Pennies, But Not From Heaven
Owner Patrick Godley reports a new presence in the inn: the spirit of a young boy, presumably a slave. Rather than being scary or harmful, this ghost is helpful. He returns lost pennies in inexplicable ways, such as dropping them from great heights when there is no one else around. Patrick claims to have been startled several times by pennies clattering down, and theorizes that the boy returns the lost money because slaves were not allowed to handle money without their master’s permission, since it could be used to try to escape.
Another, More Sinister Presence
All is not fun and games at the 17Hundred90. Several swear that there is another more sinister presence, this one in the kitchen. A former owner, Diane Greenfield Smith, claims that when she was in the kitchen on a Sunday afternoon, she felt a hard push to her back and heard a jangle of bracelets. The kitchen and bar staff claims that it is a former cook, an African American woman who was involved in voodoo. Stories abound that she does not like women to invade her kitchen, and will defend it with sometimes terrifying effectiveness.
The maintenance manager was working late one evening, repainting a room. Often times, work can only be done at night, since between the lunch and dinner crowd in the restaurant, and the breakfasts being served for the ‘bed & breakfasters’ upstairs, the staff has only a small window of time to work in certain areas. So this is how the manager found himself at 3 a.m. at the 17Hundred90 with a paintbrush in his hand. He was all alone, and yet, he heard muffled sobbing coming from the kitchen. He went to investigate, and paused at the kitchen door. The crying was definitely coming from that room, and it was clearly someone not authorized to be in that area. Not having access to a phone, the maintenance manager decided to enter the kitchen. He actually drew a knife to defend himself against the intruder, and walked into an empty kitchen. No one was there, and nothing was amiss—but he did hear a jangle of metal. Perhaps this was the bracelets of the former cook? Deciding the repainting could wait until another time (and when someone else would be there with him), the maintenance man decided to leave as quickly as possible.
Patrick Godley claims that occasionally pots will be heard banging together when the kitchen is supposedly deserted, a phenomenon which has apparently been happening for many years. A bartender working alone claims that she stepped into the kitchen to investigate the sound of pots clanking, and suddenly she felt a sting on her ear, almost as if she had been flicked or slapped. Yet another bartender, Lindsay, claims that she has experienced some strange things in the kitchen, as well. Bartenders often have their meals provided by the kitchen. She put in an order for crab cakes one night, one of her favorites and a specialty of the restaurant. Later, she saw her meal waiting on a kitchen table, with the ticket she had written. So she took the meal back up behind the bar and began to eat. The kitchen staff was very angry, because those cakes were intended for a waiting patron of the restaurant. No one remembered seeing an order placed by her, and no ticket was ever found, but Lindsay insists she wrote out the order, and found that ticket right next to her meal. “I saw it with my own two eyes when I walked back there, sitting there next to the plate. This is not the first time this has ever happened, and not just to me. It only happens to the girls that work here, not the men. Whatever the presence is in the kitchen, it hates women.”
On another occasion, a bartender expressed her dislike of a certain regular customer. He often insulted her and rummaged with his bare fingers through the fruit trays, a very unsanitary habit. Jokingly, she claimed to put a voodoo hex on him. Less than an hour later, the customer was involved in an accident that seemed to be minor, but he wound up developing complications from the injury, spending considerable time in the hospital. When the bartender was informed that the regular customer was seriously injured, she went very pale and promised not to make light of voodoo at the 17Hundred90—ever. “Maybe the voodoo cook was sending a message,” she said through stiff lips.
One evening, a former bartender named Lisa went around to the restaurant side of the building at the end of the night, flipping the switches to turn out the lights. Lisa could not reach the last switch, and turned away to get a chair to stand on. The light switch behind her flipped off on its own. Lisa stood there for a moment in the dark, considering her next move. Should she run? Finally, she decided that whoever or whatever had turned the light off was trying to be helpful. “Um, thank you,” she said, and left the room.
In another instance, one of the servers was asked by a diner if the restaurant was haunted. When she confirmed that yes, it was, the patron said that he had seen a man listening to the piano player who had suddenly disappeared from sight. One moment the man had been leaning against the brick pillars, and the next he had vanished.
One evening, a bartender and a waiter kept hearing unseen children laughing and running through the bar area. The candles on each table which had been lit at the beginning of the night were suddenly blown out by a strange wind which rushed through the area, extinguishing them all. The apparently unchivalrous waiter fled, leaving the poor bartender to fend for herself.
Another incident with candles in the bar involves a bartender named Amy. She was recently at the bar, and she asked a waiter to light the candles on each table. He did so as she prepared the bar for a busy evening. The waiter completed this task and left the room to get the dining room ready for the dinner crowd. When Amy looked up, all of the candles had been extinguished. When the waiter walked back into the bar, he asked, “Why did you blow them out?” Amy simply shrugged and said, “I didn’t… but don’t re-light them. Whoever’s here doesn’t want them lit yet, so we’re going to let her have her way.”
Sometimes keeping the spirits happy is the wisest choice in the 17Hundred90.
Owens-Thomas House
124 Abercorn Street
On the northeast side of Oglethorpe Square, the Owens-Thomas House serves as a pinnacle of Savannah architecture, considered by many historians to be the finest example of Regency Style architecture in the United States. Regency Style takes its name from England’s King George IV, who ruled as Prince Regent from 1811 to 1820. Completed in 1819 by 24-year-old architect William Jay, the house is a stunning example of sophistication, both in terms of its fully-realized architectural style and the surprising technology used within. The plumbing system actually featured bathtubs with running water, as well as flushing water closets. The house is constructed of a substance called ‘tabby’, which is a combination of sand, crushed oyster shells, and lime.
Today the Owens-Thomas House has been converted into a house museum. However, there are certain areas of the house where the staff sometimes feel uncomfortable. In Savannah the dead are never far, and this Regency house is no exception.
Footsteps have been heard, both in the main house and the carriage house, at the end of the day.
Boom and Bust
The era of architectural splendor in Savannah started with the completion of the Owens-Thomas House in 1819. The architect, 24-year old William Jay, found himself in high demand amongst Savannah’s nouveau riche, who were suddenly making fortunes in cotton and exporting. He went on to build the Telfair Mansion (today, the Telfair Academy of Arts & Sciences), the Scarbrough House, and many other buildings that were destroyed over the years, such as a bank, a theatre, and several houses. Jay’s involvement is probable, because of Regency-Style influences, in the Wayne-Gordon House, more popularly called the Birthplace of Juliette Gordon Low, and also the old City Hotel on Bay Street.
One of the key characteristics of Regency Style is symmetry. The house’s interior often contains such quirks as false doors, to satisfy the architecture. Jay also designed a square room in the house to appear round by using visual tricks—again, curved spaces are important to the style, as evidenced as well by the recessed front entrance with a curved door.
Richard Richardson, the original owner of the house, was
related to Jay by marriage. Richardson was a banker for the Bank of the United States and a cotton merchant. Three years after the completion of the house, he lost his fortune in the fallout of a failed oceangoing steamship venture, the S.S. Savannah. The house was lost by Richardson when the bank foreclosed. Thus Richard Richardson lost his house when his own bank foreclosed on it!
The house became a prestigious boarding house run by Mary Maxwell, and it was at this home that Revolutionary War hero Marquis de Lafayette delivered a speech from the south cast-iron balcony to a group of enthusiastic Savannahians. In 1830, George Owens, congressman and one-time Savannah mayor, purchased the house from the bank for $10,000. It remained in the family until 1951, when Margaret Thomas, Owens great-granddaughter, bequeathed the house to the Telfair Museum of Art, then called the Academy of Arts & Sciences. Ms. Thomas specified that her room never be altered, and the Telfair has honored her wish.
Spectres, and a Smoking Spirit
The Telfair turned the Owens-Thomas House into a museum, which was originally located on the bottom floor, with the upper floors used an apartments. It has been previously reported that one day a spectre made itself apparent to two men who were visiting a friend that lived in the upstairs. The tenant saw nothing, but the two men insist that they saw a man in a riding coat and a shirt with ruffles. The apparition stood in the doorway for a time, then walked through and passed into another room. The two visitors were so flustered by this strange occurrence that they said nothing, and when they asked the tenant if he ever had anything unusual happen, the man simply stated that he was afraid of the downstairs at night. No further visitations of this particular apparition have been reported, however.
On another occasion, a staff member set the table before going home, only to find the chair pushed back the next morning, as if someone had been sitting at the table, had finished their business, and moved on.
Tour guide Missy Brandt once related a story involving the exterior cast-iron porch on the southern side of the house museum. She was telling a quick historical anecdote to her ghost tour as they passed by the structure. As she was talking, she heard a match strike behind her and began to smell cigar smoke. She looked around the group and saw that no one was smoking, so she asked if anyone also smelled smoke. “Yes, I saw a match flare up behind you, and smoke puffing out of thin air,” a member of her tour group confirmed. This was echoed by several people on her tour, who had all witnessed the phantom match striking in thin air, as well as the cigar smoke, which promptly disappeared when Missy mentioned it.
The carriage house in the back of the property was, at one time, the slave quarters. When the upper level was renovated, they found the entire ceiling painted a bright blue color. This is yet another example of ‘haint blue,’ a color that is supposed to repel evil spirits. As detailed in the chapter ‘The Slave and Geechee Culture’, the haint blue color symbolizes water in the Geechee culture, and it is so believed that an evil spirit will not cross water to harm you. The paint was made with a mixture of indigo dye, milk, and lime. This idea of ‘haint’ paint as a protector may have had a practical value, because the lime would act as a natural insect repellent. Since mosquitoes were the transmitter of yellow fever, the Geechee may have stumbled unwittingly into a practice of shielding themselves from one of the most feared diseases of the 19th century. This protection from the ‘evil’ that was yellow fever did not extend to the inhabitants of the main house, because Frances Bolton died shortly after the house was completed, and her death is believed to have been from that very illness.
Some workers at the museum are uncomfortable in the carriage house near dusk—with its history of men and women in bondage, it is easy to see why.
In numerous instances, the staff has heard footsteps in both the main house and carriage house at the end of the day. Thinking that some tourists have straggled behind, as sometimes happens, a search will be conducted. Sometimes the staff will find nothing but empty rooms instead of strolling tourgoers. Perhaps the ghosts in the Owens-Thomas House are also busy taking in the beauty and wonders of the house? With William Jay’s beautiful design, perhaps that is not so farfetched.
Today, the Owens-Thomas House operates as a house museum, and is available for touring.
12 West Oglethorpe
Between Whitaker and Bull
Many houses in Savannah have a reputation for being haunted. In fact, it has been said that having a ghost or two in an old structure downtown has become something of a status symbol. In a lot of my interviews with locals, one house was consistently mentioned as being inhabited by otherworldly presences: the crumbling edifice located at 12 West Oglethorpe Avenue. The structure has been vacant for many years—its most continuous use was as a Fraternal Lodge Meeting Hall. What is it about this vacant house that inspires such a feeling of dread?
In a larger sense, I hear ghost stories about certain houses a lot, and they always seem to have something in common, namely that they have been abandoned for many years. The wild stories about 432 Abercorn Street, located within this volume, immediately spring to mind because of the stories’ similarity to one another: a house in a prominent area of town which sits empty for many years, seemingly without any explanation as to why no one will live there.
Many tour guides tell a story about a doctor that haunts this property. Are these stories true?
One Savannahian revealed to me that she used to run past the house as a little girl. “My sister and I were terrified of that house, and we were convinced it was haunted. This was long before it was vacant. Years later I read To Kill a Mockingbird, and I suddenly realized that we treated 12 West Oglethorpe exactly like the children in the book treated Boo Radley’s house. We came up with all sorts of crazy stories of who haunted it and why.”
The local ghost tours seem fascinated by the house, as well. One popular story told about the house is that a doctor lived there, and in his attempts to battle yellow fever, he somehow transferred the disease to his children, who then succumbed to it. The aforementioned doctor now supposedly haunts the house, grieving for his lost children. This tale is unlikely for a number of reasons: yellow fever was spread by mosquitoes, and was not communicable from person to person. Also, an exhaustive search of the records reveals that no doctor ever lived in the house. The closest bit of truth to anyone remotely medical living in the area was a dentist, Dr. Samuel White—and he lived next door, not in the house itself. This story of the doctor is likely imported from nearby Charleston SC, because the tale bears a striking resemblance to an epitaph written on a tombstone (in the Circular Congregational Church’s graveyard right off of Church Street) detailing the sad tale of three young brothers in the Savage family who all died within days of each other—and their father was indeed a doctor battling the dreaded disease which took his children from him. Another story told about 12 West Oglethorpe is that a woman hanged herself after losing her baby.
Tour guides ask people to take lots of pictures, claiming that most photos will show an anomaly, or suggesting that people will feel ill the closer they get to the front door. I’ve seen plenty of blurry photos these same tour guests will hold up as ‘proof’ that the place is haunted, and several vivid descriptions by people who believe that they run fevers and feel ill when they get near the home, only to have their symptoms disappear when they move away from the structure. But you’ll have to pardon me if I seem a little jaded about paranormal happenings. I’ve lived in Savannah for more than twenty years, a place that many consider the most haunted place in North America. It takes quite a bit more that some overheating tourists and blurry photos to get me excited about a supposedly haunted property. That sort of stuff might make socks roll up and down in Anytown, USA, but not in a city as haunted as Savannah, GA.
The Search for Tragedy
Unsatisfied with the folklore, I dug for more information. I went down to the Georgia Historical Society, but even though I conducted
a thorough search, I could find no recorded tragic happenings within its walls, yellow fever-related or otherwise. Another piece of the puzzle which eluded me is the date the building was erected. Conflicting records make this difficult to ascertain. According to an online search via tax records, the structure dates from 1900. An initial look at the Georgia Historical archives reveals this to be accurate—at least in theory. The records show that there was a new improvement by Beirne Gordon (partners with William Washington Gordon, Juliette Gordon Low’s father, in a shipping company) in 1898. The listing is for a two story brick house built on the lot in question. But there are several indicators that suggest that this was merely an improvement to an existing property. A little known fact is that Nellie Gordon, Juliette Gordon-Low’s mother, never got along with her mother-in-law, Sarah. Willie and Nellie Gordon actually moved from the Gordon mansion (currently known as the Birthplace) to a house built at 12 West Oglethorpe-- a short distance away from the Birthplace-- after the Civil War, and it appears that they lived there until Sarah passed away in the 1880’s. So records indicate that the property on which 12 West Oglethorpe currently sits was already in the Gordon name as early as the end of the 1860’s, meaning that Willie and Nellie Gordon, along with Juliette Gordon Low and the rest of the Gordon clan lived at a structure that was located at 12 West Oglethorpe Avenue, for at least fifteen years and perhaps as many as twenty. Whether it was the current structure or not is frustratingly unclear.
Haunted Savannah: America's Most Spectral City Page 13