I study and collect music of the early 19th Century up to the Civil War - and there was a LOT of haunting going on back then!

Some of the songs in these tattered old books (most of which I've never heard about, and a lot of them have NEVER been recorded as far as I know) will really reach deep into your chest and muckle on to your heart.

One particularly poigniant one is "Mother's Lament", to the tune of "Sweet Afton":

Yon spot in in the Church-yard
How sad is the gloom;
That Summer flings 'round it
In flowers and perfume;
'Tis thy dust, my Darling
Gives life to each rose;
'Tis because thou hast withered...
The violet grows.

Some of the ones that have survived include "Lorena" - which has a bittersweet association for me, as it brings back memories of my own "Lorena", loved and lost long ago.
A little over a year ago, she died of bone cancer at the age of 54.

Aren't there about 6 verses to that, Kendall? I usually keep it down to 4. Given the average American's attention span, one does well to get through the third before people start getting up and wandering off or falling asleep and tipping over.

Then there's "Angel Band". As my Brother and I kept vigil by our Mother as she died, i "sang her home" with that like the old timers used to.

Speaking of mothers, there's "Rock Me to Sleep, Mother" which was very popular from when it was written in 1860 through the CW. It's a beautiful song, and a shame that we don't hear it much, if at all any more.

A couple of tunes that I like to do on the low "G" flute are a really old one - "Brave Wolfe", and the ghostly "Mary's Dream".

After the first rousing, patriotic marches of the American Civil War, people stated getting a hard dose of reality and experienced the terrible loss and grief that any war brings.

It wasn't long before we had "The Vacant Chair" "The Pickett Guard" and "Tenting Tonight", all of which can be pretty "haunting".
These also represented some of the earliest "anti-war" protest songs to appear in America, albeit in a rather discrete form.

Someone in the South wrote "Somebody's Darlin'", which is deeply touching, and one of my favorites.   

Another nomination would be "Wayfaring Stranger". There's something to that song that gets to me from time to time.

More music was written in America during the CW than at any other time in our History. Most of it has since settled into the mouldy catacombs of obscurity, and a lot of it probably deserved to, frankly.

But there are still some wonderful old songs still waiting to be re-discovered.