An Exorcism in Savannah

With its steep roof and rooftop Widow’s Walk, the Hampton-Lillibridge House looks like it wandered down from a New England seaport and lost its way in the Georgia lowcountry. It may also be the most haunted house in Savannah.

Few Savannah homes carry a reputation as dark as this one. Built before 1800, moved across the city in the 1960s, blessed by a bishop and haunted, by every account, before and after — the Hampton-Lillibridge House has unsettled workmen, neighbors, and even its famous owner. This is its story.

A New England House in the Deep South

The house was built in 1796 by a man from Rhode Island named Hampton Lillibridge. Complete with a Widow’s Walk perched atop its steep roof, it looked then — and looks now — as though it belonged in a New England town rather than downtown Savannah. That out-of-place quality is part of its character, a little pocket of the north dropped into the Deep South.

Lillibridge’s home originally stood on East Bryan Street. After he died, his widow remarried and sold the property, and for well over a century and a half the house passed through a long line of owners, punctuated by stretches of vacancy. By the mid-20th century, it had fallen into disrepair — a forgotten curiosity waiting for someone with the vision, and the money, to save it.

Jim Williams and the Move

In 1963 the house found that person: the celebrated antiques dealer and historic preservationist Jim Williams — the same Jim Williams who, years later, would become the central figure of the bestselling book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Williams bought the crumbling home and undertook something ambitious: he moved the entire structure to its current location on St. Julian Street, near Washington Square.

The move was difficult and marked by tragedy. As the house was being relocated, part of an adjoining structure collapsed, and a workman was killed. (Larger death tolls are sometimes repeated in the retellings, but the documented accounts center on that single fatal accident.) Some would later wonder whether the disturbance of moving the old house — and something found beneath it, which we’ll come to — woke whatever now walks its halls.

The Sailor’s Ghost

The stories of a paranormal nature reach back further than Williams, to the years the house served as a boarding house. According to the most enduring tale, a young sailor who lived there took his own life in one of the upstairs bedrooms. His body has long since returned to dust — but his spirit, the legend says, never left the structure at all. He may be the first of the home’s restless residents, though he would not be the last.

Torment During the Restoration

During Williams’ restoration, the workers were tormented by something unseen. They reported hearing voices in the empty house, the unnerving sound of footsteps where no one walked, and the persistent, skin-crawling feeling that they were not alone.

One afternoon, Williams and a few friends were on the ground floor checking the progress of the work. Though the house was empty but for their small group, they suddenly heard footsteps and voices coming from the level above. They hurried to the stairs — but when they reached the second floor, the sounds had moved higher still. They climbed all the way up to the Widow’s Walk, only to hear the footsteps and voices once more — now coming from below them. Whatever it was, it would not be cornered.

A Darker Turn

In time, the harmless sounds turned sinister. On one occasion, a group of Williams’ friends were in the house when the noises started up overhead again. Only one man was brave enough to climb the stairs and investigate. When he didn’t come back, the others went looking — and found him at the top of the house, face down on the floor, paralyzed with fear, drenched in sweat, a wild look in his eyes.

He described walking into the room and feeling as though he had been plunged into a pool of ice-cold water. A powerful force, he said, seemed to take hold of him and draw him toward the open chimney shaft — a drop of some thirty feet. The only thing he could think to do to save himself was to throw himself flat on the floor and refuse to move.

The neighbors saw things too. While the house sat vacant and under restoration, several reported the sound of a woman screaming, and the figure of a man in a black suit and bow tie standing in an upstairs window. One night, with the home empty, there came a report of singing drifting from inside — accompanied by lights, and the figures of people dancing.

The Exorcism

Finally, after so many sightings and so much reported activity, the church was called in. On December 7, 1963, a formal exorcism was performed on the Hampton-Lillibridge House by the Episcopal Diocese of Georgia — the rite led by the Right Reverend Albert Rhett Stewart. It lasted a full 45 minutes.

It did not work. Within a week, the activity surfaced again — and this time, by all accounts, with a vengeance. Voices, footsteps, screams, and the oppressive feeling of a deeply malevolent male presence returned to the house and, some say, never left.

The rite lasted 45 minutes. Within a week, it all came back — worse.

The Crypt Beneath

So why is the Hampton-Lillibridge House so restless? One clue may lie in a gruesome discovery made before the home was moved. While preparing the foundation, workers uncovered an old tabby crypt, half-filled with water, hidden beneath the ground. They told Williams that the crypt was empty, and they simply covered it back over.

But the question has haunted the house ever since: if the crypt was empty, whose tomb was it? And if it was not truly empty — if something was disturbed when the house was lifted from its resting place and carried across the city — then perhaps the spirits of the Hampton-Lillibridge House have every reason to be angry.

To this day the house remains a private residence, and it is still regularly called the most haunted house in Savannah. You can’t go inside — but you can stand before it after dark, listen, and decide for yourself.