Post by Graveyardbride on Oct 25, 2014 18:31:58 GMT -5
Charleston Ghost Excursions
The Sword Gate (above) at 39 Legare Street is an impressive wrought-iron gate marking the entrance to a girls’ boarding school. These days, the gate is said to be haunted by the ghost of Madame Talvande, former headmistress, who kept the gate locked to prevent her charges’ nighttime rendezvous with neighborhood boys. But the gate did not stop one resourceful girl, who filched the key and married an undesirable young man in a midnight ceremony at St. Michael’s Church. Enraged parents withdrew their daughters and the chagrined mistress took her own life shortly thereafter. Her spirit, however, patrols the grounds and dormitory nightly to ensure her girls are safely abed.
White Point Gardens, located on the waterfront where the Ashley and Cooper rivers empty into the ocean, was once occupied by two different military installations. Long before the area became a scenic retreat and peaceful park, both Fort Broughton (established around 1735) and later Fort Wilkins, occupied what was then known as White or Oyster Point, named for the eerie white and skeletal piles of bleached oyster shells covering the peninsula’s point. The region has been a place of conflict since its colonial beginnings. Those walking below the moss-draped live oaks on nights of the full moon often feel as though they are being "watched." Others have reported feeling as though someone or some "thing" is directly behind them, but when they turn, nothing is there.
Zion Cemetery at the corner of Highway 278 and Folley Field Road is where a planter named William Baynard was laid to rest in 1849. During the War Between the States, Yankee marauders vandalized his colossal tomb (above) and removed his body and since that time, a phantom funeral procession has been seen passing the ruins of Baynard Plantation en route to the empty mausoleum. The carriage stops at each house along the way, Baynard emerges, shields his face with his hands, approaches the entrance and then returns to his cortege.
Charleston City Hall. Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard parried a number of Union attacks on Charleston where he is regarded a hero. An art gallery in City Hall displays two portraits of Beauregard and his sword, which he willed to the city. The general was reputedly a man of high principles who would think nothing of embarrassing those who had the audacity to break the law. It is believed he still roams the corridors of City Hall in search of lawbreakers or people engaged in shady dealings. Or perhaps his spirit is somehow attached to his saber.
Source: Carl A. Posey, Discovery Travel.