I've always enjoyed visiting cemeteries. I was a tour guide at Historic Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta, Georgia for 10 years. Yet, I never saw a ghost, or even thought about them. It was more the historical value I appreciated as a docent. My extreme amateur ghost hunting started about 2002 when we went on a ghost tour in Savannah. It was there I got my first orb shot. After that, I've read, learned and experienced a lot!

Regardless of what you believe, know that the pictures also represent hunting excursion fun, friendships built, and history learned to add up to the total experience.

These shots are from a few of our amateur ghost hunts. Click on the picture as I've made some comments about what was going on at the time, or some history.

Then entrance gates to Bonaventure Cemetery. It means "good fortune" in French. John Mulryne and Josiah Tattnall were large landholders in Georgia, but they much more in common than owning the land that became the cemetery. Mulryne, who built the third Tybee Lighthouse in 1773, was Tattnell's father-in-law and owner of Bonaventure, his plantation home. It was a family cemetery on the plantation that formed the nucleus of the present-day Bonaventure Cemetery.

In 1777 the state "nationalized" all Torie holdings in Georgia, giving them to Patriots like John Habersham, who received Mulryne's Bonaventure. During the Siege of Savannah the estate was used by the French Admiral Valerie D'estaing as a hospital. Josiah Tattnall Jr., son of Josiah Tattnall returned home and purchased the land from Habersham.

Tattnall continued to use the family burial ground established by Mulryne, And was buried next to his wife when he died at the age of 38. When his son Commander Josiah Tattnall III sold the property in 1848 roughly 70 acres were set aside as a cemetery.

Beginning n 1868 plots in privately-held Evergreen Cemetery were sold. In 1907 the city purchased the cemetery and renamed it Bonaventure, in honor of the former owner's home.

Johnny Mercer is probably the most famous "resident" and Conrad Aiken. Civil War buffs can find the graves of Claudius Charles Wilson, involved in the early skirmishing along the Chickamauga River that precipatated the battle of Chickamauga. Josiah Tattnall, captain of the Confederate Navy who returned after the war to Savannah, and Henry Rootes Jackson, the lawyer/poet who had a successful military career until his capture at Nashville in 1864.

Founders buried at the cemetery include Noble Wimberly Jones, who was an early radical Patriot in the American Revolution, and Edward Telfair who went on to become governor.