Savannah

1. Secret Lives of Ghosts 
     The slight rustling sound stopped her musing—hadn’t she laid that poem face down on the floor? Now it was in her lap, face up. She was probably so wrapped up in sending hate-thoughts to her sisters that she had not took notice of picking the little paper up again. Three lines. Not much of a poem, really, yet it bothered her. Why was it here? What had she promised, and to whom? No one in the family had written the poem, apparently. Anonymous. So why had she written something at the bottom?

2. Confederate Spy Ghost 
     The ghost’s hands flew up to her mouth. “‘Oh, do tell. I am most certainly not dead, although I will admit freely that I must look quite a sight.’” She pushed a stand of hair back under her bonnet, then bit her lips and pinched her cheeks. “‘I’ll allow I am quite pale, but no, sir. I am most assuredly alive. It is just that I fainted when the Union bullies tore the back of my dress off and stuck a branding iron to me. However, as you can see, I have recovered quite nicely.’”

3. Ghost in the Armor Suit 
     “So, it was on a warm spring day when I heard some odd sounds—like a combination of metal scraping on metal along and screen door springs in need of oil. I looked around, and out of the shadows stepped a suit of armor—the kind worn by knights in old fairy tales of old England. It noisily folded itself to a sitting position on one of the benches. A long sigh escaped through the mouthpiece.

4. The Big Ghost in the Little Straw Hat 
     When his eyes finally adjusted to the glare of the sun on the water, he said he nearly fell out of the boat.
     “There was a big lumberjack of a ghost. I mean he was Paul Bunyan size. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see Babe the blue ox snorting along beside him as this giant hefted a boulder over his head and chucked it into the water.”

5. Ghost of Breakfast Lake 
     “He no sooner got the words out of his mouth when a ’gator sprang out of the water. I could hear the creature hiss and snap its jaws shut as the man’s arm was ripped from his body. Together, the two of them—man and gator, locked in combat—rolled out of the boat and into the lake. The water churned and bubbled. Mud and blood clouded the surface. The small silver boat bounced about but never left the spot.”

6. The Ghost of River’s End, Tybee Island 
     The young ghost was not more than fifteen, I’d reckon. She had these large Walter Keen eyes and was so thin. Her brown hair hung straight down onto her shoulders, held back from her face by pink barrettes. Her voile dress had these little pink flowers and she was barefoot. She was sort of bent down looking through a crack in the trailer house door. I no more would’ve thought she was a ghost than the man in the moon. She looked just like a real person, at first. My first thought was, she needed a jacket as she was dressed for summer, and here it was December.

7. Policeman Ghost of 1903 
     He looked at me through narrowed eyes and said, “Where you been? That youngster’s been missing almost five weeks to the day—since August six, in the year of our Lord nineteen-ought-three.”
     I’ve never been a genius at math but I knew this Officer could not have been on the police force in 1903. He was not still out here looking for clues over a hundred and fifteen years later.

8. Gun Club Savannah 
     “I guess I blinked a few times thinking what I was seeing wasn’t really a woman carrying a head in the crook of her left arm. I could blink all I wanted, but she wasn’t going away. I didn’t realize she was a ghost at first, as she was solid, not vapor or whatever.
     “Then she turned toward me, and I could see this was not a living human being. Although she had a lot of bushy hair, her face was a skeleton.

9. PIP and the Pendulum 
     She wore her grandmother’s wedding pearls, a brand-new pair of stockings she had bought just that day, the white satin shoes her mother had worn on her own wedding day, and a light blue crystal tiara in her hair. Something old, new, borrowed, blue. She viewed herself in the mirror and again something ticked at her memory, but she couldn’t think what it was.
     Then she remembered. When she had looked into the mirror with Mr. Pocket, she had not seen Jasmine standing by her shoulder even though she should have seen Jasmine’s reflection in the mirror alongside her own. How odd.

10. Pizza in Savannah 
     “I’m not especially psychic, so I guess almost anyone can see an apparition, but one thing I am, is nosey. I wanted to know who this woman was and why she still haunted this street corner. And the pizza—well, that was just too bizarre—not the toppings, but that a ghost was eating it.

11. Pooler Polly 
     But the most astounding thing was she had no head at all. Now my friend Mrs. Allison told me that when she saw Polly, that the ghost staggered. Well, I’ve never! I ask you, how can a person with only one leg stagger? Stuff and nonsense. She was hopping along like a bird with just one leg left—that is, she had a right-hand leg that was left to her—not chopped off.
     “I get it. Her right leg was left. It’s like that Elvis song, I’m left, You’re right, She’s gone.”

12. Am I Blue?
     “Anyway, this lady set her cap for Colonel Shaw, and she got it into her head that she could actually win him over. Shaw finally had to issue an order that no women could be allowed into his camp. She was not be deterred. She dressed herself up as a man and painted her face with dark grease paint. The problem was, when the moonlight hit it, her face looked blue.”
     “Was the body this ghost was seen burying, that of Colonel Shaw?”

13. The Ghost of Ardsley Park 
     Although he continued to look away from me, I thought perhaps he was someone I knew. He was dressed as Dracula, but given it was Halloween I just nodded to him as I searched for my car key. Then I noticed a funny thing—he wasn’t as tall as I first thought. The man’s feet were about eight inches off the ground. You better believe I grabbed my key, pushed the unlock button a jillion times and jerked my car door open as he retreated behind my vehicle.

14. Head of a Beast 
     “I eased over the side of the bed and put my hand out, feeling for the flashlight. By the time my fingers touched the bedside table, a blast of cold almost knocked me back in bed. My eyes watered, and my nose stung. I pulled the sheet around me and crept toward the closet, trying to focus my eyes in the dark. A faint glimmer of light coming from the closet interior shone under the door.”