The Most Haunted City...?

Let me start by saying I love Savannah. What a charming city. Spanish moss hangs from the trees like tinsel. The brick sidewalks are often uneven and treacherous, but they're beautiful. Gaslights welcome visitors to doorways, and the "haint blue" ceilings on the porches are meant to keep the spirits away. They have town squares every couple of blocks, for a total of 22 remaining out of the original 24, squares where the townspeople could muster if invaders threatened their peaceful lifestyle. Savannah is rich in history.

We did several tours, and I have to say we heard much of the same information on almost every tour. This isn't a bad thing for those of us who might not have been paying full attention, and it's interesting to hear the varying takes on certain aspects, like the Forrest Gump bench at Chippewa Square. It isn't there. Why not? Well, one tour guide told us because it was being defaced, so they moved it to the historical society. Two other tour guides told us it was a Hollywood prop and went back to California when production ended. They did note that because of the interest, the historical society had one to commemorate the movie. 

We walked through Colonial Park Cemetery, colonial because it dates back to civil war days when soldiers encamped there - soldiers who defaced some of the tombstones when they were bored. One of my favorite stories, a stone was altered to honor the mother of ... 117 children. Many of the stones were displaced and are now along an "orphan" wall because they don't know where the graves are. Oh, the graves are there, but with the stones moved, they aren't sure which one is which. That, and the tombstones are so weathered as to be almost illegible. The thing about the cemeteries in Savannah, though, is that they are parks. Families would go to the cemetery and have picnics with their dear departed. The green space is beautiful. Then, there's the dark side of the cemeteries. Some of the land was reclaimed to be built over - without moving the bodies buried underneath. This is where the haunted histories come from. Bodies buried under streets, under houses that were built when the boundaries of the cemetery parks were pushed back. 

One of my favorite ghost stories was about a young Irish immigrant named Mary Reilly. The Irish were sent to America to work off their debts as indentured servants. Mary had a very nasty master, and one day she and her boyfriend schemed to kill the old guy off. As she was giving him his morning bath, she held his head under water and killed him. She was the first person in Savannah tried for murder, along with her boyfriend. Her boyfriend was sentenced to hanging, but Mary got a reprieve due to the fact she was pregnant. When the child was born, they took the child from her and strung her up, too. Now they say Mary wanders the square looking for the child they took from her. 

Then we visited Bonaventure Cemetery, famous from Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Our guide was very knowledgeable about its history, and relayed many stories, including the ghost stories, but he was also very fact based, i.e., he'd tell us "people say" and give us the alternate facts, but he had "true facts" to back up what really happened, and sources to check. The statuary and symbolism in the cemetery are things that always interest me (making me a taphophile of sorts, if you've read EPITAPH), and while they had a lot of interesting things to see, one of the statues most people come looking for (which was used on the cover of the aforementioned book) has also been relocated to the history museum on account of strangers traipsing over the graves the statue marked. The family wasn't happy about people trespassing on their family plot. Regardless, there are plenty of other interesting things to see, and a reminder that the plots - which are all clearly sectioned off - should be respected as private property. 

I have to say, for all the things we saw, I never had a sense of anything otherworldly lingering about. The Savannahians, however, are happy to exploit the tourism the two famous movies (and others) have brought to the fair city. Of all the tours we took, I was most disappointed by the "Ghost" tour, almost as if our guide was bored with it all. Her storytelling skills were lackluster, and she rushed through the tales she passed along. That particular tour also employs some theatrics, which were over the top for me and annoyed me more than they added to the experience. We stopped at one of the "haunted" locations, where they took us to a room, turned the lights off, and an actress came on a small stage to "frighten" us with more tales and special effects. Nope. Not what I was looking for, but probably fun for some people. Maybe I should incorporate something like that in one of my stories and have the actors "visited" during their performances. What do you think?

I enjoyed my trip immensely (did I mention the delicious food?), and while I learned many interesting things (Keeping Up With The Joneses, for instance, refers to the "fancy" houses on Jones Street and not a neighbor named Jones), the haunted history didn't do much to inspire me - which isn't to say some of what I learned won't end up in one of my books. 😉 

Low Country Boil