Why the Tour You Choose Matters
Savannah is one of the most haunted cities in America. With over 250 documented hauntings packed into a Historic District barely a square mile wide, there is no shortage of material. But that density is also why the tour you choose matters so much. Some operators rely on recycled scripts and jump scares. Others invest in original research and storytelling that brings Savannah's past to life. The difference between a good ghost tour and a great one isn't the ghosts themselves. It's the history behind them.
Seven out of every ten visitors who take a ghost tour in Savannah choose Ghost City Tours. That number isn't an accident. It's the result of over a decade of research, guide training, and an unwavering commitment to historical accuracy. But even within a single company, different tours serve very different purposes. Understanding those differences is the first step to choosing well.
Types of Ghost Tours in Savannah
Not all ghost tours are created equal, and the first decision isn't which company to book with. It's what kind of experience you're looking for. Savannah's ghost tour landscape breaks down into several distinct categories, each designed for a different audience and a different kind of evening.
Family-Friendly vs. Adults-Only
This is the most important distinction, and it's one that many visitors overlook until they're standing in a group with their eight-year-old listening to graphic details about 19th-century murder. Family-friendly tours curate their content carefully. The stories are genuinely spooky but avoid gratuitous violence, mature themes, and language that would make you regret bringing your kids. The ghosts are real, the history is accurate, but the delivery respects the audience.
Adults-only tours go deeper. They explore the darker corners of Savannah's past, including slavery, murder, betrayal, and the kinds of suffering that don't soften well for younger ears. These tours aren't gratuitous for the sake of shock value. They're unflinching because the history demands it. If you want the unvarnished truth about what happened in these streets and behind these walls, an adults-only tour is where you'll find it.
Dark Hauntings vs. Historical Hauntings
Even within the adults-only category, there's range. Some tours lean into the macabre, focusing on Savannah's most violent and disturbing episodes. Colonial-era executions, unsolved murders, and the lingering trauma of the city's slave trade. These are tours for people who want to confront the darkness head-on.
Other tours take a broader historical approach. They weave ghost stories into the full tapestry of Savannah's past, from its founding by James Oglethorpe in 1733 through the Civil War and beyond. The hauntings serve as entry points into deeper historical narratives. If you're as interested in architecture and social history as you are in the paranormal, a historically grounded tour will satisfy both appetites.
Literary and Midnight in the Garden Tours
Savannah occupies a unique place in American literature, thanks largely to John Berendt's Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Published in 1994, "The Book" (as locals call it) spent a record 216 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and transformed Savannah from a quiet Southern city into a cultural destination. The story of Jim Williams, the Mercer-Williams House, and the murder of Danny Hansford brought international attention to Savannah's eccentric characters and atmospheric squares.
Tours built around this literary legacy blend true crime, local culture, and the supernatural into something that feels distinctly Savannahian. They visit locations featured in the book, explore the real events behind the narrative, and connect them to the broader haunted history of the city. For visitors who came to Savannah because of Berendt's work, these tours close the circle between the page and the place.
Haunted Pub Crawls
Pub crawls occupy their own category entirely. They're social events first, ghost tours second, and that's by design. The format is simple: visit a series of haunted bars and taverns, hear the stories of what happened there, and enjoy a drink at each stop. The pace is relaxed, the atmosphere is lively, and the emphasis is on having a good time rather than being scared.
That doesn't mean the history takes a back seat. The best haunted pub crawls choose their stops for genuine historical significance, not just drink specials. Savannah's oldest bars have witnessed duels, murders, and two centuries of revelry, and those stories are often more compelling than anything a scriptwriter could invent. Pub crawls are ideal for date nights, bachelorette parties, and anyone who wants a haunted evening without the solemnity.
What Makes a Tour Historically Accurate?
This is where most visitors don't know what to look for, and it's where the gap between good tours and great ones is widest. Historical accuracy isn't just about getting the dates right. It's about the entire approach to storytelling.
Walking vs. Trolley Tours
Walking tours and trolley tours aren't just different modes of transportation. They represent fundamentally different philosophies about how to experience a city. Trolley tours cover more ground, but they sacrifice intimacy. You're watching the city pass by from a seat, hearing stories through a speaker, and never quite feeling the weight of a place the way you do when you're standing in front of it.
Walking tours move at the pace of a story. Your guide can stop at a doorway, point to a window, lower their voice at the entrance to a cemetery. The physical act of walking through Savannah's squares and alleys at night creates an atmosphere that no vehicle can replicate. You feel the uneven cobblestones beneath your feet, notice the Spanish moss moving in the breeze, and sense the particular silence that settles over the Historic District after dark. Every serious ghost tour in Savannah is a walking tour, and there's a reason for that.
Group Size Differences
Group size directly affects tour quality, and it's one of the most underrated factors in choosing a tour. Large groups of 30 or more people create logistical problems: it's harder to hear the guide, harder to see what they're pointing at, and harder to maintain the atmospheric tension that makes ghost tours work. You spend more time waiting for the group to reassemble at each stop than you do listening to stories.
Smaller groups create a more personal experience. Your guide can modulate their storytelling based on the audience, answer questions in the moment, and create the kind of intimate atmosphere that large groups destroy. When you're standing in Colonial Park Cemetery at 10 PM, the difference between a group of 12 and a group of 40 is the difference between an experience and a crowd.
Research-Based vs. Scripted Entertainment
Here's the question that separates serious ghost tours from theme park attractions: where do the stories come from? Some operators hand their guides a script and send them out. The stories may be entertaining, but they're often embellished, borrowed from other cities, or outright fabricated. When every tour company tells the same handful of stories word-for-word, you're not hearing history. You're hearing a franchise.
Research-based tours start from primary sources: historical records, newspaper archives, property deeds, cemetery records, and firsthand accounts. The stories are original because they come from original research, not from a competitor's website. Ghost City Tours has been doing this work since 2012, building an archive of Savannah's haunted history that no other operator matches. That's why our guides can answer questions that go beyond the script, because there is no script. There's knowledge.
This distinction matters more than most visitors realize. Savannah's real history is strange enough, dark enough, and compelling enough that it doesn't need embellishment. The truth is always more haunting than fiction.
Ghost City Tours in Savannah: Your Options
Ghost City Tours has been consistently ranked as the best ghost tour company in Savannah, with a 4.9-star rating across tens of thousands of reviews. Here's a breakdown of each tour we offer and who it's designed for.
The Grave Tales Ghost Tour
Best for: Families, first-time visitors, and anyone who wants a well-rounded introduction to haunted Savannah
Duration: 90 minutes | Price: From $29.99 | Age: All ages welcome | Schedule: Daily at 7:00 PM & 9:00 PM
The Grave Tales Tour is where most visitors should start. It's our family-friendly flagship, designed to deliver genuine chills without crossing into territory that would upset younger guests. Over 90 minutes, your guide leads you through 8-10 of Savannah's most historically significant haunted locations, including the Marshall House Hotel, Madison Square, and the infamous underground tunnels that run beneath the city.
What sets the Grave Tales Tour apart from other family-friendly options in Savannah is its commitment to substance. These aren't watered-down stories. They're carefully selected narratives that are appropriate for all ages while still being genuinely compelling for adults. The history is real, the locations are authentic, and the storytelling is the product of years of research. Parents consistently report that this tour engaged their children and taught them something, which is a rare combination in the ghost tour world.
The Grave Tales Tour meets at Johnson Square, Savannah's oldest and most storied square, beside the Nathaniel Greene Monument. Well-behaved, leashed pets are welcome.
The Dead of Night Tour
Best for: Thrill-seekers, horror fans, and visitors who want Savannah's darkest stories
Duration: 90 minutes | Price: From $34.99 | Age: 16+ | Schedule: Friday & Saturday at 9:00 PM & 10:00 PM
The Dead of Night Tour is what happens when you strip away the guardrails. This late-night, adults-only experience ventures into the true underbelly of Savannah's ghostly history, the places and stories that aren't softened for sensitive ears. Murder, betrayal, and the kind of suffering that leaves a permanent mark on a place. This tour goes where other tours won't.
The timing is deliberate. Friday and Saturday nights, starting at 9:00 PM and 10:00 PM, when the streets are quieter, the shadows are deeper, and the Historic District takes on a character that daytime visitors never see. Your guide leads you to locations including Colonial Park Cemetery, Wright Square (site of Savannah's first public execution), secret cemeteries hidden in plain sight, and the Six Pence Pub, where the spirits aren't limited to what's behind the bar.
The Dead of Night Tour meets at Johnson Square. This tour is not appropriate for children, and that's the point. Some stories need darkness to be told properly.
The Beyond Good and Evil Tour
Best for: Literature lovers, repeat visitors, and anyone seeking Savannah's most comprehensive adults-only experience
Duration: 90 minutes | Price: From $34.99 | Age: 16+ | Schedule: Daily at 9:00 PM & 10:00 PM
The Beyond Good and Evil Tour is Ghost City Tours' signature Savannah experience, and the numbers tell the story: a 4.9-star rating across more than 10,000 reviews, making it the highest-reviewed ghost tour in the city. It's been our flagship adults-only tour since 2012, and it regularly sells out.
The tour takes its name and inspiration from the world of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, visiting locations loosely tied to Berendt's iconic book while weaving in a broader tapestry of macabre history, Voodoo legends rooted in Savannah's own traditions, twisted humor, and haunting tales pulled directly from the city's shadowy past. Stops include Colonial Park Cemetery, the Hamilton-Turner Inn, the notorious 432 Abercorn Street, and the Mercer-Williams House, the setting of the book's central murder.
What makes Beyond Good and Evil the tour that visitors return for is its range. It's not a one-note experience. It's funny, then unsettling, then deeply moving, then darkly hilarious again. The guides who lead this tour are among the best storytellers in Savannah, and they've earned the freedom to make it their own within a framework of rigorous historical research.
The Beyond Good and Evil Tour meets at the gates of Colonial Park Cemetery on East Oglethorpe Avenue. Book early. This one fills up.
The Savannah Haunted Pub Crawl
Best for: Date nights, bachelorette parties, groups of friends, and anyone who likes their spirits with spirits
Duration: 2.5 hours | Price: From $34.99 | Age: 21+ | Schedule: Daily at 9:00 PM
The Savannah Haunted Pub Crawl is a different animal entirely, and it's designed to be. Over two and a half hours, your guide leads you through four of Savannah's most haunted and historic bars, each with its own dark past and its own drink specials. The price covers the tour itself; drinks are on you, but exclusive specials at each stop keep the tab reasonable.
Savannah is one of the few cities in America where you can walk the streets with an open container, and the Pub Crawl takes full advantage of that. The pace is leisurely, the stops are generous, and the stories, involving duels, murders, and the kind of mayhem that tends to happen where alcohol has been served for two centuries, are delivered with the energy of someone who genuinely loves what they do.
The Haunted Pub Crawl meets at Churchill's Restaurant on West Bay Street. It covers approximately 1 to 1.5 miles at a comfortable pace with frequent stops. This tour is 21+ only. No exceptions.
How to Decide: A Quick Guide
Choosing the right tour comes down to three questions:
Who's in your group? If you're traveling with children, the Grave Tales Tour is the clear choice. It's built for families without sacrificing quality. If your group is all adults, you have the full range of options.
What kind of evening do you want? If you want to be genuinely scared and don't mind confronting Savannah's darkest history, the Dead of Night Tour delivers. If you want a richer, more layered experience that blends literature, humor, and horror, Beyond Good and Evil is the one. If you want something social and fun, the Pub Crawl.
Is this your first visit? First-timers often do well starting with either the Grave Tales Tour (families) or the Beyond Good and Evil Tour (adults). Both provide a comprehensive introduction to haunted Savannah. The Dead of Night and Pub Crawl are excellent additions for repeat visitors or second-night plans.
Many visitors book two tours during their stay in Savannah, pairing the Grave Tales Tour with an evening adults-only experience after the kids are in bed. Ghost City Tours offers tours seven nights a week, year-round, with free rescheduling and a money-back guarantee. There's no risk in booking, and the only regret our guests report is not booking sooner.
Browse all Savannah ghost tours and book online for the best availability.
