I came across Colonial Park Cemetery on my first ghost tour and, wow, it has quite a story. It’s a rather large cemetery, I’m not entirely sure just how big, but standing on one end and peering through the gate, I could not see where it ended on the other side.
At the cemetery, there are many, very old mausoleums and above-ground tombs. Apparently in the times of the civil war, when yellow fever became an epidemic, many people fell into comas and were presumed dead. With yellow fever, it was believed to be contagious, so doctors would not touch those who were comatose to check their pulse, so they believed that they were dead. Many people were put into these mausoleums because so many people were “dying”. However it was later discovered after opening these tombs, there were scratch marks, from those who had woken up and had attempted to get free. It became such a problem that when people were buried, a string would be wrapped around their wrist and was connected to a bell that was placed next to their tombstone so that if they woke up, the bell would ring and the groundskeeper could attempt to save them. This, however, did not work as well as people had hoped…
There’s another story about a man named the Bone Collector, who rode around the cemetery at the witching hour (11:30pm) on a bicycle with human bones inside his basket. According to my tour guide, he knew someone named (I can’t remember actually, I’ll call him David) David who was giving a tour that late one night. David said that he saw a man on a bicycle approach him, whom he had never met before, and stopped him. The man said “Are you David?” “Yes.” And without saying a word, he reached into his basket, pulled out a human rib bone to give to David, and left. Part of the story is once receiving a bone if you are gifted one, you are to go home and bury it in the yard, and pray for good fortune.
Needless to say, I have no doubt that it’s haunted.
Adventures in Savannah 