Welcome back gals and ghouls to Nightscrawlers, the perfect place for all things weird and spooky. Today I want to discuss America’s Most Haunted City, which I was fortunate enough to travel to for a week in early July of this year. Savannah, Georgia is home to some of the spookiest places I have personally ever been and the city is filled with so much history that it’s no wonder it’s haunted. Right now I will be giving you a brief overview of some of the places I got to visit during my time there, and the following posts will highlight select locations in more detail! Please note that some of the photos in this post were taken by myself. If you wish to use any of them, please ensure proper credit is given. 

The History of Savannah, GA

Savannah, Georgia is the oldest city in the US state of Georgia, established in 1733 on the Savannah River by General James Oglethorpe. When they arrived on the ship Anne, they were welcomed by Tomochichi, and the Yamacraw tribe. It was on February 12th of that year that Savannah was founded as was the colony of Georgia. However, it wasn’t until 1751 that it became a Royal Colony.

This city, along with the colony of Georgia saw many wars in its time, including the American Civil War, but we will touch on that when we discuss one of the most popular cemeteries in the historical district of Savannah.

Because of all of the tragedy seen by the city of Savannah, with wars, slavery, prohibition, and Yellow Fever, it has now been named and is well known as America’s Most Haunted City. It has been featured on a number of shows including Haunted USA, Scared Famous, and most notably, Ghost Adventures who investigated the first location on our list today, the Moon River Brewing Company.

Moon River Brewing Company

The Moon River Brewing Company was a building that was originally erected in 1821 by Elazer Early and it was originally used as the City Hotel. From the outside, this building doesn’t look like anything special, if I’m going to be completely honest, but when you walk inside, it gives you an entirely different feeling. Today, it is used as a pub style restaurant that I was lucky enough to dine in during lunch on one day of my vacation to Savannah.

Unfortunately, I did not experience anything supernatural or paranormal while I was dining there, but the majority of the activity is not actually known to happen in the main dining area. The upstairs and basement are both known to be home to specters who like to show themselves to those who are brave enough to explore into the areas. The stairways to both areas are lined with cheeky “Beware of Ghosts” signs. This is one of the locations that will be expanded upon in a later article.

Sorrel-Weed House

This beautiful home on a side street of the Historical District has been labelled as one of the most haunted locations in the entirety of the United States of America as it was the location of two separate deaths. To this date it is decorated in the same manner as it was all those years ago, however now it is used as the site of a Historical Museum, as well as a tourist attraction for those who know the gruesome story that happened within those walls.

The thing about the Sorrel-Weed house that makes it stand out from other haunted locations in America, let alone Savannah on it’s own, is that there were multiple deaths on this property. The horror stories begin with Francis Sorrel and his wife Matilda. Matilda was not known to be a happy woman as she struggled with depression (something that was not well acknowledged at the time), and this was not something that helped when she found out that her husband, Francis was having an affair with one of the maids, Molly. Upon hearing of the affair, Matilda supposedly climbed to the third story balcony and jumped to her death.

Shortly after this, Molly was found hanging in the carriage house where her sleeping quarters were. So, as you can imagine, it is said that this home is very active with supernatural activity.

Mercer House

The Mercer house has been in the public eye for quite some time. If you have ever been to Savannah, you have probably heard of a book, and possibly a movie rendition of said book, titled Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. This story surrounds the horrors that took place inside the Mercer house.

The house was originally owned by the great grandfather of famed musician Johnny Mercer, but was eventually purchased by Jim Williams, who restored the house to it’s original condition. Williams did restorations as a career and lived a quite lavish lifestyle. Unfortunately, it was in his office at the front of the house that Williams shot his lover, Danny Lewis. Williams was tried four times for the same crime before being acquitted. Shortly after, he died not far from where he supposedly committed this crime in the study. His cause of death was “sudden pneumonia.”

There is a lot of mystery surrounding this property, and if you choose to visit for a tour, you are not allowed to speak of the murder or you will be removed from the premises. If you want to learn more about the events of the crime, I suggest watching the long and slow movie, or just reading the book. It will also give you a peak into the beautiful Bonaventure Cemetery.

Six Pence Pub

This stop on our visit was not actually due to it’s spooky history. We stopped in for a glass of wine following a ghost tour that we participated in because it was used in a Julia Roberts’ film, Something To Talk About and my mom was thrilled to get to go inside.

Turns out that this place is actually haunted as well. Who would have known?! When we asked our waitress if she had ever experienced anything, she told us that although she never saw it, apparently, there was an apparition of a woman dressed in period clothing in the basement (which used to be jail cells), but that she did have a glass of water go flying across a table towards her when she was taking a guest’s order on one occasion.

Bonaventure Cemetery

Bonaventure Cemetery was one of the very first locations that we visited when we arrived in Savannah, because I had heard how beautiful and creepy this place really was. There are many different spirits that are known to haunt this place. From a rich family, to Johnny Mercer, to a young girl named Gracie, this place is just crawling with supernatural energy.

There is far too much information about this cemetery, so I will have to expand more in a future post. All I will say for now is that it is hauntingly beautiful, I personally didn’t experience anything supernatural, but I definitely felt something with us. However, we did only explore a very small portion of the cemetery because of how large the land really is.

Colonial Park Cemetery

I’m just going to go ahead and start the description of this location with the fact that over 700 victims of the 1820 Yellow Fever epidemic were buried here. That’s right. Seven. Hundred. People. So that is more than enough to consider this place haunted as all hell, but there is more to the story.

When the Civil War started, this cemetery was transformed in a sense and used as a base camp for soldiers. It’s important to keep in mind that at this point in time, soldiers tended to be very young men who were drafted into the military. When we were at the cemetery, we were told that some of these soldiers were as young as 14-years-old. So, as many young men, basically children, they got bored sitting around waiting for an attack. Their idea of fun, was to use their tools and weapons to change names and dates on the headstones and even knock them down.

If you visit today, most of the headstones are not actually on correct plots, as the plots have not be relocated after all of the stones were knocked down. So the majority of these headstones are along the back wall of the cemetery so that the dead are still honoured and represented.

Wormsloe Historical Site

You may recognize the main drive way to this site from a famous Miley Cyrus movie (hint: it’s called The Last Song), but there is so much history to this location that most people will never know. The Wormsloe Historical Site is breathtakingly beautiful, with hundreds of acres of forest to explore, and even some cool wildlife to attempt to interact with (see the photo of a hummingbird I took below). I don’t know if I would say that I think this location is haunted, but it is definitely creepy as hell and has some randomly placed grave sites throughout the property.

However, if you are a history buff, please visit this location because you will probably cry because there is so much to learn. There is locations of early settlers, the remains of a mostly burned down house, and even a beautiful garden, which we were unable to see because it was 45 degrees Celsius and we are Canadian and couldn’t handle it.

 That’s it for this post gals and ghouls! I’m so sorry for the extended delay between the last post and this one, however I am now back in school getting my degree in Behavioural Science, and life has been absolutely insane. In good news though, we have officially been published! Youtube’s popular channel Top5’s reached out to me and asked if they could publish one of the posts in their new Top5’s Thriller Magazine, which is a digital magazine that you can subscribe to via the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store. Please feel free to take a peek and show them some love for their support!

Anyways, expect more content to be posted on a much more frequent basis for the next couple of months! As always, if you have any content suggestions, please feel free to submit them via the contact page or directly to contact@nightscrawlers.ca and until then…

Keep it spooky!