The importation of slaves was banned by the Georgia legislature in 1798, preceding U.S. federal laws by ten years. Unofficially and illicitly, of course, the practice continued. The renegade slave ships were brutal places, as evidenced by Maya Angelou’s fire-and-brimstone words inscribed on the monument on River Street commemorating the unfortunate victims of slavers. These slaves would be moved from the river back up through the tunnels, which hid them from the eyes of the authorities. Another reason for the usage of underground passages was because the slaves being transported were in such awful condition, often being covered in blood or excrement. The slavers shielded them from public view not from a fear of prosecution, but from fear of their value being hurt by the perception of ‘damaged goods’. The tunnel may also have been used by smugglers, or perhaps by privateer crews in need of some able-bodied crewmen, and willing to secure their ‘fresh meat’ through kidnapping. Before we ascended back up into the main dining area, Charles showed me the terminus of the tunnel, long since bricked up. I imagined how much misery had passed through that particular cramped and claustrophobic underground avenue, and got a fresh round of involuntary shudders. I was very, very glad to leave that basement. Certain areas make my skin crawl, historically-speaking, and that one gave me a four-alarm case of the heebie-jeebies.
The building has been a bar for the majority of its days. Early in the 20th century a man by the last name of Mataxas entered the picture. He served as a deckhand on a sailing vessel and jumped ship in Boston in 1907, and by 1910 had made his way to Savannah. He met and married a local girl, and they had four children. Mataxas bought the bar, and continued to run the place as a tavern in spite of Prohibition. In fact, the family still owns the building to this day.
Charles recounted what one of Mataxas’ sons had told him: that he has fond memories of watching his father flavor the illegal gin. The tavern was a ‘Speakeasy’ throughout the 1920’s, often hosting parties where the illicit beverages flowed freely. After Prohibition ended, one of the doors became another means of selling alcohol: the old tavern had sidewalk service, selling bottles to passersby.
The bar also had an interesting solution to Segregation: the two rooms were joined by the bar on the southern side, which had a passage between for the bartenders—one white, the other black, each serving their respective clientele. The clientele was not allowed to mix, but the bartenders worked side-by-side, a strange instance of the 1950’s idea of ‘Separate but Equal’. The arrangement turned bloody, however. According to Charles, the black bartender began dating the daughter of his counterpart, and the enraged wife of the white bartender shot and killed her daughter’s boyfriend in a dispute over their illicit affair.
Adventures in Renovating
The old bar has been renovated on several occasions over the years, and many times the result was less than satisfactory. Charles showed me a picture of the condition of the bar when his early 2000’s renovation process began: the entire place had been painted midnight blue with yellow piping. “They painted over the three pink marble balustrades on the bars,” he said, disgust creeping into his voice. “Painted it—that’s pink marble from the only pink marble mine in the state, in Tate, Georgia.” And it was during these latest renovations that the owners realized that the building came with more than an ugly paint job: the place was haunted.
Evidence of these hauntings manifested in several ways. Things would turn up missing or moved to a new location while the work progressed, mostly tools. While this is not unusual on a job site, the workers related some humorous instances where the screwdrivers would disappear for hours, only to be found in plain view. Drill bits would vanish. Charles’ toolbox mysteriously disappeared for a time, and then was found nearby, apparently tossed against the wall. No one claimed responsibility for this, and it was in an area where it surely would have been noticed during the search. It was if the toolbox had suddenly reappeared out of thin air.
Another incident occurred right as the restaurant was opening. The portion scale, a vital piece of equipment for an efficient kitchen, went missing. The staff hunted high and low for the scale, but it was nowhere to be found. Charles finally threw up his hands three days later and bought another scale—an expense as a new businessman he could ill afford. When he returned and was installing the new scale, he noticed the old scale in plain view on one of the tables. “There is no way we could have missed seeing the scale there in the center of the table. It was pretty obvious at that point we were dealing with a ghost who liked to hide things and then give them back.”
Charles related other eerie happenings: “I was working late one night, trying to get the place open. I was cleaning the floors on my hands and knees, and suddenly, I felt someone in the room with me. I didn’t know what to do, so I started talking. I introduced myself, and explained what I was trying to do; I said I hoped that it was okay, and that we could exist peacefully in the old place together. I apologized if I was intruding, but explained that we had to open the restaurant soon. I also added that if the presence could, or felt like it, could it help me?
“The presence stayed for a while, and then finally I felt ‘them’ leave.” Perhaps the ghosts were simply not interested in lending a hand.
Mischievous Ghosts
Perhaps the appeal worked. In spite of the playful disappearances of tools and other spectral mayhem, the restaurant known as B. Matthews opened on schedule. It was not without a few hitches, however: to celebrate the opening, one of the owners was presented with a special knife set costing $1200. Shortly after the knives were given, two of them disappeared. “We hunted high and low for the knives, and I was beginning to suspect that they had been stolen by someone. Finally we found the knives—they hadn’t been misplaced or stolen. They were imbedded—point-first—deep in the wooden floor behind the bar.”
Salt and pepper shakers have been thrown across the restaurant at all hours, with such force they hit the wall. Also being thrown from time to time was a drawer face behind the register. “It wasn’t attached to a drawer,” the former owner explained, “Perhaps at one time it was, but at this point it was just decorative, so we wedged it in place.” The problem being, it wouldn’t stay put. The drawer face would pop out constantly, and with a surprising degree of violence. “Numerous times, it has hit the back of the register stand,” the owner explained, and showed me the spot where it happened. The space between the drawer face and the register was roughly three feet, and it would take more than a draft from the basement or the groan of a shifting building to pop the drawer that distance. “I never get the impression that the presence is unfriendly, or wants to harm anyone. I think they just want to be noticed,” he says. “We finally wound up just leaving that drawer face out—it’s a little unsightly, but if it makes the ghost happy, I’ll leave it.” In another case of spectral disobedience, the spirit has also been known to open the cabinet doors behind the work space at random times, apparently taking pleasure from the staff running into them, and occasionally falling.
The former owner reported that not all of the spirits at B. Matthews fall under this ‘friendly, yet mischievous’ category. One friend of the owners’, a man named Scott, popped in for a visit. Despite Scott’s description as very large in stature, he also possesses a sensitivity to all things spectral or paranormal. Scott asked to see the basement. The owners took him downstairs, showing him around when Scott suddenly fell ill. “He said he felt two spirits down there that were very unhappy. He was trembling.” Scott was so affected by his visit to the downstairs area that he had to cut his visit short and leave prematurely. It was only then that it occurred to anyone that the area had once housed slaves, and that someone as sensitive as Scott would surely pick up on the residual feelings of those bound in chains in a squalid state of inhumane treatment.
Dark Reflections
The interview concluded, and I found myself walking towards the Savannah River, located a short distance a
way. Along the way I tried making sense of a place with such a sordid history, and connections to slavery, privateering, smuggling, and murder; yet it was downright puzzling that for the most part the hauntings associated with the property were not overtly negative or violent. In fact, judging by the sort of activity reported, the spirits there seemed more playful than anything else. At least, I amended, the ones above ground. That basement might be a very different story.
I found myself almost in a daze, standing on the old cobblestones at the stone wall comprising one side of Factor’s Walk, which faces the river. I noticed there, for the very first time, a discolored and bricked-up former narrow opening, one which matched up neatly with the other end of the cramped tunnel I had just seen in B. Matthews’ basement, and I again felt a bitter chill on a warm day. I traced my hands over the now-sealed former passage, and thought about what it must have been like for those poor souls in chains, ushered towards an uncertain future. Their lives, as English philosopher Thomas Hobbes might have said, had been nasty, brutish, and short. I hoped that they had indeed found peace in the afterlife, because the chances of a slave finding contentment in this life were slim to none.
In spite of those past connections, the structure today housing B. Matthews Eatery contains one of the best lunch spots in Savannah. If the stories are to be believed, the restaurant has much to offer to connoisseurs of both great meals and mischievous ghosts. The spectres, however, are not listed on the menu.
Savannah Harley-Davidson
503 East River Street
The shops along River Street sometimes have stories that are difficult to explain. It seems that several ghosts have taken up residence at the Harley-Davidson shop on the eastern side of River Street. Like so many current shops along the river, this was formerly a cotton warehouse.
Members of the staff have reported strange sounds, primarily from the second floor, which is supposedly where slaves were once housed, as well as being a humidor when the shop was a cigar store. Then other bizarre occurrences started to take place. According to a Savannah Morning News article which ran October 31st, 2000, Sue Barnes, who worked at the store, saw a man in a suit and tie out of the corner of her eye during a moment she knew herself to be alone. “I thought maybe we had a ghost,” she said. According to the article, the faucet in the upper level bathroom was known to turn on, and the toilet had been known to mysteriously flush. But the truly mysterious occurrences were yet to come, and took place more recently than the year 2000.
Former staff member Laura O’Neil arrived early one Sunday morning, and found the children’s rack of clothes on the second floor in disarray. She straightened them and began getting the store ready to open. When she happened to pass by the clothes once again, she noticed that once again were hanging askew, so she approached them. It was then that she felt a strange cold feeling, a feeling like an icy gust of wind, and Laura heard a child laughing. “I decided those clothes could stay where they were,” she deadpanned.
Current staff member Melissa Pashea has had numerous experiences with the spirit, whom she has named ‘Boo.’ She was working in the upstairs when she began to smell cigar smoke. She called down to the first floor to another staff member, who also smelled the cigar. She even called out to see if someone was on the second level with her, and got no response, which is when she decided to confront the spirit directly. She said, “Boo, don’t be smoking up here.” The cigar smell vanished instantly.
Melissa also said that she has found footprints in the dust on one of the tables upstairs. The marks in the dust were of small bare feet, all over the case.
Merchandise is often found moved when the staff opens up in the morning, primarily on the second floor. A strange cold spot has also been experienced by many of the staff, and also by myself personally, on the second level that defies explanation. The temperature seems to drop suddenly by what feels like twenty degrees. The only comparison to the feeling when stepping into that cold spot is when an elevator dips unexpectedly before the doors open.
Is the child’s laugh heard by a staff member the presence haunting the Savannah Harley-Davidson? Or is it the man wearing the suit and tie? Perhaps time will tell, but one thing is certain: staff members are on their toes when they venture upstairs, because those ghosts have proven to be ‘hog’ wild.
The Anonymous Bar
Releasing the original incarnation of Haunted Savannah was a great experience for me; I support anyone else who seeks to write a similar volume about their own city, with only one note of warning. Eventually if you do choose to undertake such a venture, you’ll come to realize there will be one chapter which stirs up a lot of interest from the fringes of the genre, or as I like to say, becomes a flash-point for crazy. There was just such a chapter in Haunted Savannah, and I trust that it isn’t too much of a spoiler alert to reveal that you’re reading that section right now. Roughly three-quarters of all emails or letters I’ve received over the years have asked me a variation of the question, What was the true location of the Anonymous Bar?
Original drafts of the chapter had the name of the building and business, as I recall, but my former publishers correctly worried that there might be a lawsuit or bad publicity due to the nature of the story. Once I had removed the names, though, it bothered me greatly that I had knuckled under, and I remember pondering dropping the chapter from the volume entirely rather than cheapening it by giving only half of the story. Neither option appealed to me.
Compromise presented itself, somewhat improbably, in a completely unrelated conversation I had with an acquaintance, the content of which must remain confidential, but the solution to my problem appeared. Oxymoronically, I began to see that I could both keep my secret and reveal it, all at the same time. Never before had I written in a manner designed to obscure rather than enlighten, but in a very strange way I found the process to be oddly liberating. Ghost stories almost always need a context, but the Anonymous Bar was one of the rare compelling tales that seems unaffected by removing a house number or an X mark on a map. Revealing the where of the story is much less important than understanding why I have chosen to remove that information. Eventually all of the stories in this book come down to one question, namely what the eyewitness wanted to be revealed by telling me the story; and undoubtedly in this case, the witness did not want that information shared. Suffice it to say, I have honored the wishes of a very good friend, and not directly revealed the location or name of the spot. Subtly, however, I have given vital clues to those gifted enough to decipher what I’m telling them.
Strange Happenings
Located in the heart of the Historic District, the structure I’ll refer to as the Anonymous Bar was built after the Civil War. One of several former warehouses, the building has found new life as an elegant and stylish nightclub. Under that debonair exterior, however, lurks one of the most terrifying stories I have ever heard.
Not only is the structure haunted by traditional ghosts—stories much like the others contained in this volume—but there is also a presence or force at work which is so malevolent that several staff members and co-owners have fallen prey, with serious and even life-threatening consequences. Ghosts don’t generally send the staff to the hospital, as happened in several instances in this bar, whose name, lamentably, I cannot mention. Eerie forces are, or were, at work in the structure, at least as related by a former owner of a business at that location. But first, he made me swear that I would never, ever tell this story on tour.
“I was there once with my brother, in the basement,” the former owner told me one night over a drink. “The upstairs was deserted. I had just gotten there, and my brother had been downstairs working for hours before I showed up. While we’re down there renovating the place, I hear heavy footsteps running across the floor above me, y’know, bump bump bump! I’m looking around, because the place is deserted—who the heck is upstairs? Well, my brother barely looks up even thou
gh we’re the only two there. He says, ‘Man, that’s been driving me nuts.’ So I asked him who was up there, and he just looks at me and says, ‘Nobody. It’s deserted.’ My brother took a long drag of his cigarette, like he’s thinking about whether or not he should finish what he was saying. I guess he decided to, because he said, ‘I’ve been hearing it all night and when I’ve gone up to check, I didn’t find anybody. We’re alone.’” The former owner grew very solemn as he talked. “My brother is not the sort of guy who makes stuff up. He is a pretty literal person, and a very hard worker. We both heard it, and it was footsteps. It wasn’t any settling floorboard or mouse; these were heavy stomps coming from a deserted space above us.
“We actually heard that pretty frequently. Footsteps, voices, that sort of thing. There were times, like that instance with my brother, where more than one person would hear it.”
I have heard many haunted stories about this particular city block, and one common theme is that someone died in a fire. And indeed, one of the largest threats to Savannah during that time period was fire. Many of the large blazes which have plagued the city have started in that area, including one of the worst fires in Savannah’s history, the Hogan’s Dry Good Fire of 1889. Are these the ghostly footsteps of someone who perhaps died in one of the conflagrations?
Haunted Savannah: America's Most Spectral City Page 18
