Battery Carriage House Inn

One of Charleston's most opulent homes since the 1840s, now a hotel overlooking the harbor. Guests report Civil War-era company in the rooms — the elegant kind that doesn't check out.

The Battery Carriage House Inn at 20 South Battery was built in 1843 for Samuel Stevens, a wealthy commercial agent for plantation owners. The property changed hands several times before the Civil War, when it was abandoned and Confederate troops fortified White Point Garden across the street. Local lore holds that the carriage house served as a makeshift barracks and possibly a field hospital. When Confederate forces destroyed ammunition stores near 20 South Battery to keep them from the Union, a young soldier handling one of the shells was blown apart -- a death many believe explains the inn's most terrifying ghost.

Room 8 is considered one of the most actively haunted hotel rooms in Charleston. Guests who sleep there report being woken by a headless torso floating beside the bed -- no head, no arms, just the remnants of what witnesses say feels like a gray Confederate jacket. In 1993, a self-described skeptic had the most detailed encounter on record. He woke in the middle of the night, found the headless figure hovering next to his bed, and -- driven by curiosity -- reached out and touched it. The area was extremely cold, and the thing responded with what he described as an animalistic growl before vanishing with an audible moan. He stopped being a skeptic that night.

Room 10 has a very different ghost -- one the staff call the Gentleman Ghost. He appears as a tall, slender figure in formal attire, sometimes accompanied by a scent guests compare to Old Spice cologne. The most common theory is that he's an eighteen-year-old boy who killed himself in the room when the property served as university housing. Unlike Room 8's entity, this one is polite. Twin sisters celebrating their birthday in Room 10 watched a tall, slender figure come through the wall, lie down on the bed beside them, then rise, bow, and leave back through the same wall. The ghost seems drawn to female guests and has been spotted lying on the bed or gently touching sleeping guests' hair. One woman was so rattled by the persistent presence that she spent the entire night reading the Bible, clutching it when she finally fell asleep.

Former owner Colonel Richard Lathers, who bought the property in 1870, may account for some of the activity too. His spirit mainly appears to women and has been connected to the feeling of someone lying in bed beside a guest and touching their hair.

Room 3 has its own reports. A married couple experienced their cell phone making loud, unusual noises despite being powered off with no signal. They saw floating glowing orbs on two consecutive nights, with more appearing the second evening. After a visiting psychic confirmed multiple spirits and asked them to leave, the couple slept peacefully on their third night.

The Battery Carriage House Inn has been featured on SC ETV's Ghosts and Legends series. Guests can specifically request Room 8 or Room 10 -- though the inn makes no guarantees about what company they'll have after dark.