Colonial Park Cemetery

Colonial Park Cemetery has served as Savannah's main burial ground since 1750, holding a mass grave of roughly 700 yellow fever victims, a Declaration of Independence signer killed in a duel, and headstones whose dates were altered by Union soldiers in 1864 to show ages of 421 and 544. Visitors report green mist, phantom voices, and a seven-foot shadow linked to the unverified legend of Rene Rondolier.

One headstone in Colonial Park Cemetery says the man buried beneath it lived to be 544 years old. His neighbor made it to 421. Another man's son was apparently born a thousand years before his father. None of this is true, of course. Union soldiers occupying Savannah in late 1864 altered the dates on the headstones with their bayonets, turning the cemetery into a strange, permanent joke that's now older than most of the actual graves.

The cemetery was established in 1750 during British colonial rule and served as Savannah's main burial ground for over a century. It expanded to six acres by 1789 and finally closed to new burials in 1853 after running out of room. By that point, the dead included victims of multiple yellow fever epidemics, Revolutionary War soldiers, and at least one signer of the Declaration of Independence.

The yellow fever epidemic of 1820 hit Savannah harder than any other. The official count says approximately 700 victims were buried in a mass grave at Colonial Park, though local lore puts the real number at 666, rounded up by the city's religious leaders to avoid the Satanic association. Whether that's true or just a good story, the mass grave is real, and it sits beneath an unmarked section of the cemetery grounds.

Button Gwinnett, one of Georgia's signers of the Declaration of Independence, died after a duel fought just south of the cemetery on May 16, 1777. His opponent, Brigadier General Lachlan McIntosh, shot him from twelve feet away during a dispute that originated in the General Assembly. McIntosh survived. Gwinnett died a few days later from an infected wound. Governor David Mitchell finally outlawed dueling in 1809, though it didn't stop everyone. In January 1815, Captain Roswell P. Johnson shot Lieutenant James Wilde on his fourth attempt. Wilde's brother, the poet Richard Henry Wilde, wrote about it afterward.

Then there's Rene Rondolier. The legend says a boy in early 1800s Savannah grew to stand over seven feet tall, and that when the bodies of two young girls were found on the cemetery grounds, the town turned on him. He was lynched without trial, hanged either in Warren Square or in the nearby swamps depending on who tells the story. More dead bodies appeared in the cemetery in the days that followed, and locals blamed Rene's ghost. History records no such person, and there's no documentation of the murders. But the story has survived for two centuries, and people still report seeing a towering shadow drifting between the headstones after dark.

When Sherman's troops arrived on December 24, 1864, Union soldiers camped among the graves and sheltered inside burial vaults. They moved bodies, desecrated markers, and left the headstone alterations that visitors still puzzle over today. The combined effect of military vandalism, weather, and two hundred years of Savannah humidity has left many of the original inscriptions unreadable.

Visitors after dark report an eerie green mist hanging low over certain sections of the cemetery, voices from empty paths, and figures standing near headstones who aren't there when you look directly at them.

Six acres in the middle of Savannah, holding the remains of people who died of fever, dueling pistols, war, and maybe a seven-foot phantom. The headstones lie about who's buried there and how long they lived. The cemetery keeps its secrets, and the Union soldiers made sure the dates don't help.