Haunted Savannah: America's Most Spectral City Read online

  HAUNTED SAVANNAH

  AMERICA’S MOST SPECTRAL CITY

  By James Caskey

  Copyright © 2005 James Caskey

  Copyright © 2013 James Caskey

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system--except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a magazine, newspaper, or on the Web--without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, please contact Subtext Publishing LLC, 510 East 64th Street, Savannah, GA 31405.

  Although the author and publisher have made every effort to ensure the accuracy and completeness of information contained in this book, we assume no responsibility for errors, inaccuracies, omissions, or any inconsistency herein. Any slights of people, places, or organizations are unintentional.

  Subtext Publishing Edition

  First Printing 2013

  ISBN 13: 978-0-9882529-6-7

  Printing History:

  Originally published by Bonaventure Books 2005

  Subtext Publishing Edition 2013

  All photos courtesy of James Caskey, and:

  Library of Congress, pages 257 and 259

  Cover Design by Liz Wiglesworth

  Printed in the United States of America

  Acknowledgements

  I have far too many people to thank for their time, patience and technical expertise to list in this volume. I’ve interviewed historians, authors, tour guides, and many people who work at the establishments mentioned within these pages. Without their help, this book would not have been possible. Any inaccuracies, errors of fact, or omissions contained within this volume are my own.

  Unfortunately I can’t acknowledge everyone by name, but a short list is possible. Local historian and folklore expert Rebecca Clark gave her time and provided a substantial amount of great material. The staff at the Georgia Historical Society provided an incredible amount of support. Tour guide and amateur historian Missy Brandt provided several anecdotes, but fortunately she allowed me to pay her off with sushi. Murray Silver and Cristina Piva, owners of Bonaventure Books, have my endless thanks for publishing the first seven editions of this book. Liz Wiglesworth has my gratitude for helping this extremely stubborn author edit his work for this new, improved edition. Additional editing credit goes to Sheila Lynne Bolda and Kristine K. Stevens. I’d also like to thank Subtext Publishing for showing great patience while indulging my seemingly endless revisions.

  Two very special thank you’s are in order to my immediate family: the first to my mother, who has always been an inspiration to me because of her strength. The second is to my older brother Brian, who as a child would tell me horrible stories once the bedroom lights were out, which probably explains why I now write stories about what could be lurking in the dark, just beyond perception.

  1. Hampton Lillibridge House

  2. Olde Pink House

  3. Little Gracie

  4. Moon River Brewing Company

  5. Juliette Gordon Low Birthplace

  6. Cotton Exchange Restaurant

  7. Pour Larry’s

  8. 441 Barnard Street

  9. Willink House

  10. Davenport House

  11. Kehoe House

  12. 17Hundred90 Inn and Restaurant

  13. Owens-Thomas House

  14. 12 West Oglethorpe

  15. Marshall House

  16. Alice Riley

  17. Colonial Park Cemetery

  18. Conrad Aiken

  19. Lucas Theatre

  20. River Street Inn

  21. B. Matthews Eatery

  22. Savannah Harley-Davidson

  23. Scarbrough House

  24. Foley House Inn

  25. Savannah Theatre

  26. McDonough’s Restaurant and Lounge

  27. Pirate’s House Restaurant

  28. Andrew Low House

  29. Hamilton-Turner Inn

  30. 215 East Charlton Street

  31. 432 Abercorn Street

  32. Mulberry Inn

  33. First African Baptist Church

  34. Sorrel-Weed House

  Preface

  For the revised and updated edition

  There is no present or future; only the past, happening over and over again, now.

  -Eugene O’Neill

  I was asked a great question recently, one that really got me thinking. The question was: Why did you decide to write Haunted Savannah, in 2005? I must admit that it wasn’t a formal plan, at least not in the beginning. The origins of the book began very shortly after I started Cobblestone Tours, my walking tour in Savannah, back in 2001. As I trained tour guides, I began noticing some inconsistencies creeping into their stories. Certain names, events, and dates in their respective tour narratives got streamlined and shaped by their personalities and storytelling style. These guides’ deviations from the stories increased as time went by, meaning the tales gradually got further and further from their original incarnation. This is not leveled as criticism, but a reflection of the reality that people’s memories are flawed, mine included. So in order to help with this problem, I began writing the stories down for my tour guides and distributing them for reference, so they would get the names and the dates right.

  At the time (pre-2005), there was just one book on the subject on the market: Savannah Spectres, by Margaret DeBolt, and that was originally published in 1984. In all that time Ms. DeBolt never updated the work, and very little new research had been done since. You should understand that most ghost tours in Savannah during the period I’m referencing either told their recycled variation of the ‘Spectres’ stories, or made up their tales entirely (and I’m talking total fabrication-- one company which was based in Charleston, SC moved their city’s stories to Savannah, just changing the names of the houses). I was a history enthusiast, so I began to see that in a few years the ghost tour market would be flooded with a bunch of outlandish fictional stories, which was a real shame in a place with some authentically bizarre history like Savannah. A few tour owners were already constructing their entire storytelling experience around made up ‘monster stories’ like Rene Rondolia, a fictional giant psychopath who lived in a lair under Colonial Park Cemetery in 1820’s-era Savannah. I felt (and continue to feel) quite strongly that this fabrication of our history was wrong on a number of levels.

  I found myself digging through the archives at the Georgia Historical Society, looking for something better to tell on tour. Doing real research for a ghost tour back then was seen as more than a little strange, but I loved doing it. What I found at the GHS was a treasure trove of information that was relevant to the topic. Not only was this twisted history more interesting than the stories being made up by unprincipled guides, it had the benefit of being absolutely true. Very little of this information had been used for tour material, or had ever been published. I wrote it down and incorporated it into my repertoire, and people really responded to it, because it was all authentic and new. And in the midst of all this research, I had been waiting for years for someone to write a worthy follow-up to Savannah Spectres. I hadn’t considered myself a candidate to do it, because I wasn’t a ‘real’ historian, and had never written anything longer than a five page term paper in my life. Besides, I was running Cobblestone Tours full-time. But three years passed, and I gradually amassed a huge folder of tour stories and historical t
idbits, way more than I could ever use on tour. If something caught my interest, I would write it down.

  The ‘Savannah tour stories’ folder grew to well over 30,000 words. It suddenly hit me one day that I had been busy writing the very book I was hoping would be written by somebody else, so I’d better get serious about it. I began rewriting all of the stories in a more professional tone, and submitted the result to a few local publishers. It was sort of a perfect sequence of happy accidents that quickly led me to Murray Silver and Cristina Piva, my first publishers at Bonaventure Books. They shepherded the project into the work it became, a weighty 74,000 words. They have been more than mentors, and more than friends. I cannot compliment them enough, because without those two, that book would simply not exist. It published in 2005 and sales have been steady ever since.

  So my response to the question Why did I write Haunted Savannah? would have to be a two-part answer: it was an attempt to correct a lot of false information that was being spread by many of this city’s tour guides, but it was also an effort to protect and preserve Savannah’s history and heritage through the art of oral storytelling. The book was (and is) intended to be a resource for Savannah tour guides, regardless of which company they work for, and is an honest attempt to raise the level of conversation about the subject of the paranormal in Savannah. I hope I’ve succeeded.

  Statue in Bonaventure Cemetery, located 4 miles from Savannah’s Historic District.

  Revisiting the Past

  Let’s pick this story up eight years later. I can say without any false modesty that the version of the book I published in 2005 was a very consistent seller, both locally and online. When I was initially approached about ‘freshening up’ this edition of Haunted Savannah, I was immediately wary. Experiences which are a true pleasure to revisit are a rarity. Once the husk of ‘the new’ is discarded, what we are left with is an experience that is somehow exponentially diminished. Even many positive events, those which make our lives worth living, are filled with the potential of us easily ruining our memories by trying to revise or ‘perfect’ them (see ‘Lucas, George’ for examples). I very nearly demurred for that reason, preferring the past to stay the past, as I had other projects pending on an already-full schedule. In fact, I nearly jokingly renamed the folder Haunted Savannah: The Chinese Democracy Special Edition, after former ‘Guns n’ Roses’ frontman Axl Rose’s seemingly unending solo vanity project. I feared a variation of his hubristic descent into an obsessive-compulsive tinkering might happen to me. But then I opened the file folders and viewed the text, and promptly changed my mind. The book needed an update, because a lot of the information contained within had changed in the eight years since first publishing. Plus, I knew a lot of new stories, as well as compelling updates to existing tales. I was sucked in. I promise that most of my changes will be seamless, if you’re familiar with the original version of Haunted Savannah. There will be not suddenly be giant computer-generated aliens inserted anywhere in these pages. Only a few chapters are seeing major revisions, and that is because a lot of new information has come to light.

  More to the point, though, my main reason for revisiting some of these stories is that I absolutely love the subject matter. And there is no shortage of entertaining stories-- this town is delightfully weird, in both a ‘haunted’ and a ‘non-haunted’ way. My scariest stories have nothing to do with ghosts. For instance, late one midsummer evening, on my way home from a tour, I encountered a guy wearing a Robin outfit (a near-exact replica Burt Ward’s costume from the old Batman and Robin TV show). He was just standing there, alone, in an alley. And I mean the guy had on a mask, the cape, the short-shorts, and the little curly boots-- this was no dimestore Halloween costume, it looked like the real deal, and we were nowhere near Halloween. My initial assumption was that he was in costume for a student film—Savannah is home to several thousand art students from Savannah College of Art & Design, including Hollywood-hopeful film majors. But there were no photographers or video crews anywhere in sight. ‘Robin’ was just standing there in the lane, posing heroically; hands-on-hips, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. I was about to ask him what the heck he was doing, but then realized I was wearing my tour outfit: a sword, a black-powder revolver, a sash, heavy black leather cavalry boots, grey Confederate wool from head-to-toe, and carrying a lit candle lantern. Who was I to judge? We looked at each other, nodded in that ‘what’s up’ way, and then he ran off, presumably to fight crime.

  I hope that my ongoing love-affair with Savannah, more than anything else, is what comes across in my writing. This town is very near and dear to my heart, and I try to do a good job of representing her eccentricities faithfully. There are simply just too many stories, ghost or otherwise, worth sharing about this most Southern Gothic of towns. I hope you enjoy reading this new edition as much as I did writing it.

  The Independent Presbyterian Church on Bull Street.

  Savannah- Why So Haunted?

  “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

  —William Faulkner

  Act I, Scene III, Requiem for a Nun

  Savannah, Georgia: you can’t walk down the streets at twilight without getting the impression that there is a layer of deeper meaning. The old, beautiful homes practically emanate an aura of history and pedigree, implying tales of lost loves, lives cut short, and other tragic circumstances. Simply by passing over the Savannah River on the Talmadge Memorial Bridge, descending the ramp off of Highway 17 and submerging into the mystery that is Savannah’s shadowy Historic District, you can’t help but feel transported to another time. Gas lamps flicker over rain-slicked cobblestone streets. Fog-shrouded vignettes, seemingly ripped from the pages of history books, appear live and in color. And adding even more eerie ambiance than the storied architecture is Savannah’s famous Spanish moss-draped live oaks. This wonderful city is the scene of intrigue and mystery.

  Savannah is so beautiful that the dead never truly depart. One just has to walk into a shop, hotel or restaurant in Savannah and strike up a conversation with the staff, and the talk will turn inevitably to the supernatural. Any old tavern worth its salt has a resident ghost. It is in these haunted stories we find common elements: tragedy, lost youth, and occasionally, redemption. Can you find a better backdrop for a ghost story than the Olde Pink House Restaurant, or the Kehoe House Bed and Breakfast? Savannah’s Historic District sets the scene like no other city.

  Why would Savannah be considered by many experts to be so haunted? For over a decade now, I’ve had some stock answers ready for all who asked. Very recently I’ve begun to change my mind, or at the very least add to some of those theories.

  Formerly, heading the list of possible reasons why Georgia’s First City was considered the be America’s Most Haunted had to do with energy. There is speculation amongst many (myself included) that houses can possibly store a ‘dry charge’ of the energy expended in the structure, much like a battery stores electrical power. This energy could be bound to the property by moments of extreme emotional distress, such as death or great sadness. And Savannah has experienced an immeasurable amount of tragedy over the years. There is also the possibility that an action repeated over and over again can also have this dry charge effect, which would explain why hearing footsteps is one of the most common forms of a structure being haunted. From time to time, when conditions are right, that stored power is unleashed. Think of sound waves: energy is released in audible form, and when conditions allow, such as an object bouncing the sound waves back toward the point of origin, the energy returns in the form of an echo. If energy can return in this way several seconds after the actual event, why can’t psychic energy return at a later time as well, sometimes years, decades or even centuries after the fact? It is possible that the act of renovating a structure could release this energy, and the fact that Savannah’s old buildings are constantly being refurbished might help explain the city’s haunted reputa
tion, as well. So the phenomena we label ‘ghostly activity’ may be an explainable occurrence in this way.

  There is, I used to point out, another factor to consider: many old port cities have a reputation for being haunted. Seaports (particularly in the American Deep South) like Charleston, Savannah, Wilmington, and New Orleans have garnered the reputation of having many supernatural occurrences. Perhaps it is tied in with the close proximity to the water—if ghosts are life-force energy that has not faded away, then maybe the tidal ebb and flow has somehow polarized the entire area, preserving the remaining energy and capturing it for a time when conditions are right.

  Savannah is a city built on its dead.

  History is the Key

  These are all decent theories, but they don’t really answer the question: Why here? Our history is really not that different from other places, and yet specific locations like the cities I mentioned previously have a paranormal reputation which borders on the infamous. Many people, upon visiting Savannah for the first time, have described to me the feeling that there is a much deeper story waiting to be unearthed, an elusive layer of meaning. And they are right.

  What my theory has evolved into is this: in order to understand why Savannah is so haunted, we need to examine her history on a deeper level than is achieved by most paranormal books on the subject and by local ghost tours. Simply pointing out that Savannah has endured several great fires, numerous yellow fever epidemics, and has been involved in both the Revolutionary and Civil Wars does nothing to explain why this particular seaport has such a tie to the paranormal. Lots of tragedy happened here in Savannah, but that is true of nearly every location on the planet at one time or another. So what gives? Why is Savannah really so haunted?