Fort Washita

In 1842 Gen. Zachary Taylor chose a site near the Washita River for the army’s southwesternmost post, built to keep peace for the Chickasaw and Choctaw nations, who had been forced west on the Trail of Tears in the previous decade. For two decades Fort Washita was a busy post for troops and travelers on the frontier. When the Civil War began in 1861 the federal garrison withdrew, Confederate troops occupied the post, and they burned most of it as they left at the war’s end. The army never returned.

After the war the land returned to the Chickasaw Nation, and when communal lands were divided under the Dawes Act and the Atoka Agreement, the fort was allotted to the family of Charles and Abbie Davis Colbert, who made a home in the old barracks. The Oklahoma Historical Society bought and restored the site in 1962, and in 2017 the Chickasaw Nation acquired it; it is a National Historic Landmark and has been placed in federal trust for the Nation.

Fort Washita’s ghost stories are many and old. The best known concerns “Aunt Jane,” a woman said to have been killed for her gold – by soldiers or passing thieves – and buried somewhere on the grounds; tellers cannot agree whether she was an officer’s wife or a free woman of colour, and no one knows who she really was. Visitors describe a headless figure and a rider with long black hair. Other tales say a brother and sister named Steele who lived at the site were harassed by unseen forces, and that the Colberts’ 32 dogs vanished one night and the family soon moved out. Overnight visitors have reported feeling watched and a sensation of being choked.

Under the Historical Society, the fort offered candlelight ghost tours each October. Today the Chickasaw Nation runs it as a historic site focused on frontier, military and Chickasaw history, with reenactments, a fur-trade rendezvous and seasonal events.

A headless woman, a figure on horseback with long black hair, the sense of being watched or choked at night, and disturbances blamed for driving residents away – reported by residents, visitors and overnight guests.

The restored barracks, the grounds and the old fort cemetery; reports are mostly at night.

Fort Washita appears in most collections of Oklahoma ghost stories, including Oklahoma Today’s “Spooky Oklahoma,” and its candlelight tours made Aunt Jane one of the state’s best-known ghosts. It is also a key site for Chickasaw and Civil War history in southern Oklahoma.