One of the most asked questions I receive is what got me into doing Savannah Ghost Tours. Have I ever had any ghostly sightings in my personal life, or on a tour? I always joke that the answer is a whole tour by itself.
Well, friends, let me begin… at the beginning!
It Started With Great-Grandfather Jack
My story begins in a town in North Georgia called Marietta. I was young — so young, in fact, that I have only a very faded memory of the event that took place, so this is pieced together from parts I remember and parts I have been told. I would spend lots of time at my grandparents’ home while my parents were away at work. They say that in the home I would often see a man that no one else could see. Whenever I saw this man, the room would fill with the smell of cigar smoke.
A few years later, my grandmother and I were going through old family pictures when one in particular caught my eye. It was the man I used to see. It turned out to be my Great-Grandfather Jack, who had died years before I was born. So, you might say I began seeing ghosts at a very early age.
Growing Up Among the Books
My family has always been one to believe in ghosts and the paranormal, so I was never told they didn’t exist. What really helped me later on in life — and in starting the Savannah Ghost Tours — was all the time I spent with my grandparents. I could read at a high level at a very early age, and my grandparents had a large collection of books that I would delve into and spend all day being lost in. If you saw me and I didn’t have a book in my hand, something was wrong!
The large majority of those books were about ghosts, the paranormal, and the occult. I was reading about Hans Holzer and the Warrens at five years old and fell in love with the research they did. I could get lost forever in the mysteries behind sacred sites and phantom encounters.
A Haunted House on the Mountain
When I turned two, my parents and I moved from Marietta about 20 miles west into Paulding County, Georgia. They had found a few acres on a mountain top and built the place I would call home for the next 26 years. This is where the majority of my childhood sightings occurred.
To give you an idea of why this home could have been haunted: the land it was built upon was once used to mine for gold and copper. At the end of the dead-end road I grew up on sat Paulding County’s first “city” — by then nothing but ruins in the middle of the woods, but once a small mining town. In this home, my parents and I had some pretty strange paranormal activity. We would hear footsteps come through the back door, and kitchen cabinets would open on their own. We would sometimes hear the sounds of pots and pans rattling in the kitchen late at night, and the smell of burnt toast would fill the home.
This is also where I ran my first paranormal investigations, which would later grow into full investigations and, eventually, Savannah Ghost Tours. I would set up crude 1980s-style cassette recorders and a camcorder in hopes of catching paranormal activity in my own house.
From Paulding County to Savannah
I had several more sightings over the years — some minor, others major. When I turned 16, I found some friends who shared my passion for the paranormal, and we started an “investigation group” that would visit local cemeteries at night to practice. In 2002, after graduating high school, I co-founded the Paulding Paranormal Society with my good friend Billy Engler. Calls came in almost immediately from distraught people who felt haunted by unseen forces, and things grew from there.
My very first ghost tour was in Paulding County, at one of the area’s oldest cemeteries. I thought I had found my calling — it was great! In 2011, I moved to Savannah and began leading Savannah Ghost Tours. Savannah is truly one of the few places where you can make a living doing ghost tours and doing what you really love.
Doing What I Love
I feel extremely blessed to be doing this. It is a field I am genuinely happy in, and I appreciate and look forward to meeting every single guest on my tours. I do this for them. It took a lot of work to get here — years of research went into these tours, because I don’t want to just give my guests story tours. These are experience tours — and with Destination Ghost Tours, you are in for quite an experience.
Come Experience Haunted Savannah With Me
Twenty-five years of research, a lifetime of the paranormal, and a whole city of ghosts. Join me after dark and see Savannah the way I see it.
Book a Savannah Ghost Tour
Chris Allen is the founder of Destination Ghost Tours, a historian and storyteller with a lifelong fascination for the darker corners of history. He spends his time uncovering the true stories behind haunted legends, guiding guests through historic cities, and chasing down details that refuse to stay buried. When he is not working, he can usually be found with his partner Arissa, their dog Bear, and their two cats, Trouble and Covu, photographing old places, digging through archives, or disappearing into historical rabbit holes. He believes the best history is honest, atmospheric, and just unsettling enough to linger.