Hamilton-Turner Inn

The first electrified house in Savannah, built in 1873 by 'the Lord of Lafayette Square,' is haunted by children who roll billiard balls down the grand staircase and by multiple male figures seen on the rooftop and in the hallways. The building gained national fame through Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

Spectators gathered outside 330 Abercorn Street in 1883 to watch Samuel Pugh Hamilton turn on the lights. He'd wired the salon with Edison's new electric bulbs. The neighbors were convinced the house would explode.

It didn't. By 1886, Hamilton had wired every room. His was the first electrified residence in Savannah, and the man himself was becoming impossible to ignore. Former Confederate officer at Fort Pulaski under Colonel Lawton, jeweler who ran Hamilton's Fine Watches and Jewelry, eventually president of the Brush Electric Light and Power Company, Savannah alderman, and host of parties grand enough to earn him the neighborhood title 'Lord of Lafayette Square.' He built the seventeen-room Second Empire mansion in 1873. Wrought-iron balconies, mansard roof, the kind of street presence that makes people stop on the sidewalk.

Hamilton died in 1899. Dr. Francis Turner bought the house later and ran a medical practice out of the lower rooms. Then came Joe Odom.

If you've read Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, you know Joe Odom. John Berendt immortalized him as a charismatic hustler who managed the building and threw Gatsby-level parties in the parlor rooms through the 1980s. Odom was a lawyer, a piano player, and a world-class mooch who hosted some of the most memorable gatherings in Savannah without actually owning the building. The 1997 Clint Eastwood film shot scenes at the house. The book and movie put Lafayette Square on the national map.

The ghost stories predate the book by decades.

The most common involves children. Guests hear small footsteps running through empty rooms, giggling in the hallways, and billiard balls clacking down the grand staircase. The backstory: during one of the Hamilton-era parties, children were banished upstairs while adults celebrated below. They started rolling billiard balls toward the staircase, each one bouncing down step by step, giving them a chance to peek at the party. One girl leaned too far over the top step and fell. She died. Staff and guests still hear the ball bouncing down the stairs, thunk after thunk, sometimes followed by laughter. It happens most often after dark. No death from a fall appears in the Hamilton family archives, though. The story is local legend, passed down through Savannah's ghost tour circuit, compelling but undocumented.

Then there are the men. Several male figures have been seen throughout the building: on the rooftop, near the entrance, in the upstairs rooms. One smokes a cigar. At least one carries a rifle. The theories vary. Hamilton watching over his house. A Confederate soldier, given Hamilton's military service. An art guard who was allegedly shot in the back of the head while protecting Hamilton's collection. Some guests think it's one ghost appearing in different ways. Others insist they're separate presences entirely.

Footprints have appeared pressed into bedroom carpet that nobody has walked on. When the building sat vacant between owners, neighbors reported hearing gunshots from inside.

There's a rumor that Walt Disney used the Hamilton-Turner Inn as inspiration for the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland. The architectural details, the balconies, the mansard roof, the grand interior do bear a resemblance. But Disney's Imagineers drew from dozens of sources, and no official Disney material names this building.

Charlie and Sue Strickland restored it as a luxury inn in 1997, saving it from slow decline. The Historic Savannah Association had already intervened once, in 1965, to prevent demolition.

The Hamilton-Turner Inn sits at the corner of Lafayette Square, a block from the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist. Hamilton electrified his house a decade before anyone else in Savannah. Joe Odom threw legendary parties without owning the place. Children keep rolling billiard balls down the staircase. Berendt only needed one book. The building has enough material for several.