Haunted Savannah: America's Most Spectral City

by Caskey, James

  The final letter is the most powerful. Dated December 9th, 1822, just a few months before his death, he ends with the following paragraph (all of the punctuation is faithful to the original):

  “Kiss my dear children for your husband; and make my respect to all my ----------- I was about to say friends; but this is altogether nominal; and I am disposed to believe that there is no such thing as friendship, in reality, existing, but with you, our children and your husband.”

  This is the final surviving communication between the two; perhaps the last ever. This final letter in the file is stained with what appears to be water droplets, but I have to raise the possibility that could it be Ann’s tears.

  Steele White’s death was reported in the local paper, the Georgian, sometime in the spring of 1823. The death records kept by the City of Savannah, recorded in an elegant longhand, list his death as resulting from a fall from a horse on March 30th, 1823, while in Virginia. He was thirty-eight years old.

  Ann outlived her husband by almost forty years, contradicting the popular legend which has sprung up in recent years. After Steele White passed away, records become even more spotty for Ann. Several prominent properties would have passed to her when he died, but there is no indication as to what happened to the land or to the woman herself, other than a few glimpses. Ann almost certainly had several more children but there is no mention of her second husband’s name; there is a collection of names listed in connection with hers, but it is unclear how many of these are offspring or simply relatives. The sparse records add to rather than clear up the mystery.

  There are a couple of letters from her lawyer which reference transactions where Ann sold some slaves or property to settle debts. No indication of her state of mind or happiness is offered or hinted, which is not surprising since these were largely legal discussions. Life for widows was hard in those days, and it is unclear whether she ran her own affairs, entrusted her considerable estate to a designee (her brother?) or lost a good portion of her assets for reasons unknown. Any speculation would be exactly that: simple speculation.

  Ann M. White passed away in December of 1861. Her cause of death is officially listed as ‘softening of the brain’, which probably refers to a series of increasingly-debilitating strokes, or an abscess. She is buried in Laurel Grove Cemetery, located a few miles outside Savannah’s Historic District. There is no accompanying grave for Steele White beside her in Laurel Grove, meaning he was very likely buried in Colonial Park Cemetery, since Laurel Grove did not open until the 1850’s. His records have been lost over time (along with the tombstone). Regardless of her early widowhood, the real story is a far better end than the one conjured for her by many storytellers. Instead of being murdered young by a mostly fictionalized husband, she lived a long life, and had many offspring.

  The Differing Legends

  Now that we’ve laid the Steele White connection to rest, we move on to other variants. Just for consistency’s sake I will still call her ‘Anna,’ because it is entirely possible that the ghost at 1790 does indeed have the first name of Anna, despite me proving earlier that the ghost is not Ann M. White. It is a pretty common first name, after all, then and now.

  All of these stories centering on boarding-house helper Anna share one common theme: the girl plunging to her death from one of the windows from her room (now Room 204) which overlooks a brick courtyard. One version I sketched out earlier (sans Steele White) has Anna falling hard, if the pun can be excused, for a married sailor, and committing suicide when he leaves the port city. Pardon me for being blunt, but if this account is true, doesn’t this portray her as a less than sympathetic character? At the very least it would point to Anna being mentally ill. And a slight twist on that tale (this one from the inn’s own website) has her involved with the married sailor (a local boy this time), and whose vengeful wife pushes Anna out of the upstairs window (I like their phrasing: Anna “was helped ad finestra by the seaman’s jealous bride.”)

  Yet another account has the young servant girl committing suicide when she becomes pregnant by a visiting seaman (no jokes, please) and he abandons her. This version at least makes sense from the standpoint that a woman already barely scraping by who found herself suddenly with child and abandoned would feel overwhelmed. She might have nowhere else to turn, and it is plausible that she might be tempted to end it all in a fit of despair.

  Are any of the stories accurate? Did Anna truly meet her tragic end plunging to her death? No accounts verifying or disconfirming any of these various versions has turned up. This may be an instance of the ghost’s legend arising after the inn began to have supernatural activity, a case of the haunting spurring a story to explain it. Anyway, it’s a good legend, and every single version is entertaining and easy to relate to.

  And what of the surname ‘Powers’ attached so often to our ghostly presence? Well, it may surprise you to find in a story so scant on verifiable facts that Anna Powers was a real person. The inn, as I mentioned earlier, was built in two sections: the Lincoln Street side and the President Street side. Room 204 is on the President Street side, which was built for one Anna Powers, the original owner of that building. This structure was completed in 1888, so if ghostly Anna did plunge to her death, it had to be in a different, earlier set of windows. The building we point to that contains Anna’s room simply did not exist for 65 full years after Steele White’s death. Undoubtedly at some point the facts got confused between Anna Powers and the servant girl, who may or may not have also been named Anna. It’s simply a case of there being too many Anns and Annas.

  Room 204: Every Amenity, Even Ghosts

  Room 204 has become the center of much of the spectral activity occurring at the 17Hundred90. Management at one time had a waiver form that guests would have to sign in order to stay in the room. The waiver stated that guests who stayed in room 204 would not be issued a refund if they left the Inn abruptly in the middle of the night. The waiver form policy has been discontinued because of the room’s incredible popularity with guests, mostly thrill-seekers or amateur ghost hunters. It is quite possibly the most popular room in Savannah, so people wishing to reserve the room for a night’s stay are urged to make their reservations far in advance—particularly around Halloween.

  Guests who rent the room have reported feeling a feminine presence in the room, and have also reported than Anna likes new technology. She apparently enjoys playing with light switches, even waking some guests out of a sound slumber with her mischievous habit of turning the switches on in the middle of the night. This has been confirmed by many guests who stay in the room, including a man who claimed that the bathroom light kept turning on multiple times—on consecutive nights. In yet another strange instance, a couple staying in the room next door to 204 in May of 2004 claim to have videotaped a mysterious fog in the hallway.

  Tour guide Missy Brandt had a couple on tour that was staying in that particular room. They expressed their disbelief in ghosts, but when they got to the 17Hundred90, the woman turned pale. She said, “Before we left to come out on tour, I turned the lights off in the sitting room, bedroom and bathroom.” She then pointed towards the windows, which were all ablaze with light. A young man took a digital photograph of the window, and a strange fog is evident in the image, as well as what appears to be a silhouette of a woman looking out of the window.

  Anna has also been known, as the story goes, to ransack ladies bags and remove certain intimate items of apparel. One must remember that if the tales about Anna and sailors are true, she certainly must look her best. Anna will keep the undergarments if she likes them, but if she decides that they are not up to her standards she will return the items.

  A couple of ladies from Atlanta visiting close to Christmas-time a few years back hadn’t heard the stories of Anna’s penchant for taking women’s undergarments. They left room 204 for a Christmas dinner, and when they returned they found that Anna had removed a few i
tems—and the ladies blamed the staff of the hotel! The staff, trying to calm the women down, offered them a free drink downstairs in the tavern while the misunderstanding was sorted out. The two agreed, but halfway down the stairs leading to the first floor, the woman in the lead let out a scream. From her vantage point on the stairs, she could see the Christmas tree. Anna apparently didn’t like these ladies one bit, because she had done a bit of decorating on that tree, using a few ‘ornaments’ pulled from the women’s bags.

  Sean’s Experience

  According to some of the stories, Anna liked to pick up young men, but in only one instance does this become literal. A waiter named Sean Dunbrook claims to have had a supernatural occurrence in the hallway near the room from which Anna is reputed to have taken her plunge. He was asked to collect the meal cards (which guests use to indicate their in-room breakfast preference) off of the doorknobs of the rooms. As he was doing this, he felt a strange sensation. He felt cold, and he also felt as if he were being watched. He went down the third-floor hallway, the feeling growing more and more intense. “Suddenly I felt a force lifting me by my elbows off of the ground,” Sean insists. “I looked down and realized that my feet were six inches off of the floor.” His next recollection was of running down the hallway, unsure if his feet were even touching the carpet! He says he ran all the way down to the bottom level, running with no regard to his own safety. “To get to the ground floor, I had to run down a small metal spiral staircase. I was running so hard, I nearly flipped over the railing.” Sean’s tale was certainly hair- (and feet-) raising!

  When Sean was interviewed by the Travel Channel, he was asked to conduct the meeting with the film crew in room 204, a request to which he agreed. When he attempted to enter the room, however, he found the doorway to the space inexplicably blocked by an invisible barrier. He paused outside of the doorway, unable to continue forward. The film crew, thinking he was having second thoughts about being on-camera, tried to coax him into the room. Sean had to explain that he literally could not walk into the room because of an impenetrable unseen barrier blocking his path. The film crew had to change their plans, and filmed the segment involving Sean’s interview downstairs, instead.

  A Celebrity ‘Sighting’

  Pop sensation and actress Miley Cyrus, along with her mother, stayed at the 17Hundred90 Inn in 2009 while filming the movie The Last Song. Miley and her mother requested the famous ‘haunted room’, and management obliged them. Apparently, Anna obliged the starlet and her mother as well, if what Miley reported (and took photographic evidence of) is true. While the pair were out of the room, someone removed the teen idol’s cowboy boots from her bag and placed them on top of the suitcase, leaving a clearly visible wet handprint on the leather. Rather than being frightened, Miley posted the images to social media site Twitter along with the explanation: “Look what Ana [sic] did (ghost in room 204) My boots were put on top of my suitcase & left with a handprint while I was out.”

  A Tour Guide’s Story

  Longtime tour guide Karl Kessler had a very strange occurrence on June 3rd, 2005. It was a dark and stormy night (yes, sometimes real ghost stories start out that way!), and Karl wasn’t worried about ghostly encounters. He was instead concerning himself with not getting his group struck by lightning, and was hurrying his tour past Colonial Park Cemetery (and the wrought iron fence, which would be a perfect natural lightning rod) on his way to the 17Hundred90. Suddenly three of his group froze, staring into the cemetery, mouths open. One of them pointed through the bars of the fence, and said, “Hey, did you see that woman?” Karl looked but saw nothing, but did note that the cemetery looked a trifle odd, but it was nothing he could put his finger on. The three insisted that they had seen a woman with long dark hair wearing a white gown step out from behind a burial vault, and then walked behind another vault, where she apparently vanished. It is worth noting that two out of the three had not even been drinking that evening, and the other had nursed a drink or two during the evening and would still be considered legally sober. Karl chalked it up to yet another unexplainable tour occurrence and continued the tour, not really thinking that much about it (this is how you know you’re getting to be an experienced guide: when you have a supernatural occurrence on your tour, and it seems like no big deal).

  Karl did not understand the significance of what occurred until much, much later. He was running the tour on the 24th of that same month when he had another strange happening which was connected to the first. He told his story about Anna there at the 17Hundred90 that particular evening, and later in the evening a man on the tour came up to Karl and asked him “if he had any questions for Anna.” This man was apparently in communication with the spectral presence at the 17Hundred90, or so he claimed. Karl, half convinced that the guy was a ‘few fries short of a Happy Meal,’ decided to test him. He asked if the man could speak to Anna at that moment, and he said yes, and that Anna liked Karl, “and felt a connection as she might a brother.” The man went on to say (in between frequent pauses, as if listening to Anna) that Karl’s energy was too high to register her lower energy, although she had tried to show herself several times. She had even joined his group for a bit as she had that evening, wearing a white gown. Karl asked: “At the 17Hundred90?” The man said yes. Karl knew he could nail the guy as a charlatan with his next question: “Has Anna only tried to show herself at the 17Hundred90, or has she ever ventured away?” The man cocked his head to one side as if listening intently. After a long pause he said, “Generally she tries at the 17Hundred90, but she tried most recently at Colonial Park Cemetery.” Karl’s blood ran cold. He tried to appear nonchalant as he asked the man, when was this? “Oh, it was June 3rd of this year.” The man had correctly identified what had occurred on a tour he did not witness, and even nailed the date it happened! The only one who would know that information, it seems, is Anna herself.

  Karl was so freaked out that he called me and debated quitting. I slowly talked him out of it, pointing out that nothing negative or frightening had happened to him. Besides, it’s nice to have friends on tour, even if they are spectral in nature.

  Anna did have an encore performance just three days later. Karl was telling the Anna story at the 17Hundred90 when a couple who was having a drink in the bar at the time shared that they were staying in room 204. They graciously invited Karl and the entire tour upstairs to their room for a look, and as Karl was filling the group in on more of the Anna story, the door chain abruptly began to sway—and several tourgoers noticed it right away. Nothing else in the room was vibrating or swaying, just the chain. One skeptic decided to slap his hand down on it to make it stop swaying, but as soon as he took his hand off of it, the chain began to swing once again. Karl tried himself, gingerly stopping the sway and then slowly taking his hand away. The chain immediately began to swing back and forth once again. Karl at this point simply looked upwards and thanked Anna for her contribution to his story.

  My Own ‘Happening’

  Our strange occurrences aren’t limited just to Karl. One night I myself had my own experience at the bar, and before you make a wisecrack about it you need to know that it wasn’t a blonde, brunette or redhead. And I wasn’t even drinking.

  I was feeling a tad under the weather on tour so I wasn’t interested in alcohol in the slightest: I just wanted to go home and go to bed. But I had a job to do, and on a drinking tour, tourgoers will actually get mad at you if you don’t have a beverage. So at an earlier stop I had convinced a bartender to put a little ginger ale, a little stir straw and a cherry down in a clear plastic cup, and this is what I carried around, giving the appearance of a cocktail to my guests. My ‘booze’ that evening was just a prop. Everyone seemed to be in good spirits except me: I was a little tired and increasingly sick, and although it was a fun crowd there seemed to be a bit of horseplay amongst the couples.

  By the time we got to the 17Hundred90 I began to feel a little better, and continue
d to sip my ‘cocktail’. I felt a little weak, though, so in a quiet moment I leaned heavily on the bar. I would have grabbed a seat, but if you’ve ever tried easing into a chair while wearing a Confederate cavalry sword, authentic blackpowder pistol and haversack, then you know that sitting down really is an art form; it looks easy but sometimes there is a real trick while wearing all those accoutrements. So I decided it would be easier if I leaned forward, basically collapsing against the hard surface of the antique bar. That’s when I felt someone slip their finger under the thick black leather swordbelt near my spine. Whoever this was gave a hard tug which literally pulled me up to a standing position. I turned around, already smiling, to see which of my prankster guests had done this, but all of my tour guests were on the other side of the bar, and I was completely alone on my side. There was absolutely no one behind me.

  I opened my mouth to call everyone’s attention to it, but decided against it. My reasons are murky even to myself now, but one of the factors is certainly that this time it was a tug, but next time it might be a hard shove or worse. I got the idea that this was a playful thing, but also a message that by leaning on the bar in that manner I was disrespecting the tavern. Whoever it was decided to show me that even in my condition, slouching was not acceptable.