This Spooky Southern City Is So Haunted, It Has Gravestones In Its Airport Runway

The beguiling city of Savannah has been delighting visitors for centuries, with its lush gardens, Southern food, and walkable, historic streets. This storied city is known for much more than its charm, however. It's also considered to be one of the most haunted places in America.

Savannah became the epicenter of ghost tourism with the publication of John Berendt's "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil," a rollicking true tale of high-society murder, folk magic, and ghosts, packed with colorful local characters. Visitors flock to Savannah's famously spooky cemeteries to hear the stories of the city's deceased residents. While some can seem hokey, Savannah's Enocha Edenfield Tours has a reputation for being one of America's most horrifying ghost tours. Graveyards and historic sites with checkered pasts are the obvious places to look for specters, but there are some less obvious hotspots, like The Pirates' House, one of Savannah's oldest restaurants and a haunted gem with hearty Southern food. 

But visitors can even see the city's ghostly history even as they land at the Savannah/Hilton Head International Airport. Keep an eye out as you descend on the north side of runway 10-28. You might notice two odd rectangular shapes in the tarmac set at an angle. Those are the gravestones of Richard and Catherine Dotson. Yes, Savannah is a city so haunted that even its airport has ghosts.

Locals know what lies beneath Savannah. From its founding as an English colonial settlement in 1733, the city has been disturbing the eternal sleep of the dead to make way for the living, allegedly building over Native American burial grounds. As the town expanded, it built into family burial plots and graveyards on the edge of the community.

During World War II, the U.S. Army built a military airport on the outskirts of Savannah, on farmland belonging to the Dotson Family. It became the staging area for bombers to fly across the Atlantic, and needed to expand. The only problem was that it would displace the Dotson family cemetery. Eventually, a deal for the land was reached, but with one condition: While most of the graves could be relocated, those of the founders, Richard and Catherine, must remain. When Savannah Airport was commercialized and in need of a new runway, they tried to relocate the graves again, but the family stubbornly refused. As a result, Runway 10-28 paved right over their graves. Savannah is believed to have the only international airport in the world with gravestones on an active runway.

Pilots new to Savannah Airport are known to radio in and double-check the tombstones seen on landing, not quite believing it. In addition to Richard and Catherine Dotson, there are two more graves left undisturbed to the side of the runway, those of Daniel Hueson and John Dotson. Which of these haunts the airport? Nobody knows, but legend has it that pilots landing at sunset have reported seeing two ghostly figures standing at the northern edge of the runway, watching the planes come in.