In Brief
At the Hamilton-Turner Inn in Savannah, Georgia, guests and guides keep reporting a cigar-smoking man pacing the mansard roof after dark, sometimes with a rifle. The story ties him to a watchman shot in the back of the head — and to the owner who took over the roof himself.
The Full Story
At the Hamilton-Turner Inn in Savannah, Georgia, people keep looking up. The cigar-smoking man they report is on the roof — pacing the steep mansard slope at 330 Abercorn Street after dark, and in some tellings he's carrying a rifle.
The man the story points to is Samuel Pugh Hamilton, who built the Second Empire mansion on Lafayette Square in 1873. Locals called him "the Lord of Lafayette Square." He was an obsessive art collector, and as the legend has it, he hired an armed guard to pace the roof at night and protect his collection.
That guard, the story goes, was found shot in the back of the head, the rifle still in his hand. No one was ever charged. No contemporary newspaper account confirms the murder — it's lore, not record, and even the watchman's name comes through soft. After he died, the telling continues, Hamilton took over the night watch himself, pacing the same roof his guard had walked.
Hamilton had a habit of doing things first. In March 1883 he wired the salon for electric light, the first private home in Savannah to be electrified; crowds gathered outside to watch the glow, and some neighbors feared the house would explode.
The roof isn't the only thing people report. The grand staircase carries the inn's most-told legend — children rolling billiard balls down the steps during the family's party era, and one girl who leaned too far and fell. No record of that death survives in the family's history, so treat it as the legend it is. Guests still say they hear billiard balls clacking down the stairs after dark.
The house outlived its own demolition. In 1965 the Cathedral next door bought it to clear the lot for a playground, and preservationists stopped them. It's a luxury inn now, seventeen rooms, chef's breakfast. And after dark, people still look up at the roof.
