The House That Scared Me Most – Part One

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“Is there a house where something scared you?”

As simple and perhaps as obvious as it is? It’s a good question. Especially when getting asked on a daytime cemetery or evening cemetery tour. Anymore I get asked this question or some variety of it by tourists who both have a keen interest in such subjects but who have undoubtedly read up a little on my background. For the record, I’ve conducted more ghost tours than any other figure in Savannah and I don’t mind saying that aloud as in my heyday of doing them, I took the craft to an entirely new level by creating different ghost tours and inside of neighborhoods previously not toured that way. We’re talking many thousands of tours between 1995 and 2012. I’ve also lived in one 1850s haunted Savannah home and have had unexpected psychical experiences in a few others without actively seeking them out. Which is what I try to remind people when I discuss the subject of hauntings. As I used to tell crowds, “I walk into a building the same way you do, through the front door.” 

There was a day in my early life in Savannah, late 1980s & early 1990s, when there were no ghost tours. The many vacant buildings and eerily empty streets haunted Savannah on the precipice of the coming Tourist Boom. There was talk of ghosts yes, but no dedicated tours. Such spectral conversations had a sort of salon-quality around the dinner tables of the old Savannah-guard set. The 1980’s classic by Margaret Wayt DeBolt, “Savannah Spectres,” was mentioned on occasion like an odd cousin but often with a note of respect as a real source. Which it is and to Ms. Debolt’s eternal credit is still a Top 10 seller in most area bookstores. I miss those purist hours really, but after I landed the America’s Most Haunted City award for Savannah in 2002, the ghost tour culture took on a life all of its own that not even I anticipated. So yes, before my brain or the city was rife and saturated with such things, I just wandered around in old buildings as I’d always done since I was a young kid. A past-time that survives in my life to this very day.

Beyond Savannah, having worked for “Scariest Places On Earth,” “Ghost Hunters,” MTV’s “FEAR” and ABC Family’s “Real Scary Stories,” I’ve researched and been inside of my share of haunted hospitals, asylums, castles, monasteries, forts and homes. The whole nine. But that was work and typically I never felt scared in them or by them. TV shoots seem to dilute such things for at least myself. Nothing makes a building less scary than a bunch of monitors, generators, lights, cameras, crew and people talking all of the time.
In my life, I’ve been party to dozens of ghosts hunts, including a weekend at Savannah’s Marshall House the weekend before it officially opened and around the same time, organized the first investigation of The Moon River Brewpub ever conducted by a bona fide scientific organization, The American Institute of Parapsychology. Even so? Other than being fun social events with some interesting people and findings, bringing great attention to Savannah and in some cases, re-energizing businesses, the investigations themselves never much held my attention. I enjoyed it for others but at heart, I’m a solo artist. I like to go into old buildings alone or with one other person, feel them out for themselves without all of the gadgety stuff. I like to let buildings be themselves and reveal what they want to show me. You can’t really do that in mixed company in my opinion. Or in the same way.

PART TWO of “The House That Scared Me Most” Tomorrow!

 

 

The BOO Hags by Lisa Marie

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I’m Savannah-born, Savannah bred, and one day I’ll be Savannah dead.
– Lisa Marie

This article originally appeared in the Jan-Feb 2018 issue of SOUTH Magazine and has been lovingly edited where needed but have maintained the original vignette flavor.

Savannah is considered one of the most haunted cities in the states, attracting millions of curious and inquisitive folks from all over. Lisa Marie reveals the inside scoop on the blue painted houses seen throughout the city.

Lisa Marie knows the ins and outs of Savannah history. Walking through Columbia Square, she pointed out building after building, all rich with history. “The Kehoe House is haunted by twins. That house over there with the white trim? Its haunted by a cat.” There’s little paranormal activity around here that Lisa doesn’t know about. Pointing out some of the ironwork on historical buildings, she divulges that after The Great Depression, families would steal from their plots in Bonaventure Cemetery and bring the ironwork back into town to decorate and fence their houses. Lisa Marie is so in touch, she can identify where in the cemetery some of the pieces originated.

The quick relaying of facts didn’t stop there. We passed the oldest slave quarters still intact and she shared that Miss Margaret’s place, too, had the mysterious blue paint we see on the outside of houses and on the inside ceilings. So what is it about this blue paint? Ever heard the phrase “Boo Hag” thrown around? Maybe not, but it was once word with real weight.

The neighborhood near Price Street that was once an Irish ghetto still has a prime example of just what the phrase Boo Hag meant. At the end of The Civil War, the Gullah people would knock on every door in the area. They would come up to the door and they would say, “You got a lot of sick people in there? I bet you’re having some bad dreams? Have you been losing a lot of people? Sounds like you got a Boo Hag.”

A Boo Hag is an evil spirit that comes out of a voodoo doll that hangs on your back. The legend goes that if you have a Boo Hag, at night, it picks your skin and hangs it up in your closet while you sleep. Taking your muscle body out into the city, it collects all of the evil and bad luck and brings it back before slipping back into your skin in the morning. This was considered to be the cause for lack of work, sickness and death. Of course the people were afraid, so the Gullah people would sell the cure. First, to rid yourself of the spirit and if you see skin in your closet, sprinkle salt on it. When the Boo Hag slips on your skin, the salt will make the spirit itch and burn. Second, to get the spirit out of the house, you need a broomstick. Once the spirit jumps out of the victim, it’ll attach to the broom and you can sweep it but in the morning when you’re sweeping away the dust. But still, the Boo Hag can always come back into your house, right? You need this special paint to keep the evil away. This sounds expensive, but can you put a price on your family’s life? On your own future? These people couldn’t. They Gullah people made paint out of cemetery dirt, indigo, and, what Lisa Marie says, “a sacrificed cat,” which most likely means the bones considering the Gullah people’s ties to voodoo practices. This paint was called the “haint blue” paint because it kept the haints away. A “haint” was another name for an evil spirit. The Gullah people walked with away with extremely full pockets after every house they stopped to offer their services.

Lisa Marie is a highly rated storyteller at Shannon Scott Tours/Bonaventure Cemetery Journeys and gives both public tours and private tours. Lisa is an immensely talented portrait artist, writer and has worked as a fashion model and actress (X-MEN: FIrst Class)