Some of Savannah's gentlest ghost stories come from the Kehoe House. The Kehoes raised a large family here, and guides note that some of the children died in the house. To the storytellers, that explains the sounds guests most often describe: children laughing, running and playing in the halls and rooms when no children are staying at the inn. Ghost City Tours calls this a residual haunting, an echo of a family's everyday life replaying itself rather than spirits trying to reach the living.

Not every report is that passive. Ghost City Tours says at least one presence here seems aware of the living. Guests have described waking to the touch of a hand on the head or a grip on the arm, with no one there. Others describe old-fashioned perfume drifting through a hallway or bedroom.

One story told for decades on Columbia Square is that two Kehoe children were playing in a chimney, became trapped and died there. In the legend their mother came home to find them missing and searched everywhere for them. They were found only when something began to smell in the house. It is one of the most repeated stories in Savannah and one of the most thoroughly debunked.