Haunted Places in Georgia: 10 Sites With Real History

This article contains affiliate links. If you buy through them, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.

Most haunted places in Georgia are in Savannah, a city founded in 1733 whose old squares, hotels, and cemeteries carry yellow fever epidemics, Civil War occupation, and one famous 1981 shooting. Below are 10 haunted places in Georgia, nine in or near Savannah plus the Andersonville prison site, each split into what the record supports and what is only told as legend. Most of the ghost stories come from ghost-tour operators and paranormal TV, not from independent documentation, and we say so wherever that is the case.

Quick answer if you're short on time: Of the haunted places in Georgia listed here, Bonaventure Cemetery, Colonial Park Cemetery, and the Marshall House are the easiest to visit on your own, the Mercer-Williams House is the most famous thanks to Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, and Andersonville is the best-documented tragedy.

1. Sorrel-Weed House (Savannah)

The Sorrel-Weed House was designed by architect Charles Cluskey for shipping merchant Francis Sorrel and was built around 1840. Henry D. Weed bought it in 1859, and the Weed family kept it until 1914. It was named a Georgia state landmark in 1954 and added to the National Register of Historic Places on November 13, 1966. The ghost story among the haunted places in Georgia that tour guides tell most often involves Sorrel's second wife, Matilda, who died by suicide around 1859, and a young enslaved woman named Molly said to have been involved with Sorrel. Our sources say no historical record from the Sorrel family mentions an enslaved woman named Molly, and the museum's own review of family papers does not support the scandalous version. The house appeared in a 2005 Ghost Hunters Halloween special and a 2014 Ghost Adventures episode.

Can you visit: Yes, through the house museum's tours, including evening ghost tours. Check current hours and ticketing.

2. Bonaventure Cemetery (Savannah)

Bonaventure was established in 1846 on the grounds of the former Bonaventure Plantation, and the City of Savannah bought it in 1907. The grounds cover about 160 acres on a bluff above the Wilmington River. John Berendt's 1994 book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil made it famous, and the “Bird Girl” statue from the book's cover was moved to the Telfair Museums in 1997. Gracie Watson (1883-1889), the six-year-old daughter of a hotel manager, died of pneumonia and has a life-size statue there. The folk tale that her spirit lingers at the grave, and at the site of her family's former hotel, is local lore with no documentation.

Can you visit: Yes. The cemetery is open daily with no admission fee (about 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.). Respect the graves, and do not rub or climb on the monuments.

3. Hamilton-Turner Inn (Savannah)

Samuel Pugh Hamilton, an alderman known as “the Lord of Lafayette Square,” built the Second Empire mansion at 330 Abercorn Street in 1873. It was reportedly the first home in Savannah with electricity, with lights installed in 1883. The Cathedral of St. John the Baptist bought it in 1965 intending to demolish it, and the Historic Savannah Foundation stepped in to save it. It became an inn around 1997 and appears in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil through the parties of its then-resident Joe Odom. Ghost reports connected to the house come from the inn's marketing and ghost-tour guides; we found no independent record of any of them.

Can you visit: Yes, as a guest. It operates as a bed-and-breakfast inn, and it is among the more comfortable haunted places in Georgia to stay in.

4. The Marshall House (Savannah)

Mary Marshall opened the hotel on Broughton Street in 1851 during Savannah's railroad boom. The building served as a hospital during yellow fever epidemics in the mid-1800s and as a Union hospital in the last months of the Civil War, after Sherman's troops occupied Savannah in December 1864. Joel Chandler Harris, the author of the Uncle Remus stories, lived there during Reconstruction. The hotel closed in 1957 and reopened after a restoration in 1999. The hospital history is documented. The ghost reports from guests and tour guides, which describe footsteps and apparitions of wounded soldiers, are not.

Can you visit: Yes. It is a working hotel and is billed as Savannah's oldest operating one.

5. Moon River Brewing Company (Savannah)

The brewpub occupies the former City Hotel, built in 1821 by Eleazer Early and described as Savannah's first hotel. It housed a post office branch and a branch of the Bank of the United States, and guests included Lafayette and John James Audubon. Hurricane damage in 1979 left it vacant until a 1995 renovation, and the brewery opened on April 10, 1999. Its haunted reputation was built largely by television: Ghost Hunters (2005), Ghost Adventures (2009), and BuzzFeed Unsolved: Supernatural (2018). We did not find a documented death that explains the stories attached to the building.

Can you visit: Yes, as a customer of the brewpub and restaurant.

6. Colonial Park Cemetery (Savannah)

Colonial Park opened in 1750 and closed to burials in 1853. More than 700 victims of Savannah's 1820 yellow fever epidemic are buried there, along with Button Gwinnett, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. After Union troops occupied Savannah on December 24, 1864, several hundred soldiers were quartered at the site, and they reportedly defaced markers and altered dates and ages, which is the documented origin of some of its odd inscriptions. The cemetery became a city park in 1896 and holds about 9,000 graves on six acres. Ghost-tour accounts of apparitions are legend, and the standard encyclopedia entry for the site does not mention any.

Can you visit: Yes. It is a free public park in the historic district. Walk the paths and leave the gravestones alone.

7. Mercer-Williams House (Savannah)

John S. Norris designed the Italianate house for General Hugh Mercer. Construction began in 1860, the Civil War interrupted it, and cotton merchant John Randolph Wilder finished it around 1868. Nobody named Mercer ever lived there. Antiques dealer Jim Williams bought the run-down house in 1969 for $55,000 and restored it. In 1981 he shot Danny Hansford, his assistant, in the study. Williams was tried four times and acquitted, and he died in 1990. Berendt's 1994 book and the 1997 film made it the best-known of the haunted places in Georgia. Guides say Hansford's ghost haunted Williams and that Williams consulted a voodoo practitioner. Those claims come from tour operators, not from court records. For the folk-magic background behind such stories, see our guide to hoodoo and American conjure.

Can you visit: Partly. The Mercer Williams House Museum offers guided tours of limited parts of the house, and its operating schedule has changed in recent years, so confirm before you go.

8. The Pirates' House (Savannah)

The Herb House, built in 1734 on the Trustees' Garden grounds, is said to be the oldest building in Georgia. The Pirates' House restaurant opened in 1953, run by Herb Traub and Jim Casey after the building was saved from demolition. The famous story is that sailors were drugged and carried through tunnels to waiting ships, a practice called shanghaiing. The record supports a tunnel: during a 1960s renovation a tunnel was found running toward the river, probably for smuggling. The shanghaiing is the part we could not confirm, and the footsteps and apparitions that staff report are anecdotal.

Can you visit: Yes, as a restaurant. It is a regular stop on Savannah ghost tours.

9. Old Candler Hospital (Savannah)

Candler Hospital began in 1803 as a seamen's hospital and poorhouse, was incorporated in 1808 as the Savannah Poor House and Hospital Society, and moved to Gaston Street in 1819, where it stayed for about 160 years. After Union forces occupied Savannah, it served as a Union hospital until 1866. The Methodist Church bought it in 1930 and renamed it for Bishop Warren A. Candler, and the original building is now owned by the Savannah College of Art and Design. Ghost tours describe apparitions of soldiers and a tunnel under Forsyth Park used for the dead. Those are tour claims; the hospital's role in epidemics and the war is the documented part.

Can you visit: Not on your own. It is a college-owned building, so see it from the street or on a ghost tour that stops there.

10. Andersonville Prison (Andersonville)

Confederate authorities opened the Andersonville prison in February 1864, and it operated until April 1865. About 45,000 Union prisoners were held there, and nearly 13,000 died, mostly of scurvy and dysentery. Its commander, Captain Henry Wirz, was hanged on November 10, 1865, in Washington, D.C., the only Confederate officer executed for war crimes. Today it is the Andersonville National Historic Site, with a national cemetery and the National Prisoner of War Museum. Reports of voices and figures at dusk come from enthusiast websites, and the park service treats the site as a memorial. Among the haunted places in Georgia, this one is first of all a place of mass death, and it deserves a quiet visit.

Can you visit: Yes. It is a National Park Service site in rural southwest Georgia, free to enter, with a museum, the former prison grounds, and the cemetery.

What's Actually Verifiable

Across these haunted places in Georgia, the founding dates, epidemics, occupations, and the 1981 shooting are documented. The ghosts mostly are not. The Sorrel-Weed “Molly” story has no support in Sorrel family records, and the shanghaiing tunnels at the Pirates' House are legend even though a real tunnel turned up in the 1960s. Much of what is told on a Savannah ghost tour is entertainment, which does not make the history behind it any less real.

Visiting Haunted Places in Georgia Responsibly

Haunted places in Georgia range from public parks and cemeteries to hotels, restaurants, and private or college-owned buildings. Stay on public property, book official tours, and do not enter closed buildings. Trespassing is illegal, and cemeteries are real burial grounds. Savannah's historic district is walkable, but check current hours and tour schedules before you plan a day around any one stop. For the wider American picture, see our guide to haunted places in the United States, and for sites that welcome visitors, our list of real haunted places you can actually visit on Halloween.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the most haunted place in Georgia?

There is no objective ranking of haunted places in Georgia. The Sorrel-Weed House and the Mercer-Williams House in Savannah are the most promoted, and Andersonville is the best documented as a site of mass death. Treat any “most haunted” label as marketing, since the ghosts are unproven and the history is what can be checked.

Why is Savannah so haunted?

Savannah's reputation rests on its history: yellow fever epidemics, Union occupation from December 1864, old cemeteries in the middle of the city, and a thriving ghost-tour industry. The 1994 book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil added to the fame. None of this proves any haunting, and the stories are mostly told by tour operators.

Can you visit the haunted places in Georgia on your own?

Many of them, yes. Bonaventure Cemetery, Colonial Park Cemetery, the Marshall House, the Pirates' House, and Moon River Brewing are open to the public, and Andersonville is a free National Park Service site. The Mercer-Williams House runs limited tours, and Old Candler Hospital is a college building you can only view from outside. Always confirm hours first.

Is the Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil story true?

Partly. Jim Williams was a real Savannah antiques dealer who shot Danny Hansford in 1981 and was tried four times before an acquittal, and he died in 1990. Berendt wrote about real people, but his book is a work of narrative nonfiction, and the supernatural elements are folklore added by guides, not court findings.

Is Little Gracie Watson's ghost real?

Gracie Watson was a real child who died of pneumonia in 1889 at age six, and her statue stands in Bonaventure Cemetery. The idea that her spirit appears at the grave is a local folk tale with no independent documentation. The statue is a real artwork commissioned by her parents.

Is it legal to explore abandoned haunted places in Georgia?

Not without permission. Entering a closed building or private land without the owner's consent is trespassing, and cemeteries have posted hours. The legal ways to see these sites are the official tours and public visiting hours listed above, which also give you better history than a flashlight and a dare.