Mercer-Williams House

Two people died in the study of this Italianate mansion on Monterey Square: Danny Hansford, shot by owner Jim Williams on May 2, 1981, and Williams himself, who collapsed on nearly the same spot on January 14, 1990, eight months after his fourth trial ended in acquittal. Staff report seeing Williams walking the halls after hours, and visitors photograph a blond boy in the windows, possibly 11-year-old Tommy Downs, who fell from the roof and was impaled on the iron fence in 1969.

Jim Williams died in the same room where he killed Danny Hansford. Same spot, almost to the foot. Williams collapsed on January 14, 1990, from heart failure complicated by pneumonia, eight months after being acquitted at his fourth trial for Hansford's murder. His body was found near the threshold of the study, the room where Hansford had bled out on May 2, 1981. The symmetry was too clean for Savannah to ignore.

The house on Monterey Square was never meant to be a crime scene. New York architect John S. Norris designed it in 1860 for General Hugh Weedon Mercer, but the Civil War interrupted construction and Mercer never moved in. No one named Mercer ever lived here. Cotton merchant John Randolph Wilder finished the building around 1868. The Shriners used it as a temple in the mid-20th century. By the late 1960s, it sat vacant.

Williams bought the house for $55,000 in 1969 and spent two years restoring it. He was an antiques dealer and historic preservationist who had restored over 50 houses across Savannah. The Mercer House became his masterpiece. Jackie Onassis once visited with Maurice Tempelsman and offered $90,000 for a Faberge jade box on a table. Williams turned her down.

The relationship between Williams and Hansford was volatile. Hansford was 21, working as Williams's assistant and, by most accounts, his lover. After a heated argument on May 2, 1981, Williams shot Hansford in the study and claimed self-defense. The case went to trial four times, a record for the state of Georgia. Williams was convicted at the first trial, but the verdict was overturned. Three more trials followed. Contradictory police evidence eventually led to acquittal in 1989.

Then there was Tommy Downs. In 1969, the same year Williams bought the house, an 11-year-old boy fell from the roof while hunting pigeons and was impaled on the wrought-iron fence spikes along West Gordon Street. Two violent deaths at the same address, twenty years apart.

Williams allegedly brought in a voodoo practitioner to cleanse Hansford's spirit from the house after the shooting. The cleansing either failed or made things worse, depending on who's telling the story. Staff members working after hours have reported seeing Williams himself walking the hallways, fully visible, moving with purpose before vanishing. Around the anniversary of his famous Christmas parties, some claim the chandeliers light up and shadowy figures in formal dress appear in the windows.

Tommy Downs shows up too. Visitors have photographed a blond boy in the windows and some report seeing him fall from the roof, over and over, a loop that never resolves. Ghostly reflections in the house's glass panes circulate online regularly, though the combination of old glass and Savannah's light makes that kind of image easy to produce.

The study remains the center of everything. Hansford died there. Williams died there. Tour groups are not allowed on the second floor, which means the study stays undisturbed. Dorothy Kingery, Williams's niece, manages the museum from the carriage house. The ground floor tour covers the antiques, the architecture, the Norris design. It does not dwell on the shooting, though every visitor knows why they're really there.

John Berendt's 1994 book Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil turned this house into a literary landmark, and the 1997 Clint Eastwood film cemented it. A musical adaptation opened in 2024. The fame keeps the ghost stories alive. Two deaths in the same room, a decade apart. A child impaled on the fence. An acquittal followed by a collapse on the exact same floor. That's the house, with or without ghosts.