Barnsley Gardens Resort

Godfrey Barnsley built this Italianate estate for his wife Julia, who died before it was completed, then reportedly appeared as a ghost to tell him to finish it. The property endured a Cherokee curse, a Civil War fortune loss, a tornado, and a family murder before being restored as a resort in 1988, and guests still see Julia walking the gardens at dusk.

Godfrey Barnsley built Woodlands for a woman who would never live in it. His wife Julia died of a lung ailment before the Italianate manor was finished, and Godfrey, gutted by grief, stopped construction entirely. Then, according to family legend, Julia appeared to him in the gardens and told him to finish the house for their children. He did. By 1848, the estate was complete, 4,000 acres of north Georgia foothills with boxwood hedges and formal gardens designed in the style of landscape architect Andrew Jackson Downing.

The Barnsleys had been warned. An elderly Cherokee chief who'd lived on the land before Godfrey purchased it cursed the property when he was forced off. Sacred ground, he told them. Within a few years, Godfrey's son was killed by pirates during a voyage through the Orient, and a teenage daughter died in the house the same year. The Civil War took Godfrey's fortune. He died in 1873, and the estate began its long decline.

In 1906, a tornado ripped the roof off the main house. Godfrey's granddaughter, Adelaide Saylor, moved into the kitchen wing and lived among the ruins. Her grandsons, Preston and Harry Saylor, inherited what was left. Preston had been a prizefighter in the 1920s under the name K.O. Duggan. Injuries in the ring affected his mind, and he was eventually committed to the state hospital. On March 13, 1935, Preston escaped. He came back to Barnsley Gardens, convinced Harry was plotting to steal his share of the property.

On November 5, 1935, Preston chased Harry through the house with an automatic pistol. A shot caught Harry in the chest and he collapsed, dying in his mother's arms.

The property sat empty for decades after that. In 1988, Prince Hubertus Fugger of Bavaria purchased the 1,300-acre estate and began restoring it as a resort. The following year, a Cherokee medicine man named Richard Bird traveled from Cherokee, North Carolina to the property and performed a ceremony to lift the curse.

The ruins of the original manor house still stand in the center of the resort grounds, open walls and doorways framing the sky. Guests and staff report seeing Julia in the boxwood gardens, usually around dusk. She's been described as a translucent figure who radiates calm, and resort employees have nicknamed her "the guardian of the gardens." Godfrey's ghost has been spotted in the manor ruins, shuffling around what was once his study, or walking through the grounds alongside Julia in the evenings.

The Adair House, one of the historic buildings on the property, has its own spirit: a playful child. Employees hear laughter and running footsteps from empty rooms. Toys left in certain spots get moved overnight.

A stern, unidentified man has been seen in the Rice House, though no one has connected him to a specific person from the family's history.

Barnsley Gardens is a place where everything that could go wrong did. Cherokee curse, dead wife, dead children, Civil War ruin, tornado, murder. And yet the gardens survived, and the ruins are beautiful in a way that feels earned rather than staged. Julia wanted the place finished. It was. Not in the way anyone planned, but finished.