For twenty-five years, Moon River was the place to drink a pint alongside one of Savannah's most famous ghosts, and the building's reputation has outlasted the brewery. As Ghost City Tours tells it, the ghost stories began once the long-empty building was bought and reopened in the late 1990s, and staff and patrons kept reporting shadow figures and strange events for years after. Its fame went national through television. Ghost Hunters featured it in its 2005 Halloween special, followed by Ghost Adventures in 2009, BuzzFeed Unsolved: Supernatural in 2018 and the Travel Channel's Most Terrifying Places in 2019.

Much of the lore centers on the basement, where staff named a dark presence 'Toby,' seen moving silently through the shadows. Ghost City Tours tells of a woman on one of its tours who suddenly panicked there. She said her whole right side went icy cold and she could hear voices she couldn't make out, and the feeling stopped only when she got outside. Many other visitors have described the same feeling in the basement.

Upstairs, guides tell of the City Hotel's most famous killing. James Stark was shot dead inside the hotel by a Savannah physician, Philip Minis (spelled 'Phillip Minas' in some tour accounts). Tellers disagree about whether it happened on the stairs or near the kitchen, and Stark's spirit is said to roam the main floor. Tour lore also describes the upper floors as a makeshift hospital during yellow fever epidemics, where many people, mostly children, are said to have died. Some visitors have reported small figures and children's voices up there.

The restrooms had their own stories. In one account, a woman in the ladies' room couldn't open her unlocked stall door no matter how hard she pushed, until she cried out to be let out and it swung open. The waitress told her she wasn't the first. Another diner swore something gripped her thigh, twice, under the table.