Foley House Inn

This house was built by a widow who buried more than most men could carry.

Honoria Foley was an Irish immigrant, widowed young when her husband Owen passed away, leaving her to make her own way in a city that didn't make life easy for widows. In 1896, on land scarred by the Great Savannah Fire seven years earlier, she built this house with determination and the money she had left... then opened one of Savannah's very first bed and breakfasts.

She ran it herself and became known as a sharp, capable businesswoman at a time when very few women were given that opportunity.

That's the history you'll find written down.

What happened inside these walls after dark is another matter entirely.

In 1987, during renovations, workers made a discovery nobody expected.

Hidden inside one of the walls was a human skeleton.

Nearly mummified with age.

That part isn't legend.

The remains were real, and they were documented.

To this day, no one has ever identified who that person was, or explained how the body came to be sealed inside the wall.

Naturally, Savannah supplied its own explanation.

According to local legend, a traveling boarder became obsessed with Honoria Foley, refusing every rejection she offered.

One night, the story says, he entered her bedroom while she slept.

She awoke in terror and struck him with a heavy candlestick, killing him instantly.

Rather than see a respectable widow executed for defending herself, a trusted friend supposedly helped conceal his body inside the wall, where it remained hidden for nearly a century.

There is no surviving document, diary, or court record proving the story happened that way.

But there was a skeleton.

And somebody placed it there.

Since that discovery, guests have reported encounters with a gentleman wearing an old-fashioned top hat walking through the garden late at night. Staff eventually gave him a name...

Wally.

Doors open on their own.

Guests wake to the unmistakable sensation of someone sitting on the edge of the bed, only to find the room completely empty.

Cold drafts drift through locked rooms where every window is shut tight.

Whoever was hidden inside these walls...

however he came to be there...

many believe he never truly left.

And Honoria Foley...

wherever she may be...

may have simply decided she doesn't mind the company.