Tales From This Crypt*

*Heh heh. Boys and Ghouls, actually it is not tales from this crypt, it is a tale about the resident of that crypt – in a manner of speaking, heh heh, heh, ha ha Ha Ha HAW HAW.

The above is the eternal home of the body remains of James Habersham (c1712-1775), in the Colonel Cemetery in Savannah. He was a person wanting independence and did much for the independence movement , but died before the actual Declaration of Independence was, well, declared.

The other day while indexing pictures I came across some pictures I had taken in Savannah. The Ole’ Pink House and the Habersham’s crypt brought back some memories. But I did not take the picture of Habersham’s portrait, I found it on Google.

In February of 2005 Anna went to a business meeting in Savannah and I tagged along. The five day meeting was to convene on something like the 15th. We arrived a day before and toured Savannah. We ate at Paula Dean’s “The Lady and Sons” that morning and took a tour of the city.


On the tour The Ole Pink House Restaurant was pointed out as being the home of James Habersham in Colonial Days. The tour guide added that the house was rumored to be haunted by old James himself. We made a mental note to maybe eat there while we were in Savannah.



Somehow, either that night or the next night almost all the people at the meeting decided to have dinner at The Ole’ Pink House.

When we arrived a the restaurant we were taken up to the second level and about 8 of us were seated at a big round table with a portrait of James Habersham looking down on us.



I told this part a couple years ago, so stop me if you already heard it:

We were all sitting around, waiting for our food and making small talk and the seasoned ones were bringing past funny moments that happened at their meetings. One guy, T, brought up a handicapped person that worked for him one and he imitated the poor guy.

M said, “Lets give T a hand!”

Then, without warning: WHAM! The noise came from T’s plate. A rubber hand was lying in his plate. We were all shocked.

M, one of the quieter members at the table reached over and retrieved his artificial hand and reattached it. First there were silence, then everybody laughed, nervously of course.

I didn’t realize M had a prosthetic hand, and I doubt if many more did either.

I looked up at the portrait of James Habersham and his features seemed a little strainer and his eyes looked a little wider than they were a few minutes ago.

It appeared James was shocked too.

Then after people got over the shock and started talking again, people were making one-liners about M giving T “the back of his hand” or “M shot T the finger – five of them!” …. And wait! Everybody had more!

I looked up at James' portrait again. The look of shock had left his eyes and again they were glinting and his smile looked as if he had a few hand jokes he wanted to throw in too.