An urban legend from Savannah, Georgia

They say just outside Savannah, where the Spanish moss hangs like nooses from the trees, there’s a rotting plantation house swallowed by time and purple bloom; its porch sagging, its windows like dead eyes. 

But it’s not the house that draws people in. It’s the vines.

Wisteria, thick and wild, strangles the place like it’s trying to keep something in. And late at night, when the wind dies and the crickets fall silent, the vines begin to whisper.

Not in words, at first; just a brushing sound, like silk skirts across the floorboards. But, stay long enough, and the whispers turn clear. They say your name.

People who hear it don’t always leave the same.

There’s an old story about the lady of the house, Miss Evangeline Moreau. During the Civil War, her family sold her to Union soldiers for safe passage. Legend says she was chained in the cellar when the house caught fire, left to burn with her betrayal. But the flames never took the house, just her.

In her final moments, she cursed the land. And some say the wisteria grew from her scorched bones, fed by spite.

Visitors report waking with bruises shaped like handprints. One man said he heard sobbing from the backseat of his car all the way home to Atlanta. 

A teenage girl who dared to whisper back had nightmares for a month, always the same: Evangeline’s pale arms reaching out from the vines, mouth sewn shut with hair, dragging her into the walls.

She stopped sleeping and then stopped speaking. The last anyone saw her, she was walking barefoot down the highway, purple blossoms braided into her hair, whispering names no one recognized.

Locals know better than to go near. But tourists, well, they love a good photo op.

So, if you ever find yourself out by the old Moreau place and the vines start to rustle without a breeze, don’t listen.

And if you do listen, don’t answer back.

Because the Whispering Wisteria never forgets a name once it’s spoken.