Hamilton-Turner Inn

They used to call him the Lord of Lafayette Square.

Samuel Pugh Hamilton built this house in 1873, and he built it to be seen. Seventeen rooms, in the grand French Empire style, towering over the square like he owned every inch of it... which, in a way, he did.

Hamilton was an alderman, and later the mayor of Savannah. Grand Master of the Knights Templar. And when the future arrived in this city, he made sure it arrived here first.

In 1883, this became the very first house in Savannah wired for electric light. While the rest of the city still burned gas and candles, Hamilton's windows glowed with something almost nobody in Savannah had ever seen before.

Power, and the appearance of power, were the same thing to a man like that. And people who build houses to be envied... tend to leave something behind when they go.

The Hamilton family eventually sold the house, and in 1915, Dr. Francis Turner bought it, running his medical practice from the courtyard level while his family lived upstairs.

For decades afterward, this grand house became whatever Savannah needed it to be... a boarding house, a home for nurses working at the Marine Hospital, and later a private residence again under a woman named Nancy Hillis, who lived here and operated it for years before it finally became the inn that welcomes guests today.

This house has held mayors, doctors, nurses, boarders, and travelers from every corner of the world.

Maybe that's why so many different kinds of spirits seem to have stayed behind.

Guests on the upper floors report the sound of children... giggling in empty hallways, small feet running where no children are staying.

In the game room, more than one guest has heard the distinct crack of billiard balls colliding, only to walk inside and find the table untouched, the balls sitting exactly where they were left.

Marbles have been heard rolling across floors above rooms with nobody in them.

Then there's the figure on the roof.

Guests and staff, across many years, describe seeing a man along the roofline, pacing slowly back and forth, the orange glow of a cigar visible in the darkness.

Some say he carries a rifle over his shoulder, walking his post like a sentry who never received the order to stand down.

Local legend holds that he may have been a guard employed by Hamilton, killed while on duty... though no surviving record confirms exactly who he was or how he died.

He simply appears, paces... and is gone.

Inside, guests describe cold spots in rooms that should be warm, doors that knock from the other side with nobody there, and the unmistakable feeling of not being alone... even in a room with the door locked from the inside.

Samuel Hamilton wanted this to be the brightest, most watched house on Lafayette Square.

Maybe it still is.

It seems whatever stayed behind here never learned how to stop keeping watch.