The beguiling city of Savannah has been delighting visitors for centuries, with its lush gardens, Southern food, and walkable, historic streets. This storied city is known for much more than its charm, however. It’s also considered to be one of the most haunted places in America.
Savannah became the epicenter of ghost tourism with the publication of John Berendt’s “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,” a rollicking true tale of high-society murder, folk magic, and ghosts, packed with colorful local characters. Visitors flock to Savannah’s famously spooky cemeteries to hear the stories of the city’s deceased residents. While some can seem hokey, Savannah’s Enocha Edenfield Tours has a reputation for being one of America’s most horrifying ghost tours. Graveyards and historic sites with checkered pasts are the obvious places to look for specters, but there are some less obvious hotspots, like The Pirates’ House, one of Savannah’s oldest restaurants and a haunted gem with hearty Southern food.
But visitors can even see the city’s ghostly history even as they land at the Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport. Keep an eye out as you descend on the north side of runway 10-28. You might notice two odd rectangular shapes in the tarmac set at an angle. Those are the gravestones of Richard and Catherine Dotson. Yes, Savannah is a city so haunted that even its airport has ghosts.
Who haunts Savannah’s airport?
Locals know what lies beneath Savannah. From its founding as an English colonial settlement in 1733, the city has been disturbing the eternal sleep of the dead to make way for the living, allegedly building over Native American burial grounds. As the town expanded, it built into family burial plots and graveyards on the edge of the community…