Haunted Sites
Summoning the spirits…
Photo: JeffersonLH · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons
Willink House
Private residence, please view from the sidewalk only. Don't knock or enter.
An 1845 Cape Cod-style cottage tied to shipbuilder Henry Willink, whose story Ghost City Tours links to Confederate ironclads. Reports include phantom footsteps, slamming doors and apparitions.
- Address
- 426 E St Julian St, Savannah, GA 31401
- Hours
- Check the official website or call ahead for current hours.
- Admission
- Check the official website.
- Access
- exterior only (private residence)
The real history
About the place
The Willink House is a small Cape Cod-style cottage, unusual in Savannah, now at 426 East St. Julian Street on the corner of Price Street. It's often dated to about 1845, though Ghost City Tours notes that Henry F. Willink may not have returned to Savannah from New York until 1851. It originally stood just south of Oglethorpe Avenue at Price and Perry Streets. Willink lived there about ten years before moving to a larger brick house. In 1964 the Historic Savannah Foundation saved the cottage, and it was later moved to its present lot.
Henry Frederick Willink was born around 1825. He was the son of Frederick Henry Willink, a German immigrant merchant who by 1860 enslaved 23 people. The younger Willink studied at Chatham Academy, worked in his father's shipyard and then in New York, and returned to start his own shipbuilding business. By 1860 he enslaved five people. During the Civil War his yard built the ironclad CSS Georgia, nicknamed the 'Ladies' Gunboat' because the Ladies' Gunboat Association raised $115,000 for it. It proved better suited to serve as a floating battery than as a warship.
Today the cottage is a private residence and is not open to visitors. Please view it from the sidewalk, and don't knock or step onto the property.
Private residence, please view from the sidewalk only. Don't knock or enter.
Local legend
The Ghost Story
Told here as local lore, the way guides, books and visitors tell it. These are legends, not established fact.
The story told at the Willink House is a love story with a cold ending. As Ghost City Tours tells it, Henry Willink once invited his wife to come with him to the shipyard. She missed her footing and fell over a ship's railing into the river. Weighed down by her heavy skirts and unable to swim, she drowned before he could reach her. Willink was inconsolable. He threw himself into his work, paced his house at night and often stormed out to the shipyard in the dark.
On one of those nights, the legend continues, his wife's apparition appeared in front of him on the deck. He staggered back in shock, missed the edge of the ship and went overboard himself. Unlike her, he was saved. Neighbors came to know the sound of Willink slamming his front door as he left for the yard at night, and according to the story they kept hearing it after he died. Owners of the cottage have reported footsteps, slamming doors and unexplained sounds, and some have concluded that the house is simply haunted.
Tips
- This is viewed from the street: please respect the residents and the property.
- Featured on 2 ghost tours; see the links below.
