Rhett Butler came from Charleston pops into my head as I walk down the well-lit street filled with the clean cut, neatly dressed, vibrant people on a comfortable early May night. The filthy rich southern scoundrel made his fortune profiteering off of goods and services during the Civil War, The mansions that Rhett could have lived in are carefully preserved in a city that welcomes over four million tourists annually.
In the Spring of 1670, 150 English colonists, indentured servants and slaves sailed into the Charleston harbor and decided to build a miniature of London which they called Charles Towne. Their vision was an aristocratic, English countryside inhabited by the landed gentry. The settlers were plagued by death and disease in the early years and many of them died leaving their ghosts adrift in the city
Our tour meets in front of a dingy bar and is small, about a half dozen people. Our tour guide is young, male, a bit on the grungy side, a poet and a history teacher. He talks and talks and talks until my head is spinning with stories. Lost Revolutionary and Civil War soldiers, a woman left by her man who still wanders the streets, are just a couple of the stories he tells. Many buildings in Charleston are haunted dating back a couple of centuries. We begin walking to find them.
Charleston City Hall, located at 80 Broad Street, is said to be haunted by General P.G.T. Beauregard, a native of Louisiana and a general in the Confederate army charged with the city's defense during the attacks on Fort Sumter. Multiple guides, employees, and council men and women have reported seeing the general's ghost overlooking the city council chambers from a second-floor balcony. Pirates were imprisoned in a Guard House of the Provost Dungeon and died down there and are said to also haunt the city.
He takes us through a corridor where many people have reported being touched, even manhandled by ghosts but we see no signs of paranormal activity. He begins to sound like a low drone.
We stop in front of a tombstone in the Unitarian Church cemetery and our guide talks about who lies beneath so I duck behind them onto a bench to rest my sore tourist feet. At first, I think that whatever is touching my arms and shoulders are insects and I swat them away but they the have the persistence of mosquitos looking to suck out every last drop of blood. When I duck out of the tour a few minutes later I expect to be covered with but there is nothing. A couple of days later I realize my phantom mosquitos were likely a ghost touching me.
