Haunted Sites
Summoning the spirits…
Greenwich Cemetery
No photo of this place yet.
A quieter historic cemetery beside Bonaventure, where ghost stories have been passed down through generations, according to Ghost City Tours.
- Address
- Greenwich Rd (adjoining Bonaventure Cemetery), Savannah, GA 31404
- Hours
- Check the official website or call ahead for current hours.
- Admission
- Check the official website.
- Access
- cemetery (daytime)
The real history
About the place
Greenwich Cemetery sits on a bluff above the Wilmington River, east of Savannah, beside Bonaventure Cemetery. The two share an entrance at 330 Bonaventure Road, just inside which stands the ornate Gaston Tomb. The land was once Greenwich Plantation. In 1896, long after the plantation house was gone, the naval-stores magnate Spencer P. Shotter built a Beaux-Arts mansion and elaborate gardens here. The estate appeared in several silent films, including Stolen Moments, before the house burned to the ground in 1923.
The City of Savannah bought the land in 1933 and added it to Bonaventure, making Greenwich the newest of the city's four municipal cemeteries. Fourteen of Shotter's garden statues came with it. They sat in storage until 1965 and were then lent to Telfair Museums, and the city approved selling sixteen statues in 2020. A 3.5-acre section is now a quiet meditation park. Among those buried here is Danny Hansford (1960–1981), whose death at the Mercer House is at the center of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.
The cemetery is open during daytime hours. City cemeteries don't allow haunted or paranormal tours.
Local legend
The Ghost Story
Told here as local lore, the way guides, books and visitors tell it. These are legends, not established fact.
Most visitors to Savannah never see Greenwich Cemetery. It isn't on postcards and it lacks Bonaventure's famous statuary, but Ghost City Tours says it has built a quiet reputation among the people who know it well. The stories told about it are notable more for their consistency than their drama.
The most common report is a shadowy figure among the graves. Visitors describe someone standing by a headstone or walking slowly along a path, dark, featureless and roughly human in shape, who is gone by the time they get closer. These sightings cluster in the older sections, where the trees are tallest and the light is dimmest, and in late afternoon and early evening, when the shadows stretch out. Others describe movement at the edge of their vision near the big family monuments, sudden cold spots that pass in seconds, and faint rustling or whispering where no one else is around.
Some visitors also think about the place's past, the vanished plantation and the burned mansion with its silent-film gardens, and wonder what lingers on the bluff.
What to see
- Greenwich Park
- Danny Hansford
- Cecelia Seiler
Named in the Wikipedia article cited below.
Tips
- City rules bar haunted and paranormal tours inside city cemeteries, so night tours tell these stories from outside the gates.
- Featured on 1 ghost tour; see the links below.
