Haunted Road Trip from Charleston: The Upriver Day Route

This is a haunted road trip from Charleston that runs about 120 miles and fits in one daylight day. It starts on the Battery, follows the Ashley River Road to the abandoned town of Dorchester (settled 1696 or 1697, depending on the source), and ends at dusk on the Edisto River at Givhans Ferry, 35 miles from downtown.

Charleston calls itself the most haunted city in America. I do not argue with that. I only point out that the people who built Charleston spent their summers upriver, buried their dead upriver, and felt the 1886 earthquake hardest upriver. The route follows them.

Distances and times are estimates for a Saturday with no traffic; check a map before you leave. Hours and prices come from the parks’ own pages in October 2026 and change without notice.

Stop 1: The Battery, Charleston (start, 9:00 a.m.)

Begin at White Point Garden, at the tip of the peninsula where the Ashley and Cooper meet. The seawall became a promenade in 1838; the park opened in 1837 and held Confederate artillery during the Civil War. Fort Sumter is visible across the harbor. Street parking; free; always open.

What the dispatches say happened here: nothing yet. This is where the stories are told, not where they start. The county history explains the difference.

Stop 2: Ashley River Road (SC 61), about 15 miles, 30 minutes

Take Lockwood Drive north to SC 61 and follow it northwest. The two-lane stretch past Church Creek is a National Scenic Byway, on the National Register since 1983, running under old oaks past Drayton Hall, Magnolia Plantation and Middleton Place. You need not stop at any of them, though Middleton Place sits near the generally accepted epicenter of the 1886 earthquake. Drive it slowly.

Stop 3: Colonial Dorchester State Historic Site, about 10 more miles, 20 minutes

Address: 300 State Park Road, Summerville, SC 29485. Hours: 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily during daylight saving time, 9 to 5 the rest of the year. Admission: $3 adults, $1.50 S.C. seniors, $1 children 6 to 15.

Congregationalists from Dorchester, Massachusetts, settled here in January 1696 (the state park service gives 1697). St. George’s Anglican Church was finished in 1719 and its brick bell tower added in 1751. The tabby fort went up between 1757 and 1760 against a French invasion that never came. The British occupied the town after Charleston fell in 1780, burned the church, and were driven out in December 1781. The town never recovered; residents moved to higher ground at Summerville and scavengers carried off the bricks. The tower stands. The fort stands. There is no bell.

What the dispatches say happened here: The Tower With No Bell. Allow 45 minutes.

Stop 4: Summerville, about 5 miles, 12 minutes

Summerville was a pineland village by 1785 and a town in 1847, built by Charleston planters escaping fever and insects. The 1886 earthquake started a fire that leveled much of the square. In 1899 an international congress of physicians named it one of the two best places on earth for lung complaints, on account of the pines. Park on Main Street and walk the historic district. Lunch is here.

The Summerville Light is the town’s one famous ghost: a woman who waited by the railroad with a lantern for a husband killed on the tracks, and who still waits. The story dates to the 1950s and 1960s and the lights appeared on Old Sheep Island Road, which locals called Light Road. In January 2025 USGS seismologist Susan Hough published a paper arguing the sightings cluster at the 1886 epicenter and near three magnitude 3.5 to 4.4 quakes in 1959 and 1960, and that gas from the Summerville Fault meeting static on the rails could account for them.

Do not go looking. Sheep Island Road is private and closed to the public. Read the paper instead; it is linked below.

Stop 5: Audubon Center at Francis Beidler Forest, about 22 miles, 35 minutes

Address: 336 Sanctuary Road, Harleyville, SC 29448. Hours: Wednesday through Saturday 9 to 5, Sunday 11 to 4, closed Monday and Tuesday. Admission: $12 adults, $7 children 6 to 12, free on second Saturdays.

Take US 78 northwest to Ridgeville and follow the signs, or I-26 to exit 177. A one-mile gravel drive leads to the visitor center. The boardwalk is 1.75 miles through old cypress and tupelo in Four Holes Swamp, which Audubon says has gone unchanged for a thousand years. Most people take an hour and a half to two hours. Plan the day around the closed days or the route falls apart.

What the dispatches say happened here: the swamp drains into the Edisto, and The Edisto Keeps Its Own.

Stop 6: Indian Field Methodist Campground, about 14 miles, 25 minutes

Take US 178 southwest toward St. George, then US 15 north about five miles. Indian Field is a ring of 99 two-story wooden cabins, called tents, around an open tabernacle that seats more than a thousand. Methodists have held camp meetings here since 1838; the present tents date to 1848. It is on the National Register (1973). It is private church property, open to look at from the road, and in use during the annual camp meeting. Do not walk into tents.

Stop 7: St. George, about 5 miles, 10 minutes

St. George grew up on both sides of the South Carolina Canal and Railroad line and was incorporated in 1875. It has been the Dorchester County seat since the county was formed in 1897. Population 1,843 in 2020.

Park on North Parler Avenue. The town clock, at 129 North Parler, is a three-faced electric clock that has stood there since June 1955. It was first mounted on the Farmers and Merchants Bank and later moved to its own pedestal. It chimes the Westminster tune on the hour. The clock keeps good time. That is the official position of the town, and it is nearly always true.

Walk the block. The Weeks Building, a third-generation clothing store with apartments above, anchors it, and the barbershop block is the setting of Almost Here. At 229 North Parler, Louis Lourie opened a dry goods store around 1914 that advertised “a thousand bargains”; his sons took the name to Columbia in 1948. The restored Lourie Theater is downtown. Every April since 1986 the town has held the World Grits Festival, which is where The Grits Judge comes from. For the clock, read Whatever Hour It Strikes.

Stop 8: Givhans Ferry State Park at dusk, about 20 miles, 30 minutes

Address: 746 Givhans Ferry Road, Ridgeville, SC 29472. Hours: 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., extended to 9 p.m. during daylight saving time. Admission: $6 adults, $3.75 S.C. seniors, $3.50 children 6 to 15.

Take US 78 back toward Ridgeville and follow the signs south to the river. The park is 988 acres on a bluff over the Edisto, the longest free-flowing blackwater river in North America, at the end of a 23-mile paddling trail from Colleton State Park. The River House and four cabins were built by the Civilian Conservation Corps. The porch of the River House faces the water. Stand there until the light goes.

What the dispatches say happened here: Not Yet.

From Givhans Ferry it is 35 miles back to downtown Charleston, about 45 minutes by SC 61.

Before you go

The full route is drawn on the county map, with every stop above and the dispatch that belongs to it. If you would rather have it on paper in the glovebox, I will send the printable version.

”Send

The Upriver Haunted Route: a drive from Charleston you can do in a day