ghost ships and magical thinking

Take away the cemeteries, the ghost in every room and on every corner (apparently they loiter), and all the tales of pirates, and Savannah is just another mid-size city that sells fudge to tourists.  What Savannah purchases from those romantic (and commercially exploited) stories--and what imbues it with magic--is the possibility that the past isn't really the past--that it's still with us today.  Which is just another way of thinking this: perhaps after we're long gone we'll still be around, too.