D’Estaing called for the surrender of the British, commanded by General Prevost (nicknamed ‘Old Bullet Head’ for an old wound to his temple). Prevost asked for a twenty-four hour truce to consider his options, and then used that time to fortify his positions. At the end of the twenty-four hours, General Prevost sent his reply—they would fight. Amazingly, d’Estaing did not attack immediately, instead laying siege to the city for more than three weeks, hoping to force the British to surrender.
The French artillery can be excused for their inaccuracy: a mistake by the supply ship’s steward called for each cannon crew to receive a keg of rum instead of a keg of beer. The cannon crews, drinking copiously, were supposed to destroy the British lines. Instead, they bombarded the city’s houses and buildings, and on occasion their own troops—in fact they hit everything except the British defensive fortifications they were supposed to be reducing. A terrified population sought refuge with their captors after being shelled by their so-called liberators. A number of women and children were killed in the barrage. Some children established a cottage industry: snuffing out the French cannonballs with sand and selling them to the British, so they could be fired back.
The Allied attack was to take place in the very early morning hours of October 9th. The British were warned well in advance by civilians, which were allowed free movement between the Allied battle lines and the town. The attackers were pounded by artillery from both land and sea. The attempted assault lasted just an hour, the bloodiest hour of the entire Revolution. D’Estaing himself was wounded twice. Among the dead was Count Casimir Pulaski, who was the highest-ranking foreign officer to die in the Revolution, and Sergeant William Jasper, who was killed trying to save his regimental colors.
The screams of the wounded, groans of the dying, and roar of the cannon would have drowned out the curses of the Allied troops towards their incompetent commanders. Overall, there were nearly one thousand casualties, most of them Allied. The battle clearly over, a truce was called, and the bodies of the dead were buried in an unmarked mass grave, the location of which is unknown. The Allies retreated, and Savannah would remain in English hands until July 11th, 1782.
A Very Specific Haunting
Perhaps, as has been explored in other chapters, the energy from past events can literally become embedded in a specific location. What then of this unassuming house, located on a peaceful square? The house may have been free of conflict, but the plot of ground upon which the house was built had been literally doused with human blood over two centuries before. Add to that fact that the area is located within the confines of the former Potter’s Field (a burial ground for the very poor), one which had been eventually built-over as the city expanded south of Colonial Park Cemetery. That means that this small area has seen perhaps as much pain, suffering, and death as any spot on the planet.
This violent past might explain Roger’s experiences in his apartment. What he was reporting were classic symptoms of what is known as a poltergeist (German for ‘noisy ghost’). Poltergeists are flare-ups of pent-up, invisible energy, and can manifest themselves as doors slamming, objects breaking, or, as experienced by Roger, can sometimes unfortunately direct their energy towards an individual. According to my reading on the subject, the poltergeist which focuses on a person will usually target someone who is going through turmoil, especially an adolescent. But why then would this entity direct negative energy at Roger? He seemed to be a normal, well-adjusted adult. One clue did surface, however: as I revealed details of the Siege of Savannah and talked about the clash of nationalities in that battle, he said, “Hmm, that’s funny.” When I asked him what he meant, Roger explained that he was connected, at least ethnically-speaking, to practically every nation taking part in the battle: English, French, Irish, Haitian, and American. “And, their blood soaked this ground,” I added, “they were killing each other right here, on the very spot you rented.” Roger involuntarily shuddered.
I did have some advice for him: the first step in dealing with an unwanted poltergeist is also the easiest: he should ask it to leave, in a firm voice. “Tell it the outcome of the battle,” I suggested. If that fails, he could call in a priest or minister to bless the house, or even perform an exorcism (many claim that this strategy is completely ineffective, and judging by the failure of the exorcism rites at the Hampton Lillibridge House, they very well may be right). The last step would be to simply move.
The last option was ultimately the answer for poor Roger. He tried for a while to find peace with the entity occupying his home, but failed to devise a successful, long-lasting strategy for driving out his unwanted ‘friend’. Considering the military history of the plot—and its unfamiliarity with the phrase ‘successful strategy’— Roger’s attempt at a truce was doomed to fail. He finally chose the wisest, albeit the least satisfying course: he withdrew, moving less than a quarter of a mile to new digs.
The new tenants have reported no problems.
432 Abercorn Street
Benjamin J. Wilson House
If you were to come to Savannah and take a collection of different ghost tours, all offered by rival companies, certain houses would keep popping up on many of the tour routes. This is to be expected, both for reasons relating to reputation (many of our Historic District homes have very famous ghost tales attached), and for reasons of a less scrupulous nature (some tour companies simply copy what other tours say, repackaging someone else’s story as their own product out of sheer laziness). For both of the rationales I just posited, you might quite rationally expect the ghost stories about various locations within the downtown area to be identical. After all, the history is the history, right? At least the various samplings should be very similar, owing to the fact that despite whatever ‘spin’ the guides are giving each story, the basic facts are largely the same. But what to make of a house where none of the guides seem to agree on the history of the house, much less the ghost story?
This brings me to 432 Abercorn Street, a prime example of a house about which no one can come to a consensus. Before I delve into shedding some light on the topic, let me first paint a rough sketch of what is being said about the house. I have obtained the following largely from the vast reams of material which are readily available on the internet. I have simply combined and edited the various stories into one narrative.
“Tourists often take pictures of the house, only to find images of a little girl sitting in one of the windows.”
The Legend
What you’ll likely hear on a tour:
The house was built in 1868 for Civil War General Benjamin J. Wilson. Shortly after their Greek Revival house was completed, the General’s wife died of yellow fever, leaving him to raise their daughter alone. He was a strict disciplinarian and was used to having his orders obeyed by men in combat, so he regarded any rule-breaking as insubordination, tantamount to treason.
The already-gloomy mansion was very close to the Massie School, the oldest (and first) public school in Savannah, which is still in use as an educational center today. General Wilson’s daughter loved to play with the children who went to Massie School, but her father disapproved of her socializing with them. He believed that she was of a higher social class than the grimy undisciplined urchins he saw running through the neighborhood, so he simply forbade her from having any contact with them. Undeterred, the little girl continued to run across the street to play with the other children.
Enraged by her disobedience, General Wilson punished his daughter by tying her into a chair in front of the living room window, ropes holding her in place. She could still see the other children playing outside, but now she could do nothing but sit and watch. In those days before air conditioning, houses could become unbearably hot, and the poor girl was sitting in front of the window, exposed to full sunlight. After a few days of sitting in such horrible punishment, the little girl died of heat stroke and dehydration. A few years later, Gen
eral Wilson also died in the home, but his death was of natural causes.
The General and his daughter have never left the house, according to many. Tourists often take pictures of the house, only to find images of a little girl sitting in one of the windows. Other tourists are less lucky: before they can snap a picture, their cameras shut down or have their batteries drained. Malfunctioning cameras have begun to grow very hot and even smoke in tourgoers hands.
General Wilson’s face doesn’t show up in a window like his daughter’s. Instead, his image is etched directly into the stucco. If you look for him, supposedly he can be seen looking out from the wall next to the right-hand window on the second level. This living-room window is the one where his daughter purportedly died. Is the image of the old man’s face just a coincidental arrangement of cracks and discoloration, or does the angry General still glare ominously at outsiders from his home?
There are other, darker happenings surrounding the house. In 1959, a family came to visit some friends, who happened to live at 432 Abercorn. The visiting family included three daughters, ranging in age from four to thirteen. The adults all went out one evening, leaving the children at the house. When they returned to the house hours later, they found all three of the girls dead. Two of them were still inside the house, and one was sprawled on the front porch, as if she was slain while trying to escape. There were occult-type objects left at the crime scene. This gruesome triple murder was never solved.
In the 1980s, the house was briefly rented out by some art students from nearby Savannah College of Art and Design. They constantly complained of hearing pounding, heavy pacing, crying, and even a lot of giggling which sounded like a young girl. One of these students mysteriously disappeared after a few of them conducted a séance in the house. To this day, it is not known what became of him.
The current owners are content to let the house crumble rather than take a chance on any more strange happenings.
How Much of This Story is True?
How much of this preceding tale, some or all of which you might hear on a tour in Savannah, is accurate? Well, I love a good ghost yarn as much as then next guy, but there are so many things wrong with this story I scarcely know where to begin. Bad legends deserve to get a beat-down in my opinion, so… batter up.
There was no general named Benjamin J. Wilson who fought for either side during the Civil War. There was a general named “Benjamin Wilson,” but he was born in 1866, and there is no indication that he ever lived in Savannah. Someone is getting these two men confused, and blending their details to suit the story. But there is no indication that the ‘Benjamin J. Wilson’ that had the house constructed at 432 Abercorn was even in the Civil War, at any rank.
The real Benjamin J. Wilson (again, the one who built the house) is listed in the 1870 City Directory as a merchant, and he owned a store on Bay Street. There is no designation of ‘general’ associated with his name (no, he didn’t even own a general store!), and there is no mention in any archive or directory about a wife, or any children. The property itself formerly held a house of worship, St. Paul’s Free Church, which was built in 1856. But the church burned in 1865, and the lot was sold to Wilson in 1868. The current house was built the following year.
Let me repeat that: there is no documented proof of any wife, children, abuse, or murder. Could it have happened? I suppose it’s possible. But it is also ‘possible’ that Benjamin J. Wilson invented Silly Putty, interstellar space travel, and ran a two-minute mile. But where’s the proof? An outlandish tale without corroboration is just a bunch of hot air. In the absence of anyone stepping forward with any information about Benjamin Wilson or 432 Abercorn that I somehow failed to find, despite an exhaustive look through the archives and tax records, the story is lacking in documentation of any kind.
What about the young Wilson girl’s abuse and murder? Could that be accurate? I have a few thoughts on the subject. In the course of my job as a writer, I am forced to study the evil that people willfully do to one another, and I am cursed with a very vivid imagination. The downright wickedness of John Montmollin, slave dealer in 1850’s era Savannah, for instance, is a very real, palpable thing to me. In writing about it, I was forced to confront his callous disregard for others. In much the same way, Madame LaLaurie in 1830’s New Orleans (whom I wrote about extensively in my 2013 book The Haunted History of New Orleans: Ghosts of the French Quarter) ‘got’ to me. I’ve also studied that famous murderous pair of Charlestonians, Lavinia and John Fisher in the early part of the 19th century, in detail. I’ve read with growing horror of the crimes of female serial killer Belle Gunness on a bleak farm in the early 20th century. Ted Bundy, Aileen Wournos… the list goes on and on. But there is one common thread running through all of these murderous narratives that the tale of Benjamin J. Wilson does not have: the killer always attempts to cover up the crime. Those who willfully commit murder, regardless of their circumstances or motivation, simply do not put their still-living victims on display in a front window for all to see in a major urban center. Even those killers that qualified professionals would deem irrevocably insane seem to understand, on a certain level, that they need to hide their egregious breach of social convention. So, to me, the story of Benjamin Wilson mistreating his daughter in such a public fashion is quite simply ludicrous. It is the stuff of so-called ‘splatter’ or ‘gore’ movies, and does not resemble real life in the slightest.
Likewise, I found zero documentation for murders involving this house, in 1959 or any other year for that matter, and no records of disappearances, either. When you cut those elements out of the story, all we’re left with is a bunch of cameras not working and a ‘face’ in some stucco that you really have to squint to see. Even if you take the other accounts I found on the internet (people experiencing all manner of paranormal things near this house), the story comes out as a lot of speculation and rumor. The stories seem to key upon uneasy feelings.
Is that all there is to this tale? A made-up story regarding an abandoned house? Surprisingly, the answer is no, there is in fact much more to this property than the erroneous ‘ghost story’ being attached to the building. In a very strange parallel with another chapter in this book (12 West Oglethorpe), this story arc that is missed by (most) Savannah tour guides is one literally right under their noses. But to tell it properly, we need to really dig for it, both in the archives and in a literal sense.
So... What, Then?
Savannah, if the pun can be forgiven, has a grave problem. The amount of renovation taking place in Georgia’s First City is constantly turning up the obvious remnants of her close ties with a tragic past. We are consistently turning up graves in odd locations, even today.
In keeping with this tradition, a December 14th, 1927 Savannah Morning News article described a body which was unearthed by a crew laying storm drains on Gordon Lane, which is the alley to the south of Gordon Street. The crew found a crumbling coffin with a human skeleton inside, which they unearthed in full view of children out on recess from the Massie School, located just north on Calhoun Square. Yes, let that location sink in for a moment. According to the article, the children, rather than being sickened or afraid, were highly excited that there were people buried so close to their school.
Further examination revealed even more skeletons and bones, including one which had been decapitated (presumably by the road crew, accidentally), pine boxes, and a few crumbling headstones. Research shows that this is the location of an old slave burial ground, which is shown on an 1818 map of the city, clearly titled ‘Negro Burial Ground’. During that time period, before any houses or schools were built on the location, the area was known as the Common, a mostly undeveloped patch of land just south of modern-day Liberty Street. Supposedly the bodies were moved in 1855 to the African-American section of Laurel Grove Cemetery (South) to make way for city expansion—but apparently more than a few bodies were missed. As late as June of 2004, human
remains were found by a utility crew in this location, this time digging in front of the Massie School. This was reported in the Savannah Morning News, with an accompanying picture of a Savannah-Chatham Metro police officer holding aloft a human skull at the dig site. How many burials remain from this nearly forgotten cemetery? Without a significant (and expensive) archaeological dig to find out, the question will remain unanswered.
The land presently occupied by 432 Abercorn Street, as well as the Massie School and all of surrounding Calhoun Square, was used for African-American burials. And the weirdness doesn’t end there: there are not one, but two paved-over burial grounds in this vicinity. In his memoir Recollections of a Long and Satisfactory Life (1934), William Harden, a white Savannahian, recalls two early cemeteries, one a Potter’s Field and the other for black burials:
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