Ghost City Tours ranks 12 West Oglethorpe second only to 432 Abercorn among Savannah's most talked-about haunted houses, and as at 432 Abercorn, its most famous story is a tale rather than history. As the legend goes, the house that once stood here belonged to a doctor during one of Savannah's yellow fever epidemics. He worked day and night to save the city, until he came home one evening to find his youngest child burning with fever. One by one the fever took his whole family while he fought in vain to save them. Sure that his own pride had doomed them, and spared by the disease himself, the grief-stricken doctor shut himself in his youngest child's room. He boarded the window and refused food and water until he died there.

The sightings reported today are quieter. Passersby describe shadowy shapes moving in the alley behind the house and figures near its back corner and the parking lot. The most common description is of a man in a cap leaning against the house as if waiting for a ride, who vanishes before the startled tourist's eyes. Ghost City Tours says its guests have more than once let out a shriek walking past.