We Thought Someone’s Kids Were Running the Hallway

My husband and I stayed at The Marshall House a few years ago while we were visiting Savannah. We booked it because we like staying in historic hotels, and while we had heard people say it was haunted, that wasn’t really why we chose it.

The first night was completely normal. We had dinner, walked around the Historic District for a while, and came back pretty tired.

Sometime in the middle of the night, I woke up because I could hear what sounded like kids running up and down the hallway.

At first, I just rolled over and tried to ignore it, but it kept going. It sounded exactly like a couple of children running back and forth outside our room.

After a few minutes, my husband woke up too and asked, “Do you hear that?”

I said, “Yeah. I wish their parents would get them under control.”

It went on long enough that I finally decided to look into the hallway myself.

I opened the door expecting to see a family or at least hear people talking.

There wasn’t anyone.

The hallway was completely empty.

I remember standing there for a few seconds because it didn’t make any sense. I had been hearing what sounded like children only moments before.

I went back inside, and after a little while, everything got quiet again. We eventually went back to sleep.

The next morning, while we were checking out, I mentioned it to the woman at the front desk. I wasn’t complaining, I just said something like, “There were some kids running the hallway pretty late last night.”

She smiled and asked what floor we had stayed on.

After I told her, she nodded and said, “You’re not the first guest who’s mentioned hearing children.”

She didn’t say much else, and honestly, I didn’t ask.

Later that day I looked up the history of the hotel and found out other guests had reported hearing children in the hallways over the years.

Maybe there was a perfectly normal explanation for what we heard.

But I still think about how quickly the hallway went from sounding full of running children… to being completely silent the moment I opened the door.