Savannah is often called the city that lives upon its dead, and to the ghost tours Colonial Park Cemetery is the center of that reputation. Some local enthusiasts call it 'Paranormal Central.' Ghost City Tours notes that more than 10,000 people are thought to lie in its six acres, but fewer than 1,000 markers survive. Many were buried in mass graves during epidemics, and other stones were knocked down or destroyed. To many storytellers, those lost and unmarked graves are why the ground is so restless.

Guides on night tours, which gather outside the front gate, describe shadowy figures slipping silently between the box tombs and vaults. Ghost City Tours says its guests have twice seen a greenish mist drift through the cemetery in a single year. The occupying Union soldiers of 1864–65 are another favorite theme. Tour stories tell of vaults broken open and gravestones vandalized, and some say the restless dead remember it.

The cemetery's most famous ghost is René Rondolier, who almost certainly never existed. As the legend goes, René was a huge, nearly seven-foot man, shunned by the town. After two young girls were found murdered in the cemetery, a mob blamed him and lynched him nearby. Ever since, people claim to see a towering shadow walking the paths or hanging from the 'Hanging Tree.' Some versions place his home on the lot of the Hampton-Lillibridge House.

Other tales mix lore with real history. Guides speak of Hoodoo practitioners gathering grave dirt here before the gates were locked at night. They also tell of the long, strange search for General Nathanael Greene, whose body went missing in the cemetery's vaults for decades until searchers finally found him in 1901.