ingram, a late-nineteenth-century writer who collected many accounts from the region. A unique feature was her vicious psychological attacks. She knew secrets about the people she frightened that nobody else did and “taunt[ed] people with their sins and shortcomings.”

“Witch” was the term many locals in Robertson County, Tennessee, (population approximately 9,000) applied to the purported phenomena, though some argued “spirit” was more applicable than witch, considering the entity was neither alive nor visible, in contrast to common depictions of witches. Even for occult and paranormal aficionados, which had for centuries included Ivy League thinkers, the early 1800s was an era in which the terms ghost, demon, apparition and witch often constituted confusingly vague categories. In this case in Tennessee, the alleged ongoing hauntings beginning in 1817 were carried out by an invisible specter of an American Indian woman. Whether she was called a witch or spirit or entity, the thought of her paralyzed Robertson County with fear.

Many non-Indian residents worried that challenging the mysterious spiritual force would anger it further. Still, a series of would-be heroes tried to investigate the so-called witch of Robertson County. At one point that number was estimated at hundreds of investigators, and at another it was put at thousands. These included ministers, a judge, private detectives, as well as multiple “witch hunters” and other self-declared occult experts. One of the sleuthing ministers concluded the phenomenon was “evidently preternatural or supernatural, of an intelligent character.” All of these investigators reportedly stopped their inquiries after being scared by the spirit.

Soldiers who passed through Robertson county on their way to other locales and military campaigns heard reports about the witch. The legend of the witch gradually spread and soon reached unexpected ears: Andrew Jackson.

This was twelve years before he became president of the United States, when he was still a decorated but unprincipled general in the army. Jackson received his orders from superiors in Washington, but he was not above ignoring official orders in favor of his own agenda.

It was the start of the strangest, and now largely forgotten, episode in the annals of Andrew Jackson’s military career, reconstructed here through letters, memoirs, family lore and archival documents. Jackson, according to one of the earliest chroniclers of the case, became “bent… on investigating the witch.” He went rogue. Fresh off grim crusades against Indian tribes, charged with pacifying the region, and prey to a psychological drive to prove himself the better of all challengers, Andrew Jackson decided to mobilize and root out the witch.

Charly, a Creek Indian boy who lived at Andrew Jacksons’ sprawling Tennessee estate, had reason to be particularly interested in the trek Jackson was beginning to plan. A disturbing chain of events had brought Charly (likely around ten years old at this point) to live on the Jackson property, known as Hermitage. During military campaigns in 1813 and 1814, when General Jackson was decimating Indian villages, he brought home at least three Indian children to be part of his estate. Jackson and his wife did not have biological children, and these young Indians were meant to provide company and playmates, which the family called “pets,” for the Jacksons’ adopted and quasi-adopted children (who were relatives’ children). These Indian boys were orphans, something they had in common with Jackson himself. “I feel an unusual sympathy,” Jackson said of the boys’ circumstances. But Charly and the other boys were orphans because Jackson and his army had slaughtered their families, or at the very least dismantled and displaced their communities.

Charly reached a crossroads in his time at Hermitage. At first, he had fit into the household. Rachel Jackson, Andrew’s wife, thought “highly of [Charly’s] understanding” and intelligence, and showered him with attention. But soon the family observed that Charly had an independent streak—meaning he was not always eager to follow their orders. In particular, he refused to “mind” or obey the desires of young Andrew Jackson Jr.

Such insolence could have had serious consequences, including expulsion from Hermitage. The Jacksons already thought of Charly as a “savage,” less than human. But there was reason for Jackson to want Charly to come along on his strange quest. Charly’s knowledge of Indian supernatural legends would be helpful. He would have grown up hearing tribal Indian legends of the paranormal. In one Pequot legend passed down through generations, a “ghost-witch” entered the life of a boastful man with a bottomless appetite for power and pleasure, at first joining him and enabling his lifestyle before tricking him and punishing him for his hubris. The Yakama tribe told of supernatural “monster-women,” sometimes referred to as Tah-tah-kle’-ah, who were sisters separated from one another before some settled to live in a cave and hunted children for companionship—and adults for food.

Jackson believed an Indian might attract the presence of the witch. Charly’s age could also help in that respect. Accounts from Robertson County claimed the witch often appeared when children were present.

Even with the dark violence committed against Charly’s family by Jackson, the fact remained that Charly had to depend upon Jackson for his safety and security. If Charly aided Jackson’s mission, he could secure that protection moving forward.

Andrew Jackson was confident he could be a match for Robertson County’s spirit. He had a responsibility to keep the region safe from dangers—more precisely, to keep the non-Indian, non-enslaved population safe—whether from the mortal or immortal world. If this supernatural force was a real threat, it fell into his jurisdiction to wipe it out. But that did not mean he took the lore lightly. Jackson’s unusual quest needed a support team. Because of the mission’s unofficial nature, he would have to leave behind as little of a paper trail as possible. For the purposes of recreating the story here, the most likely team members will be identified through correspondence, documents and archival accounts.

In addition to whatever help young Charly could provide, a man named George, who accompanied Jackson into the field during various military expeditions, was a valuable addition to the excursion because Jackson trusted him to carry out his orders. George would have little choice in the matter, as he was enslaved at Hermitage. The Jacksons gained great wealth from participation in slavery, and they enslaved men, women and children at their plantation.

Jackson had a wide range of contacts with expertise in military tracking and fighting. He found a man who claimed to possess special skills as a “witch hunter.” Though the record obscures the identity of this man, the witch hunter’s description, “a brawny man, with long hair, high cheekbones, hawk-bill nose and fiery eyes,” matches Jackson’s confidante John Coffee, 45, of the Tennessee militia.

Coffee had been among the military underdogs who fought under Jackson at the Battle of New Orleans. Over six feet tall and weighing around 200 pounds, the formidable man towered over most other people. Around the time Coffee was about to leave for Robertson County, a female journalist met with him. She remarked that “his countenance has much animation, while speaking, and his eyes sparkle; but the moment he ceases to speak, it resumes its wonted placidness, which is characteristic of the Tennesseans.” In addition to serving under Jackson, Coffee married a niece of Jackson’s wife. Coffee was also a land surveyor. The more land he helped America obtain through military endeavors with Jackson, the more business he gained as a surveyor.

Evidence also suggests Sam Houston, 24, Jackson’s military protege and later a famed Texas politico, joined the party. Having been raised by Cherokee from a young age after the death of his father, Houston was poised to advise his mentor on the Indian legends that could inform a search for the witch. Tennessean Davy Crockett, 31, who had advanced to the rank of lieutenant colonel under Jackson in military operations against the Creek tribe, was another candidate to join the special squad.

Those preparing for the campaign might rightly have wondered at their leader’s obsession. But Jackson had a clandestine endgame in mind, one that was destined to amaze even his biggest skeptics.

Jackson’s convoy riding on horseback came closer to their destination in Robertson County, trailing a team of horses pulling a wagon of supplies.

A crowd of onlookers gathered to see the visitors, especially Jackson. Now in his early fifties, he was tall and slender with piercing blue eyes, silvering hair, a signature scar across his cheek and a strong chin. The legend of Andrew Jackson arose not only from his military record, but also from his personal story, which was a consummate hardscrabble narrative. His mother once chastised him not to cry since “girls were made to cry” but boys were “made…to fight.” He was orphaned at a young age and, from that point on, seemed hellbent on showing he was undaunted and unafraid by what the world threw at him. Young Jackson never backed down from a fight. When he defied a British officer during the Revolutionary War, the angry officer slashed the youth across his face, leaving a scar still visible many decades later. Jackson as an adult also picked fights, including armed duels, wherever he went, his aggressiveness quickly giving way to cruelty. Along the way he stirred up fascination and disgust in those who met him.

The locals who gathered along the dusty country lane absorbed every detail they could about the now-famous general, with their observations later partially substituting for the lack of official chroniclers of the mission. For those residents who feared a supernatural presence, they could feel confident that Jackson would fearlessly take on the witch and that he would win his ultimate duel, one between the living and the dead.

The convoy’s wagon was filled with enough supplies and weapons for a weeklong encampment. As they rode on, Jackson and his party discussed their plans and strategies for the undertaking. They were closing in on the primary area of her purported hauntings. As they rode, some among the party muttered dismissive, skeptical comments about the existence of the spirit. The wagon and its horses stopped short for no perceptible reason.

“The driver popped his whip,” as witness Whitmel Fort, 28, later told it to family, “whooped and shouted to the team, and the horses pulled with all of their might, but could not move the wagon an inch. It was dead stuck as if welded to the earth.”

Andrew Jackson shouted to the group, “It’s the witch!” He ordered every man off his horse to put “shoulders to the wheels” to push the wagon. It would not budge. A relative of the family living at the nearby farm confirmed the vehicle was on perfectly “level ground.”

“Forward at a gallop!” John Coffee, Jackson’s right-hand man, commanded his troops. But there was still no movement at all, and the group stood around, stumped in “bewildered astonishment.” “The driver laid on the lash and the horses and men did their best,” recalled eyewitness Whitmel Fort through his grandson, “making repeated efforts, but all in vain.”

The group even removed the wheels from the wagon, finding them in perfect order. Jackson examined the apparatus, agreeing there were no mechanical problems.

Then, as reported by multiple accounts, a voice was heard. It was described as feminine and metallic: “I will see you again tonight.” Jackson and his soldiers fanned out to look for the source of the voice, not finding any trace of the speaker. As abruptly as they had stopped, the horses and wagon suddenly began to move freely.

The party proceeded to a nearby farm that had been reported to be one of the epicenters of the reported phenomena. Here the searchers could improvise a camp from which to explore the area. The experienced soldiers, surveyors and trackers could quickly master the lay of the land. The northern perimeter of the property ran alongside the river near to which was a cave believed to be one of the places that attracted, or possibly sheltered, the witch.

The cave had chambers that extended as much as 30 feet high, filled with sparkling stalactites, which narrowed into tight tunnels. The soldiers’ best guides would have been children. They could squeeze into and explore remote tunnels. This was where young Charly could show off his strengths. By one account, a boy armed with a candle crawled deep into the cave’s tunnels. The setting called to mind the Yakama tribe’s Tah-tah-kle’-ah cave-dwelling sisters who sought children for companionship. As the boy progressed, the tunnels seemed to become quicksand. He became stuck, and his candle went out, leaving him in complete darkness. He felt himself grabbed by some invisible force. As a local recounted, his “legs were seized as if by strong hands, and he was drawn out with a face full of mud and nearly suffocated.” He was terrified but safe. The force, while frightening him, had also shocked him by saving him from sinking to his death.

Other locales to scope out included the Red River, with its bubbling springs, and the surrounding crop fields and forests. While walking through the dense forest, sticks and rocks would be reported to fly through the air at people, with no source in sight. Witnesses swore the spirit could take on the forms of animals, identified at times as a rabbit with a black spot on the bottom of its left hind foot and at other times as a giant, bird-like creature. A local minister cautioned that the entity could “assume any form it desired.”

Settled in, General Jackson and his party were invited to eat dinner in the nearest farmhouse. There, talk turned to the Indians who had occupied the land many years before, an interesting and provocative topic considering the belief in the supernatural entity’s Indian origins. John Coffee, the party’s “witch hunter,” bragged about how he would defeat the spirit. He showed off a massive flintlock army pistol and displayed a silver bullet. He also shared other talismans believed to counter the presence of a witch and told stories of prior confrontations with spirits. Other weapons trusted by witch hunters included balls of horse or cow hair, foxfire (the luminescent part of rotting fungi or wood) and water with silver soaking in it overnight, which was meant to be consumed by victims of the spirit.

The witch hunter did not just plan to find the spirit but to kill it.

As the night wore on, Jackson got tired of his subordinate’s bragging, reportedly remarking to Sam Houston, “Sam, I do wish the thing would come.”

Locals had many anecdotes—and warnings—to share with visitors. The spirit was known as a trickster who misled people about her identity and purpose. “I am a spirit,” she was reported as saying. “I was once very happy but have been disturbed.” There was consensus that she answered to the name Kate. This would later lead some locals to identify her with their reclusive neighbor named Kate, a nonsensical assertion even for strident believers in the supernatural, considering that this neighbor was alive and well during the time period. The notion was likely a misogynistic gesture toward a woman to punish her for being unconventional. There was also an Indian woman named Nonhelema who had died years earlier and also went by Kate, her baptismal name, after an encounter with a missionary. She had traveled the frontier area helping colonists communicate and negotiate with tribes. Nonhelema had a romantic relationship with at least one soldier. Despite the invaluable help she provided Americans over the course of decades that contributed to the rebellion against the British and made possible the founding of the country itself, she was ultimately betrayed. Her brother, a tribal chief seeking peace, was murdered in cold blood in front of her, and she was taken prisoner by her former American allies before dying in poverty. In addition to being a brilliant woman, she had been a fierce warrior, said to be over six feet tall and to have participated in multiple battles. She fit the profile for those who thought the spirit was an aggrieved American Indian woman. Still other locals insisted the entity had never been human but rather “a Spirit from Hell,” with one local reporting that the specter once told a minister, “I am a Spirit from everywhere, Heaven, Hell, the earth.”

At the farmhouse, Jackson counted on the promise purportedly delivered by the witch’s disembodied voice at the country road when the wagon was stuck: I will see you again tonight. As the night wore on, according to those present at the dinner, something in the atmosphere seemed to change, giving way to an eerie silence and foreboding.

Charly arguably faced the highest stakes. His mixed thoughts about his new life at the vast and unfamiliar Hermitage estate can be imagined. His social status, like that of the other young Indians brought to Hermitage through no choice of their own, was vague, straddling several categories: enslaved individuals, servants and members of the family. Charly was no doubt an Anglicized name imposed on him, but he was not yet a Jackson, leaving him with a dangerously blurred and unstable identity. If Charly were to really become part of the Jackson family, he would need to prove himself.

The party was on watch throughout the house and grounds. The search inside presented an opportunity for Charly. Above the first floor of the house was a half story, which could be most deftly surveyed by a child able to move through its crevices and crawl spaces, into the shadows, looking for clues about the specter.

If Charly could use size and speed, Coffee showed off his bravado. The arrogant witch hunter, increasingly on edge, loudly dared the spirit to come out. The prelude to the witch’s appearance usually came with noise. An array of unsettling sounds included that of rats gnawing. In addition, knocking seemed to come from inside and outside walls, producing “a frightful racket.” Such noises had been reported in the very first newspaper account of the haunting. Then, as relayed by Whitmel Fort, faint footsteps were heard cascading across the floor.

“Here I am,” spoke a voice, as transcribed by multiple witnesses. It was the metallic voice heard earlier on the road. It was time for the showdown that Jackson had anticipated. The voice continued: “Shoot.”

Coffee raised his pistol loaded with his silver bullet and pulled the trigger. It “failed to fire,” despite his careful preparations. “Try again,” the voice came. The hunter pulled the trigger again, and again nothing happened. The talismans he had brought along likewise seemed useless.

“It’s my turn,” the voice was now reported to say. The hunter reportedly felt himself struck repeatedly by some invisible force. He “tumbled over” and then screamed in pain, feeling as though he was being pierced with a thousand pins. The spirit was also reported to be able to cause a stiffness of the tongue and a feeling like a piece of wood lodged inside one’s mouth.

The house seemed to be under siege. Ever more intense noises alleged to be produced by the spirit included the sounds of someone struggling for breath or being choked, clawing against the floor, and pounding on the rooftop. Chairs and furniture were overturned. Outside in the dark proved just as ominous. Lights flickered on and off over the fields, and the spirit, allegedly able to shapeshift, took on far more intimidating forms than just a rabbit. A large dog would change appearance to have two heads—or no heads—before giving chase.

The most vicious of the spirit’s alleged assaults took place on an emotional plane. The spirit was said to perfectly imitate any human voice. At one point, when a minister tried to repel the spirit with a hymn and prayer, the spirit repeated them in his voice. She could also sing, siren-like, in a way that made one purported witness swear “no human voice was so sweet.” Multiple accounts reported that when strangers like Jackson’s hunters came to town looking for her, the spirit could instantly announce the stranger’s name, repeat the stranger’s private conversations verbatim to others, and list the person’s most personal and intimate transgressions, sometimes in front of their spouses.

At one point, Jackson commented, “I’d rather fight the British than to deal with this torment.”

At a lull in the action, exhaustion overtook Jackson’s party, and some tried to get a little sleep on straw mattresses. For those who fell into an uneasy sleep, covers were yanked off. The party heard the voice curse, sing and threaten. One sleeper believed he felt the spirit enter his bed. Thinking quickly, he rolled her into the quilt, dragging her toward the fire to try to burn her. He was stopped in his tracks by a terrible stench and an impossible weight. Another would-be sleeper found himself waking up, as a local reported, “pinioned, as it were, to the floor by some irresistible force from which he was utterly powerless to extricate himself, and the witch scratching and pounding him… while the man pled for his life.”

As was often the case in Jackson’s missions, he would have to take matters into his own hands to achieve his ultimate goal.

When he reflected on his personal ambitions, Andrew Jackson knew no limits.

As he reached his fifties, there was reason for Jackson to become restless about the even bigger achievements in his sights. He sought the ultimate position of power in the country he had spilled so much blood to enlarge. He was not going to be leading backwoods military missions forever, and he would lay waste to obstacles to get where he was going.

He had long refused to be intimidated by supernatural American Indian legends. He had carried out brutal military incursions on American Indian tribes, including the Creek (Charly’s tribe) and Cherokee. Under the guise of securing control of areas such as the regions around and within Florida, Jackson had gone to brutal lengths, including mass slaughter, to usurp lands and power. In some cases, tribal leaders would sign coerced treaties. Jackson exhibited neither moral qualms nor anxieties about transgressing supposed powers from other cultures’ spiritual worlds. At one point, he and a military contingent reached an Indian land known as Holy Ground or Grave of White Men that had terrified others. The land, reportedly containing “wizard circles” around its borders, was said to have a mystical barrier that would destroy intruders. Jackson crossed over without a second thought.

From his dark, bloody attacks on tribes, Jackson had, ironically, educated himself about Indian culture and beliefs. This knowledge was advanced by Jackson’s quasi-adoption of Charly and the other Indian children. The witch had become infamous across Tennessee but not just for its violent physical interactions. Observers chronicled how the entity had made predictions about the future, often about political and military matters, including, it was said, details about the Civil War still some 45 years away that later proved accurate.

With all the commotion in and around the farm house, Jackson, the mighty general, never tried to use force against the purported spirit. The evidence reveals the ultimate twist of their journey: Jackson did not want to stop the entity at all but rather to draw the witch out, to bait her to come to him, likely using Charly, the motherless native child, as a lure. This started with the naysayers on horseback voicing doubt about her and was furthered by their “witch hunter” loudly threatening to kill her. Jackson’s secret endgame was perhaps not to destroy the spirit, but rather to convene with her and demand its oracular ability shine on him.

Drawing on examples like the encounter in the cave, if Charly was to be used as bait, he would be facing a high-stakes dilemma. Any increase in Jackson’s power meant further danger to Charly’s people and all other tribes. But Charly would also have understood that supernatural empowerment could come with repercussions, as in the story of the Pequot “ghost-witch” who enriched the greedy man before punishing him.

It was said there was something hypnotic about getting close to the spirit. One man who promised not to try to catch her asked to touch her hand. He found her “touch was soft and delicate”; but local Whitmel Fort recounted that when another man dared to put out his hand he “felt… a hairy substance.”

Whatever private interaction Jackson allegedly experienced with the entity that night, witnesses kept details to themselves. To those inclined to believe in the supernatural and to believe that Jackson indeed communed with the witch, they would not have been surprised by an interaction involving a Faustian bargain. The native mythology of the Wendigo, which was circulated under different names in different tribes, was said to begin with a warrior making a deal with a malicious spirit who gave him incredible powers that ultimately turned him into an inhuman being.

Surviving records clearly reflect that Jackson originally planned a weeklong stay in Robertson County. This itinerary was set. Yet after the purported encounters on their first night, he was content to leave the next morning, suggesting that an unspoken goal had been accomplished. His men were unanimously terrified by their night’s stay, rushing to leave, but Jackson, it was said, wore a smile as he departed.

Approximately a decade later, Andrew Jackson was elected president of the United States. It was unprecedented to rise to the White House from poverty and orphanhood. Among other things, his presidency was characterized by further depredations to American Indian tribes through violence and forced removal.

Jackson never spoke about his quest to find the spirit, even when meeting others in later years who had been present with him in Robertson County. For those who claimed to have their own encounters with the spirit, traumatic memories affected them for decades, with one noting that “every recurring thought of the dire events came like a convulsing nightmare.”

One tribe greeted the news of Jackson’s ascension by commenting that “the Devil became President.” Faustian bargains, for those who believed in them, have two sides. For his part, Jackson’s meteoric rise in power was paired with growing health problems so mysterious they continue to this day to be studied by modern medical historians. To skeptics of any supernatural exchange, there is still meaning in Jackson’s health mysteries, which have been associated with the same time period when he murdered his way through Indian communities. These health issues have been attributed by some to environmental factors from those travesties, a kind of karmic consequence of his merciless treatment of others.

According to local lore, the witch of Robertson County led to the death of the owner of one of the farms—one of the only cases in the annals of parapsychology in which a spirit is blamed for a death. The fates of the likely participants in the secret Robertson County military mission run the gamut. John Coffee, after continuing his role as surveyor appropriating Indian lands, died at 61 following a trip to Washington to visit Jackson. Sam Houston supported Jackson’s presidential candidacy before becoming governor of Tennessee. He then moved to Texas where he remained a political force. Davy Crockett broke with President Jackson over his treatment of tribes, calling the Jackson administration’s policy of removing tribes from their homelands “oppression with a vengeance.” As for Charly, any reliable trace of the young Indian disappeared completely from the historical record. One of the other would-be adoptees from a tribe who lived at Hermitage with Charly ended up dying young and being buried in an unmarked grave, perhaps a fate shared by Charly.

By the time Andrew Jackson was in his second term as president, illnesses ravaged his body. On January 30, 1835, he exited the Capitol supported by a cane when a man named Richard Lawrence came up to him, standing feet away. Lawrence raised two pistols. He fired both at point-blank range at Jackson. The result of this first presidential assassination attempt in American history remains baffling. Both of Lawrence’s pistols flashed, explosions rang out, but neither fired, exactly as had been described by witnesses all those years earlier when the witch hunter fired at the spirit. Davy Crockett, by then a 48-year-old congressman, was present on the steps of the Capitol and helped wrestle the gunman to the ground and pull Jackson away. With the gunman apprehended, the weapons were studied carefully and found to have high quality ammunition. A witness, who happened to be Thomas Jefferson’s grandson, watched the assassination attempt in astonishment, hardly able to believe Jackson not only survived, but was unscathed.

“Were I inclined to superstition,” he said, “the conviction that the President's life was protected by the hand of a special providence would be irresistible.”

Matthew Pearl is a writer of fiction & nonfiction, co-founder of Truly*Adventurous & editor of Truly*Horror.

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