Savannah, GA

This city is beautiful, historic and hauntingly awesome. It's billed as the Most Haunted City in the US and it just might be. We arrive in Savannah around 11am today. We head to the Visitor's Center to get a map and use the bathroom. From the parking lot, trolley bus tours are leaving every few minutes. We decide we can get a good overview of the city this way, so we hop on one. Our tour guide Bob is the third generation native of Savannah. The tour was informative, entertaining and allowed us to see a lot of the city in just 90 minutes.

After the tour we grab lunch at Christopher's, a bistro style lunch place. We then hit the streets. Founded in 1751, Savannah was designed by General Oglethorpe as a perfect square, with small parks called squares throughout. From the middle of the historic district, the city expands one mile in each direction. This makes the city a walkable place.

We walk to the Book Lady bookstore then through several squares. We duck in the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, an amazingly ornate cathedral. We stop in "The Book" gift shop, concerning all things related to the book The Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. After walking the streets for awhile, we check into the hotel. Staci rests for a bit and cruise the waterfront and the City Market shopping district. Both areas were touristy but filled with neat shops.

Then it gets exciting. We go to the Sorrel-Weed House to take a haunted tour. Our tour guide Chris, a fellow former banker, and I hit it off right away. The tour is filled with lots of history about the Francis Sorrel who built the house. He was said to be cursed because the ladies in his life kept dying. His mother died during a revolt in his native Haiti, his first wife dies, his second wife dramatically commits suicide after catching him with a slave, then the slave mysteriously hangs herself, though we think she was murdered.

The tour leads through several rooms on the first floor, then the basement then outside, then the carriage house where the slaves lived and the site of the slave's death. At each spot, Chris tells us what happened there, what has happened haunting-wise, including what he has experienced. At one point in the tour there is a loud bang; loud enough to startle all of the women on the tour and messed with our tour guide. I couldn't tell if it was faked or real but he seemed very shaken up. Staci thinks it was real. We then head out to Madison Square and hear more ghost stories. We end the tour at the cemetery in pouring rain. It was a great tour. Here's a tv show on the haunted house.

We took bunch of photos and possibly got a ghost. I'll let you be the judge. Here's the picture and here's the pic zoomed in on the top left window. See the face? creepy.

After the tour we grab dinner at the Moon River Brew Pub, supposedly the second most haunted building in Savannah after the Sorrel-Weed House. We ask our waiter Richard. His eyes get real big and his face goes white. When he started working there last October, he'd heard the stories but after six weeks, he's in the back and hears something. It's late and there's only a few servers left in the restaurant. Then he hears his name called from behind, but everyone is in front of him. He runs up to the front of the restaurant but no one had said or heard anything. When he told the manager, the manager said the ghosts interact with you more after they get to know you. Dinner was filling. I take a to-go cup only because I can and its part of the culture. We run back to the hotel in the pouring rain. It feels like home.

We added a bunch of photos. See the link on the right column.