Savannah's Haunted Squares: Spanish Moss, Piracy, and Gothic Mansions
A journey through the cobblestones of America's most haunted city—from General Oglethorpe's grid to shadowy crypts and antebellum legends
Savannah · 7 stops · 9 min audio · Generated
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1. Johnson Square: The Birthplace of Georgia
Bull St & E St Julian St, Savannah, GA 31401
Stand in the shade of the live oak trees in Johnson Square and listen to the splash of the twin stone fountains. Laid out in seventeen thirty-three, this was the very first of General James Oglethorpe's twenty-four planned communal squares, designed to serve as defensive assembly points and social commons for the new colony of Georgia.
Look at the soaring white obelisk in the center of the square: it marks the grave of Major General Nathanael Greene, George Washington's brilliant second-in-command during the Revolutionary War, whose tactical genius liberated the Carolinas and Georgia from British forces.
Facing the square is Christ Church, the mother church of Georgia, where John Wesley served as minister in seventeen thirty-six and founded America's first Sunday school before returning to England to establish Methodism. Beneath the square's soil lie early colonial graves from epidemics of yellow fever.
Walk south along Bull Street beneath hanging tendrils of Spanish moss toward Wright Square.
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2. Wright Square: Tomochichi's Boulder and The Hanging Tree
Bull St & W State St, Savannah, GA 31401
Step into Wright Square and pause beside the massive, rough-hewn granite boulder resting in the grass. This primitive boulder honors Chief Tomochichi of the Yamacraw tribe, the indigenous leader who welcomed Oglethorpe and ensured the peaceful survival of Georgia's first settlers.
When Tomochichi passed away in seventeen thirty-nine, he requested burial among his English friends in this square. Decades later, when railroad magnate William Washington Gordon's monument was erected directly over Tomochichi's grave, civic outrage eventually prompted the placement of this ancient granite stone from Stone Mountain to restore honor to the chief.
Wright Square is also renowned in Savannah ghost folklore as the site of the town gallows, where early convicted felons, including Alice Riley in seventeen thirty-five, were executed. Visitors frequently report inexplicable chills beneath the weeping moss.
Continue south down Bull Street into Chippewa Square.
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3. Chippewa Square: From Forrest Gump to Historic Footlights
Bull St & Perry St, Savannah, GA 31401
Walk toward the center of Chippewa Square, where the bronze figure of General James Oglethorpe stands atop a marble pedestal, sword at his side, facing south toward Spanish Florida as if perpetually guarding Georgia's frontier. The square was laid out in eighteen fifteen to honor American soldiers who fought at the Battle of Chippawa.
Look toward the northern curb of the square: this is the exact spot where Tom Hanks sat on a fiberglass park bench in the nineteen ninety-four film Forrest Gump, sharing chocolates and life philosophies with strangers. The bench was later moved to the Savannah History Museum to protect it from overzealous souvenir hunters.
On the east side of the square stands the Savannah Theatre, founded in eighteen eighteen. It is one of the oldest continuously operating playhouses in the United States, surviving three disastrous fires and hosting theatrical legends from Edwin Booth to Lillian Russell.
Walk two blocks south along Bull Street to Madison Square.
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4. Sorrel-Weed House & Madison Square: Antebellum Grandeur
6 W Harris St, Savannah, GA 31401
Stand before the towering ocher stucco facade and iron filigree balconies of the Sorrel-Weed House on Madison Square. Designed by renowned architect Charles Cluskey in eighteen forty for wealthy shipping merchant Francis Sorrel, this sixteen-thousand-square-foot palace is one of the finest examples of Greek Revival architecture in Georgia.
General Robert E. Lee was a close family friend of the Sorrels and stayed in this very house in eighteen sixty-one while planning coastal fortifications. In the center of the square stands the monument to Sergeant William Jasper, the revolutionary hero who fell during the bloody Siege of Savannah in seventeen seventy-nine while attempting to plant the patriot flag.
The house is widely claimed to be among the most haunted locations in America, with stories centering on the tragic suicide of Matilda Sorrel and lingering shadows from the revolutionary battle that soaked this square's ground in blood decades before the house was built.
Continue south toward Monterey Square and the gothic grandeur of the Mercer House.
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5. Mercer Williams House & Monterey Square: Midnight Secrets
429 Bull St, Savannah, GA 31401
Look up at the red-brick walls and ornate cast-iron balconies of the Mercer Williams House, set behind wrought-iron fences on Monterey Square. Begun in eighteen sixty for General Hugh Mercer, great-grandfather of songwriter Johnny Mercer, the house became world-famous through John Berendt's nineteen ninety-four non-fiction book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.
Antique dealer and preservationist Jim Williams bought and painstakingly restored the derelict mansion in nineteen sixty-nine. In May nineteen eighty-one, inside Williams's downstairs study, the fatal shooting of his assistant Danny Hansford occurred, leading to four sensational murder trials before Williams was finally acquitted.
In the center of Monterey Square rises the soaring Pulaski Monument, honoring Polish nobleman Casimir Pulaski, the Father of the American Cavalry, who gave his life for American independence during the Siege of Savannah. His mortal remains were reburied beneath this monument.
Walk two blocks further south to the great green expanse of Forsyth Park.
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6. Forsyth Park: The Victorian Cast Iron Fountain
Drayton St & W Gaston St, Savannah, GA 31401
Walk down the long, shaded walkway beneath arches of Spanish moss until you stand before the dazzling white cast-iron spray of the Forsyth Park Fountain. Unveiled in eighteen fifty-eight, this iconic fountain was modeled after the grand fountains of the Place de la Concorde in Paris, ordered straight from the catalog of the Janes, Beebe and Company foundry in New York.
Look closely at the sculpted tritons, mermen, and spouting swans at the base: every Saint Patrick's Day, Savannah continues a joyous civic tradition where the mayor pours green dye into the fountain, turning the foaming spray a brilliant emerald hue to kick off one of the largest Irish celebrations in North America.
During the Civil War in eighteen sixty-four, Union General William Tecumseh Sherman's troops camped across these thirty acres of greenspace after completing their March to the Sea, sparing Savannah from burning because of its unmatched beauty.
Head north toward the river bluffs to finish your tour at Factors Walk and The Pirates' House.
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7. Factors Walk & The Pirates' House: Cobblestones and Smugglers
20 E Broad St, Savannah, GA 31401
Step onto the ballast stone paving of Factors Walk and walk toward the weathered timbers of The Pirates' House near the Savannah River bluff. Built in seventeen fifty-three as an inn for seafarers and visiting merchants, this is recognized as the oldest standing structure in Georgia.
The cobblestones under your feet arrived as ballast in the hulls of sailing ships from Europe. The river bluff's network of iron bridges and cotton factors' offices was where brokers, known as factors, graded millions of pounds of Sea Island cotton that drove the nineteenth-century world textile market.
Down in the tavern cellar of The Pirates' House, legendary tunnels led straight out to the river docks. Unwitting sailors were frequently drugged with rum, dropped through trapdoors, and shanghaied onto outbound merchant clippers. Robert Louis Stevenson mentioned this inn in Treasure Island, noting that Captain Flint drew his last breath in an upstairs room.
Look out toward the muddy Savannah River as the evening fog rolls in over three centuries of romance and southern gothic mystery.