👻 Special Edition: After Dark in Peachtree City

Peachtree City, Georgia, is known for many things: quiet neighborhoods beneath tall pines, beautiful lakes, and more than one hundred miles of winding paths where golf carts have become part of everyday life.¹

Ghosts probably aren't the first thing that comes to mind.

But after dark, there are stories.

One belongs to comedian and actress Margaret Cho, who spent about a year living in a Peachtree City house she would later describe as the most haunted home she had ever lived in.²

The others belong to the paths themselves.

🏡👻 Margaret Cho's Haunted House

Margaret Cho came to Peachtree City while filming Drop Dead Diva, the television series in which she played Teri Lee. She rented a house near the studio and settled in for roughly a year.

Years later, while talking with Kesha about the paranormal, Cho immediately knew which home stood above the others.

Peachtree City.

She described the house as “very active.”³

Cho began hearing unexplained things inside the house. The activity became familiar enough that she developed an unusual way of dealing with whatever she believed was there.

She talked to it.

When something happened, Cho would acknowledge the presence aloud. She wasn't trying to force it from the house. She simply asked it not to frighten her.

For a time, that strange coexistence seemed to work.

Then one night, something came much closer.

🛏️ Something Got Into Bed

Cho was lying alone in bed when she felt something get onto the mattress beside her.

She didn't simply hear something in another room or sense that she was being watched.

She felt the bed move.

The mattress lowered beside her beneath what felt like the weight of another body settling onto it.

Cho froze.

She was frightened enough that she didn't move at first. Something seemed to be lying beside her, yet she couldn't see what it was.

Finally, she forced herself to turn around.

There was nobody there.⁴

Cho would later describe what she believed occupied the house as a kind of trickster presence, something that seemed to enjoy causing small disturbances that were nevertheless deeply unsettling.

The strange activity continued. So did Cho's habit of talking to whatever she believed was sharing the house with her.

And she stayed.

There was another detail that bothered her later. Cho remembered being told that the owners were away in Europe and difficult to reach, yet she understood that if she wanted to leave the property, getting out of the lease would not be particularly difficult.

Eventually, Cho did move out.

But apparently, whatever she believed inhabited the house did not.

🚪 The Deadbolt

Another of Cho's Drop Dead Diva co-stars moved into the house after her.

According to Cho, on the very day he moved in, he stepped outside to smoke a cigarette.

The door locked behind him.

And somehow, the deadbolt was engaged from inside the house.

He couldn't get back in.⁵

Cho found some dark humor in the incident, joking that whatever had been relatively tolerant of her apparently didn't like boys.

Years passed.

Then Margaret Cho went back.

🕯️ Returning to the House

Cho eventually returned to the Peachtree City residence with psychic medium Kim Russo while filming an episode of The Haunting Of....

Another family was living there by then.

Cho recalled noticing something unsettling almost immediately. Beside the beds were oxygen machines, and she remembered members of the family as being seriously ill.

Then there was the condition of the house itself.

A bathtub had broken in half.

A marble countertop had also split in half.⁶

Cho was back inside the same house where she remembered hearing unexplained activity, communicating with an unseen presence, and feeling the mattress sink beneath something she could not see.

Now the house seemed battered.

During the paranormal investigation came an even stranger story.

According to Cho's later account, Russo told her that two teenage boys had supposedly performed a ritual involving an animal sacrifice on the property sometime during the 1980s. The ritual, Cho was told, had opened some kind of supernatural doorway.

A “hellmouth.”⁷

Cho wasn't entirely convinced by that explanation. In fact, she found the term itself rather funny.

But she did not dismiss the house.

She continued to describe it as psychically active and singled it out as the most haunted house she had ever lived in.

And perhaps the most unsettling part of her story remains the simplest.

Somewhere in Peachtree City stands an otherwise ordinary house where Margaret Cho remembers lying perfectly still in bed while an invisible weight settled onto the mattress beside her.

🌲👻 After Dark on the Golf Cart Paths

The stories that follow are part of the paranormal folklore surrounding Peachtree City's wooded golf-cart paths, passed between residents and repeated in different forms.

During daylight, the paths are unmistakably Peachtree City.

Golf carts glide beneath the trees carrying families, teenagers, neighbors and visitors across a network stretching for more than one hundred miles. Some portions travel through the wooded scenery that has become one of the city's defining features.⁸

At night, those same paths can feel very different.

Beyond the neighborhoods and shopping areas, stretches of pavement disappear beneath heavy tree cover. The path curves. The headlights turn with it.

And everything beyond their reach goes dark.

🌑 The Figures in the Trees

Among the stories told about the paths are encounters with dark, human-shaped figures standing just beyond the pavement.

A rider rounds a bend and notices what at first appears to be a person standing several feet inside the tree line.

The figure doesn't approach the cart.

It doesn't wave.

It simply stands there.

Watching.

The cart continues forward and passes the spot. Someone looks back toward the trees where the figure had been standing only moments before.

There is no one there.

❄️ The Sudden Cold

Other stories begin on an otherwise warm Georgia night.

A cart is moving normally along a wooded stretch when the riders suddenly feel the temperature plunge.

It isn't described as a gradual cooling.

It is abrupt.

A pocket of intense cold in the middle of the path.

For several moments, the cart moves through it.

Then, just as suddenly, the cold is gone.

The warm night returns behind it.

🗣️ The Whispers

there are the voices.

Some of the stories told about nighttime travel along the quieter paths describe riders hearing what sounds like whispering somewhere inside the woods.

The sound seems close enough that someone aboard the cart turns toward the trees, expecting to see other people nearby.

No one is visible.

The cart keeps moving.

The voices remain somewhere beyond the path for a little longer.

Then they stop.

Line Creek provides an especially atmospheric corner of this landscape. The nature area preserves seventy acres of woodland along the creek, with granite outcroppings, almost three miles of trails, and remnants of nineteenth-century mill sites still surviving among the trees.⁹

It is beautiful country.

But after sunset, beauty and eeriness can occupy the same patch of Georgia woods.

A few yards of pavement appear beneath the headlights.

The trees stand beyond them.

And according to Peachtree City's paranormal lore, every once in a while, something may be standing there too.

🌙 What Do You Believe?

Margaret Cho has her story.

Peachtree City's paths have theirs.

After reading them, what do you believe? 👻

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📚 Sources & Notes

1. Peachtree City describes its hallmark shared-use path system as a network of more than 100 miles connecting neighborhoods, schools, parks and shopping areas through the city's wooded scenery. City of Peachtree City, “Paths & Motorized Carts.” ↩
2. Cho was living in Peachtree City during the production of Drop Dead Diva. Contemporary material from Cho's own website places her there in 2009, while her later interview with Kesha identifies the Peachtree City residence as the most haunted house she had lived in. Margaret Cho, “Groomer Has It,” May 22, 2009. ↩
3. Margaret Cho, interview on Kesha and the Creepies, “Opening a Hellmouth with Margaret Cho,” June 4, 2021. Cho identifies the house as being in Peachtree City, says she lived there for about a year, and describes it as “very active.” iHeart transcript and episode. ↩
4. In the same interview, Cho recounts lying in bed when she felt something get into the bed beside her and the mattress sink beneath its apparent weight. She remained still in fear before turning and finding nothing there. “Opening a Hellmouth with Margaret Cho.” ↩
5. Cho also recounts that after she moved out, a male co-star moved into the house. On his first day there, he went outside to smoke and, according to Cho, the door locked and dead-bolted behind him, leaving him unable to re-enter. “Opening a Hellmouth with Margaret Cho.” ↩
6. When describing her later return to the property with a psychic, Cho recalled oxygen equipment beside the beds, illness among the family then occupying the house, a bathtub broken in half, and marble countertops that had also broken. “Opening a Hellmouth with Margaret Cho.” ↩
7. Cho says she was told during the paranormal investigation that two teenage boys had supposedly performed an animal-sacrifice ritual on the property during the 1980s and opened what was described to her as a “hellmouth.” Cho herself expressed doubt about that particular explanation while continuing to characterize the house as psychically active. “Opening a Hellmouth with Margaret Cho.” ↩
8. The city's official materials describe Peachtree City's path system as more than 100 miles of shared-use paths running through wooded scenery and connecting residential, commercial, educational and recreational areas. City of Peachtree City, “Shared-Use Path System.” ↩
9. Line Creek Nature Area is a seventy-acre preserve along Line Creek with hardwood forest, granite outcroppings, almost three miles of trails and surviving remnants of dams associated with multiple nineteenth-century mills. City of Peachtree City, “Line Creek Nature Area.” ↩