Blog of Haunted Stories in and Around Savannah

Phantom Ship On Fire

11/15/2015

Someone on the tour last night told me this story, said a lot of people he knew had seen the ghost ship and added they also see people jumping from the ship. I did some research and got this first hand account that was a little more real than the rest. It's always seen in the Northumberland Strait, the body of water that separates Prince Edward Island from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick in eastern Canada.
"At the time I first saw the Phantom Ship it was early evening in the fall of the year, November 26, 1965, just turning dark. I was busy with my housework, having no thought of such a thing as a Phantom Ship. I was standing near my kitchen window, and when I looked up, I was so startled that I could hardly believe my eyes. There was this ship, on fire and sailing down the Strait. The telephone was right beside me on the wall, so as I watched the ship, I called some of my neighbors up the road that keeps close to the shore. Those others looked and saw what I was seeing, and the word spread up the Cape {this sighting is from Cape John}. Many, as they told me afterwards, stood at their back doors and saw for the first time in their lives the Phantom Ship of which they had heard. As we watched, the ship just seemed to disappear. There was no mistaking it for a real ship.
"But that wasn't the end of it. Two nights later, almost under the same circumstances, I saw the Phantom Ship for the second time. Again I phoned others to make sure I wasn't seeing things. They, too, as before, saw that same ship. Word was flashed to River John, some six miles away, and soon our Cape road was crowded with cars, loaded with people eager to catch their first sight of the ghost ship.And they weren't disappointed. That time the Phantom was visible to hundreds of people for a half hour, and then, like the other time, it just seemed to fade away, and where the bright light had been, there was only the blackness of the water."
I love stories like this. No one seems to know the name of the ship or the circumstances of the fire, the ship is always sailing east to west and the sightings go back to the 1800"s.

Someone In That Hotel Just Didn't Like Him

11/1/2015

This is a good one. A couple on the tour told me they stayed at the St. Ann Marie Antoinette Hotel in New Orleans. She said the smell of magnolias in the sheets was so strong it woke her up in the middle of the night. She then woke up her husband and said "can you smell that"? He said "what is it"? It dissipated after awhile and they went back to sleep but she said it actually happened twice while they were there. Then she told me that her grandfather who was with the family on the trip hated the hotel. Every time, without fail, whether they let him go first or last, the elevator door would shut on him. 1st theory is that in those days people didn't bath often and really poured on the perfume. 2nd theory, it wasn't that grandpa didn't like the hotel but that the hotel didn't like him!

Flash Lights At Night

10/11/2015

A guy on my tour told me he woke up twice during the night to see a white circle in the corner of his bedroom. 1st time he got a kitchen knife thinking someone had broken into the house and it was a flashlight, the second time some other implement of protection. No one there. A while after that he noticed his adult daughter was sleeping with her door open at night. He asked her about it, she said she kept seeing an orb (she knew what one was, if you don't, read some previous posts) in the corner of her room and it made her nervous. The house was not an old house but was built over where an old farm house had been. Sometimes it the land under the house that is haunted by spirits that linger.

And We're Back At The Pink House

10/4/2015

I tell this story on the tour that was told to me while outside the Pink House, the old Habersham residence now an elegant restaurant. A girl on my tour told me that she, her husband and another couple had dinner there the night before in one of the second floor bedrooms now a dinning room. On the wall was a painting of Mrs. Habersham Jr, the builders wife. She said she kept referring to Mrs Habersham as "having her bitch face on". When she got up to go the bathroom she got a little shove going down the stairs and landed on her knees on the landing. This is where it gets really interesting!

A few nights ago I had a tour again outside the Pink House. Before I could open my mouth this girl announced that a friend of her's had had dinner there, "had made disparaging remarks about the owners wife and had been pushed down the stairs". I assumed it was the same girl and started asking specific questions. "Was she attractive (the mistress of the house had an issue with attractive women in the house and her husband, a notorious womanizer)? "Yes, she was a tall Brazilian". Didn't sound like my girl. I asked "does she know how to party?" "No, she has one drink if that and she's done". Definitively not the girl I first heard the story from. Beware what you say and where you say it, it may come back to haunt you.

Natural AC

9/27/2015

At the beginning of my tour I sometimes tell people about my journey from just needing the work to believing in spirits. One thing I mention is that if you're in an old building and it's slow, ask your server if the building is haunted, has anything ever happened to them, you'll be shocked how many times the flood gates open, I was.

I got an email after the tour from a women who said she was at the River House on River Street and she asked her waitress about the restaurant. The reply was shocking (I told you so). She said she had worked there about 6 months and no, nothing had ever happened but in her house occasionally a cold blast air would rush by her. The women on my tour replied, "it's call AC". The waitress replied, "we don't have AC, we don't even own a fan". Welcome to Savannah!

Remember Tangled Up Phone Cords?

9/27/2015

Jacki owns a beauty salon. For four years she had problems with the phones, went through all the major carriers and still couldn't get phone service. The older clients told her the family that used to own the old house where the salon was located had had a murder. The husband was having an affair with the Avon sales women and one day the son, to keep the affair quiet (guess that didn't work) choked her to death with a phone cord (remember those). Putting two and two together Jacki, who at first was frightened, came to a point had had enough. She let the spirit know in no uncertain terms she was there to stay and she was just going to have to deal with it. No problems after that.

Ketchup

8/23/2015

Thursday night I had a tour in the basement of Tondee's Tavern telling them about the time an employee burst out of a storage room door and scared the hell out of everyone. Then I ran in to him a couple of nights later cleaning off a table downstairs and he proceeded to tell that tour how he would pull the ketchup bottles out of an old metal door in the wall, put them on the back shelf and every morning he would come down and they were all put away in the wall. I had just finished the story when a guy on the tour yelled out "look at the ketchup bottles"! They were all mostly knocked over like bowling pins. I just pointed them out to 14 people and they were all up right, lined up. Everyone was seated but me and no one was near them. Freaked me out a little and when these thing happen, as I always tell people, it's not earth shattering. You're now unsure if they were standing up, was the guy closest to them jerking your chain? This is not the first thing that has happened to me on a tour and I have a feeling, not the last.

Cassadaga Florida Halfway Between Daytona and Orlando

8/9/2015

Here's something that came up last weekend and if you're headed back to Florida or to, you might want to give this small community a stop. I've had some experiences here.

The first photo in the album is Colby Memorial Temple where they hold a service every Sunday. I've tried EVERYTHING and part of the service is a meditation and I go deeper there than anything I've ever tried. I was once trying to locate one of the psychics who's famous for finding things, I was parked along a street trying to find him, they don't make it easy but he came walking by dragging his trash and stopped and found me. They don't have regular pickup service, you'll see why.
It's a small, quiet community nestled in the woods of central Florida, about halfway between Orlando and Daytona Beach (I4 exit 116), best known for having a large number of psychics and mediums, and has consequently been named the “Psychic Capital of the World". It’s also known for being terribly haunted.

It's the oldest spiritual community in America's Southeast. Two hundred and fifty people live on the 57-acre town that consists of 47 houses and 10 streets. George Colby founded Cassadaga in 1894 as a 35-acre spiritual community and refuge for mediums, aura readers and healers. Each year Cassadaga receives over 36,000 visitors looking to experience the paranormal and most of them stay at The Cassadaga Hotel, the psychic center is supposedly a favorite hangout for restless spirits.

Snag yourself a t-shirt in the gift store... “Cassadaga, where Mayberry meets the Twilight Zone”

Powder On The Trunk Of The Car

8/2/2015

I had a girl on my tour last night that had one of those "I never believed them but now I do" stories. This involves Old State Road 47 outside Columbia SC. She was told sometimes you would go out there really late at night and 3 black cats would be sitting in a triangle looking at each other. First couple of times she went out nothing and low and behold there they were. 3 wild cats, no big deal. There's a bridge where if you turn your car off it will not start right back up, it takes a couple of minutes. Happened when she was in the car. This the big one (isn't always the lonely railroad tracks), anyway, if you stop the car on the tracks you will be pushed off. First couple of times, nothing. Then she said they tried it and something physically picked up the back of the car and pushed it off the tracks. In the 70's a school bus (it's always a school bus also have you noticed) stalled on the tracks and a bunch of children were killed when a train struck it. It has been reported that if you put powder on the back of the car you can see the small hand prints of the children pushing the car. I Googled it and this was not an isolated story, just someone who had actually experienced it.

This One Even Gives Me The Creeps

6/14/2015

A couple on the tour lived in a house built in the early 1900's at the end of a road across the street from an old mill, they weren't sure what kind. It was a large tour so I couldn't get all the facts but I got the basics and that was enough to give me the creeps. That's impressive!
They ran some sort of boat storage business on the property and had installed security cameras so that they could keep and eye on the boats. He looked up one night at the monitor and sees a man standing in front of a boat looking towards the corner of the house. They both run out, nothing.
She has an autistic 3 year old niece who stayed over for an extended weekend. She said she started screaming bloody murder after they had put her down and rocking her and taking her for a ride in the car was all that would calm her down. When they got home the niece kept eyeing the house as if, I'm not so sure about this.
This is what got to me. She said her husband came in one day and she asked him if he was all right. He said yes, what are you talking about? She had just cleaned the the bathroom and there was now blood all over the back of the toilet “running down the back of the tank”. They both went in and it was still there drying. Yikes!
I told them you have to do something about this house, they had only owned it a little over a year. First off, and this was another thing that would happen in the house, the next time the front door unlocks and opens by itself (they'd be sitting there and watch) you need to state firmly and forcefully “you're dead, we live here now, there's a better place for you, you need to move on”. Next I advised them to sue the seller and not have any children right away. I may have another career here.

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