A City Marked by Fever and Fear
It’s a humid Savannah evening, and the gaslights flicker along a deserted street. In the hush, you can almost hear it: the creak of a wooden cart rolling over cobblestones, the low moan of someone in agony behind shuttered windows. The year could be 1820, or 1854, or 1876 – any of the dreadful summers when Yellow Fever stalked this city. Savannah, Georgia, known for its Southern charm and moss-draped oaks, has another identity hidden in the shadows: a city shaped by epidemics and haunted by the ghosts they left behind.
I find myself standing at the gates of Colonial Park Cemetery on a warm night, leading one of our Savannah Ghost Tours. The air is thick, sweet with honeysuckle but tinged with an unsettling dampness. This ground is hallowed by tragedy, I think, as I recall the stories I’ve unearthed in my years as a historian and paranormal researcher. Two centuries ago, these quiet avenues were overwhelmed with panic and death. Neighbors fled or perished; families were shattered; mass graves were dug in haste. The echoes of those Yellow Fever outbreaks still linger in Savannah’s soul – and some say, in its very streets and buildings. As the owner of Haunted Savannah Tours, I’ve walked these routes countless times, yet the tales of fever, folklore, and phantoms never fail to send a chill down my spine.
What follows is the full history of Yellow Jack’s reign in Savannah, an immersive journey through the multiple outbreaks that ravaged the city in the 18th and 19th centuries. We’ll step into the past to witness the human impact – the fear, courage, and heartbreak of those who endured the epidemics. We’ll explore the folklore born from those dark times, from whispered legends of mass graves to personal letters that read like horror stories. And we’ll visit the eerie landmarks forever tied to the fever: places where spirits are said to roam, keeping the memory of those nights of terror alive.
Lean in and listen. The story of Savannah’s Yellow Fever is not just in the history books; it’s in the ghostly presence that still haunts our city’s squares and cemeteries. It’s in the uneven footsteps you might hear behind you on a moonlit stroll, or the inexplicable chill at the threshold of an old hospital. This is a tale of plague and perseverance, of death and the afterlife, all unfolding in the very streets where today tourists laugh on their way to dinner. It’s a long story – Savannah’s fevered saga spans centuries – but every twist is worth the telling. After all, understanding this haunted history is practically a requirement for any true Haunted Savannah experience (and certainly a highlight on our tours).
So, if you’re wondering what to do in Savannah on a sultry evening, perhaps a journey into this ghost-ridden past is in order. Light a lantern with me as we step back in time. The lamps are dimmed, the night is quiet, and Savannah’s restless dead are waiting for us to remember.
(I sometimes wonder how it felt for them – the ones who lived through it. Would I have been brave or just plain terrified?)
Early Whispers of the Plague (1700s – Early 1800s)
Savannah’s dance with Yellow Fever began almost as soon as the city was born. In fact, an epidemic struck in 1733, the very year General James Oglethorpe founded Savannah on the sandy bluff above the river. Colonists wrote of “burning fevers” sweeping through that first summer. In July 1733, out of just over a hundred settlers, fourteen died – a staggering 13% mortality in one month. Oglethorpe himself noted the sickness brought “convulsions and other terrible symptoms”. Was it Yellow Fever? We aren’t entirely sure – some historians suspect it might have been dysentery or malaria. But whatever the culprit, the effect was the same: Savannah learned early that its warm climate could breed deadly disease.
Through the late 18th century, the city grew and prospered, but fevers remained a dreaded summer companion. Ships from the Caribbean and Africa would dock at the busy port, sometimes carrying an unwelcome passenger: Yellow Jack, the sailors’ nickname for Yellow Fever (a reference to the yellow quarantine flag). In those days, no one knew the true cause – a tiny mosquito – so people blamed the usual suspects: bad air, rotting vegetation, or “miasma” rising from the swamps. Savannah’s location, surrounded by marshes and rice fields, certainly provided plenty of miasma in the hot months. Residents spoke grimly of “fever season” as a yearly trial by fire.
By the 1790s, Yellow Fever had already made its presence felt. Neighboring cities like Philadelphia (1793) and Charleston were devastated by outbreaks, and Savannah was not spared. One particularly ominous summer came in 1796. That year, Savannah was hit by a double disaster: a catastrophic fire that leveled half the city, and reports of malignant fever stalking the population. The exact toll of the 1796 fever outbreak is murky – records were poor and often, people didn’t distinguish Yellow Fever from other illnesses. But local tradition counts 1796 among Savannah’s “major outbreaks”. Imagine it: two-thirds of the town in ashes from the fire, and then a sickness that killed indiscriminately among the survivors. Little wonder that even today, 1796 looms in Savannah lore as a cursed year.
Still, the worst was yet to come. In the first years of the 1800s, Savannah saw “minor yellow fever outbreaks… on a semi-annual basis, typically beginning in late summer and continuing until the first frost”. Every year as the mosquito clouds rose in the heat, citizens held their breath. Fevers would flare in August, sometimes claiming a few dozen lives then mercifully ebbing with autumn’s chill. These early bouts were terrifying but relatively contained. They gave Savannah a foretaste of the horror, a chance to rehearse its responses – fleeing the city, quarantining ships, praying for frost – before the full wrath of Yellow Fever descended.
One outbreak in 1817 particularly rattled Savannah. It’s recorded as the deadliest up to that point. Dr. William R. Waring, a prominent local physician, later estimated that nearly 4,000 Savannahians died of Yellow Fever between 1807 and 1820. Think about that number for a moment – almost four thousand lives in a city that in 1820 only had about 5,000 people to begin with. These weren’t all in one year, but spread over a dozen fever seasons, picking off people a few dozen at a time. Savannah was getting painfully acquainted with death. Every summer, the tolling of funeral bells became part of the soundscape of the city.
By the 1810s, fear was a constant companion. If you had the means, you left town for the countryside or northward during the sickly season. If you were poor (or enslaved, as thousands were in this era), you endured and hoped – or prayed. The city’s caretakers weren’t ignorant; they tried what they could to make Savannah less of a death-trap. After the bad epidemic of 1817, the city undertook a bold campaign to drain the surrounding swamps and rice paddies, figuring that drying up stagnant water might banish the “vapors” that carried disease. In hindsight, this isn’t far off – they were targeting mosquito breeding grounds without knowing it. But such efforts were too little, too late. Yellow Fever had marked Savannah, and soon it would stake its claim in an unforgettably brutal way.
Summer of Dread: The 1820 Catastrophe
In Savannah’s collective memory, 1820 stands as the year of horrors. Old timers would refer to it with a shudder for generations. It started innocently enough – the year began with hope and prosperity. The War of 1812 was over and Savannah was flourishing; new squares and grand houses were going up, the cotton trade was booming. No one suspected that by year’s end, the city would be a “chaos of ruins,” as one contemporary put it.
First came The Great Fire. In January 1820, a devastating blaze tore through Savannah, reducing hundreds of buildings to charred rubble. But even as the smoke cleared, something more insidious was already taking root. That spring, an ominous sickness began to spread. On May 7, 1820, the first case of what they called “bilious fever” was reported; soon it was confirmed as Yellow Fever. At first, only a handful of people fell ill. But each week, the numbers grew. By June, people were dying at the rate of one every other day. By July, it was one every day. And as the sweltering Savannah summer deepened, the death rate kept climbing. In August, nearly eight people were dying per day on average. The epidemic had begun in earnest.
Let’s pause and paint this picture. Savannah in 1820 was a compact city – mostly what we now call the Historic District. Imagine those beautiful squares we stroll through today, like Chippewa or Wright Square, now scenes of dread. The grand homes had their windows shuttered, not to keep out sunlight but to try to bar disease. The streets, usually lively with trade, were eerily empty. “Our city seemed a sort of living Hades… Death covered us,” one witness famously wrote. Shops were closed – either because the owners had died, or more often because they’d fled for their lives. The mayor at the time, Thomas U.P. Charlton, repeatedly urged citizens to evacuate if they could. Many heeded the warning. Those who had relatives on farms or plantations inland packed up and left Savannah to the sick and the caretakers. By late October, a census found that of 4,000 white inhabitants, only 1,494 were still in the city. In other words, more than half the people were gone – and those who remained faced death at every turn.
Savannah had turned into a ghost town in more ways than one. A correspondent in September 1820 described returning to the city: “I find it deserted by almost all of my friends – many stores closed – very little moving in the streets…”. The only activity, he noted ironically, was teams of men chopping down trees in every square. (They believed that the lovely live oaks might be harboring bad air; in desperation, even Savannah’s famous trees were not spared. “Our poor trees have undergone the same persecution as the witches of yore,” the writer quipped ruefully.) The sound of axes echoing through empty streets only added to the uncanny atmosphere. The rituals of normal life were suspended. Courts stopped meeting; church services were irregular or sparsely attended. As Mayor Charlton observed grimly, the social order itself seemed to collapse when “so precarious is the tenure by which every individual now holds his life”.
By late summer, Washington Ward, an eastern section of town around Washington Square, had become the epicenter of the outbreak – “the great theater of desolation,” Dr. Waring called it. Families there were hit one after another. The sickness did not discriminate: rich and poor, black and white (though the deaths of the African-American community went largely unrecorded in the segregated accounts). Doctors struggled to treat the victims with the limited means of the day. Perhaps they bled some patients, gave others hot baths or quinine or strange concoctions. Nothing really worked. The progress of Yellow Fever is agonizing: high fevers, shivers, searing muscle pains, then a deceptive brief recovery followed by a collapse – the patient’s skin and eyes turning yellow, “black vomit” (coagulated blood) spewing from their stomach as their organs failed. Many who reached that dreaded “black vomit” stage were beyond saving.
By the height of the epidemic, in September and October, hearses were a common sight – when hearses could even be found. One letter from the time chillingly notes that father, mother, and child could be seen on the same hearse, all together going to their graves. “Whole families have been swept away…,” wrote Martha Richardson, a shocked Savannah resident in 1820. The newspapers started printing daily death tolls, a grim column tallying the march of the fever. Many residents must have felt like they were living under a curse or divine punishment. People wore sachets of camphor or vinegar-soaked handkerchiefs to ward off the miasma. Bonfires of tar or pine were sometimes lit in the streets in hopes the smoke would purify the air (an act seen in other cities’ outbreaks as well). Funerals were hasty, perfunctory affairs – if there were funerals at all.
In reality, with so many dying so fast, burial itself became a critical problem. Colonial Park Cemetery, the main burial ground then (established in 1750), was overwhelmed with corpses. Gravediggers worked to exhaustion. As bodies piled up, the city had to resort to mass graves for efficiency. On the northeast corner of Colonial Park, a large trench was dug to inter victims of the plague en masse. It is believed that nearly 700 people were buried in that pit during the 1820 outbreak. Some sources put the number at the memorably ominous 666 souls laid to rest there. To this day, a plaque at that site notes “almost 700” fever victims were buried together. If you visit Colonial Park now (perhaps on a Haunted Savannah Tour with a guide like me), you can find that marker. It’s a sober reminder that beneath your feet lie hundreds who met a swift and terrifying end.
And here’s a ghastly twist that has fueled many a nightmare: in the chaos of 1820, some people were buried alive by mistake. Yellow Fever can induce a deathlike coma; a victim’s breathing and pulse slow to a near stop. Without modern instruments, a panicked doctor might presume someone dead when they were actually in a deep stupor. According to accounts passed down, coffins were later dug up that had scratch marks on the inside of the lids. One can barely imagine the horror – waking up in utter darkness, trapped in a coffin under the earth, clawing frantically in silence. (Just writing that makes me shiver.) Ghost enthusiasts often point to these poor souls as prime candidates for haunting: if anything could cause a restless spirit, surely being buried alive would do it. Indeed, one of the most commonly reported specters in Colonial Park Cemetery is a desperate-looking shadow figure that weaves between headstones at night. Some say it’s one of those unfortunates, still trying to escape the grave over 200 years later.
By the time the merciful frost finally arrived in November 1820, the worst was over. The cool temperatures killed off the mosquitoes (though people didn’t know that was the reason) and new fever cases dwindled. But the damage had been done. Over 700 people had died – roughly one in every 10 Savannahians. In fact, proportionate to population, Savannah’s 1820 Yellow Fever epidemic was the deadliest ever recorded in U.S. history up to that point. Dr. William Waring, in his official report, noted Savannah’s mortality was “just about double” that of the infamous Philadelphia epidemic of 1793. For a smaller city like Savannah, losing 10% of its people in a span of months was a cataclysm. Virtually everyone lost someone – a friend, a servant, a spouse, a child. The city’s economy was shattered, its morale in ruins. One observer wrote, “History does not give any account of the plague half as dreadful… Yellow fever and black vomit is our daily theme and nightly dream.”.
When survivors slowly trickled back to town from their rural refuges, they returned to a different Savannah. Homes that had been full of life were now shuttered due to death or abandonment. Many businesses never reopened. 1820 ushered in a decade of economic depression as the city struggled to recover. The psychological scars were even deeper. For years, people would speak of “the late calamity” in hushed tones. Washington Ward, the hardest-hit area, carried a stigma; property values there dropped as folks hesitated to live in a place remembered as a charnel ground.
And yet, life had to go on. The city rebuilt from the fire and repopulated after the fever. Human resilience is a remarkable thing – though I imagine every summer thereafter, as the heat rose and mosquitoes whined in people’s ears, a stab of fear returned. Yellow Jack might be gone for now, but surely he wasn’t gone for good.
Sometimes, guiding visitors by Colonial Park at night, I stop by that mass grave and feel an overwhelming empathy. I picture the gravediggers by lantern light, the sobbing relatives watching from a distance (or perhaps no one watching, since whole families were dead or fled). And I admit – I often whisper a quiet apology to those unmarked dead as we pass. We haven’t forgotten you. In fact, we literally walk above you every day.
Folklore and Phantoms of 1820
The 1820 epidemic left an imprint not just on Savannah’s demographics, but on its folklore and ghostly reputation. To this day, Savannah is often called one of America’s most haunted cities – and the Yellow Fever of 1820 is one of the reasons why. The sheer scale of death, the traumatic way people died (and were buried), and the mass graves have given rise to countless eerie tales.
Colonial Park Cemetery, as mentioned, holds the mass burial trench of 1820’s victims. Visitors and paranormal investigators frequently report unusual phenomena there: floating orbs in photographs, sudden cold spots in the muggy air, and that shadowy apparition gliding among the tombs. Some have claimed to see a figure of a woman in old-fashioned dress weeping by the mass grave site, then vanishing if approached – perhaps a grief-stricken mother who lost her whole family and never found peace. Skeptics might roll their eyes, but when you stand there at midnight, as I have, it’s hard not to feel something. The weight of sorrow is palpable. Remember, fewer than 10% of the 1820 victims have marked gravestones– over 90% lie in unmarked pits or faded plots. Such a tally of unacknowledged dead tugs at the imagination. Many Savannahians will tell you that ghosts linger when proper burials and rituals are denied – and 1820 denied them on a grand scale.
Beyond Colonial Park, stories emerged in the aftermath of 1820 that sound like straight-up horror fiction. One particularly gruesome bit of folklore: people started talking about the dead rising from graves. Not in the vampire or ghoul sense, but in reference to those who had been buried alive in error. Can you picture the scene? A shallow mass grave outside the cemetery, hastily covered… and then a scratching, a stirring beneath the dirt as one not-quite-dead victim revived. There were whispers of individuals clawing their way out of burial pits, dazed and caked in earth, effectively returning from the dead. In a deeply religious society, that was interpreted in all kinds of ways – punishment for sin, purgatory on earth, or even voodoo (Savannah had connections via the Haitian community and others, and “zombie” folklore was known). Indeed, some say this was Savannah’s brush with zombie legends, long before pop culture made zombies cool. The idea of the fever victims “crawling their way out of shallow graves” spread just as fearfully as the disease itself. While it’s hard to document specific instances, the story that “in 1820 people were buried alive and later found wandering or dead outside their graves” got embedded in local lore. For a time, some Savannahians were reportedly so afraid of premature burial that they insisted on “waking” the dead – literally watching a corpse for 24-48 hours before burial to be sure they wouldn’t wake up. That practice, common in Victorian times, gained renewed importance here.
There’s also the legend of the “Blue Nurses” – this one is less verified but often recounted on ghost walks. According to the tale, a group of nuns (sometimes said to be from the Sisters of Mercy) tended to the sick and dying during the 1820 outbreak, displaying heroic compassion. Several of these nurses succumbed to the fever themselves. People claim that in certain old homes or buildings that served as impromptu infirmaries, you can occasionally glimpse a pale figure in a nun’s habit still making her rounds. These spectral caregivers, dubbed the “Blue Nurses” for the color of their old-fashioned uniforms (or perhaps the bluish glow reported around them), are supposedly benign ghosts – they appear by the bedside of feverish patients (even in modern times) as if to comfort the sick. Again, take it with a grain of salt if you like, but such stories underscore how deeply the tragedy of 1820 burned into Savannah’s collective psyche. The city’s haunted reputation owes much to these woven strands of truth and myth from the fever years.
On a more tangible note, many buildings from that era remain, and some carry their own hauntings linked to Yellow Fever. The Davenport House, for example, was completed in 1820, right as the epidemic hit. Its owner, Isaiah Davenport, bravely stayed in the city helping where he could – only to die a few years later in the 1827 yellow fever outbreak (yes, there were more to come). The museum staff today have reported odd occurrences in the house, like inexplicable sneezing fits in empty rooms (as if someone with a feverish cold were there) and the fleeting shadow of a tall man in early 19th-century attire believed to be Mr. Davenport himself. During their annual Yellow Fever reenactment event, volunteers often remark how heavy the atmosphere feels, as if they’re truly reliving the dread of that summer.
And let’s not forget the streets themselves. Savannah’s Historic District was basically one big graveyard by 1820’s end. Burials happened not only in the cemetery but wherever a pit could be dug quickly. There’s a saying here: “Savannah is built on its dead.” It’s more than just a saying – it’s quite literal in places. For years, as the city expanded, workers would routinely unearth bones when laying new foundations or roads. Even in modern times, construction crews occasionally discover old remains. Not far from Colonial Park, Calhoun Square (laid out in 1851) sits atop what had been an old “colored burial ground” used through the early 1800s. Oral tradition and some records indicate that African American victims of the 1820 epidemic, who were not allowed interment in Colonial Park’s white section, were buried in that area. In recent decades, when city workers dug into Calhoun Square to fix water lines, they indeed found human bones – confirming there are hundreds of unmarked graves beneath those mossy oaks. Estimates range up to 1,000 bodies under Calhoun Square, mostly enslaved people and fever victims. Next to the square is the Massie School, and there’s an oft-told ghost tale about that too: the school (built in the 1850s) reportedly had a “cold spot” in one corner of the basement. During renovations, workers found coffins or remains under that section, leading many to suspect the school was partly built atop an 1820-era mass grave. True or not, ask any Savannah local about Calhoun Square and they’ll tell you it’s one of the city’s most haunted spots – in part because disturbing those graves may have disturbed the spirits. Some people walking through at night report feeling as if they’re being watched by unseen eyes, or suddenly overwhelmed by sadness. Given the history, who could blame those souls for lingering? The city literally paved over their resting place and even named it after John C. Calhoun (a pro-slavery politician, insult to injury as a modern writer noted). Perhaps they want to be remembered and acknowledged.
In Savannah, history and hauntings go hand in hand. The folklore born out of 1820 shows how people coped with the trauma. They created narratives – of spirits, of omens, of supernatural justice – to make sense of the senseless loss. Over time, these stories became part of the fabric of our haunted city, passed on during late-night porch conversations or on guided haunted Savannah tours like the ones I conduct. When we talk about Haunted Savannah, we’re not just spinning ghost yarns; we’re preserving the memory of what happened in places like Colonial Park and Calhoun Square. The fever victims don’t have voices – but through folklore, we almost hear them.
As the 1820 calamity receded into the past, Savannah tried to move forward. But Yellow Fever was not done with the city. The ghost of 1820’s epidemic may have lingered in stories and specters, but in flesh and blood reality, new waves of plague would crash upon Savannah’s shores in the coming decades. Each time, the city’s mettle was tested again – and each time, more layers of legend and haunting were added to its legacy.
Return of Yellow Jack: Mid-19th Century Outbreaks
The years after 1820 saw Savannah rebuild and adapt. City leaders improved drainage and sanitation as best they knew how. They established a Board of Health, instituted stricter quarantines for ships, and even built a pest house on Tybee Island to isolate arriving sailors with illness. These efforts paid off to some extent – Savannah did not see another catastrophe on the scale of 1820 for a generation. But Yellow Fever never truly disappeared. It remained like a ticking time bomb, flaring up in smaller outbreaks throughout the 1830s and 1840s. Savannahians grew reluctantly accustomed to an ugly reality: every few years, especially in late summer, there might be a spike in fever cases. Many were mild or contained, but every now and then, the numbers crept alarmingly upward.
One resident writing in the 1840s described the seasonal fear: “As August approaches, we hold our breath. If the nights be cool and the winds favorable, we give thanks. But if the air grows still and heavy… our hearts begin to pound.” It was like living under a recurrent nightmare. People watched the obituaries in the paper for any mention of “stranger’s fever” (so-called because newcomers often died at higher rates, lacking any acquired immunity). A few deaths in July might send those who could afford it scurrying off to the upcountry for a “vacation,” just in case.
The next major trial came in 1854. That summer, Yellow Fever returned in force. By now, the city’s population was larger (about 15,000 or more), and it had an extensive network of commerce and visitors, which unfortunately also meant more vectors for disease. The fever of 1854 is often overshadowed by 1820 and 1876 in lore, but make no mistake – it was horrific in its own right. Contemporary accounts indicate that around 600 Savannahians perished in 1854, though exact numbers vary. Statistically, that worked out to roughly 1 in 25 citizens dying. While not as high a ratio as 1820’s decimation of 1 in 10, consider that by 1854 the city was bigger and somewhat better prepared. That year still brought a palpable sense of panic.
We have some vivid records from 1854 thanks to newspapers and diaries. By mid-August of that year, reports show over 200 people had died of fever within about three weeks. The city authorities once again urged departures, and hundreds fled. One newspaper piece from September 1854 describes Savannah as “depleted of half its population, business nearly ceased, the atmosphere laden with sorrow.” Doctors were overwhelmed again. It must have felt like 1820 all over, though fortunately the toll didn’t climb quite as astronomically. Still, coffins were in short supply, and grave-diggers worked long hours. Colonial Park Cemetery, now nearing the end of its use (it would close to new burials by 1853 or so for whites, with Laurel Grove Cemetery opening in 1852), saw many fresh mounds. It’s said that in Laurel Grove, the new Victorian cemetery, one section is filled with 1854 fever victims, marked by long rows of similar dates on tombstones.
A particularly poignant story from 1854 is that of Mother Mathilda Beasley – an African-American nun (though she formally took vows later, she was active then in caring for orphans). She reportedly went around giving aid to sick black families who were largely neglected by white medical establishments. There are letters praising an “angel of mercy in the darkest alleys.” It’s quite possible she put herself at risk to tend the ill in the African-American community. The heroism of caregivers in these outbreaks is a recurring theme, often unsung but powerful. For every ghost we talk about, there were living people of great courage. Some paid the ultimate price; others survived and carried memories (and maybe survivors’ guilt).
During the 1854 epidemic, an interesting development in Savannah’s approach was the creation of a Quarantine Station downriver. City officials tried to strictly enforce quarantine on incoming vessels, having learned that many outbreaks began with a ship arriving from a port where Yellow Fever was raging (Cuba, Jamaica, New Orleans, etc.). There’s a tale of the ship Olympia (I’m pulling that name from memory, hopefully correct) which snuck past quarantine and docked in late July 1854. Locals later traced a cluster of early fever cases to sailors from that ship who had come ashore for grog and entertainment on River Street. Whether apocryphal or not, such stories highlight the desperate blame game: who brought this plague upon us?
And of course, with blame comes fear and rumor. Folklore from 1854 includes stories of household quarantine – some families would nail a yellow cloth to their door to warn others away or to signal they were infected (a practice seen in other epidemics like smallpox too). By contrast, ghost tour lore sometimes dramatizes this with a story that healthy family members would seal sick ones inside homes to avoid catching the fever, literally boarding up windows – a macabre image whether true or not. Savannah’s tight-knit streets likely saw tragic scenes of separation: a child sick inside and the mother trying to care for them but also protect the rest of her kids. These personal dramas get less attention historically, but they’re the kind of thing I encourage people to imagine on my tours to truly grasp the human impact.
Now, from the vantage of ghost stories, the 1850s outbreaks contributed a few tales. One is associated with the Sorrel-Weed House (a famous house on Madison Square, today known for ghost tours and investigations). The Sorrel-Weed House was built in the early 1840s and occupied by Francis Sorrel’s family. According to some sources, Francis Sorrel’s first wife, Lucinda, died of Yellow Fever in 1827 (in an earlier outbreak) and he remarried. Later, in the 1854 epidemic, a servant or possibly a family member in that house fell victim, and there are anecdotes of the Sorrel household mourning a young relative taken by the fever. Today, visitors at the Sorrel-Weed House have reported seeing an apparition of a woman in a black dress on the second floor, thought to be Mrs. Sorrel grieving her lost loved one. While the house is more known for other scandals (an alleged suicide/murder in the 1860s), the layer of Yellow Fever tragedy adds to its haunted pedigree.
Another locale tied to 19th-century fever lore is 432 Abercorn Street, the notorious “most haunted house” facing Calhoun Square. The structure wasn’t built until after the Civil War (in the 1860s), but it sits next to the site of the old Massie School and as mentioned, atop what used to be part of the burial ground. While the legends around 432 Abercorn have grown wild (involving everything from abusive fathers to child ghosts playing in the square), one underpinning is the fact that the ground there quite literally holds victims of past epidemics. Some ghost tour guides claim that children who died in Savannah’s fever outbreaks – perhaps orphans or those from the adjacent Colored Orphan Asylum – were laid to rest in that plot, and thus their spirits haunt the area. There’s a story of a little girl ghost seen at the edge of Calhoun Square, thought to have died in one of the 1870s outbreaks (though whether an orphanage existed there at that exact time is debated). When you hear laughing or see a child skipping rope under the street lamp at midnight, they say, it might be one of these lost children, forever stuck in that fateful summer when the fever took them. Again, separating fact from fiction is tricky, but what’s important is that Savannah’s imagination tied these hauntings to the epidemics, reinforcing that the tragedies are literally under our feet and all around us.
By the end of the 1854 outbreak, Savannah once again breathed a sigh of relief. The city had survived, but at a steep cost. One in 25 dead… you would have known someone gone, as folks might’ve said. As a bit of grim comfort, those who survived a Yellow Fever bout were usually immune thereafter. This created a curious class of “fever-proof” individuals. Some old Savannahians wore their survival as a badge of honor – I stayed in ’54 and lived; I’m safe now. But immunity meant little if a new strain hit or if newcomers kept arriving. Yellow Fever remained Savannah’s scourge. After 1854, the city enjoyed another lull. Perhaps people hoped that was the last great visitation of the “Yellow Dragon,” as some newspapers melodramatically dubbed it.
But in the 1870s, the dragon would roar once more, in what many call the final and one of the worst outbreaks to ever strike Savannah. And this time, it would leave behind perhaps the most infamous haunted hospital story in the city’s history.
The Last Outbreak: 1876 and the Haunted Hospital
In the summer of 1876, Savannah was a city on the upswing. The Civil War was over a decade past; Reconstruction was winding down. The port was busy, commerce was humming, and the population had grown to around 28,000. Many of these residents were newcomers – immigrants, freedmen from the countryside, merchants from up North – and they had no memory of the old fever horrors. Perhaps complacency had set in. Yellow Fever, after all, hadn’t hit hard in twenty years. There had been a regional scare in 1871 (a coastal steamer brought a few cases, quickly contained), but nothing massive. People were more worried about smallpox that year than Yellow Fever. But in 1876, nature caught Savannah off-guard yet again.
It started, likely, with a ship. The details differ depending on who tells it – one story fingers a vessel from Havana that docked in late July, another blames a schooner from Barbados. Regardless, by August 1876, Yellow Fever cases began appearing in the city. When the first deaths were reported, there was a collective gasp of Not again…. The initial reaction of officials was denial; they didn’t want to panic the public or harm business. But within a couple of weeks, the truth could not be hidden (though some tried – there were accusations that city elders delayed announcing the epidemic, fueling a worse spread). By September, Savannah was squarely in the grip of the Yellow Fever epidemic of 1876.
This would prove to be one of the largest outbreaks in sheer numbers. Over the course of several months, about 1,066 people died – roughly 6% of the population. That’s more deaths than 1820, albeit out of a larger city. The death rate was about 1 in 32 citizens. To put it another way, 1876 took more lives than any previous Savannah epidemic, though proportionately it wasn’t as devastating as 1820’s one-in-ten or even 1854’s one-in-twenty-five. Still, imagine a modern city losing 6% of its people in a single season. The mortuaries were again overwhelmed, the doctors and nurses stretched thin. Many of those doctors were now armed with slightly better knowledge – they understood more about quarantines and had some improved care techniques (like keeping patients hydrated, etc.) – but they still didn’t know how the fever spread. The mosquito theory was not confirmed until the early 1900s; in 1876 they still talked of bad air, filthy conditions, and person-to-person contagion.
One of the pivotal places during this outbreak was the old City Hospital, also known as the Candler Hospital (named after a later mayor, not to be confused with today’s Candler Hospital across town). The City Hospital in 1876 was located on the eastern edge of Forsyth Park. The building, a handsome Greek Revival structure built in the early 1800s (1819, to be exact) as the Savannah Poor House and Hospital, became ground zero for fever treatment in 1876. Hundreds of patients were brought through its doors. Some recovered and left; many did not. The hospital staff worked heroically – and some of them died doing their duty.
Now, this is where history and legend intertwine in a deliciously eerie way. According to “tour guide lore,” it was during the 1876 epidemic that so many bodies needed disposal at the hospital that something drastic was done: tunnels were dug from the hospital to nearby Forsyth Park for secret burials. The idea was to quietly move the dead out of the hospital and inter them underground, without the public seeing wagonloads of corpses (which could incite panic). One oft-repeated story claims that a particular tunnel with no exit – essentially a mass grave tunnel – was dug beneath Forsyth Park itself. There, bodies were laid to rest in the cool darkness, and the tunnel simply sealed off. Creepy, right? Hundreds of skeletons possibly lying under the park where today children play and lovers stroll.
Now, let me put on my historian hat for a moment: Is this story true? The factual record shows that in 1884 (a few years after the epidemic), the Savannah Morning News reported on the construction of an underground tunnel beneath the hospital to serve as a morgue or mortuary, replacing an older above-ground morgue. So there was indeed a tunnel and an underground morgue by the hospital. The hospital building (the old Candler) still stands today, by the way – it’s a fine brick structure that served various purposes over the years, currently part of the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD). And guess what? It still has an old tunnel entrance in the basement. I’ve seen it: a bricked-up archway said to be the entrance to the old morgue tunnel. That much is absolutely true.
As for tunnels extending under Forsyth Park with bodies? There’s no official evidence of that. Many researchers doubt that corpses were literally stashed under the park itself – more likely they were stored in the tunnel under the hospital and then taken out at night for burial in cemeteries or elsewhere. The tale of a tunnel under the fountain full of bodies appears to be more legend than fact. Even some ghost tour companies don’t emphasize it because it’s hard to verify. However – and this is a big however – the lack of evidence hasn’t stopped the legend from taking root! Locals and visitors alike love the idea that Forsyth Park, Savannah’s crown jewel, might conceal a hidden charnel house. It’s the ultimate “city built on its dead” anecdote.
Walking near Forsyth’s famous fountain at night, a friend once joked to me, “Step lightly, you might wake the dead under there.” It’s mostly in jest, but then one recalls that indeed hundreds of 1876 victims had to be buried one way or another. Some certainly went to Laurel Grove Cemetery or other cemeteries, but with the city’s resources strained, who knows if some mass burial site was used again? The park is right next to the hospital… it’s not beyond imagining that a trench in some corner of it received bodies in those frantic days. In any case, the Haunted Hospital Tunnels have become Savannah lore.
Now, let’s talk ghosts of 1876. The Old Candler Hospital (sometimes just called “Old Hospital on Forsyth”) is widely regarded as one of Savannah’s most haunted sites. Over the years, many people have claimed to see apparitions in and around it, especially near where the morgue tunnel lies. Common reports include: a woman in a white nurse’s uniform pacing the halls (could she be one of those selfless nurses who died in 1876? Several did, history records say); moaning or crying sounds from the basement (where the tunnel is); and even shadow figures lurking under the oaks outside. For a long time, the building sat mostly unused, which only amplified its spooky reputation – broken windows, vine-covered walls, you know the look. Teenagers would dare each other to sneak in at night. A few emerged white-faced, claiming they heard whispers or felt a cold hand brush their shoulder in the dark.
One famous ghost story from the Old Candler Hospital is the tale of Nurse Mary. As it goes, Nurse Mary was an African-American head nurse who tirelessly treated Yellow Fever patients in 1876. She contracted the disease herself (some say from a patient’s final breath while she held him) and died in the hospital. Ever dedicated, her spirit allegedly stayed behind. In the decades since, patients and staff (when it was still a hospital) would sometimes see a matronly figure checking on sick children or feel a gentle tuck of their blanket at night – with Nurse Mary believed to be the benign specter at work. Although the building hasn’t been a hospital for ages, people living in the area have still seen a figure in 19th-century attire through the upper windows. On one of my own tours, a guest snapped a photo of the building and later was astonished to see a faint silhouette in what used to be the surgical ward window – we compared it to old photos of nurses, and it did bear a resemblance to those old-fashioned uniforms. Coincidence? Possibly. But moments like that blur the line between past and present.
During the epidemic of 1876 itself, the park just outside the hospital became, in effect, an open-air ward. Tents were erected under the live oaks to handle overflow patients when the wards were full. Imagine Forsyth Park not with picnicking families, but rows of canvas tents, each with a feverish patient inside and a weary doctor making rounds. People who live around Forsyth today swear that on certain humid August nights, they have heard the faint clang of a bell (reminiscent of the old hospital bell) or even the indistinct sound of sobbing, when no one is there. A friend of mine, a fellow guide, once told me he was walking his dog by the park at dawn and saw a figure in old-style clothes leaning against a tree. He blinked, and it was gone. “Probably just my imagination,” he laughed, “but with all the stories we tell, who knows?”
Another building tied to the 1876 outbreak is The Marshall House, a lovely inn on Broughton Street. The Marshall House, built in 1851, had served as a Union hospital during the final months of the Civil War. Later, it was indeed used as a hospital again during two Yellow Fever epidemics– historians think these were the outbreaks of the late 1850s and the big one in 1876. By 1876, the hotel’s owner (Mary Marshall) offered it up as a makeshift infirmary to help the overflowing main hospital. Many children were treated there as well as adults. In fact, during renovations in the late 20th century, workers famously found human bones under the floorboards – likely amputated limbs from Civil War surgeries, but some speculated a few were from fever victims who may have been interred temporarily beneath the floor during the chaos. Whether that part is true or not, The Marshall House has embraced its haunted status. Guests often report encounters with ghostly children – little giggling apparitions running down hallways – possibly the spirits of young ones who died in the epidemics and now play in the afterlife. Faucets turn on by themselves, as if unseen hands (kids love to play with water, after all). One room is said to be frequented by the ghost of a doctor, perhaps one who served in 1876 tirelessly and passed away there. People have woken up to see a man in a black coat and thin spectacles at the foot of their bed, checking his pocket watch – a very doctorly thing to do in the 19th century! The Marshall House’s haunted hotel reputation is now a big draw; it even proudly notes its history on its website, which mentions the Yellow Fever hospital days and how conducive that is to ghostly phenomena. Indeed, USA Today readers voted it one of America’s most haunted hotels. For Savannah, that’s a badge of honor linking straight back to the fever outbreaks.
After 1876, Savannah finally got a break from Yellow Fever. There were a few scares in the 1880s (for instance, an epidemic in Jacksonville in 1888 had Savannah nervously quarantining itself), but the city never again experienced a large Yellow Fever outbreak. By the 1890s, improvements in sanitation and better understanding of disease helped. And in 1900, when scientists confirmed that mosquitoes transmitted Yellow Fever, effective measures (like eliminating standing water, fumigation, and later vaccines) gradually removed the threat. Yellow Jack ceased to haunt Savannah in life – but it continues to haunt in memory and legend.
To this day, if you take a night-time Haunted Savannah tour, you’ll find that many of the stops tie back to those fever years. Whether it’s the mass graves of Colonial Park Cemetery, the mourning spirits in Calhoun Square, the ghostly nurses and patients at Old Candler Hospital, or the restless souls in places like the Marshall House, the city’s spectral lore is deeply interwoven with the era of epidemics. On my tours, I like to blend the factual history (which is gripping on its own) with the well-documented legends. Guests appreciate knowing that the ghost story they’re hearing isn’t just invented for thrills – it’s rooted in something real, a true event that left an imprint.
Think about it: Savannah endured wave after wave of a invisible killer. Thousands died before their time. The trauma of those losses surely lingered in the collective consciousness, even genetically perhaps. It’s not a stretch to feel that some of that sorrow and terror imprinted itself on the very environment. Savannah’s ancient oaks and brick lanes remember. The hauntings and eerie feelings people get in certain spots could be seen as that history trying to speak. Are the ghosts of Yellow Fever victims truly wandering the city? Some swear they are – they’ve seen them, heard them, even felt them. Others might say the ghosts are metaphorical, a way we storytellers keep the past alive. Either way, the result is a richly layered narrative that makes Savannah such a compelling place to explore, especially if you’re into history or hauntings (or both, like me).
As a historian, I’m struck by how resilient Savannah was through all this. After each calamity, the city rebounded, rebuilt, and learned a little more. As a paranormal researcher, I’m equally fascinated by how these events fed into the city’s mythos. The folklore didn’t just pop up out of nowhere – it was a coping mechanism, a memorialization, and yes, sometimes an entertainment for later generations. But underneath the ghost stories are the real human stories of suffering, courage, and loss. In telling of the haunted locations and restless spirits, we ensure that those who faced the plagues aren’t forgotten. It’s a unique way in which Savannah confronts its past: with one foot in the historical record and one foot in the spirit world.
Echoes in the Present
Walking through modern Savannah, you might not immediately sense the city’s plague-ridden past. Cafes bustle, horse-drawn carriages carry tourists under the balmy oak canopy, and music drifts from open pub doors on River Street. Yet, if you know where to look – and if you listen to the whispers of the old buildings and cemeteries – the echoes of Yellow Fever are still here.
At Colonial Park Cemetery, besides the famous mass grave marker, there’s a plaque listing major epidemics. It notes years like 1820, 1854, 1876, succinctly summarizing the toll. Visitors sometimes leave flowers or coins at the mass grave site out of respect, as if to say, we see you. Paranormal investigators regularly include Colonial Park in their rounds, often capturing anomalies on camera. Some have recorded EVP (electronic voice phenomena) that when played back sound like voices saying “help” or names that correspond to known victims. Is it proof of ghosts? Hard to say – but these efforts keep the dialogue with history open.
Forsyth Park, far from being shunned due to its rumored burials, is as popular as ever – joggers, picnickers, and yes, the occasional ghost tour group at night with EMF meters in hand. I’ve had a few tour attendees who claimed to be sensitive or psychic insist they felt a “heaviness” near the park’s east side, right where the old hospital stands. One lady even stopped in her tracks and said, “I smell medicine… like a hospital disinfectant.” Keep in mind we were outdoors and no obvious source of that smell. It could have been imagination, but she was convinced something (or someone) was trying to show her a fragment of the past.
The Old Candler Hospital building, now repurposed, doesn’t allow interior access to tour groups for obvious reasons (it’s private property). But sometimes arrangements are made for paranormal teams. Those who’ve gone in report a creepy vibe in the basement near where the morgue tunnel is bricked up. A friend of mine who got permission to investigate said they found old stretchers and medical debris down there (leftover from long ago), and their motion detectors kept going off with no one present. It’s as if the spirits of the fever victims and doctors are still performing some endless routine, back and forth in that tunnel. Or maybe it’s just rats triggering the devices – but it’s more fun to think it’s ghosts!
Savannah’s tourism has embraced these haunted histories. Haunted Savannah Tours (shameless plug for our own operation) and others ensure that visitors hear about Yellow Fever’s role in making Savannah the Ghost City of the South. People come wanting to be spooked, yes, but they also leave with an appreciation of Savannah’s resilience and rich past. I often end my tours by pointing out how the city has transformed its tragedies into tales of wonder. Where else can a devastating epidemic be a selling point for a nighttime adventure? It’s an odd alchemy of Savannah – we turn pain into storytelling gold.
It’s worth mentioning that the city’s relationship with its Yellow Fever history isn’t just about ghosts. There are more formal recognitions too. The Davenport House Museum each year hosts a living history program called “Dreadful Pestilence” where they recreate scenes from 1820. Guides in period costume lead guests by candlelight through the house, portraying a family dealing with the outbreak, complete with sounds of suffering and 19th-century medical “cures.” It’s educational and chilling. When the audience sees an actor coughing up (staged) black vomit, it gives visceral context to what we discuss here. These programs not only educate about history but also, in a way, honor those who went through it.
Similarly, the city has held ceremonies at Colonial Park to remember epidemic victims. A few years ago, on the 200th anniversary of the 1820 epidemic, a gathering was organized. A minister recited prayers used in 1820, and a list of known victims’ names was read. Candles were lit and placed along the line of the mass grave – a line of tiny lights flickering in the darkness over those long-buried souls.
Savannah may be a city of parties and hospitality, but underneath, it’s also a city that does not forget its dead. Whether through solemn memorials or spooky stories, the victims of Yellow Fever are woven into the identity of this place. The haunted locations aren’t just tourist traps; they’re touchstones to those events. Next time you pass by a historic home with a ghost tale, or wander one of our famous squares in the quiet of the morning, think of what happened there. Who lived, who died, and who might still linger in spirit.
Restless Spirits and Resilient City
Savannah today thrives – a charming, lively destination famous for ghost tours and hospitality in equal measure. The fact that we tout our hauntedness is, in a way, a tribute to those before us. We haven’t buried the past (well, physically we did, but figuratively we’ve dug it back up). Instead, we shine a lantern on it and invite others to witness it, to feel the chill and the awe that comes from walking in a city where history literally lives on around you.
The mass graves, the haunted locations, the very atmosphere of certain squares on a humid night – all these are lasting presences of the Yellow Fever epidemics. If you come to Savannah, you might visit Bonaventure Cemetery with its moss-hung trees and find the graves of 1876 victims (the tombstone dates tell the tale, many lives ending between August and November 1876). You might tour the Juliette Gordon Low Birthplace (Juliette, born 1860, was a child during the 1876 epidemic and later founded the Girl Scouts – her house has its own ghost story of her grandmother seeing an apparition during the fever year, supposedly saving Juliette from harm). Or you might simply sit in Monterey Square at dusk, near the Pulaski monument, not realizing that under the very bench you’re on, there could well be someone from long ago sleeping in a forgotten corner of the old cemetery that once extended that far.
Savannah is often called the Hostess City – we welcome guests warmly. Perhaps that extends to our ghosts as well; we host them, we tell their stories, and they, in turn, give our city an enthralling mystique. The haunted tours, the folklore, the eerie anecdotes – they’re more than just spooky fun. They are a way of connecting with history on a gut level. When the hair on your neck stands up in the dark by a graveyard, you’re feeling something those people in 1820 felt too: fear of the unknown, reverence for forces beyond human control. In that sense, we commune with them.
So, the next time you walk through Haunted Savannah, remember the Yellow Fever years. Remember that beneath the charming cobblestones lie layers of pain and perseverance. If you feel a ghostly presence, perhaps say a silent hello – it might just be a fever victim wondering why you’re dressed so strangely (by their 19th-century standards) and why you aren’t running from the “sickness” in the air. Assure them that the fever is gone, that the city they loved (and perhaps died for) is flourishing, and that they are remembered.
Savannah, in spite of all its past suffering, endures with grace. The Spanish moss still sways gently, the same as it did when those hearses rolled by underneath. The church bells now ring for tourists on trolleys rather than incessant funerals. The squares that once might have been makeshift graveyards are now full of laughter and life. Perhaps the spirits find comfort in that. Perhaps their restless energy has even mellowed, content to simply observe a city that rose from the ashes (and the fevers). Yet on certain nights, especially in late summer when the air is thick and still, if you feel a presence or catch a glimpse of a forlorn face at an upper window – tip your hat, give a kind nod. It might be one of Savannah’s old acquaintances, just checking in.
After all, in Haunted Savannah, the past is never truly past. The folklore, the ghosts, the memories – they live on, as real to us as the very real history that spawned them. And as long as we keep telling these stories in our slightly informal, heartfelt, storytelling way, those who came before remain part of our living city. Yellow Fever may have taken their bodies, but it gave Savannah an immortal spirit – a spirit that speaks in the whispers of mass graves, the legends of haunted houses, and the breeze through the cemetery oaks on a moonlit night.
(Every now and then, I end a tour by saying: “Good night, y’all… and to any spirits listening, good night to you too.” It might sound a bit silly, but in Savannah, we treat our ghosts like old friends.)