 In the 1990s while construction crews were working on renovating one of Savannah's most historic hotels, they found a bunch of body parts that had seemingly been buried underneath the floorboard. Of course at this point the construction workers had to then call the police in because it appeared like this was a crime scene. Now it didn't take long for the police and the investigators to realize what they were looking at wasn't necessarily a crime scene. And what they were looking at gives credence to the stories that this hotel is one of the most haunted hotels in the state of Georgia. But before we go any further please remember to hit that subscribe button and give us a like. Welcome to Esoteric Atlanta my name is Bryce and today we're going to be talking about the Marshall House on Savannah. I told you that Keeho himself when he came to Savannah from Ireland started working at an iron factory and that is how he eventually made his fortune. You see iron had become a really big commodity because of the railroad system and with in 1840s with the railroad system Savannah had doubled in size and with Savannah's population growing in 1851 a local Savannah native named Mary Marshall decided to build a hotel. Now Mary Marshall was born during the American Revolution. She was a tried and true American as soon as America or the United States had won its independent from Great Britain Mary Marshall's father started buying up land in Savannah. Now Mary Marshall's father died in 1795 and that's when Mary Marshall inherited all this land that she was sitting on until she decided to accommodate all these people moving into Savannah for the railroad. But unfortunately as all of our stories have gone 10 years after Mary Marshall had developed the Marshall House the Civil War broke out. Now in the beginning of the Civil War the South the Confederate was actually winning the war and it wasn't until the Battle of Gettysburg that things started to change and as we spoke about in our Gone with the Wind episode towards the end of the Civil War Sherman marched his Union troops through the south. They would go through the south burning down cities and towns and pulling up railroads and tying them around tree trunks. Now again we talked about the burning of Atlanta and almost all of our ghost stories out of Atlanta and of course as Sherman trail blazed through the state he eventually got to Savannah and when he got to Savannah one of the things that Sherman needed was a hospital for his soldiers. Now the mileage from Atlanta to Savannah is about 223 miles. In modern times it takes about three hours to drive to Savannah from Atlanta but these Union soldiers had marched all these miles with wounds dirty I can only imagine how many infections these men must have had by the time they landed in Savannah Georgia. So for the 65,000 Union soldiers that settled upon Savannah Sherman definitely needed a place for them to be treated and so Sherman decided the Marshall House was the perfect location for his Union hospital and frankly I have no idea what Mary Marshall must have thought about this. She actually died in 1877 so she did live through the Civil War in Savannah when Sherman took over her hotel but all is fair and love and war and I guess that's just how it was. You can't I don't think you can really tell a soldier to get out of your hotel I just don't think that would go over too well. So the Marshall House became a Union soldier hospital from 1864 to the end of the Civil War in 1865. Now for a lot of these wounded soldiers the only way to ensure their life from all these gnarly diseases they had picked up from open wounds was to amputate body parts. Now they didn't actually have a lot of anesthesia available to do these surgeries and as most people probably can gather with common sense once there is an infection on an arm sometimes they do need to cut the limb off before it spreads to the rest of the body. So without the anesthesia what would happen is a soldier would be lying in one of the bedrooms and a nurse would come in and hand him a big bottle of liquor and tell him to drink it all up. After the soldier was drunk the nurse would then lead the soldier down into the basement to perform his amputation. Now the doctor the surgeon who did the surgery would also give the soldier something metal to bite on. Now a good surgeon would be able to take a leg or an arm off within 10 to 15 minutes and of course this involved sawing off these body parts. Now from what I gather they would use one saw to get through the flesh and the muscle and by the time they got to the bone they had to get a bigger saw to go through the bone. I cannot imagine the horror that must have been happening in that room. Now granite as I said the amputation was necessary in order to save the soldier's life however that does not mean that it was a pleasant experience or mean that the liquor given to the men actually did a whole lot to numb them out from the pain. Now once the limb was off the doctor had to close the wound. They didn't use stitches they took sawdust and impacted the sawdust on the open womb and then took a branding iron to brand it close. Honestly I think that I I don't know how many soldiers put into just passing out from pain and I can't imagine the smell of the basement or the horror the nurses were having to witness and even the doctors themselves. I mean I come from a family of doctors but that's part of the reason why I would never want to be a doctor. I cannot imagine being in that position. Now for those who are familiar with the south and with savannah our temperature down here is usually really hot and humid but however during this winter of 1864 to 1865 savannah experienced a deep freeze. You see the ground was too frozen for the doctors or the hospital staff to be able to take the limbs and bury them outside. So they took the limbs and they buried them in the floor board of the marshal house and there they stayed until the 1990s when the marshal house was being re-renovated and they pulled up all these old bones from amputations. As I said in the introduction at first they thought they had found a crime scene but then it didn't take them long to obviously realize that these were bones from soldiers from the civil war. Now the civil war wasn't the only time that the marshal house acted as a hospital and saw a lot of death. We've talked a lot about yellow fever in previous episodes regarding savannah but in 1876 about 11 years after the civil war an outbreak of yellow fever happened again in savannah and once again the marshal house became a hospital. This time not we didn't just have men getting limbs amputated or dying we had women and children there as well but by 1880 the marshal house was ready to be a hotel again and at this point the marshal house annexed the florida house right next to it in order to make the property bigger. By 1895 they did close the hotel down for about four or five years so that they could put electricity into the hotel and there the hotel sat again until the mid 90s when they started to re-renovate it once more and they found the amputated body parts. Now something else that was pretty wild that happened during the same time in the 90s where they found all the limbs. All of a sudden in certain rooms there was this horrible awful odor and in fact I read stories that even the hotel staff were so offended by the smell that they could not even go into the rooms. These rooms were 214, 314 and 414. Now I've never stayed in the marshal house and I might be completely wrong in saying this but it sounds to me like the rooms were probably stacked on top of each other. When finding these bones I wonder if maybe something else was unlocked some portal and maybe these rooms happened to be under the area where the operations happened and the smells that were coming up into the room I would guess would be the smells of rotting flesh that I imagine waft about the hotel when it was a hospital during the civil war. Now I don't know for sure again because I've never been there. Now they also say in these particular rooms they feel a very very dark and evil present so much so that they've had a priest come in to throw down holy water as well as in room 414 they've had to play gospel music on repeat in order to try to keep the darkness down but these smells this darkness isn't the only thing that haunts the marshal house in fact it's one of the minor things in the marshal house. People say that on a regular basis you can hear screams coming from the basement and that more times than not guests at the hotel will run into soldiers asking them for help to find a surgeon. Most of these apparitions don't have body parts on them in fact one famous soldier that is seen a lot at the marshal hotel is a soldier that is missing his hand and he comes up to guests holding the nub of his hand begging them to help him find the doctor. People also claim to hear crying babies and children playing and in fact in room 304 a little boy dwells within this room and it is very common for people to have bite marks of a child on their arms. Now there was one story in particular where a woman was staying in room 304 with her daughter she heard her daughter playing and went to ask her daughter who she was playing with the little girl kept pointing to a little boy that was supposedly standing in the corner the mother could not see this little boy but all of a sudden the little girl screamed ouch and had a bite mark on her elbow. Now this was the size of a child's teeth it wasn't an adult bite mark and there is no way for anybody to be able to bite their own elbow and when the mother went to confront the hotel manager about what had happened all he could do was offer her another room. Now behind the check-in desk at this marshal house is a portrait of mary marshal this is an oil portrait of her that was done in 1830. Now the interesting thing about this oil painting is that our own jim williams from our midnight in the garden of good and evil episode had this portrait in his estate and it wasn't until he passed away that the marshal house was able to get the portrait back and place it in mary marshal's hotel. Well it is said that mary marshal herself walks the halls of her hotel and in fact another story i read is when a father and daughter were walking through the lobby the daughter looked up and pointed to mary marshal's portrait and said hey i've seen this lady walking around there's also the common story of a gentlemanly fellow sitting at the window and reading this gentleman is not wearing clothes of modern times he is very much in a period piece although no one really knows who this man is and in fact the stories of the marshal house are endless it definitely seems like if you are looking for a ghost experience this is the place that you want to stay from what i read it appears that most people who stay at this hotel have an experience and if you really want to get to know a ghost again try to get to the room 304 with the biting little boy okay guys thank you so much for staying through another story again thank you to josh mckay for doing our music and to todd rodrick for being our editor again we are on instagram at esoteric atlanta as well as twitter and same as the other videos i am still trying to figure twitter out so we're not super active on twitter yet all right guys i'll talk to you soon bye