Spend a night in haunted Savannah

It’s easy to see why spirits want to stick around Savannah. This historic Georgia port city, checkerboarded with oak-graced parks lined by elegant mansions, feels both ancient and adolescent—its streets a time machine that can leave you slightly off-kilter.

I’ve long been drawn to Savannah’s seductive vibe, oldness is palpable here. According to the visitor bureau’s boast, Savannah is “America’s Most Haunted City,” and the eerie undercurrent of centuries past feels very much alive, even for those who are no longer living. ” On a recent visit, I decided to see, hear, and maybe feel for myself, perhaps via tingles up the spine, if this paranormal PR had merit.

Tripadvisor lists 61 ghost tour options, a frightening number to sort through—cue the Ouija board or Magic Eight Ball. I chuckled while perusing clever names (ie, “Spirits and Scoundrels” and “Conjuring Cocktails”) but opted for Ghost City Tours “Dead of Night Tour,” precisely because it was, in fact, not at the dead of night. With a start time of 9 p.m., a witching hour more my style, it began an hour earlier than many others while still leaving time for a non-rushed dinner and sunset drinks at Peregrin, a SCAD-designed rooftop bar offering to-die-for vistas from, ahem, a levitated perch. If spirits were hovering about, I figured I might get a preview from up here.

I walk cautiously for a few blocks to meet our tour at Johnson Square, the oldest and largest of Savannah’s famed squares.In the shadow of the 50-foot obelisk marking the grave of a revolutionary war hero, we meet “Crow,” our tour guide. His voice is rich and deep, his delivery animated, and it’s clear that Crow, a Savannah native and former Savannah School of Art and Design (SCAD) student, takes storytelling seriously.

“I love folklore. I love going deep with research,” the veteran tour guide assures us. “I’ve been doing this for eight years now, and every ghost story you’ll hear tonight is either from my direct experience or straight from a guest’s experience.” We nod.

“There are no moments of joy ahead, only darkness,” he warns. On the way to Wright Square, our next stop, he mentions the some-23,000 unmarked graves “according to the findings of a 2013 seismic survey,” that he claims we’re casually strolling over. “Watch your step, Zombie hands are a perennial problem.”

At Wright Square, formerly known as Gallows Square, Crow recounts a “long history of lynchings” as we pause beneath the extended horizontal limb of what he calls the Demon Tree. Here, evidently, Alice Riley, an Irish Catholic indentured servant met her demise in 1735, hanged after being the first woman convicted of the first murder in the new colony of Georgia. The tale, in Crow’s telling, has all the elements of chilling drama: desperate lovers (Riley and her fellow immigrant paramour, Richard White, were convicted together), in a desperate situation (abused by their evil master, William Wise), suffering a gruesome death (a pregnant Alice reportedly took three days to finally succumb by hanging).

Before the noose tightened around her neck, Alice cried out, “I damn this city to hell!” Crow, likewise, cries this out at blood-curdling volume, startling our group.

We move on to The Foley House Inn, where Crow tells of “Wally,” a ghost so named after an intact skeleton was found sandwiched in a wall. Wally, sometimes seen on the fire escape, occasionally moves tables around and haunts the dreams of inn guests.

And then it’s on to the Sorrel-Weed House, a circa 1840 Greek Revival mansion, once the home of the wealthy shipping merchant Frances Sorrel and wife Matilda, and then later the businessman Henry Weed. Robert E. Lee visited here, and the film Forrest Gump’s opening scene was filmed from its rooftop.

At night, doused in the creepy glaze of streetlamps, its fading terracotta paint looks downright spooky, and I found myself, for the first time on the tour, loosening my cynicism. I actually looked to see if the ghost of Molly, Matilda Sorrel’s maid and Matilda’s husband’s mistress who committed suicide here, might indeed be a shadowy figure on the piazza.

Next up is one of Savannah’s storied cemeteries. An active burial ground from 1750 to 1851, the sprawling Colonial Park Cemetery in the heart of the historic district is home to some 600 tombstones, but also thousands of unmarked graves, including some 4,000 extending beyond its tall iron gates, as in, where we are currently standing. This is a recurring theme here in Savannah—the dead, it seems, are everywhere. But Crow gets specific, and personal, in his account of Rene Rondolier, one of the cemetery’s alleged ghosts.

“I saw him myself, when I was 17, hanging out in the playground there with my friends, as 17-year-olds do,” says Crow, pointing to lonely swing sets off in the distance. Legend has it that Rondolier, a young man over 7-feet tall was a gruesome killer who attacked pets and people. He was convicted and hanged, but his ghost is said to still lurk on these grounds, “a tall, huge shadowy figure that follows people for three blocks or so, like he did me,” vows Crow. An experience that led to this current gig leading ghost tours. A calling from the beyond.

So here’s my takeaway from getting ghosted in Savannah: I can’t 100 percent verify that the city is indeed more haunted than say Charleston or Salem or other places with deep, dark pasts. But I can confirm this: you don’t need to believe in ghosts to believe your ghost tour leader. Especially if yours happens to be a killer storyteller, a master of suspense and spectacle and of illuminating the factual history of a place like Savannah, with, perhaps, more color, more spirit. For every ghost story, there’s the ghost, and there’s the story. The latter is enough for me.