The Powder Magazine

Charleston's oldest public building, constructed in 1713 to store thousands of pounds of gunpowder for the young colonial city. The thick walls have protected many secrets over three centuries.

Completed in 1713, the Powder Magazine at 79 Cumberland Street is the oldest public building in the Carolinas and the last standing component of Charleston's original colonial fortifications. The squat, fortress-like structure was built just inside the city's northern defensive wall with three-foot-thick brick walls capable of containing an explosion, a windowless interior, and a roof filled with sand designed to direct blast force upward while smothering the flames. At its peak, the magazine held up to five tons of gunpowder -- the volatile lifeblood of a colonial city perpetually threatened by American Indian raids, European naval powers, and pirates.

Charleston knew firsthand the horror of a powder magazine explosion. On May 15, 1780, during the British siege of the city, a soldier carelessly discharged a musket into a separate magazine containing four thousand pounds of gunpowder. The catastrophic blast killed approximately two hundred people and destroyed multiple buildings, causing more casualties than the entire siege itself. The Cumberland Street magazine had been emptied before the British could capture it -- General William Moultrie ordered its five tons of gunpowder moved to the Old Exchange Building and sealed behind brick walls, where British occupation forces never discovered it. After the Revolution, the building was retired from military use and passed through a series of private hands, serving as a print shop, livery stable, wine cellar, and carriage house before the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the State of South Carolina purchased it in 1902, saving it from demolition.

The most colorful ghost reported at the Powder Magazine is that of the infamous female pirate Anne Bonny. Born around 1690, Bonny was one of the most feared buccaneers in the Caribbean, known for her fiery temper and ferocity in battle. After her capture, she famously escaped the noose by claiming she was pregnant. Museum visitors have reported seeing the apparition of a woman in period clothing moving through the small building, and some believe this spirit is Bonny herself, who reportedly spent her later years in Charleston and died at the age of eighty-eight.

The second named spirit is Gabriel Manigault, a wealthy post-Revolutionary War architect who briefly owned the Powder Magazine and used it as his private wine cellar. Manigault relocated to Philadelphia in 1805 and died there in 1809, but his ghost is said to still roam the building -- perhaps, as one account wryly notes, searching for an unopened bottle. Shadow figures that fit neither Bonny nor Manigault have also been spotted within the museum, leading some to speculate they may be Sir Peter Colleton, one of the original Lord Proprietors of the Carolinas, or the residual spirits of soldiers who once guarded the volatile stockpile.

Paranormal investigators have documented strong electromagnetic field readings inside the building, and visitors consistently report cold spots, phantom footsteps in the narrow interior, faint murmurs of long-forgotten voices, and the persistent feeling of being watched. The combination of three centuries of military use, the specter of catastrophic explosion, and the building's associations with pirates, soldiers, and colonial power makes the Powder Magazine one of the most atmospherically haunted sites in a city already thick with ghosts.

Today the Powder Magazine operates as a museum dedicated to Charleston's colonial military history, featuring artifacts and interactive exhibits. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972. Guided tours and ghost tours regularly include this diminutive but potent building as a stop, and the stories told within its ancient walls grow richer with each passing century.