ANOTHER TRAGIC wedding day left the ghost that now haunts the Cleland House. It is the ghost of a woman whose death was a terrible accident, conceived by no one and executed by what had appeared to be a beautiful and exquisite wedding gift.
Anne Withers lived with her parents on the Georgetown waterfront during the prosperous years preceding the Civil War. Her father was a socially prominent rice planter. Desiring to keep his family involved in Georgetown society, they lived most of the year in their Front Street townhouse.
Built in 1737, their comfortable home was reputed to be the oldest home in Georgetown. It was located near the point where St. James Street met the Sampit River.
The Cleland House originally faced the river. In 1730’s Georgetown, Front Street was a secondary thoroughfare, so the rear of the home faced the road.
For thirty years, a chimney on each end of the house provided warmth against the cold winter and the perpetual dampness of the river. In 1767, one room was added at each end of the house, enclosing the chimneys.
The Cleland House already had a great deal of history behind it before it was occupied by the Withers family.
Many prominent guests had stayed in the home. During the Revolutionary War, Baron von Steuben and Baron deKalb were reputed to have been guests in the house while traveling with General Lafayette. Aaron Burr slept there preceding one of his visits to the Oaks Plantation where his daughter Theodosia lived. The Withers family was quite proud of the history of their house.
When Anne fell in love with a handsome sea captain, her father was a bit displeased but not very surprised. After all, the girl was raised beside the waterfront and she grew up intensely interested in the comings and goings of the tall-masted ships.
Anne’s father hoped his pretty daughter would marry the son of another planter, but he had to admit that this sea captain was not bad at all. The fellow was quite wealthy, as well as being very handsome. He and Anne would have good-looking children.
Anne’s parents, after being informed of the couple’s desire to wed, gave their consent to the marriage. With their parents’ blessings they went ahead with plans for the nuptials.
The wedding was scheduled to take place when the sea captain returned from his next voyage. The pair would marry downstairs in the Withers’ home, with a reception in the ornate garden behind the Cleland House.
Anne was delighted but she prepared for her wedding with nervous anticipation. What if his ship was caught in a storm or stranded in the doldrums? What if he did not arrive for the wedding day?
The months flew by and, much to Anne’s relief, her captain arrived in Georgetown, well and safe, a week before their wedding day.
One night, while catching his breath amidst the flurry of parties and social engagements that preceded the nuptials, the captain told Anne he had brought her a wedding present.
He reached in his pocket and brought out the gift, wrapped loosely in a linen handkerchief. As the material unfolded in his hand, a glittering gold bracelet appeared.
Anne gave an exclamation of delight and awe. In all her life she had never seen such a treasure.
The bracelet in her captain’s hand was a chain of linked gold beetles. Each tiny creature had glistening gem eyes. They were perfectly life-like, except for their gold countenance and lack of legs. Never, except in nature, had Anne seen beings of such flawless perfection. The beetles wrought in solid gold apparently had a foreign origin, for Anne had never seen insects quite like these around Georgetown.
As if he could read Anne’s thoughts, her fiancé said, “It came from Egypt. The old trader I bought it from assured me it is a rare antiquity found in the tomb of an Egyptian princess.”
As he struggled to undo the clasp to put the bracelet on Anne’s wrist the captain went on, “No doubt it’s very old and of rare quality, but I don’t know about the Egyptian princess part. That sounds wonderfully mysterious, but the trader was a superstitious old sod, reeking of whiskey. He said he’d had nothing but bad luck since he bought this fine piece off a blind beggar.”
When the clasp still would not come undone, and Anne finally withdrew her wrist. “Don’t try anymore,” she told her captain. “I won’t wear it until our wedding. The clasp has probably not been worked in many years. My maid will get it open, even if she has to oil it and pry it loose.”
When Anne returned to her room, she gave the bracelet to her maid and asked her to undo the clasp. She did not see the bracelet again until her wedding hour, several days later.
When the hour came for her to dress in her bridal finery, Anne found the bracelet laid along with all her other carefully chosen attire. When Anne was dressed, her maid gently fastened the glistening circlet of beetles around her wrist.
Anne turned her wrist this way and that, causing the bright stone eyes of the gold beetles to wink and glitter. What an extraordinarily lovely bracelet, she thought.
“It’s time, Miss Anne,” her maid advised the bride.
Anne stood up, gave her maid a hug, and walked out her bedroom door. The time had come to descend the stairs to the flower-festooned parlor where she would marry her captain. All her family and close friends were awaiting her descent.
Anne felt a tug of apprehension as she approached the staircase. This was such an important moment, the most serious, most happy moment of her life—and this bracelet was starting to itch, starting to prickle, starting to prick her …
Anne’s maid heard a terrible scream tear from her mistress’ throat. She dashed out of Anne’s bedroom and into the upstairs hall to find Anne collapsed at the top of the stairs.
The bride was deathly pale in all her shimmering white finery. The only color on her ghostly alabaster form came from the gleaming red eyes of the golden beetles, and the blood that ran from the points where each beetle clung to her wrist.
Anne’s maid tore at the bracelet as wedding guests ran up the stairs.
She gasped in horror as the bracelet finally gave way, the previously hidden legs of the beetles now wrenched loose from her mistress’ tender flesh. However, it was too late. Anne was already dead.
Anne’s parents were overcome with shock and grief. Her fiancé could not forgive himself for giving his love such an unspeakably horrible present.
He immediately set sail for London, the bracelet locked away in a wooden box in his cabin.
The captain took the bracelet to the finest chemist in all London to have its structure and content analyzed. The chemist explained that the bracelet, perhaps never worn, was designed by the ancient Egyptians as a device to punish grave robbers. Each beetle had minute, sharp legs which held poison. These legs were hidden in the beetle body and ingeniously designed only to deploy when warmed by body heat.
After Anne had worn the bracelet for a short time, every needle-like leg came down and punctured the tender flesh of her wrist, poisoning her instantly.
Poor Anne died in terror, with no idea what was happening to her. She was only aware of the excruciating pain of thirteen fiery-eyed beetles digging into her wrist just as she was descending into the misty dream of her wedding.
Since that day, Anne has been seen many times in the garden behind her house. Some say the reason why Anne Withers occasionally comes back to her home by the river is the inexplicable terror of her death. She still does not understand what terrible force snatched her life away at its most joyous moment. Some nights, when the moon is nearly full and the river warms the cool breeze that blows in from the ocean, she can be seen in all her antebellum bridal finery walking through the back garden. And those who have seen her walking there will tell you that the look of bewilderment on her face reveals that she is wondering what went so horribly wrong on her wedding day long ago.
The Cleland House, built circa 1737,
is located at 405 Front Street
on the corner of James Street.