A City Built Upon Her Dead

Savannah Georgia is a city like no other, where the spirits of long departed mortals still linger in her sultry streets and moss-drenched cemeteries. Spirits who refuse to leave the city built upon its dead. Founded in 1733 as a colony for debtors, Savannah's history is rich in turmoil. As a long coveted sea port, she has experienced siege, slavery and the savage effects of plague.

Savannah's Landmark Historic District, the largest in the country, is comprised of two square miles of stately homes, picturesque squares and cobblestone streets. Streets on which it has been said that you cannot walk more than two feet without passing over a dead body. For Savannah's dead are not confined to the cemeteries. Hundreds of victims of the Yellow Fever epidemics of the 19th century lie in mass graves just beyond the cemetery boundaries, beneath the streets and parks where the living pass unaware of the mass interment beneath their feet.

Fever victims are not the only forgotten souls in Savannah. Slaves, once a traded commodity in her port, also lie unclaimed beneath the very streets they paved. Their crude grave markers were moved from the old slave burial grounds to make way for expansion, but their bodies were not.

Disrupted graves, abandoned bodies and tormented spirits comprise much of Savannah's dead. And so it should not be surprising that she is so haunted by spirits who refuse to leave--who refuse to find peace. For though their mortal remains lie beneath her soil, their spirits wander her streets and claim their place within her abodes. Refusing to be forgotten.