Lining the eastern brick wall are many tombstones, some of which are only fragments, which have been broken off or otherwise removed from their original location over the years. A lot of the grave markers within the cemetery have disappeared over the years, either through neglect or vandalism, and the custom of affixing them to the wall undoubtedly arose from the desire to preserve them.
Colonial Park by moonlight.
Noteworthy Burials
Button Gwinnett (1735-1777) signed the Declaration of Independence, but perhaps even more noteworthy was his ill-conceived duel with Lachlan McIntosh in 1777. His wounds sustained during the exchange of pistol fire did eventually kill Gwinnett, but today his rare autograph is highly prized by collectors. He has a temple-style burial marker for his valuable service in the early years of the American Revolution. Contrary to what some tour guides might claim, the duel with McIntosh did not take place inside the cemetery, instead occurring near the present day town of Thunderbolt, about 5 miles southeast of Savannah.
Lachlan McIntosh (1725-1806) was a born military leader and strategist. His service in the American Revolution took him from Florida all the way to Michigan, and he was a trusted subordinate to George Washington. But he is unfortunately most known for shooting his rival, Button Gwinnett.
Susannah Gray’s (1791-1812) stone informs us that she “departed this life by the will of God, being killed by lightning on the 26th of July, 1812.” Her correct age is 21 years, not the 121 years and 1,124 days listed on her slab. This alteration is the handiwork of the Union troops in General William T. Sherman’s army, who camped in the Colonial Park Cemetery in 1864. Another changed stone is Josiah Muir, whose altered inscription reads that he died at the age of eleven, and was survived by his wife Mary, age seventeen, and his son Lewis, aged twelve. Among many others that the Union troops changed are Captain Jonathan Cooper, aged 1700 years, and Phillip D. Woolhopter, aged 1,491 years.
Archibald Bulloch (1730-1777) would have been immortalized forever as a signer of the Declaration of Independence, but he instead decided to focus his efforts on Georgia’s defense against Britain. He died somewhat mysteriously shortly before the conflict spread to the South, but his contributions to U.S. politics were far reaching, including his family line: Archibald’s great-great-grandson was President Theodore Roosevelt.
The Habersham Family Vault is a prominent brick crypt on the northern edge of Colonial Park Cemetery. Please see the chapters titled ‘Little Gracie’ and ‘Old Pink House’ for more details about this key Savannah family.
An example of one of the family vaults located in Colonial Park Cemetery.
‘The Dreadful Pestilence’
Observant visitors to Colonial Park Cemetery will notice a certain year recurring as the terminus date on many tombstones: 1820. Not only was Savannah struck with a Great Fire, burning much of downtown, but the city was then laid low by a yellow fever epidemic that particular year. Yellow fever was one of the most feared diseases in seaport cities. Symptoms of yellow fever included black, bloody vomit, a jaundiced color, hemorrhages from the nose, gums, and bowels, and a fever-induced descent into delirium and coma. Death usually followed. It killed a tenth of the population in 1820, totaling nearly seven hundred people.
Savannah residents during that time period endured a nightmarish spectacle, with the wealthier citizens fleeing away from town in droves to escape the dreaded killer disease. The remaining citizens burned tar, paradoxically hoping to clear the air by generating billowing black smoke, and even fired cannons down city streets in an attempt to help combat the illness. Many people believed that poisonous vapors from the swamp or even the burial grounds were responsible for the affliction. Some doctors prescribed that sufferers of yellow fever should drink turpentine or even water laced with tar to ease symptoms of the disease, with disastrous results. It was not until the turn of the 20th century that physicians began to understand that yellow fever was transmitted by mosquitoes, not communicable from person to person.
Today there is a plaque located inside Colonial Park Cemetery which is dedicated to the 1820 mass grave. No one is quite sure where the mass grave is located, but records clearly indicate that it is somewhere within the confines of the cemetery.
Some Erroneous Folklore
Many tour guides will claim that Rene Rondolia (see his chapter in this volume) had a secret underground lair located in Colonial Cemetery, and that this area was called ‘Rene’s Playground.’ The claim is that Rene would drag unwitting victims into a series of tunnels under the cemetery. This story of lairs and tunnels though, like Rene himself, is entirely made up.
Another false ‘factoid’ that I frequently hear is that duels took place behind the cemetery’s southern edge, and the loser of the contest’s body would then be simply tossed over the iron fence for easy burial. But according to Thomas Gamble’s book, Savannah Duels and Duellists, many of the duels between Savannah gentlemen actually occurred across the Savannah River in South Carolina. In all my years of research, I have never turned up an instance of a duel actually being fought at Colonial Park Cemetery. Furthermore, tour guides relating this false story as fact would probably be surprised at the number of duels which did not result in bloodshed. Not only were dueling pistols notoriously inaccurate, but many times the combatants would simply fire a shot into the air, and part as friends.
“Closer investigation revealed a dead goat.”
A Sickening Discovery
In 1999 and early 2000, the cemetery was the site of a documented occurrence which was both morbid and cruel. In late 1999, a dog with its throat slashed was found in the cemetery. It was a terrible thing to have happen under any circumstances, but it was even more mortifying for the town’s image because it happened in a centrally-located cemetery which was nestled between the police barracks and the fire house. But the awful findings were just beginning: in April of that following year, local historian and cemetery enthusiast Elizabeth Piechocinski was walking her dog next to Colonial Park when she spotted something which didn’t belong on one of the burial slabs. Closer investigation revealed a dead goat. The goat’s mouth and feet had been bound, the throat slashed, and the heart had been cut out. Found nearby was the goat’s heart in foil, a coconut, and a burned candle. Whether this was an unknown sect’s strange religious ceremony, or just a tasteless joke has never been fully determined, but a good friend of mine who is very knowledgeable about Voodoo ceremonies bluntly pointed out, “If the perpetrators of this ceremony were attempting to practice a form of Voodoo, they weren’t doing it right. That nonsensical ceremony they performed doesn’t make it Voodoo any more than leaving crackers and wine makes something Christian. They sound like idiots, or pranksters, or both.” Regardless, the City of Savannah now quite understandably locks the gates of Colonial Park every evening.
A Strange Video
In 2008, a young man was filming what he thought was an innocuous video within the confines of Colonial Park Cemetery. Jesse Greathouse, a fifteen year old tourist, panned right and left with his camcorder, just hoping to capture a sense of the old cemetery. It appears, though, that he captured a great deal more than that on his video camera. Seen in the frame is a small child running through the cemetery, and no one else strolling through the tombstones and burial vaults appears to react to what should have been a enough strange sight in its own right: a toddler sprinting, unattended, through a burial ground. But the video goes from odd to freakish when the child disappears behind a tombstone, appears to turn to vapor, rising into the trees. A few seconds elapse, and the child shoots back earthward with unnerving speed. Again, none of the casually-strolling tourists near this freak phenomenon seem to notice this event, and it begs the question, can they even see the child at all? But don’t settle for my description and interpretations of the video. Just type “Colonial Park Cemetery ghost video” into an internet search engine and judge for yourself: is it a genuine pa
ranormal occurrence? I have watched this particular video many times, and still cannot explain what was captured on tape.
A Personal Sighting?
One evening, I myself experienced a bizarre happening in Colonial Park with possible supernatural ties. This was especially noteworthy because I had with me a tour group full of people. In late November, 2001, I was beginning my second ghost tour, which began at 9 o’clock. I was standing at the beautiful granite arched entrance and had just begun my introduction to the crowd—essentially telling them who I was and what they could expect on the tour. The temperature had dropped precipitously all throughout the evening, and the crowd began to pull in closer to me, perhaps in an effort to keep warm. Suddenly, I noticed that several people in the group were staring at something over my shoulder with expressions ranging from amazement to out-and-out fear. After being distracted by this for a few minutes and attempting to keep going regardless, I finally stopped talking and turned around. What I saw in the cemetery made my blood run even colder: about twenty yards away, near the marker for Edward Malbone, painter of miniatures, there was a strange, localized fog.
This was a vapor unlike any I had ever seen. It appeared to be tendrils of mist, swirling up out of the ground, and it only rose from four or five spots all densely packed together. These tendrils were rising up in columns, swirling even though there was no breeze at all. Nowhere else in the cemetery was there even light fog, let alone strangely dense mist, except in this one isolated location. These columns rose about five and a half feet off of the ground—it was pointed out to me later by one of the witnesses to this phenomenon that they were roughly as tall as a human, which I admit never occurred to me at the time. My entire tour group and I watched this unbelievable sight for a full three minutes until the strange vaporous forms gradually dissipated. I turned back to the group, who were full of questions about what they had just seen. One person actually accused me of somehow staging the incident! It was one of those moments where I just shook my head with a smile and said, “Only in Savannah.”
“I was suddenly awash in a very cool, pleasant blast of air, like an air-conditioned gust of wind on that muggy evening.”
Yet Another Haunting
Another strange occurrence at Colonial Cemetery: one night I concluded a pub crawl on a very warm, perfectly calm evening. Mother Nature’s frequent steamy summer joke is that the rising humidity often makes the still night air seem like it’s getting hotter, not cooler. But despite the temperature and my wool uniform, it had been a great tour, for reasons having everything to do with my crowd. They had been attentive and fun, as well as generous tippers, and I began walking back to my car in good spirits. It was a busy holiday weekend and finding parking had been difficult, so I had been forced to park on Habersham Street, a decent walk from the tour’s starting point. As fate would have it, that meant I had to cut south along Perry Lane, behind Colonial Park Cemetery. The stretch behind the burial ground is a particularly un-illuminated area at night, and what little light afforded there by streetlights was even further shaded by crepe myrtle trees and mossy live oaks. The streets were mostly devoid of foot traffic and cars, and the stillness of the hot, humid air seemed to muffle sound even more. As I walked, I became increasingly aware of one other sound besides my own gait and the sword on my hip clanking lightly: the sound of footsteps off in the distance behind me. I turned to look, but saw nothing in the gloom. I figured at first that I might be hearing the echo of my own steps and continued walking. But the sound persisted, and the footsteps I heard came at a quicker pace than my own. I finally stopped and turned, peering a little anxiously this time into the near-darkness, hand instinctively feeling for the hilt of my sword. Again, I saw nothing but an empty street behind me, but the sound of someone’s passing grew even louder and more distinct. I took a couple of nervous steps back, searching for any source of the noise I was hearing. And that’s when it happened.
I was suddenly awash in a very cool, pleasant blast of air, like an air-conditioned gust of wind on that muggy evening. Whatever (or whoever) it was, it (they?) passed right through my body. The trees never stirred and the Spanish moss never moved: this was not wind. And the pocket of air I briefly felt envelop me as the footsteps passed right through the space I was occupying was not only chilled and devoid of humidity, but it also smelled quite strongly of flowers. I instantly relaxed, feeling calming energy flowing through me. Whatever this was, it was not intended as a negative sign; quite the opposite, in fact. And then it was gone, leaving nothing behind but quickly-fading footsteps and a peaceful feeling. I have no explanation for what happened that evening, and even looked for nearby flowers to explain the smell I had just experienced, but there were none.
I know next to nothing about flowers (as readers of my book, The Haunted History of New Orleans: Ghosts of the French Quarter already know, my ignorance of blooming plants once got me into some serious and embarrassing trouble with a Voodoo Queen), but a few days later I smelled the same distinct scent again, this time from a fence near my home. Small white flowers bloomed with an intense fragrance, and I stopped to examine them. An older woman working in the garden at that particular house noticed me standing at her fence and waved. I told her that I loved the scent of her garden, pointing specifically at the white blooms, and she said, “Isn’t it lovely? I just adore Confederate jasmine.” All I could think of at that moment was my tour uniform, which is of a Confederate officer, and just had to smile at the serendipity. Was it a message of approval, or just an odd coincidence?
Deriving Meaning From Bones
A cemetery is ultimately more than a place to bury the dead. If you’re attuned, a burial ground often tells a story. How old is the place? How affluent were its citizens? How did the city grow? By that measure, Colonial Park Cemetery speaks volumes about the people and the relative wealth of the population. Began in 1750 when Savannah was a grubby, somewhat underfed seaport, the early simple headstones reflect that hardscrabble existence. As the city grew, though, it witnessed a renaissance of commerce and culture. In a century-plus worth of burials at Colonial Park Cemetery, the later tombstones are more elaborate. Ultimately what we have is a snapshot of a seaport, echoing both boom and bust.
Colonial Park represents much more than a collection of random tombs and burial markers. Early Savannahians were confronted with the prospect of disease, imprecise medical care, a staggering infant mortality rate, and unsanitary conditions. They responded to that adversity by erecting a simple yet elegant burying ground. As their city grew they embraced Colonial Cemetery, literally wrapping their streets and homes around it, as a reminder of the razor-thin and all-too-familiar line between vitality and decay.
I often point out the powerful acquaintance that those early residents must have had with death. Sometimes it makes my crowd just a trifle uncomfortable as I talk about it, but I illustrate this deep familiarity with the concept of afterlife by pointing out that on the southern edge of Colonial Park Cemetery, there is a children’s playground. The plot of ground on which it is located was within the original confines of the cemetery. So welcome to Savannah, I’ll say, where children literally play on the dead.
Conrad Aiken
228 East Oglethorpe Avenue
Conrad Aiken was one of Savannah’s most famous literary figures, along with Flannery O’Connor and Joel Chandler Harris. Aiken was a celebrated and decorated 20th century poet and author. But his life was marked with tragedy as well as triumph.
Born in 1889, Conrad grew up in a row of houses called Marshall Row, located across from Colonial Park Cemetery. He recalled later in life that he and his friends played amongst the tombstones, and in his autobiography entitled Ushant, An Essay published in 1952, he referred to it as “that jungle graveyard.” He recalled that “one could pry loose the bricks of the ancient vaults and crawl down into the warm dust to find broken boards and an old brown bone or two.” In his poem, The Coming Forth
by Day of Osiris Jones, Aiken also mentions the cemetery and surrounding area, showing what an impact the cemetery had on such an impressionable youth.
A Dark Turn
His father William, a doctor, began to exhibit signs of what Conrad later described as the family petit mal of mental instability. He believed that his wife was trying to have him committed to an asylum, and surrounded himself with paranoid delusions. An associate asked William how he was doing, and he responded, “For an answer to that question I shall have to refer you to my lawyer.” Needless to say, this story does not have a happy ending.
William’s instability increased, and he tried on several occasions to take his own life. In one instance he turned on the gas in the apartment, informing his wife that they “would now see who would emerge from the apartment alive,” according to the Savannah Morning News’ account of the Aiken tragedy.
William Aiken quarreled with his wife during the last week of February, 1901. Eleven-year-old Conrad, who was home at the time, heard a silence and then his father’s voice counting to three. Then he heard a pistol shot. He heard his father count again, and then another pistol shot sounded, and he heard what sounded like a body hitting the floor. Conrad rushed to the nearby police station and told the desk sergeant that “Papa has just shot Mama and then himself.”
Haunted Savannah: America's Most Spectral City Page 16