Haunted Sites
Summoning the spirits…
Photo: Seasider53 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons
Olde Harbour Inn
An 1892 riverfront warehouse turned inn, said to be home to 'Hank', a prankish spirit staff linked to a 19th-century fire. Even Ghost City Tours notes there is no record of deaths in that fire.
- Address
- 508 E Factors Walk, Savannah, GA 31401
- Hours
- Check the official website or call ahead for current hours.
- Admission
- Check the official website.
- Access
- hotel
The real history
About the place
The Olde Harbour Inn occupies 504–516 East Factors Walk, a range of buildings that runs from River Street up to Factors Walk, with pedestrian bridges to Emmet Park and Bay Street. A warehouse stood here by 1812. Ghost City Tours says it was used by the Johnson and Jones families for cotton, and that it was demolished around 1888–89. In December 1889 the Savannah Morning News reported that Dennis J. Murphy was raising a three-story building 'under the bluff,' and that the Tide Water Oil Company had already leased two floors.
On the night of January 2, 1892, a fire that started in a wooden warehouse at the east end of Factors Walk spread to the oil company's building. The next morning's paper reported 'five hundred barrels of oil' burned, no cause found and, importantly, no lives lost. The building was rebuilt, and Standard Oil occupied it until 1907. It then stood empty for more than twenty years. From 1930 to 1980 it was the Alexander Brothers blue-jeans and overall factory.
It was renovated in 1985 and opened as the Olde Harbour Inn in 1987. HLC Hotels bought it in 1991 as the first of its historic Savannah inns. It is a working inn, so the inside is for guests, while River Street shops occupy the ground floor.
Local legend
The Ghost Story
Told here as local lore, the way guides, books and visitors tell it. These are legends, not established fact.
The Olde Harbour Inn's ghost even has a name: Hank. Former desk receptionist Sherry Hughes, who worked there from 1995 to 1997, spoke of him often. As she told it, Hank is believed to have died in one of the fires that swept the building in the 19th century. A darker version, repeated by Ghost City Tours, makes him the arsonist. In this telling the fire started near his office while he was in a bitter dispute with management, and his revenge backfired when he became the blaze's only fatality.
Former innkeeper Valerie Freeman Clark used to steer ghost-seeking guests to Room 405. Hughes once spent the night there herself. A little after midnight, she said, the alarm clock and radio in Room 406 next door suddenly went off, blaring, though 406 was empty that night. 'That kind of creeped me out,' she recalled, 'especially with 406 being the room that (Hank) tends to be the most.' Guests and staff also tell of Hank pounding on doors and rattling doorknobs.
Tips
- Featured on 5 ghost tours; see the links below.
