Most Haunted Places in Savannah, and a Self-Guided Walk

Everything below sits in or just outside the Historic District, and the stories are exactly that, stories. Guides tell them, ghost-hunting TV shows have filmed at several of the houses, and local writers have spent real effort debunking some of them. Historical facts such as build dates and deaths are stated as fact, hauntings are not.

The table is your planning sheet for the walk that follows.

Use this table to decide which stops matter to you, then string them into the route in the self-guided section.

One more name you will hear: Bonaventure Cemetery, 160 acres on a bluff over the Wilmington River southeast of downtown, a cemetery since 1846 and free to enter daily from 8 am to 5 pm. It holds the graves of Johnny Mercer, Conrad Aiken and Little Gracie Watson. The Bird Girl statue from the Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil cover left in 1997 and now stands in the Telfair Museums' Jepson Center, so do not go looking for it among the oaks.

Colonial Park Cemetery

This is the anchor of any haunted walk. Established in 1750 and expanded three times by 1789 to about six acres, it is the oldest intact municipal cemetery in Savannah, with over nine thousand graves and no burials since 1853. The hard history is heavy enough without embellishment.

More than 700 victims of the 1820 yellow fever epidemic lie here. Button Gwinnett, a signer of the Declaration of Independence killed in a 1777 duel, is buried or memorialised here, and historians still debate whether his monument marks the actual grave. Nathanael Greene lay in the Graham vault from 1786 until 1901, sharing it for a time with his British rival John Maitland.

After Union troops occupied the city on 24 December 1864, several hundred soldiers camped among the stones and allegedly damaged markers and altered dates. The marker called the Duelist's Grave remembers poet James Wilde, killed in a duel fought across the river in South Carolina. For the full names, vault history and visiting rules, see our Colonial Park Cemetery: History, Graves, Hours and Ghost Stories guide.

Wright Square and the stories guides tell

Wright Square was laid out in 1733 as Percival Square and renamed in 1763 for the royal governor James Wright. The Creek leader Tomochichi was buried at its centre in 1739. Ghost walks add a darker layer: the story goes that Alice Riley, hanged in the square in the 1730s for murder, haunts it still.

That is legend, reported as legend on every tour that passes. If you would rather hear it told by a guide, the 90-minute Savannah Candlelit Ghost Walking Tour departs from a sidewalk facing Chippewa Square and walks the Historic District squares by lantern light.

Colonial Park closes at night, and no tour enters after hours. Every ghost walk in town tells its stories from the sidewalk on Abercorn Street, which means a self-guided visitor by day has actually seen more of it than most tour guests ever will.

The Sorrel-Weed House

At 6 West Harris Street on Madison Square stands one of Savannah's largest houses, about 10,000 square feet of Greek Revival and Regency built between 1835 and 1840 by architect Charles B. Cluskey for shipping merchant Francis Sorrel. The documented history is grim enough. Sorrel's wife Matilda died by suicide, and Sorrel held enslaved people on the property, with quarters still standing on the courtyard.

Guides tell a story that Matilda jumped from a balcony after discovering a relationship between Francis and an enslaved woman called Molly, who was later found hanged. The historian Tiya Miles, who toured the house, notes the suicide is documented but there are no records of a Molly in the family papers. The house appeared on Ghost Hunters in 2005, Ghost Adventures in 2014 and BuzzFeed Unsolved, and it now runs daytime history tours, night ghost tours and paranormal events from its Bull Street courtyard.

Our Sorrel-Weed House, Savannah: History, Tours and the Molly Story post sorts fact from legend in detail.

The Mercer Williams House and 432 Abercorn

The Mercer Williams House at 429 Bull Street on Monterey Square was built between 1860 and 1868 for General Hugh W. Mercer, though nobody named Mercer ever lived in it. Jim Williams bought it in 1969, and the 1981 shooting of Danny Hansford in the study became the story behind Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, the 1994 book and 1997 film. It is a museum you can enter by day.

One block east, on Calhoun Square, 432 Abercorn Street, the Benjamin Wilson House, draws crowds for rumours that local writers have actively tried to debunk. It is a private residence. Look from the sidewalk, take your photo and move on, because there is nothing to enter and someone lives there.

Museums, a ship chandlery and a house you can investigate

The Andrew Low House at 329 Abercorn Street on Lafayette Square was built in 1849 by John S. Norris for Andrew Low, father-in-law of Juliette Gordon Low, founder of the Girl Scouts. You can visit by day as a museum, and at night it is the one haunted house the Ghosts and Gravestones trolley actually enters. That trolley also goes inside the Perkins and Sons Ship Chandlery, a restored 19th-century shipping warehouse on River Street.

If you want the hands-on version, the paranormal investigation at 416 W Liberty Street puts ghost-hunting equipment and EVP recording in your own hands for 90 minutes indoors. The listing ties the house to Revolutionary War battles and a triple-axe murder, and the format is an investigation, not a storytelling walk.

Several of the most-mentioned haunted addresses are working businesses you can walk into tonight without any ticket at all. The Marshall House at 123 E Broughton Street, built in 1851 and used as a Union hospital after December 1864, is now a hotel whose ghost stories centre on the hospital years. The Kehoe House at 123 Habersham Street on Columbia Square was built in 1892, served as a funeral home for part of the 1900s and is now an inn.

The Hamilton-Turner Inn at 330 Abercorn Street faces Lafayette Square.

The eating and drinking stops are just as easy. Moon River Brewing at 21 W Bay Street occupies the former City Hotel building of 1821 and has appeared on both Ghost Hunters and Ghost Adventures. The Olde Pink House at 23 Abercorn Street is a restaurant in the 18th-century Habersham house, where stories say James Habersham Jr. appears in the tavern downstairs.

The Pirates' House at 20 East Broad Street has an Herb House section dating from 1734, and Robert Louis Stevenson put Captain Flint's last days there in Treasure Island. If stories over a drink sound right, the haunted pub crawl runs 7:30 pm starts from Madison Square with 3 to 5 stops, 21 and over, and every drink paid at the bar under the city's to-go cup rules. The zone runs from the river south to Jones Street, cups are paper or plastic, 16 fluid ounces maximum, and you can carry only one drink at a time.

The loop below is about 3.0 miles (4.9 km) on flat city streets, around 70 minutes of walking before you stop anywhere, longer if you enter the Mercer Williams House or Colonial Park Cemetery. Do it in daylight if you want to go inside anything, because the cemetery and the museum houses keep day hours. Do it after dark for atmosphere, which costs nothing and is entirely legal on public streets and squares.

Work through the stops in this order: you start by the river and finish on Calhoun Square, south of the busiest blocks.

• Start at the Pirates' House, 20 E Broad St, whose Herb House section dates from 1734
• Walk west to the Olde Pink House, 23 Abercorn St, on Reynolds Square
• Drop north to River Street and its old cotton warehouses
• Climb back to Bay Street for Moon River Brewing, 21 W Bay St, in the 1821 City Hotel building
• Head south on Bull Street to Wright Square for the Tomochichi and Alice Riley stories
• Walk east to the Marshall House, 123 E Broughton St, the 1851 hotel that served as a Union hospital
• Continue to Colonial Park Cemetery, 200 Abercorn St, open by day only
• Detour east to the Kehoe House on Columbia Square
• Cross to Madison Square for the Sorrel-Weed House, 6 W Harris St
• Walk to Lafayette Square for the Andrew Low House, 329 Abercorn St
• Pass the Hamilton-Turner Inn, 330 Abercorn St, on the same square
• Go south to Monterey Square and the Mercer Williams House, 429 Bull St
• Finish one block east at 432 Abercorn St on Calhoun Square, a private house, exterior only

Two practical rules. First, the weather is the main variable: June through August average about 12 rainy days a month and summer evenings stay hot and humid, so October, November and March through May give the mildest walking evenings. Bring water either way.

Second, do not photograph or knock at 432 Abercorn Street beyond a quick respectful look. It is a private home, and the local debunkers who have written about it would rather the crowds moved along.

Both paths visit the same streets. The difference is what happens at the door. A self-guided walker sees more of Colonial Park Cemetery than any tour guest, because tours only view it from the street.

A tour guest, on the other hand, steps inside the Andrew Low House after dark or holds an EVP recorder in a house on West Liberty Street, which no independent visitor can do. This table puts the two side by side on the things that actually decide it.

If you go guided, the choice is mostly about format. Families suit the Fraidy Cat family-friendly walk, which starts at the fountain in Columbia Square and runs gentle rather than terrifying. Adults who want darker material pick the Dead of Night Adults-Only Ghost Walking Tour, which meets at the Nathanael Greene Monument in Johnson Square and explicitly excludes building entry, so it competes directly with the free walk on access and wins on storytelling only.

The lantern-lit classic covers the same squares and runs departures from 5 pm through 9:30 pm.

This is where expectations get calibrated. The internet makes it sound like every haunted house in Savannah sells ghost tour tickets through its front door. Only a few do, and the list is short.

What you can genuinely go inside, and how.

• Colonial Park Cemetery, free, 8 am to 5 pm November to March and 8 am to 8 pm March to November, closed at night
• Sorrel-Weed House, daytime history tours plus night ghost tours and paranormal events, meet in the Bull Street courtyard, tickets by phone or in person, an admission fee applies
• Mercer Williams House, as a paying museum visitor by day
• Andrew Low House, by day as a museum, or at night only on the Ghosts and Gravestones trolley
• 416 W Liberty Street, only on the guided paranormal investigation, night slots, no one under 13
• Savannah Paranormal Museum at 415 W Boundary St, included after hours on the paranormal museum trolley
• Bonaventure Cemetery, free daily 8 am to 5 pm, southeast of downtown so you need your own ride
• Marshall House, Kehoe House, Hamilton-Turner Inn, Moon River Brewing, Olde Pink House and Pirates' House, as a paying guest or customer

Everything else on the haunted lists, including 432 Abercorn Street, is exterior-only. Two formats sold outside the booking platforms this site compares also exist: hearse ghost tours in restored hearses, sold on the operator's own site with prices shown only at booking, and horse-drawn carriage ghost tours sold directly by carriage companies. Neither has a verified price here.

Start with the free loop and you will know within an hour how much narration you actually want. The squares and streets carry the atmosphere on their own, and by day you can go further into the cemetery and the museum houses than most ticket holders ever get. When you decide you want the stories told properly after dark, compare the current listings on our page of ghost tours in Savannah, Georgia and pick the format that matches your night.