As I’ve shared many times over the years, our family loves spooky stuff, and as a result we love Halloween. In fact, it’s the No. 2 holiday around our house every year.

Of all the things we’ve done over the years on our family vacations, ghost walks/tours have been a centerpiece. We’ve done them from Gettysburg to New Orleans to Charleston to St. Augustine, and each of them have offered their own special flavors of frightful fun.

But there is one tour story that stands head and shoulders above all of the rest. What you are about to read is 100% true, and can be verified by several different sources who all witnessed it with their own eyes— and ears. 

While visiting Savannah in 2014, I arranged a ghost tour of the Sorrel-Weed house. For those not in the paranormal know, Savannah is one of the hotspots for ghostly activity, and the Sorrel-Weed house is regarded as the epicenter of all hauntings to be found there.

This particular night, our family was part of a group that would do a sort of “investigation” of the house. Outfitted with detection devices and cameras, our job was to go through the house trying to either have one of the devices triggered by some kind of energy force or perhaps even capture an image of something spooky and supernatural — or funny looking pictures of the people in the group if nothing else. 

When we entered the house, we were told of the many legends surrounding it. Built in the early 1840s, the house was built by Francis Sorrel, a wealthy plantation owner who was originally from the West Indies. He married soon after he immigrated to the United States, pairing with a young woman named Lucinda Moxley, who was just 17 years old. She was from an extremely wealthy family which did business with Francis. Unfortunately, Lucinda died just five years into their marriage in 1827. 

Two years later, Francis was joined in matrimony again, this time marrying his dead wife’s younger sister, 23-year-old Matilda, in 1829. Francis’ shipping business grew exponentially during this time period, and he quickly rose to be one of the city’s most prominent and wealthy men. 

However, Francis did have his vices. He had a long-ongoing affair with one young slave girl in particular named Molly. Supposedly, Francis arranged for Molly to have special quarters set up above the carriage house so that they could meet in private. However, they were discovered one night by Matilda Sorrel. Enraged by her husband’s infidelity, Matilda committed suicide by leaping from the second story balcony of the house, bashing her head against the flagstone courtyard. A few weeks after this grisly death, the slave Molly was found in the carriage house hanging from a noose, in yet another alleged suicide on the grounds.

As if that weren’t enough, the southernmost point of the British horseshoe-shaped earthen fortifications during the Siege of Savannah during the Revolutionary War were located in what was later developed into Madison Square, very close to (and on) the Sorrel-Weed House’s current location. This ill-conceived assault in October 1779 was, according to many historians, the bloodiest hour of the entire American Revolution, with well over a thousand casualties recorded.

And those are just a couple of the stories known about the house. Suffice it to say there are multiple opportunities for all kinds of haints and boogahs to reside around the Sorrel-Weed house. 

On this particular night, though, everything was pretty quiet – until we went into the basement. It was there that Marion Rose and a friend decided to sit down on a couch located near one corner of the mostly dark room. 

Being a dad and an expert prankster, I decided to sneak up behind them with the intention of grabbing them on the shoulder and giving them a good fright. With everything very quiet overall and no real activity noted, it seemed to be a perfect time to cause them to jump out of their drawers. 

But as I started to ease over toward them, the unmistakable whir of something flying through the air went above my head, followed by a loud crack that honestly sounded like a gunshot. We all jumped and hollered, which caused one of the guides to come into the room to check on us. 

Upon turning on the lights, a rock was found resting by my feet, and a clear impression on the bare wood of the support rafters of where it had hit was found about a foot over my head. 

The guide went back and reviewed footage from the security cameras while we watched over their shoulder. You could see me sneaking up on the girls, when pretty much out of nowhere a rock flew by me at an incredible rate of speed, bounced off the rafter, and fell to the ground. When we went back into the room, we matched the rock up with other similar rocks found around the fireplace – on the opposite end of the room from where the couch sat. 

The problem? There wasn’t another soul in the room with us when this happened – at least not a mortal one.

This episode created quite a stir. Another guide later shared that one of the spirits noted over the years was that of an adolescent young man who apparently was quite protective of young ladies in the house. 

Needless to say, I haven’t tried to sneak up on Marion Rose since.