On November 20, 1780, a major skirmish broke out between 270 British troops and 1,000 American troops at Blackstock Plantation in Union, South Carolina. The battle was short but fierce, and in a matter of hours, Colonel Banastre Tarleton, commander of the 63rd British regiment, retreated, leaving 50 of his British troops wounded or dead and at the mercy of Thomas Sumter and the American troops. Only three American soldiers were killed. The British soldiers killed in the battle were buried where they fell on the battlefield, where their bodies remain to this day.
Today, Blackstock Battlefield is part of a national park and still looks very much as it did that November day in 1780. The site is extremely isolated and remote, located far from the beaten path. Driving down the 1 1/2-mile gravel road to the battlefield, it is easy to grasp a sense of the history and timelessness of the place. Not much has changed in the last 225 years. Blackstock Plantation house is long gone, but the battlefield remains virtually intact. Standing atop the hill overlooking the site of the battle, it is a simple matter to imagine the battle raging below—to imagine the smell of gunpowder, the shouts of troops, the screams of wounded men and horses. Some people have claimed to have heard that very thing. Visitors to the battlefield have reported hearing phantom troops marching and some have had sightings of shadowy apparitions. Unfortunately, visitors to the site are fairly rare, and reports of ghostly sightings are few and far between.
However, one often-reported encounter that stands out as particularly odd is the sighting of a mysterious large, black dog that appears out of nowhere and follows visitors’ cars as they leave the battlefield site. One such report indicated that a black dog appeared alongside a moving car in one spot on the gravel road, disappeared back into the woods, and reappeared a couple of minutes later when the car stopped at the stop sign at the end of the road. Not very odd until you realize that the dog would have had to have traveled at a rate of more than 30 mph for a distance of more than a mile to reappear that quickly.
According to folklore, phantom black dogs are sometimes guardians of the dead. Do the restless dead of Blackstock have their own guard dog keeping watch over their final resting place? No one knows for sure, but a visit to the Blackstock Battlefield just might bring you face to face with a mysterious black dog if you are lucky (or unlucky) enough.
Written by — Melanie Billings Independent Paranormal Investigator
BLACKSTOCK BATTLEFIELD
BLACKSTOCK ROAD UNION, SOUTH CAROLINA
Taken from the: Encyclopedia of Haunted Places -Ghostly Locales from around the World – Compiled & Edited by Jeff Belanger – Copyright 2005 by Jeff Belanger