Taken From the Book “The Ghosts of Charleston” by Julian T. Buxton III
THE HEADLESS TORSO
20 South Battery – Room 8
Most Charleston ghosts comport themselves with the refined behavior and appearance of the people and of the city. However, the specter occupying room 8 at the Battery Carriage House Inn, located behind the mansion at 20 South Battery, is as menacing as he is ugly. His countenance is atypically brutal.
What makes this ghost so awful is that he has no head. Visitors report seeing the torso of a man clad in a coarse wool outer garment. This ghost marks his appearances with a guttural moan as though he is in deep pain. At times, he hovers at arm’s length. More often, he parades in erect military posture back and forth at the foot of the bed.
Although some maintain that he is the remnant of a pirate hanged in the oaks at Battery Park, the prepon – derance of experience suggests he is the ghost of a Confederate soldier who lost his head and the greater part of his limbs during a munitions explosion accident. Across the street from the mansion, White Point Gardens now covers the once dug out fort and Confederate munitions magazine known as Battery Ramsey. In February 1865, Charleston residents evacuated the city, many taking family and valuables to the capital in Columbia, 120 miles inland, to avoid the wrath and ravage of General William Tecumseh Sherman’s great March to the Sea. In fact Sherman spared Charleston and obliterated Columbia, where so many Charlestonians sought refuge, and where he left little trace of flourishing antebellum life.
To this day, mystery surrounds Sherman’s decision not to unleash the full hell of his army onto Charleston as a real and symbolic act of revenge toward the city that started the murderous Civil War. In his public role as warrior, Sherman’s regard for Charleston was clearly negative. He bastardized the city’s proper name with terms such as “the hellhole of secession.”
The answer to this mystery may lie within the man’s private world where his regard for Charleston held deep paradox. Earlier in his career, Sherman served at Fort Moultrie on Sullivan’s Island. During this period (1842 – 1845) the city sparkled with wealth and vitality in spite of the stock market crash of 1841. Then as now, Charleston stood alone among America’s cities as an elite visual jewel. Across harbor water from the fort, the dazzling city shimmered in the young Sherman’s sights each night. He enjoyed Charleston’s social life and developed friendships with local families. Did the young soldier have a lover in the city? Or did the city itself create a soft place in his heart?
After the evacuation of Charleston, Confederates exploded tons of their own munitions along the waterfront at the tip of the peninsula. They worked fast and furiously to do whatever it took to keep the weaponry out of enemy hands, believing that Sherman’s approach to the city was imminent. One prominent artillery piece, a giant Blakely gun from England, sat at what is now the corner of South Battery and East Bay Streets. Upon exploding, a huge fragment of the gun flew into the roof of the Thomas Roper House at 9 East Battery and lodged into the rafters, where it remains today.
Five houses away at 20 South Battery, the soldiers in charge of destroying the remaining munitions took nightly refuge in the carriage house behind the deserted mansion. This dangerous work – great blasts performed in haste – may explain the horrible wounds inflicted on the body of what now exists as a floating, headless torso in room 8. The poor soul who sought rest there during his final days of duty returns a disturbed and restless disfigured aura in the afterlife.
On the night of Saturday, August 8, 1992, the Headless Torso visited a couple in room 8. Eight months later in a taped testimony recorded at the law office of Drayton Hastie, proprietor of the Battery Carriage House Inn, the couple revealed the details of their encounter with this angry apparition.
Hastie Interview, July 10th, 1993:
HUSBAND: I am a skeptic. I’m a technical person by education, an engineer. I believe in things I can see and feel and so on and I have never been a believer in things supernatural, or ghosts, or spirits, (until last August 8,) We came to Charleston and got a room at the Battery Carriage House Inn for the evening.
Like I said, I have never been a believer in anything like this. In fact, after it happened, I still for a while thought it was just a dream. . . but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it wasn’t just a dream because it was too real.
The bed in that room is sort of an antique bed that sits higher off the floor than a bed you would have today. So when you lie down on it you are not at [the usual] level, but up a little higher. I slept on the right hand side and [my wife] slept on the left side… I was sleeping on my side facing away from the bed looking at the wall… I don’t know what time it was. I don’t remember. It wasn’t early in the morning and it wasn’t right after I fell asleep.
It was sometime in the middle of the night that I had a sensation of being watched. What I could see laying on my side with my head on the pillow was this torso of a person from the waist to the neck. I couldn’t see a face. I couldn’t see legs or feet but I could see its body. It was a man. It was big, not necessarily tall but broad. A strong, barrel-chested man. He had on several layers of clothing. His overcoat was, and I distinctly remember this because I reached out and touched it. .. his overcoat was of very coarse material like burlap it was very scratchy.
Looking back on it, touching this thing is one of the things that make me think it was more than just a dream. I had the real physical sensation of touching something. I remember that clearly, it wasn’t just seeing it in a dream. It was a real feeling of touching,
The other thing was that this person breathed, and it was sort of raspy, like he had asthma or allergies or something. But when I reached out and touched his coat, the breath changed into the guttural growl of an animal. He moaned, or uttered some angry sound that made it clear that he didn’t want me to do what I was doing. It was threatening. This thing didn’t have an axe or a knife to kill me, but he was not happy that I was there. I felt like he wanted to chase me out of there. It really scared the heck out of me. It really did. Again, I am not a believer of things like this.
INTERVIEWER: Why would you want to reach out?
HUSBAND: I think because the material looked so unusual to me. It was not like any overcoat I had ever seen before. I was curious. It looked so different that I had to reach out and touch it. It was open. I don’t remember seeing buttons or clasps or anything. It was just open like a cape or an overcoat, just draped over the shoulders. It was very thick. You could see the fibers like you can with a burlap sack. Fibers stuck right out of it.
WIFE: You said you felt danger.
HUSBAND: Yes, after I touched his coat, I felt fear. I was very much afraid. I felt that at any moment he was going to harm me…I know everyone has had a dream where you try to scream and you can’t. And that is what I tried to do, to scream. I was that frightened. He was standing, then hovering right over me. There was that much room between the bed and the wall. He was standing in the space between the bed and the wall, right next to me. didn’t even have to stretch to touch him…he was a foot or a foot and a half away.
WIFE: You got a gut feeling that it was a real person or an intruder or a burglar?
HUSBAND: I never saw hands, I never saw a neck, I never saw legs, I just saw a torso. But it was a person. It wasn’t just a coat. There was a real person there, yet there was no – like I said, I never saw a face, I never saw flesh.
INTERVIEWER: But you are sure it was a man?
HUSBAND: Yes, I am positive it was a man from the depth of his breathing. It was a very low, deep wheezing. It is still hard for me to believe. But what I know is that it was more than just a dream… it was real and physical. I am still not going to sit here and say it was a spirit, but I can’t think of what else it was.
INTERVIEWER: What was his hair like?
HUSBAND: I couldn’t see any. There was a person there. There was noise. The things that scared me the most and convinced me it wasn’t a dream was what I heard and what I felt.
INTERVIEWER: So, what made you come back here?
HUSBAND: Well ever since it happened I cannot stop talking about it. I told one person and then another and another. I haven’t gone around broadcasting it because it can feel ridiculous telling people about it. But I can’t stop. I can’t seem to help it.
[My wife) kept telling me, “You’ve got to call the owner of the house and find out the history. You need to find out if something happened there and if there are other people who have this experience.”
The more I thought about it, the more I thought she was right. I needed to dig back, ask questions, and find out … It’s like I am now the one with unfinished business.
WIFE: There is so much history here, it makes sense that if indeed there are such things as ghosts they would exist in these old homes.
CLOSING COMMENTS BY MR. HASTIE: I want to put on tape that (the husband) was trained as an industrial engineer. He is not a believer in any supernatural events or, as he at least he wasn’t before now. No mention was made to him or to his wife of the experience of the sisters from California (who delighted with their visit from the Gentleman Ghost) or of prior supernatural events transpiring in room 8 or room 10. The strange thing is that from all accounts it appears that there are two different people who are conducting visits to these rooms. [The husband’s] visitor was clearly not the young man. I think I will continue to hold to the awake/dream theory… I think that when you are in a strange place away from home, it is more normal to have dreams of apprehension. At any rate, we will keep collecting our ghost stories and see if the consistency of the stories continue to match.
THE GENTLEMAN GHOST
20 South Battery – Room 10
In 1904 an unhappy young man returned from Yale University to the family estate at 20 South Battery, a towering, five-story mansion with a mansard roof. He Ascended the stairs to the top floor and “fell” from the window onto the lawn below. This story is undeniably tragic. However, the ghost story connected with it is not.
The Gentleman Ghost consistently appears in room 10 of the Battery Carriage House Inn. Persons fortunate enough to meet him describe a wispy gray apparition, a handsome young man of medium height with a slight build and a receding hairline. His clothing places him from the heart of Charleston’s Victorian period. The Gentleman Ghost proceeds through the afterlife undaunted, demonstrating an obvious affinity for women. Perhaps he is making up for what he missed by dying so young.
Those who encounter this apparition praise his demeanor and manners. He is a genteel ghost who does not act threatening in any way. However, most of his appearances seem to be motivated by his desire to jump into bed with women staying in room 10.
When the ghostly young man appears lying beside her, a woman’s usual response is to scream. That is when the Gentleman Ghost politely exits through the wall.
Such behavior suggests that he chooses to leave rather than impose himself on a lady, as this would be unbecoming for a man of his refined sensibilities and social stature. This is how the Gentleman Ghost acquired both his reputation and his name.
The following is a letter to the proprietor, Drayton Hastie, from a former Inn guest who wishes to remain anonymous. In it, she describes the spectral visit she experienced in 1992:
In celebration of our birthday, my twin sister and I decided to treat ourselves to an overnight stay at the well-known Carriage House Inn on the Battery in Charleston, South Carolina. The date was May 19, 1992. The room was furnished in the lovely antique-style furnishings of the 1800s. My sister and I both love historic places, so we were pleased with the atmosphere of the historic Carriage House. We were given room 10. Our common wall was connected to the main house. We retired for the night about 11PM I placed one of the antique chairs in front of the door, telling
my sister that if anyone tried to enter, the chair would be a barrier. My sister fell asleep almost immediately. I was restless and couldn’t fall asleep. I was lying on the right side of the bed, facing the door. I noticed a wispy, gray apparition that appeared to be floating through the closed door, through the chair, and into the room. The configuration was of a man with no visible features. His height was about 5 feet 8 inches. No special clothes were visible, just gray, wispy shape of a slightly built man. He moved in an upright gliding motion over to my side of the bed. He lay down in twelve-inch space beside me on the bed. He placed his right arm around my shoulders. I didn’t feel any pressure from his arm touching me. At no time did he speak to me. I wasn’t frightened because he didn’t seem threatening. I wanted to wake my sister to let her see what was happening. I called her name several times before she woke up. She asked me what was wrong. When I tried to answer her, the figure disappeared more suddenly than he had appeared. I didn’t say anything else to her, but relaxed and fell asleep and didn’t awake until 6 A.M. I then asked my sister if she had seen or heard anything in the night. She hadn’t. I related my story of the visitor during the night. She was disappointed she hadn’t seen him herself.
I wished I had remained quiet and not spoken, because I feel I frightened him away. I feel that possibly the restoration and renovation of the main house were disturbing his home. He was looking for a place to rest and thought we might share our bed for the night.
I would love to return some day and spend another night at the Carriage House Inn to see if my Gentleman Visitor revisits me.
What happens when the woman remains quiet? To date, we have no reports of that.
