Spooky Happenings in South Carolina

You'll find The Meeting Street Inn on Meeting Street, which runs through Charleston's historic downtown area. The inn has three stories and is a 56 room bed and breakfast inn. The guest rooms are romantic and charming and filled with southern décor. In the older section, one can find 12-foot ceilings and huge windows. Every room at the inn has a piazza that overlooks the lovely courtyard, and some of them have balconies.

German immigrant Adolph Tiefenthal had D.A.J. Sullivan build this three-story brick building for him in 1874. There was a saloon, restaurant, and wholesale dealership in German beer and Rhine wines on the first floor. He lived with his wife and three daughters on the second and third floors. After four years, Adolph died, and his wife remarried and became the saloon keeper. In 1886 the Atlantic Brewing and Ice Company leased the rental space on the first floor.

Around the turn of the century, George Hormickel took over the lease and opened the Salvory Club and Restaurant catering to Charleston society's well-to-do. In 1930 William J. O'Hagan bought the property and opened a boutique "Genuine Antique." Finally, in 1981 The Meeting Street Inn opened its doors. It was repaired and again renovated in 1989 after Hurricane Hugo.

At the inn, in Room 303, a rather large entity has claimed the room as its own. At times the ghostly spirit locks the door to the room, wanting to remain alone and can push around a person even weighing as much as 250 lb. When the door was opened with the master key, a tremendous force kept it shut. Trying to break down the door, it flew open without resistance.

A couple sitting in bed, in Room 107, was startled by a female entity. She appeared at the foot of their bed. She looked solid from the waist up, but from the waist down, you could see through her. Then she floated to the door, opened it, and left their room.

The entities are believed to have been part of the Tiefenthal family.

The Battery Carriage House Bed and Breakfast Inn is located in the garden area of an 1845 antebellum mansion, known as The Stephen-Lathers House, described as "one of the most elegant antebellum houses on Charleston's historic waterfront."

The Battery Carriage House has five stories and is an 1845 Greek Revival/Second Empire style antebellum mansion. There are eleven guest rooms. Three of the rooms are in the raised basement and have king-sized beds. They are the largest available at the inn, facing the Battery and the small front garden. The largest room is number three, an old vaulted room which may have been a wine cellar or a cistern for the main house.

The mansion was abandoned in 1860 when the Civil War broke out because it was so close to the city's defenses. In 1879 a Colonel Richard Lathers bought the estate and hired architect John Henry Devereaux to renovate it. Later, Andrew Simonds purchased the mansion. In the 1920s and 1930s, some rather wild parties took place here. The house fell into disrepair when Hurricane Hugo blew through town. Afterward, Drayton and Kat Hastie restored and renovated it.

Various rooms in the Carriage House are haunted by a broad-chested, tall male entity dressed in a buttonless, rough material overcoat and whose apparition only shows his torso. He enjoys bothering men in Room 8. Guests have the feeling that they are being watched. One guest told the inn owners that he saw an entity standing by the side of the bed. It was wearing several layers of clothing and breathing heavily. The guest said that he was fascinated by the apparition's cape material because it was a material he had never seen before, probably from another century. When he reached out to touch the material, the entity let out a growl. Now fully awake, the guest looked closer, and the entity disappeared.

A husband and wife staying in Room 8 had differences of opinion. The wife believed in ghosts, but the husband did not. During the night, the husband was awoken several times by a feeling that an unseen presence was hovering over him. He heard a chair being thrown against the wall and the sound of the toilet seat slamming down. The wife took several pictures all about the place after her husband fell asleep and was surprised to see an outline of a torso standing in the courtyard, looking up at the door to their room.

Two sisters retired for the night in Room 10. One fell asleep right away, and the other lay awake and restless. She saw a wispy gray apparition with a slender build. It floated right through their locked door. The young man's apparition had no facial features, and it lay down next to her and put his arm about her shoulders in a comforting manner. When she woke up her sister, the entity vanished.

A guest unpacking his bag in Room 10 felt a presence standing behind him. As the evening progressed, the guest felt more and more uneasy. He read the 23rd Psalm about ten times, and when the atmosphere became extremely negative, he stopped. That night he slept with the Bible beside him. The next morning he heard footsteps following him out of the room and down the stairs. He saw a figure out of the corner of his eye, which quickly disappeared.

In the same room, a different time, a woman guest was relaxing on the bed. Her husband had gone downstairs. She saw a shadow of a man on the wall passing by the bed. When a woman and her daughter stayed in this room, they set up a camera and let it run when they went to bed. When the film was developed, they saw that something kept standing in front of the camera. This entity tapped on the microphone and breathing was recorded. Several orbs also moved about the room.

After lingering around the bed, in Room 3, figures of light with different shapes and sizes gathered together in the sitting room. A turned off cell phone started going off by itself at 3 AM. The sound of dripping water has woken guests up, but no water is dripping in the sink when they wanted to turn off the faucet.

Many of the entities have been captured on film here, and the joint is jumping with them.