In fact, in what many say is the country’s most haunted city, it seems everyone has a ghost story or two—children’s sallow faces peering out of windows, the constant clanking of keys unlocking doors and the drone of low-volume piano playing, to name just a few. At the 17Hundred90 Inn and Restaurant, for example, staff tell me about a ghost who was an indentured servant at the inn when it was a boarding house. She fell in love with a sailor and they planned to run away together. He instead left without her and the distraught young woman committed suicide. Her ghost now tugs guests’ bed sheets. And at the Foley House Inn, a B&B facing Chippewa Square, staff report kitchen doors swinging open and closed with no one walking through them, and that a chef there would see a silhouette of a man from the 1800s. Costumed guides lead nightly ghost tours along quiet and dark neighborhood streets, stopping in front of homes with tales of those who were murdered and died there, and their restless spirits left behind. “We have the highest rates of reported poltergeist activities in the nation,” explains the costumed tour guide with 6th Sense World® Historic Ghost & Cemetery Tours who calls himself “The Spirit Formally Known as Prince.” “That means we get the most phone calls for unusual physical activities in the house, for example, furniture moving by itself, things flying through the air, things like that.” Savannah’s summer getaway is just a half- hour drive toward the coast. With the feel of a friendly beach community, Tybee Island has three stretches of ocean beaches offering water sports including swimming, kayaking, parasailing and stand-up paddle boarding. Many visitors book dolphin boat tours that usually encounter tame groups of jumping and playful marine life. Others, meanwhile, take on the challenge of climbing the 178 steps up the restored 1730’s Tybee Island Light Station and Museum with its dramatic views of the coastal so-called Lowcountry. Along the South Channel waterway near Tybee Island sits Fort Pulaski National Monument,
named after Polish Revolutionary War hero Casimir Pulaski. Pockmarked brick walls surrounded by a moat remain after improved Union rifled cannons bombarded and pierced the fort, forcing the Confederate stronghold to surrender in 1862. Farther north up the Atlantic coastline and just beyond the South Carolina border is Hilton Head Island, one of the nation’s foremost beach communities known for its resorts and more than two dozen golf courses. It’s another hour or more drive north to Charleston, so very similar to Savannah with its colonial and Civil War history, antebellum homes, and Southern ambiance. Church spires and multi-tiered steeples tower over the low- rise skyline along streets with swaying palms and mighty live oaks draped in Spanish moss. So-called Rainbow Row is where the most photographed, picture-postcard string of pastel-colored homes sit side by side. It’s where Confederate gunners pummeled Fort Sumter with the opening salvos that started the Civil War. And yes, it’s also purportedly one of the nation’s most haunted cities. Before leaving Savannah, I walk through shaded squares and quiet neighborhoods one last time. “A lot of the old families that date back to the Colonial period are still here,” I recall tour guide Meyerhoff telling me. “There’s a blend of different architectural styles, and it’s all at eye level and not high towers and buildings. There’s a uniqueness and charm.”
For more information: www.VisitSavannah.com
Colonial Park Cemetery, the site of many ghost tours
SAVANNAH
COAST TO COAST MAGAZINE FALL 2022 | 20
Made with FlippingBook - Online catalogs