Savannah's 'Most Haunted' House

In the "Midnight Newsletter," an article by Margaret DeBolt indicates that Savannah's restorationist Jim Williams developed a keen interest in psychic phenomena and kept notebooks on many different subjects in this area, including voodoo.  His fascination was apparently inspired by the three-story Hampton Lillibridge House on 507 East St. Julian Street - his second restoration in Savannah.  Built in 1796 by an architectural firm from Rhode Island, it had deteriorated during the early twentieth century and had served as a boarding house.  Reportedly, a depressed sailor hanged himself from a brass bed frame in one of the rooms.

507 East St. Julian Street

In 1963, Williams purchased it and moved it four blocks from Reynolds Square to its current location.  DeBolt and Caskey report that a worker was killed when part of the roof collapsed during this tricky transition.  Williams hired a crew to begin work, but they quickly reported strange footsteps, voices, laughter, and the sound of furniture being thrown around.  Several workers left after they experienced the sense that unseen others were present in the house. A news crew that caught wind of the rumors entered the unoccupied house one evening and saw a piece of construction material come flying at them.

3rd Floor Window

One worker reportedly went to an upper story to investigate a loud noise in a room supposed to be empty.  When he failed to return, others went to find him and discovered him lying facedown on the floor.  He was terrified. He told them he'd walked into the room and felt as if he had plunged into ice-cold water.  He seemed to lose control of his body, so he dropped to the floor to impede the force he'd felt drawing him toward an open chimney shaft, where a thirty-foot drop would have meant certain injury, even death. (Caskey says that when this man mentioned an exorcism, they heard a loud female scream coming from that room.)

The house from a distance