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The
Marine Hospital
The U.S. Public Health Service building at Drayton and York Streets was constructed
in 1905 and was an active hospital until the 1980s when the Public Health Service
was shut down. It then became a clinic until 2003, then after a few years
vacancy it was purchased by Savannah College of Art and Design.
The building sits on Oglethorpe Square and is almost 70,000 square feet. The
building is probably the most haunted structure in Savannah. Many people have
taken photos that are covered with 'orbs'. They look like bubbles - but are
not bubbles, they are orbs. One theory states that an orb is energy being
transferred from a source (street lights, radio signals, cell phones, etc.) to a
ghost so they can manifest themselves to us. According to physics, energy
being transferred takes the shape of a sphere.
The top floor of this hospital was the quarantine ward and for its first fifty years,
when a sailor came into this port with a fever, he was put up there in order to
quarantine him from the local population. This was before the cause of such
fevers was known and before we had antibiotics. If he made it to the ward, he had been
lucky to make it into the port past the "lazaretto". Every port has one.
It is an Italian term for a building used as a Pest House or quarantine station.
The Works Progress Administration (WPA) Guidebook for Georgia describes this hospital
as the quarantine station for the port. Both sick passengers and sailors were
kept there. Any ship with fever onboard would be told to anchor at the lazaretto
and anyone with fever would be taken off and put in the pest house. The ship
would then be allowed into the harbor. So if a sailor made it into this port
with a fever, he was put into the quarantine ward. If he didn't have a deadly
fever going in, he did after being put there. Ninety percent of the patients
died there, tens of dozens of men.
This building is one of the most haunted spots in the South. One photo taken
by a lady on a walking tour in 2004 from the corner of Drayton and President shows
the building covered with orbs! Two other photos taken inside the vacant building
one night when the door was found ajar, show the empty darkened staircase covered
with orbs, like all the spirits that haunt the top floor are starting to come down
into the lower floors of the building.
So, even though it now is owned by Savannah College of Art and Design, venture around there late at night and snap a picture or two and see what you
get!
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