Sorrel Weed House, Savannah Georgia 2012

As I stated in my last blog, my wife and I were so captivated by Savannah and amazed by the findings from our first haunted holiday, we vowed to return as soon as we could manage it.  Thankfully, we were able to arrange to make a trip back to Savannah the following year.  The previous year we had stayed at The Marshall House.

The Marshall House

On this trip we decided to split our time between The Keyhoe House and The 17Hundred90 Inn (Room 204).

The Keyhoe House

17Hundred90 Inn

All three haunted hotels proved to be quite interesting, but that is a topic for another time..................

As part of our second visit to Savannah we elected to take the last Paranormal Ghost Tour at The Sorrel Weed House on two separate evenings.  The first evening's tour started with an orientation in the courtyard and a walk through the basement of the main house where we captured several photos with bright orbs that appear to be moving when you examine the images in succession, snapped a few seconds apart.

Sorrel Weed House Basement

Sorrel Weed House Basement

As we proceeded to explore the rest of the basement, the balls of light continued to show up in our photos.

Sorrel Weed House Basement

Sorrel Weed House Basement

Sorrel Weed House Basement

Sorrel Weed House Basement

Next, the tour took us upstairs where we once again took a photo of a orb in motion right below the cabinet with the two dishes on display.

Sorrel Weed House - Second Floor

However, one of the most fascinating photos that we took that evening was the image of the mirror over the fireplace.  If you look to the lower right hand corner of the picture you will see a reflection of something wearing a baggy white shirt, a black strap on its right shoulder (presumably one of two suspenders), and total darkness where the face should be.

Sorrel Weed House - Second Floor with Apparition in the Mirror

Sorrel Weed House - Close-up of Apparition in the Mirror on the Second Floor

Now, I have tried to come up with alternate explanations for this over the last year and a half but I have not been able to debunk this anomaly in the mirror.  I have looked at all the other photos as well as the video that we took during the evening, and I could not find anyone wearing this type of outfit (and no, there wasn't anyone on the tour that had a black void in lieu of a face). Of course, I wish that the man in the hat had not been standing directly in front of the spot where the thing would have been standing to create the reflection seen in the image, but such is life (or death - I'm not sure anymore). However, what I do know is that the entity seen in the mirror not only doesn't match the description of anyone else on the tour, but its' reflection is much darker than those cast by the two (real) men standing to the left of the mirror.  I simply have never run across anything like this before and I don't know what to make of it.

The tour progressed to the balcony on the second floor where Matilda, wife of Francis Sorrel, is said to have jumped to her death in the courtyard below after walking in on her husband and Molly (a slave girl who was very close to the family) having an affair.  We captured the following evp while listening to the tour guide tell the story about the circumstances leading up to Matilda jumping off the balcony.

Later, we moved on to the carriage house to see Molly's room on the second floor where she was found dead, hanging from the rafters shortly after her affair with Francis was discovered. We received several random evps in the carriage house that are interesting but don't seem to be connected in any logical way. 

When this evp was recorded no one in the group was talking.  At this point, we were all walking up the stairs to the second floor of the carriage house.

When these next three evps were recorded we were in Molly's room on the second floor of the carriage house.



The next evp was a funny one to hear later since the one guy on the tour (seen previously in the picture with the mirror) had a shaved head.

This evp was fascinating and a little frustrating since so many random phrases were jammed into a relatively short period of time.



The off-color and seemingly random nature of the content of most evps never ceases to amaze me.  I constantly catch myself trying to make sense of them and draw connections, but the truth is many evps yield very few answers but are intriguing nonetheless.

The tour finally concluded in the courtyard where it had begun and the other members of the tour quickly departed. However, since I had recorded such interesting evps in the root cellar of the carriage house the previous year, I asked the tour guide if I could investigate the area by myself while she locked up the house. She agreed and I proceeded to walk down into the dark, musty root cellar with my video camera and digital recorder in hand.  While I was in the cellar with the door shut in complete silence & darkness, I captured the following evps.  In the first two evps you will hear me ask questions related to the "secrets" that the spooky female voice illuded to when my wife and I were in the root cellar the previous year.  I did not get the same woman's voice this time however. Still, what I did capture was as surprising and unexpected as ever.



Not only did the next evp come through in a demonic sounding voice, similar to the one we recorded the previous year in the root cellar, but I really didn't appreciate it's response to my fairly simple question.

The last two evps from the root cellar (the first one from a female the second from a male) are pretty spooky but at least they don't sound demonic.

After about 20 minutes in the dark, dingy cellar of the carriage house, I had my fill for the evening and resurfaced to find my wife and the tour guide talking in the courtyard.  While I thanked the tour guide for letting me explore the root cellar my wife walked around the courtyard taking pictures. In these series of photos, taken one after the other a few seconds apart, we later found some of the best visual evidence for the existence of ghosts that we have ever collected.  In the last few photos that my wife took that evening in the courtyard, images of orbs floating randomly in the air give way to one photo that suddenly contains a figure of man.  

Sorrel Weed House - Courtyard

Sorrel Weed House - Courtyard

Sorrel Weed House - Courtyard

Sorrel Weed House - Courtyard with Apparition

Sorrel Weed House - Close-up of Apparition in Courtyard

As you scroll through the four pictures, pay close attention to the brick wall left of center that has a light shining up it and tree branches blocking the light creating a silhouette against the wall.  Compare the first three photos with the fourth.  In the fourth image, a man wearing a hat appears just in front of the light source, blocking out the wall, tree and most of the light.  However, when you get to the head of the figure, you can see the light from behind it shinning through the face just below the hat.  Have you been able to find Waldo yet?  I was simply amazed when I first saw this photo when we got home.  It seemed even more astonishing to me when I recalled that these pictures were taken about 45 minutes after the completion of the final tour of the evening, when everyone other than myself, my wife and the tour guide had left the premises. In addition, all three of us were standing on the opposite end of the courtyard out of camera range and, as I found out later, the tour guide had locked the gate to the courtyard while I was in the root cellar and actually had to unlock it for us when we left.

We returned to The Sorrel Weed House a couple days later and got more photos with orbs and a few more evps, but nothing could compare to what we encountered this particular evening.  This is why, when my wife and I are asked what places we have been to that we would consider to be truly haunted, one of the first places we mention is The Sorrel Weed House in Savannah, Georgia.  I hope that you can now better understand why we can make that claim with a great deal of confidence.

See other posts about the Sorrel Weed House at Sorrel Weed House Savannah, Georgia 2011 & The Sorrel Weed House - Carriage House Second Floor.

Sorrel Weed House, Savannah Georgia 2011

If you read my previous post, then you know that I was (and still am to a great degree) a skeptic when it comes to stories concerning paranormal occurrences.  Even though I have had many documented encounters of unexplained occurrences over the past few years, I am still very skeptical when I go to a location that has many stories of paranormal activity but very little evidence to support it.  This is particularly the case when the site in question is a for profit institution such as a restaurant, hotel, etc. that has a great deal riding on convincing people that the establishment is haunted.  On the other hand, I love history and I truly appreciate the work of historians who separate fact from fiction to create accurate written documentation that can be preserved for generations to come and allow individuals in the future to learn form the significant events in our past.  I also enjoy legends and the lessons that they can provide in an allegorical manner.  However, it is disturbing to me when legends are accepted as historical fact without any examination of the veracity of the stories that have been past down over many years.  Often times ghost stories suffer from this syndrome. Many individuals, with their desire for intrigue and need to find "proof" of an afterlife, are far too willing to believe legends at face value and fill in the cavernous gaps left by disparate evidence collected at a location that is believed to be haunted.  In truth, it is extremely difficult to provide unequivocal evidence for the existence of a particular entity in an attempt to lend support for a long standing legend. However, through sound paranormal research, the investigator can provide additional information to previous findings which may in turn someday be pieced together to provide answers to those experiencing paranormal occurrences, increase our historical understanding of a particular location and maybe even support a long standing legend. With this being said, I will provide links to the locations that we have examined so that you can read up on the legends, but I won't go into the back story too much myself.  What I hope to provide is an even handed examination of what we found so that you can compare our findings to the legends and make up your own mind about what (if anything) has been gained in our attempt to uncover the truth behind the stories of paranormal activity.

After I was made to see the light by the unseen little girl laughing in my living room, I became fascinated by the paranormal and began reading everything I could find on the topic and watching every show on television that had anything to do with ghosts.  However, prior to my personal experience with the paranormal I had no interest in the subject and had never seen shows such as Ghost Hunters, Ghost Adventures, Paranormal Witness, My Ghost Story, Dead Files, A Haunting, etc.  As I began consuming all of this new information, I quickly began to realize that several cities were mentioned over and over again, each claiming to be the most haunted.  These turned out to be the focus of our earliest paranormal investigations.  The stories regarding Savannah captured my attention initially due to its beauty, civil war history, multitude of ghost stories and magnificent historical homes.  However, it wasn't until I saw a re-run of Ghost Hunters' first Halloween Special at The Sorrel Weed House that I was truly drawn to travel to Savannah on our first Haunted Holiday.

The Sorrel Weed House

Savannah is an amazing city, seemingly trapped in a time capsule of the old South with all of its beauty, elegance and tragedy.  Nothing captures the beauty, elegance and tragedy of Savannah more than The Sorrel Weed House.  During our first stay in Savannah we toured all of the haunted homes, stayed in haunted hotels and went on every haunted tour we could find to see if there was anything to the stories we had heard.  However, when we got home and examined all of the evidence, the time we spent at the The Sorrel Weed House proved to be the most significant with regards to paranormal evidence.  We owe a great deal of thanks to Bradley Dilling, our tour guide, for letting us into the root cellar of the carriage house (which is usually off limits to tourists).  When my wife and I went into the root cellar with two other ladies from the tour while Bradley locked up the main house, we received some of the most interesting and disturbing evps we have ever encountered.  The two evps that always stand out in my mind when I think of the Sorrel Weed House are the following, which seem to be from the same spooky sounding woman (exact same voice) that both reference a particular "secret".

These two evps occurred only a few minutes apart during the 15 minutes or so that the four of us were alone in the dark root cellar at around 12:30 AM.  And if these weren't scary enough, right before we left the basement we received the following demonic sounding evp.

We were so taken by the stories associated with the house, we decided to try another company's tour of the Sorrel Weed House the following evening.  When we listened to the recordings we found similar auditory anomalies.  In the foreground you hear the voice of our tour guide who has a heavy southern drawl going through the stories about the house while everyone else in the house was silent.  However, in each instance you hear another female voice chime in with responses to her statements that are not at all pleasant.

Another response our guide received from an unknown source that evening occurred when she mentioned the fact that her daughter had seen things in the basement of the main house when she brought her on the tour one evening.  The following evp seems to be from a woman who is concerned by the fact that living people are beginning to see things and that another entity may be "changing the outcome".

The last evp I will share (and we have a lot more) is that of a little boy speaking over a woman who was having an argument with the person she was with on the tour.  The funny thing about it, there weren't any little kids on the late night ghost tour we took that night but his voice clearly states "she's the drunk", something I would have remembered hearing, and a comment that would have received a response if heard by the woman in question.


To say the least, after examining all of the evidence, we were truly impressed by the paranormal activity that we found at the Sorrel Weed House and soon planned another trip to do a follow up investigation.  In my next blog I will show you the amazing visual and auditory anomalies we uncovered on our second trip.  For now I will leave you with two photos taken in the courtyard of the Sorrel Weed House.  In each photo, you will see rather large, bright orbs.  Typically, I don't put too much credence into photos with orbs since they tend to be pretty common from our experience.  However, because of what we found on our second trip in this courtyard, I have begun to re-think my skepticism regarding orbs.

Sorrel Weed Courtyard

Sorrel Weed Courtyard

See other posts about the Sorrel Weed House at Sorrel Weed House Savannah, Georgia 2012 & The Sorrel Weed House - Carriage House Second Floor.