Each restoration stirs a rising of sinuous activity left from the past and draws it into the present. Such rational explanations, however, do not account for the super natural activity reported by guests staying at one of Charleston's most famous mansions, The Battery Carriage House Inn at 20 South Battery, where one apparition stands apart from the others as a singularly arresting sight. While most Charleston ghosts comport themselves with the refined behavior and appearance of the people and city they inhabit, this wraith is as menacing as he is ugly. He harms no one, yet his countenance is unexpectedly brutal. What makes this ghost so awful is that he has no head.
Visitors report seeing the torso of a man clad in a coarse wool outer garment.
This ghost marks his appearances with a guttural moan as though he is in deep pain. At times he hovers at arm's length over the bed. More often he parades in erect military stature back and forth at the foot of the bed. Although some maintain that he is the remnant of a pirate hanged in the oaks at Battery Park, the preponderance of experience suggests he is the ghost of a Confederate soldier who lost his head and the greater part of his limbs during a munitions explosion accident. Across the street from 20 South Battery, White Point Gardens now covers the once dug out fort and Confederate munitions magazine Battery Ramsey.