Savannah Through Ghost Stories: The Haunted History of America's Most Atmospheric City
Savannah calls itself the most haunted city in America. I'm a skeptic by nature. But after three nights walking under Spanish moss at midnight, past Colonial Park Cemetery where yellow fever victims are buried in mass graves, through squares where dueling pistols settled arguments — I'll admit the atmosphere gets to you.
This isn't about whether ghosts are real. It's about why Savannah makes you wonder.
Why Savannah Is Special for This Theme
Most "haunted" cities have a few old buildings and a gift shop. Savannah has something different: an unbroken record of 291 years of human drama concentrated in a 2.5-square-mile historic district where almost nothing has been demolished.
The city survived the Revolutionary War, the Civil War (Sherman refused to burn it), multiple yellow fever epidemics, fires, hurricanes, and two centuries of poverty that prevented modernization. The result: buildings from the 1730s sitting next to buildings from the 1850s sitting next to buildings from the 1920s. Every structure has absorbed its own history.
Add Spanish moss that drapes every live oak like mourning fabric, and 22 squares that become shadowed, enclosed spaces after dark, and you have a city that was essentially designed — accidentally — for ghost stories.
Top 10 Haunted Experiences
1. Ghost City Tours Walking Tour
The best walking ghost tour in Savannah. Ninety minutes through the historic district hitting Colonial Park Cemetery, haunted inns, and sites connected to Savannah's most violent and tragic events.
Cost: $25-35. Tours depart from City Market at 8PM and 9:30PM. The guides are trained actors and historians who know how to pace a story. Even confirmed skeptics find themselves looking over their shoulders by the end.
The midnight tour is worth the later hour — fewer pedestrians, darker streets, better atmosphere.
2. Hearse Ghost Tours
You ride in a converted funeral hearse through the historic district while a guide narrates from the driver's seat. It's campy and brilliant.
Cost: $25. Ninety minutes. The hearse seats about 6 passengers. Book at hearseghosttours.com. The vehicle-based format covers more ground than walking tours and hits sites in quieter parts of the district that walking tours skip.
3. Colonial Park Cemetery After Hours
The cemetery is open daily 8AM-5PM (free). But ghost tours pass through the perimeter after dark, and the view through the iron fence — tilted headstones under twisted oaks in amber streetlight — is one of the most atmospheric sights in any American city.
The cemetery holds victims of the 1820 yellow fever epidemic. Mass graves hold hundreds of bodies. Vandals in the 1800s altered dates on headstones to make deaths appear more dramatic. The boundary wall on the south side may contain bodies within the brickwork.
A guided daytime visit (through Sixth Sense Savannah, $20, 90 min) provides historical context that makes the nighttime atmosphere even more potent.
4. The Mercer-Williams House
This is the house from "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil." Jim Williams, an antiques dealer, shot his assistant Danny Hansford here in 1981. Williams was tried four times (the most trials for a single crime in Georgia history) before being acquitted. He died in the house six months later.
Museum tour: $13. The guide tells the story with appropriate dramatic weight. The house itself is gorgeous — built by the great-grandfather of songwriter Johnny Mercer — and the events that happened inside give every room an edge.
5. Bonaventure Cemetery
Forget the ghost tours for a moment. Bonaventure is hauntingly beautiful in broad daylight.
A Victorian cemetery on a bluff above the Wilmington River, 160 acres of oak-shaded paths, elaborate monuments, and river views. The Bird Girl statue (photographed for the cover of "Midnight in the Garden") has been moved to the Telfair Museum, but the cemetery's atmosphere remains overwhelming.
Free entry. Open daily 8AM-5PM. Guided tours: $20-30 (1.5 hours). Go at golden hour — the light through the moss creates shadows that photographers travel from around the world to capture.
6. Sorrel-Weed House
Reportedly Savannah's most haunted building. The 1840 Greek Revival mansion has been featured on Ghost Hunters, Ghost Adventures, and seemingly every paranormal TV show.
The dark history: Matilda Sorrel, wife of the original owner, allegedly jumped from the balcony after discovering her husband's affair with a household slave. Both the slave quarters and the main house are said to be active with paranormal phenomena.
Tours: $20-30. The basement tour is the most intense. Whether or not you believe, the architecture alone is worth the visit.
7. Moon River Brewing Company
A brewpub in a building that was formerly a hotel, a bank, and a post office. Staff and customers have reported full-body apparitions, objects moving, and aggressive encounters in the upper floors (which are closed to the public).
The beer is genuinely good (Slow Voodoo Pilsner, $7/pint). The ghost stories are told on signage throughout the building. You can drink a craft beer in a reportedly haunted building. That's a Savannah Tuesday.
8. Davenport House Museum
An 1820 Federal-style house that was nearly demolished in 1955 before a group of women saved it — launching Savannah's historic preservation movement. The ghost stories here are gentler: the sound of children playing in empty rooms, a cat that appears on the staircase.
Tour: $10. The architectural history is the real draw — this is the house that started Savannah's commitment to preservation. Without the Davenport House, the entire historic district might have been bulldozed for parking lots.
9. Wormsloe at Dusk
The 1.5-mile avenue of 400+ live oaks at Wormsloe Historic Site is dramatic at any hour. But at 4:30PM in winter, when the light comes through the canopy at an angle and the moss catches the last sun, it becomes the single most Gothic-looking place in the American South.
Entry: $10. Open Tuesday-Sunday 9AM-5PM. The drive is 10 miles south of downtown. Even if you skip everything else on this list, see Wormsloe.
10. A Self-Guided Square Walk After 10PM
No tour needed. Just walk the squares after dark.
Start at Johnson Square (the oldest, 1733). Walk south through Wright Square, past the boulder marking Tomochichi's grave. Continue to Chippewa Square (where the Forrest Gump bench scene was filmed — the bench is now at the Savannah History Museum). End at Monterey Square, surrounded by iron-fenced mansions.
Each square at night is a small, enclosed park with gas-style lamps, oak shadows, and near-silence. The transition between the busy restaurant streets and the quiet squares is jarring. And that open-container law means you can carry a drink the entire walk.
Bring a to-go cup from any bar. Walk slowly. Let Savannah do what Savannah does.
Best Time for Haunted Savannah
October. Not just because of Halloween (though Savannah does Halloween spectacularly). October has the best atmospheric conditions: warm enough for evening walking (18-24°C), low enough humidity that the moss hangs without drooping, and early sunsets (6:30PM) that give you more darkness to work with.
Budget for a Ghost-Themed Weekend
Experience
Cost
Ghost City Tours walking tour
$30
Hearse Ghost Tours
$25
Mercer-Williams House
$13
Bonaventure Cemetery guided tour
$25
Sorrel-Weed House
$25
Wormsloe Historic Site
$10
Moon River Brewing (beers)
$20
Total
~$148
Add $120-250/night for a hotel in the historic district, and you have a weekend that costs less than a single night at a Disney resort but delivers infinitely more atmosphere. For more insights, check out our Your 14 Biggest Savannah Questions, Answered Honestly. For more insights, check out our seasonal guide.
Savannah doesn't need ghosts to be extraordinary. The oaks and moss, the squares and shadows, the weight of 291 years in a compact, walkable grid — that's enough. But the ghost stories add a layer. They force you to look at buildings differently, to imagine what the walls absorbed, to walk a little slower and listen a little harder.
And on a quiet October evening, walking through Monterey Square with a to-go bourbon and Spanish moss swaying overhead — even a skeptic might pause and wonder.
