South Mag South Issue 71 | Page 32

S O U T H E R N H E A LT H & W E L L N E S S I S S U E BOO HAGS SAVANNAH IS CONSIDERED ONE OF THE MOST HAUNTED CITIES IN THE STATES, ATTRACTING MILLIONS OF OF CURIOUS AND INQUISITIVE FOLKS FROM ALL OVER. LISA PRENTISS REVEALS THE INSIDE SCOOP ON THE BLUE PAINTED HOUSES SEEN THROUGHOUT THE CITY. TOLD by LISA MARIE H PHOTOS by JABBERPICS “Savannah born, Savannah bred, and when I die, I’ll be Savannah dead.” Lisa Marie knows the ins and outs of Savannah’s history. Walking through Columbia Square she pointed out building after building, all rich with history. “The Kehoe House is haunted by twins. Next to it, the Davenport House is said to be haunted by a cat.” There is little paranormal activ- ity going on here that she does not know about. Pointing out some of the ironwork on historical buildings, 32 S OUT H MAGA ZI NE.C OM she divulges that during the Great Depression many people sold the iron work from their homes to support their families. After the depression people wanted their beautiful verandas and gates back so they took the iron from around their family plots in Bonaventure Cemetery and brought it out to the city. The quick relaying of facts didn’t stop there. We passed the oldest slave quarters still intact, The Owens- Thomas House, and she shared that it too had the mysterious blue paint we see on the outside of houses on the inside ceiling of the slave quarters. So what is it about this blue paint? The blue paint is said to keep the haints out! Haints are believed by the Gullah people to be lost souls or ghosts that linger behind and haunt those un- lucky enough to cross their path. In the 1800’s in the Irish Ghetto, otherwise known as Olde Forte, people were liv- ing in squalor and despair due to lack of running water and living space. The Gullah root doctors of the time found a way to turn this misery into opportu- nity. They would go to Olde Forte and tell the story of the BooHag, by the time the story was told, their pockets would be full. A BooHag is just one of the many haints that could get in your home if you didn’t have the haint blue paint painted on your doors and win- dows. You definitely wanted to keep this haint out because the BooHag was believed to hitch a ride on your back into your home, when you went to sleep at night it would rip your skin off and hang it in your closet, then crawl inside of you and take your bloody insides all over the city and collect all of the evil and bad luck it could find and stick it to you. It would then come back to your house and suck the breath from your family members leaving them ill and near death before crawling back into your skin. After hearing the tale told by the root doctors, people be- lieved th e BooHag to be the cause of all of their misery. The root doctors would then sell them a solution to their haint problem, and that didn’t come cheap. They were instructed to have someone check the closets in the night, if a skin was hanging they would have to use the sea salt sold by the root Dr. and sprinkle it into the skin. This would burn the BooHag when it crawled inside your skin and it would jump out. Sadly, its still in the house, so in order to get it out they would have to buy a broom from the root Dr’s to sweep the house and the BooHag would go flying out with the dust. Theres just one problem left... The haints are go- ing to come right back inside! This is when the root doctors made the bulk of their money. They would offer to come paint the doors and windows in Haint blue to keep the BooHags out. They had to make the paint them- selves using cemetery dirt, indigo and a sacrificed cat. At one time, all of the windows and doors of the cottages in Olde Forte were adorned in haint blue as well as many houses around the city. People were willing to pay the price out of pure desperation, and the root Dr’s lived happily ever after, using the money they made to secure beautiful homes of their own, many right here in Savannah, as well as Daufuskie Island and South Carolina. • To join Lisa on her haunted tours, go to Americas Most Haunted City Tour (ameri- casmosthauntedcity.com) or Bonaventure Cemetery Journeys (shannonscott.com.)