Hello, I’m Chris Allen, and welcome. Today we’re delving into a mystery that has fascinated Savannah for decades – a tale I’ve titled “Who Put the Bones in the Wall?” It’s a story about an old inn, a set of human remains discovered during renovations, and all the questions that come tumbling out with the skeleton.
Picture Savannah, Georgia: Spanish moss draping the oak trees, gas lamps flickering outside elegant 19th-century homes. Savannah calls itself the “Hostess City” for its charm and hospitality, but it’s equally famous as America’s Most Haunted City. Ghost tours rattle by on cobblestone streets every night. Every old building here has a story, maybe even a ghost story. And one of the most chilling begins at a lovely bed-and-breakfast called the Foley House Inn, right on Chippewa Square.
Our story kicks off in 1987, inside the Foley House Inn. At that time, the inn was undergoing some much-needed renovations. The place was nearly a century old, full of history – and as workers were about to discover, it was hiding a deadly secret in its walls.
It started like any other renovation: dusty plaster, pry bars, the whine of power tools. Workers were removing an inner wall on the first floor to create space for a new staircase leading down to the kitchen. It was tedious work, the kind where your mind wanders – until something unusual falls out of the wall. One of the construction workers strikes a section of old plaster and a cascade of crumbled wood and dust spills out… along with something else. At first it looks like just debris, but then someone spots what appears to be a bone. And then – a skull.
Imagine the shock. You’re tearing down a wall in a beautiful historic inn – and suddenly a human skull is staring back at you from the hole you just made. The work grinds to a halt. The crew realizes they’ve uncovered human skeletal remains, sealed inside the wall. A full skeleton, as it would turn out, hidden between the old bricks and plaster for God-knows-how-long.
News of the grisly discovery spread quickly among the staff and the owners. The police were called, an investigation launched. It’s not every day that you find a body literally in the walls of an upscale bed-and-breakfast. The immediate questions practically asked themselves: Who was this person? How did they end up entombed in a wall? Was there foul play, or some bizarre accident? In a city as historic as Savannah, could these be old colonial remains, or something more recent and sinister?
The authorities examined the skeleton. Given the context – the bones were dry, old, and the wall itself hadn’t been opened in decades – it became clear these remains were not recent. They likely had been there for a very long time, possibly close to a century. Any soft tissues were long gone; this was essentially an archaeological find rather than a forensic crime scene. The remains were too decomposed to get a clear identification. No obvious modern forensic clues like clothing remnants or personal items were reported in the wall with the bones (at least none that have been publicly discussed). It was a mystery with only a skeleton and no name.
For Savannah’s rumor mill, though, that skeleton was more than enough. Almost immediately, people began to speculate that the bones belonged to someone who had met a violent end in the house’s early years. And many long-time locals thought back to an old legend about the Foley House Inn – a legend that, until 1987, was dismissed as just a spooky ghost tale.
To understand that legend, we need to step back in time to the late 1800s and meet the woman behind the Foley House Inn, Mrs. Honoria Foley. Honoria Foley was the original owner of the home. She had it built in 1896, right on top of the ashes of a previous house that burned down in the Great Savannah Fire of 1889. Honoria was the widow of a wealthy Irish immigrant, Owen Foley. By all accounts, she was a savvy businesswoman and an early hospitality pioneer – in fact, the Foleys’ original home was one of Savannah’s first true bed-and-breakfasts. After the fire destroyed that first home, Honoria rebuilt bigger and better – the structure that stands today as Foley House Inn was two townhouses combined into one large inn. She ran the place herself, raising her family there. Her son (or possibly son-in-law, according to some records) and grandchildren even lived on the property with her for a time. So you have to picture this genteel Victorian boarding house, with a respectable widow proprietor and a mix of family and guests coming and going.
For many years, Mrs. Foley’s inn prospered pleasantly. But as the story goes, something terrible happened one night around the turn of the century – something that Honoria Foley kept secret for the rest of her life. According to local legend, Honoria had a male guest – often described as a wealthy businessman, an exporter from out of town – who was staying at her inn. This guest took a particular interest in the attractive widow. At first perhaps he was just flirtatious, but eventually his advances became unwanted and inappropriate. Honoria tried to rebuff him politely – she was a respectable woman after all – but the man wouldn’t take no for an answer.
Then came the fateful night. The tale has the feel of a Southern Gothic thriller: It’s late, the household has gone to bed, and Honoria Foley is alone in her bedroom. Suddenly, the door swings open and there stands the unwelcome boarder, intent on having his way. Honoria, startled and terrified, reacts in self-defense. She reaches for the heavy brass candlestick on her nightstand – the kind that every well-to-do 19th-century bedroom would have for lighting – and she swings it with all her might at the intruder. One blow to the head is all it takes. When the chaos and adrenaline subside, the man lies on the floor of her room, deathly still. Honoria Foley has just killed him.
Now, imagine being a woman in 1900 who’s just accidentally (or perhaps not-so-accidentally) killed a man in your home. The man was a guest under your roof. Honoria likely feared that if she reported this to the authorities, no one would believe her story of self-defense. A widow of high standing could see her reputation ruined, her business shuttered, maybe even face murder charges. It was a Victorian world, and a woman claiming she fought off an attacker might well have been met with skepticism or scandal. Honoria had a great deal to lose – her inn was her livelihood and her pride.
So the legend says Honoria made a drastic decision. Instead of calling for help, she enlisted the aid of a trusted friend – some versions say it was a male friend who perhaps was a carpenter or someone handy. In the dead of night, they carried the lifeless body of the boarder and concealed it inside the house itself. They chose an interior wall, adjacent to what was then the dining room of the inn. There, the friend helped Honoria create a sort of makeshift tomb: they placed the corpse in a niche and then sealed up the wall with bricks and plaster, hiding all evidence of the crime.
If this sounds like something out of Poe’s The Cask of Amontillado, you’re not wrong – it’s eerily similar, except that story was fiction and this, supposedly, was real life. Honoria Foley literally had a skeleton in her wall (forget closets!). One can only imagine her anxiety in the days and weeks after. The grisly deed was done, but could she keep it secret? There would have been questions: a guest has vanished overnight – where did he go? Perhaps Honoria told the other boarders and servants that the man left abruptly in the morning before anyone was up. In an era without modern IDs or instant communication, it might not have been too hard to explain away a missing traveler. Savannah was a port city; men came and went. If he had no close friends in town, his disappearance might not raise immediate alarms.
But what about the smell? This is a practical question that any modern person might think of – a body sealed in a wall would decompose and surely create an odor. The legend doesn’t detail this part, but it’s a valid point: how did she mask the stench of decay in a busy boarding house? Perhaps the corpse was already starting to dry out, or maybe they sealed it well with brick and plaster and lime (if they were smart, they might have used lime to neutralize odors). Or maybe Honoria distracted everyone with extra helpings of Southern magnolia-scented potpourri for a month or two. We don’t know. However she managed it, Honoria Foley apparently lived the rest of her life with that horrible secret literally embedded in the architecture of her home.
According to the lore, Honoria never breathed a word of it to anyone for years. Not to her family, not to her other guests. Life went on at the Foley House. The widow Foley remained a respected hostess, and any whispers about the wealthy boarder who vanished were lost to time… until many years later.
Here’s the twist that ghost tour guides love: Honoria Foley supposedly confessed on her deathbed. In 1914, Honoria was 83 years old and in failing health. As the story goes, in her final moments she grew delirious or remorseful and revealed that she had killed a man long ago and that his remains were still hidden in the house. You can picture the scene: the old woman, eyes clouded with time and pain, grabbing a relative’s hand and rasping out a wild tale about a body in the wall. It sounds like the kind of thing people might write off as the ramblings of a dying mind. Indeed, that’s what reportedly happened – those who heard her confession apparently dismissed it as nonsense. “Poor Honoria is hallucinating,” they may have thought. After all, it is an outrageous claim. No one went to tear down walls looking for proof. Honoria Foley was laid to rest, and whatever she said in those final hours was politely forgotten, chalked up to the fevered imagination of an old lady at death’s door.
Fast forward 73 years. It’s 1987, and new owners are renovating the Foley House, probably with no knowledge of any spooky legends. And lo and behold – a skeleton is found in the wall, in the very spot Honoria had allegedly indicated. Suddenly, that long-dismissed deathbed confession doesn’t seem so crazy after all. Honoria’s wild tale was apparently true.
Now, to be transparent: much of Honoria Foley’s murder story comes from oral history and ghost tour lore. We don’t have a written diary or a police report from 1900 confirming all these details. But the fact is that a human skeleton was indeed found in the walls of her house. And as far as anyone knows, Honoria Foley was the only person who had ever hinted at a body being there. The remains were never officially identified, but the assumption is they belonged to that missing male guest from around the late 1890s. We don’t even know his name – he’s become a kind of urban legend character, often just referred to as a “wealthy boarder” or even given the nickname “Wally” (a little tongue-in-cheek nickname short for “the man in the wall”). Some say he was a rich exporter visiting on business who simply vanished one night. The lack of identification raises intriguing questions: Did nobody search for this man back then? Perhaps if he was traveling alone and had no close family nearby, news of his disappearance never spread. In an age before digital records, someone could go missing and only a few local notices or telegrams might mark it.
We might never have all the facts, but what’s certain is that the Foley House Inn gained instant notoriety from that moment in 1987 onward. The inn went from being just another charming historic B&B to front-page news and a must-stop on every Savannah ghost tour. “When you find human remains in your walls during renovations, you end up getting that reputation,” the current owners quip – and it’s true, the Foley House became the haunted inn everyone talks about.
Guests began to wonder if the inn was haunted by the unfortunate soul in the wall, or perhaps by Honoria herself, burdened by guilt. Almost immediately, ghost stories started cropping up. People reported strange occurrences: the feeling of a rush of cold air passing in an empty hallway, inexplicable noises at night, even sightings of a spectral figure. One frequently told tale is that of a man in a top hat wandering the inn’s garden late at night – presumably the restless spirit of the murdered boarder, still looking for justice or perhaps just some late-night fresh air. The staff playfully named the ghost “Wally,” as I mentioned, which shows Savannah’s sense of humor about its hauntings. (I have to admit, naming the ghost of a guy found in a wall “Wally” – that’s both terrible and terrific.) Guests who are in the know request the “haunted room” or ask the front desk staff to recount the story over breakfast.
For the Foley House Inn, the legend has become part of its identity. On their official brochures and website they even embrace it, mentioning that finding bones in the wall tends to make you a ghostly legend in Savannah. It’s great for business – who wouldn’t be a bit curious to stay at the inn with a skeleton-in-the-wall story? The inn today is lovely, by the way – tastefully decorated, comfortable rooms, all that good Southern hospitality – plus perhaps an extra guest or two who checked in over a century ago and never really checked out.
Now, sensational as this story is, it naturally made me wonder: Is the Foley House case unique? Or have other historic renovations turned up human remains and mysteries? As it turns out, this is not an isolated incident. There have been a number of cases – some historical, some surprisingly recent – where people literally found bones in the walls (or under floors) of buildings. Each time, it raises those same big questions: Who was this? How did they get here? Was it murder, accident, or something else? And often, those questions lead to some remarkable stories.
So let’s broaden our scope for a few minutes and look at a couple of similar incidents, because they really put the Foley House mystery in perspective.
First, staying right in Savannah – it seems the Foley House isn’t the only haunted inn in town that hid a secret in its structure. If you go just a few blocks away, you’ll find the Marshall House Hotel, one of Savannah’s oldest hotels (built in 1851). The Marshall House has its own spooky reputation, but the relevant part of its history comes from renovations done in the late 1990s. Around 1999, the Marshall House was being restored and during the work, some floorboards were pulled up on the ground level. Underneath the old wood planks, workers discovered human bones – a whole bunch of them – right beneath the floor. Understandably, they halted work and called the police, just like at Foley House. For a short time, the Marshall House was effectively a crime scene. You can imagine the concern: had they just uncovered evidence of some forgotten massacre or clandestine grave?
But in the Marshall House case, there turned out to be an historical explanation that, while macabre, wasn’t a murder. Historians noted that during the Civil War in the 1860s, the Marshall House had been used as a Union Army hospital. Specifically, it was a hospital for wounded soldiers during Sherman’s occupation of Savannah in 1864-65. In those days, battlefield medicine being what it was, they performed many amputations. Limbs were removed to save lives, but then you had the problem of disposing of those amputated arms and legs. According to records, the hospital staff at the Marshall House sometimes buried amputated limbs in the dirt-floor basement or under floorboards, especially during winter when the ground outside was too hard to dig proper graves. It sounds horrible today, but it was a common practice at times of war. So the bones the workers found in the 1990s turned out to be the amputated remains of Civil War soldiers that had been left there for over a century. Once that was determined, the nature of the find shifted from a potential murder investigation to an archaeological one. Those remains were likely gathered respectfully and given a proper burial afterward (and indeed they were – the bones were carefully removed; I believe some ended up in a museum display temporarily to explain the history, then were interred).
Of course, that hasn’t stopped ghost lore from thriving at the Marshall House too – guests talk about seeing soldier apparitions and such, perhaps missing their lost limbs (there’s even a frequent playful claim of a ghost searching for his missing arm). The Marshall House uses its history in marketing as well. But the key point for us is: sometimes when you find bones in an old building, the explanation isn’t murder at all, but rather historic events – war, disease, or in this case, surgical leftovers that sound like something straight out of a horror movie but actually make historical sense.
Now, not every skeleton-in-the-wall story is as old as Foley House or as medically explained as Marshall House. Some are far more recent and starkly criminal. Let me give you one example that is basically a true-crime case: the story of JoAnn Nichols in Poughkeepsie, New York. This one isn’t about a grand historic mansion, but it’s so striking that it bears mentioning. JoAnn Nichols was a 55-year-old first-grade school teacher who went missing in 1985. For years, nobody knew what happened to her. She simply vanished from her home one day. Her husband, James Nichols, told police that JoAnn might have been depressed after the death of their son and that perhaps she ran away or harmed herself. The case went cold; JoAnn remained a missing person for 27 years.
Jump ahead to 2013. James Nichols, the husband, had died of natural causes at the age of 82. With no family to handle his estate, authorities sent a clean-out crew to clear the old house (which was described as extremely cluttered with junk – James was a hoarder). While clearing the basement, workers knocked down a false wall that had been built behind shelves… and behind that wall, they found a large plastic container. Inside the container were skeletal human remains. Dental records later confirmed what had long been suspected – it was JoAnn, the missing wife, hidden behind the basement wall in her own home. The medical examiner determined she’d died from blunt force trauma to the head. In other words, she was likely murdered by her husband back in 1985, and he had concealed her body in a wall for nearly three decades. He lived the rest of his life in that house, sleeping above that basement, with her remains sealed in drywall below. It’s a chilling thought. And he got away with it – only after his death was the truth discovered. The case of course was reopened posthumously, but the prime (and likely sole) suspect was already dead, so in a practical sense, justice was never served.
I mention this case because it highlights something important: when human remains turn up behind walls, often the truth involves a crime of passion or desperation. In the Nichols’ case, it was a modern tragedy – a husband who apparently murdered his wife and hid her, maintaining a façade of a worried spouse for years. In Honoria Foley’s case, if we believe the legend, it was also a crime of passion in a way – a sudden act of violence in self-defense, followed by a desperate cover-up to avoid ruin. The big difference, of course, is that Honoria’s secret stayed hidden far longer and drifted into the realm of folklore before being confirmed, whereas the Nichols case was a straightforward missing-person-turned-homicide.
Going back even further in time, there are recorded incidents from the 19th and early 20th centuries of hidden skeletons discovered in old houses, which became sensational news in their day. One example: In 1913, a mansion in Illinois built by a prominent man, Colonel Thomas Snell, was being remodeled. Workers there found the skeleton of an infant concealed in a cavity in the wall, tucked inside a small homemade coffin. The headlines were lurid – this was a “mansion of mystery” yielding an awful secret. It turned out to be a long-buried family scandal: the remains were believed to be connected to an illegitimate child and a cover-up of a birth (and likely a murder) that had occurred decades before. The newspapers at the time called it a “life of sin and awful crime” revealed at last. So again, an old house renovation brought a secret literally out of the walls.
These stories, whether from 130 years ago, 30 years ago, or just a decade ago, show us that walls can’t keep secrets forever. Eventually, renovations happen, walls get opened up, foundations get dug into – and hidden things come out. Sometimes it’s as benign as a time capsule or a forgotten letter. But every so often, it’s something a lot more disturbing.
Now, having looked at those parallels, let’s return to the Foley House Inn and our central question: Who put the bones in the wall? We can’t exactly haul Honoria Foley back from the grave to answer that. She took that answer with her over a century ago. But thanks to that 1987 discovery, we have strong reason to believe the old legend was true – that Honoria herself was the one who caused those bones to be in that wall, whether by her own hand or with the help of her friend. In all likelihood, she did it to cover up an accidental killing and to protect herself and her family from scandal and legal peril. Was it the right thing to do? Absolutely not – someone died and was denied justice or even the dignity of a burial. But can we understand why she might have panicked and done it? In the context of her time, maybe we can. It was a harsh world for women, and the courts might not have believed her story of self-defense, especially if there were no other witnesses and the victim was a well-to-do man. Ironically, had she reported it, she might have been vindicated if evidence of his assault came out – but that’s a big gamble she clearly wasn’t willing to take.
As for the identity of the victim, it remains an open question. No name has ever been put to the remains. He’s the eternal John Doe of the Foley House. People have tried to sleuth it out in a cursory way – searching archives for any mention of a missing businessman in Savannah around 1896-1900 – but nothing conclusive has come up. It’s quite possible no one reported him missing in Savannah. If he was from elsewhere and traveling alone, folks back home might have just assumed he decided to extend his trip or conduct other business. If he had no close family, the trail would go cold quickly in those days.
One tantalizing detail is that many versions of the story describe the victim as “wealthy.” If Honoria truly feared losing her inn over this incident, one wonders: did she also perhaps quietly take the man’s money or valuables after killing him? Was robbery a possible motive, as some rumors suggest? Or was it purely fear of scandal? The official Foley Inn website hints that speculation swirled about him being “murdered for his money” – implying maybe robbery. But the more prevalent narrative in Savannah is the self-defense one. It could even be a bit of both: maybe after defending herself, she realized the man had a lot of cash or jewelry on him, which could tempt someone to rationalize hiding the body and keeping the money. Again, we’re in the realm of speculation – without diaries or records, we have only the fragments of oral history. Honoria Foley by all accounts lived comfortably and passed the inn to her family when she died, so she wasn’t hurting for money desperately, but who knows what temptation or rationalization occurred in that fateful moment.
The legacy of this mystery is alive and well. Today, if you travel to Savannah, you can stay at the Foley House Inn. You might even be able to sleep in the very room next to where the bones were found (the wall in question is now long rebuilt as part of that staircase, but the general area can be identified). The staff might share the story if you ask them – in fact, they’ve embraced it as part of the inn’s charm. Tour guides on the street certainly will point it out after dark, with flashlights waving and maybe a dramatic whisper: “In this very house, a skeleton was found in the wall…” It’ll send a chill down your spine even on a muggy Georgia evening.
Savannah has a way of layering history, myth, and modern life all together. You can have a delightful breakfast of blueberry pancakes in the morning at the Foley House, and that evening go on a ghost tour and hear about its dark secret. One guest might simply admire the antique décor and comfy bed, while another guest in the next room is nervously inspecting the walls for any further surprises. (Don’t worry – lighthearted note – as far as anyone knows, the Foley House had only one skeleton hiding on the premises. The renovation in the ’80s presumably checked the other walls thoroughly after that scare!)
So, after all this, what can we conclude? Who put the bones in the wall? The evidence and legends point to Honoria Foley – a woman who, in a moment of crisis, possibly committed an act of violence and then covered it up by literally bricking her problem behind plaster. It’s a shocking thing to imagine this proper Victorian lady capable of, essentially, murder and a cover-up. But stories like these remind us that every saint has a past and every sinner a future – or is it the other way around? Honoria remains something of an enigma: heroically defending her honor one moment, then perhaps coldly hiding the evidence the next. Savannah’s archives are quiet about any scandal, so if not for those pesky bones turning up, she’d be remembered only as a successful innkeeper and society lady. Instead, she’s now a character in one of Savannah’s most famous ghost stories.
One more thing to ponder: Savannah’s an old city with a lot of human drama in its past – wars, slavery, epidemics, prosperity and poverty. Sometimes I wonder, how many other secrets lie buried in its old homes and under its garden squares. The Foley House was one that gave up its secret unexpectedly. There might be others out there with their own skeletons still literally in the closet (or wall, or attic). Every renovation in the Historic District must carry a little tingle of suspense: what will we find when we peel back this old drywall or lift these floorboards? Usually it’s nothing more than some 19th-century newspapers used as insulation or a child’s long-forgotten toy. But once in a while – as we’ve seen – you might find yourself face to face with a long-lost soul, and a mystery demanding to be solved.
In the end, the Foley House Inn’s skeleton raises more questions than it answered. What exactly happened on that long-ago night? We have only one side of the story – Honoria’s alleged account – and even that was kept secret until proof emerged. Who was the victim, really? We might never pin a name to him or know his story. And importantly, what should we think of Honoria Foley? Was she a murderer who got away with it, or a woman who defended herself against assault in an era when the system might not have protected her? Perhaps both can be true. It’s the kind of moral riddle that history is full of.
One thing’s for sure: the discovery of those bones turned a quaint Savannah inn into the centerpiece of a legend. It’s a story that guests will whisper about and travel writers will eagerly retell, blending history and myth. It makes for a great tale on a ghost tour – complete with the dramatic reveal of the skeleton and the satisfying notion that a deathbed confession was vindicated after all those years.
As we wrap up, I’ll leave you with this thought. There’s a saying that “if walls could talk, they’d have some stories to tell.” In the case of the Foley House Inn, the walls did more than talk – they actually held onto the evidence of a story for ninety years until someone finally listened. So next time you stay in an old hotel or visit a historic home, take a moment to wonder: what have these walls witnessed? Hopefully nothing as dramatic as a murder – but you never really know, do you?
Thank you for joining me on this journey through the past. It’s been a real tale of mystery, murder, and renovation mayhem. I hope you found it as fascinating as I do. If you enjoy stories like these – where history leaves us a puzzle – be sure to tune in next time. Until then, stay curious and stay safe… and maybe think twice about what might be lurking behind your own drywall! After all, you never know what secrets might be hiding in the walls.