314-322 West Hall Street

A little girl woke up crying in this house not long ago.

When her mother checked on her, there was a bruise on her leg... in the exact shape of a hand.

The little girl said a lady had grabbed her while she slept.

We'll get back to that.

First, you need to know whose hand it might have been.

By 1883, county records show wooden dwellings standing on this lot, held under the estate of a woman named Rachael De LaMotta... meaning she was already dead, and whatever life she'd lived here had passed to someone else to sort out.

It didn't stay settled for long.

In June of 1886, the Savannah Morning News published a sheriff's notice: her five houses on this lot were being seized and sold, on the courthouse steps, in a lawsuit brought against her estate by a group of creditors, the Habershams among them... one of the oldest names in this city.

A dead woman, sued by name.

Her home auctioned off to strangers to pay debts she left behind.

Some of that same old wood may still be standing right where you're looking, folded quietly into the building in front of you.

That's not the only thing this house has held onto since.

In 1922, a funeral was held right here, under this roof, for a child.

Nobody remembers exactly what took that child's life.

Only that this house has hosted a child's final goodbye at least once before.

Now... back to that bruise.

This house spent years as a short-term rental, and nearly every guest who stayed here has a story.

Blankets, pulled slowly off sleeping bodies in the middle of the night, by hands nobody could ever see.

A ball, left on the old slanted floor, rolling backward... uphill... again and again, as if gravity simply didn't apply in this house.

The owner's own toddler, laughing and playing on the floor with another child.

A child who wasn't there.

Then came the night the owner still can't explain.

She felt a small hand tap her shoulder, over and over, exactly the way her daughter always woke her.

She opened her eyes, reaching out...

and her daughter was asleep in bed, right where she'd left her.

Untouched.

Something else had been doing the tapping.

She ran to check on her little girl anyway, and found her already awake.

Crying.

Saying a lady had grabbed her leg while she slept.

That's the bruise.

Still there the next morning, in the shape of a hand that didn't belong to anyone in that house.

Maybe it's a woman who died alone, with no children of her own, still reaching for any child who sleeps under her roof.

Whatever she is...

she isn't finished yet.