Haunted Sites
Summoning the spirits…
Perkins & Sons Ship Chandlery
No photo of this place yet.
Tour access onlyA restored 19th-century ship chandlery on River Street that Ghosts & Gravestones enters at night to share waterfront ghost legends.
- Address
- 211 W River St, Savannah, GA 31401
- Hours
- Check the official website or call ahead for current hours.
- Admission
- Check the official website.
- Access
- ghost tour access only (entered at night on Ghosts & Gravestones)
The real history
About the place
Perkins & Sons Ship Chandlery at 211 West River Street is a nighttime attraction created for the Ghosts & Gravestones trolley tour run by Historic Tours of America (Old Town Trolley). Ghosts & Gravestones describes it as a 19th-century warehouse tied to Savannah's shipping trade. Ryan McCurdy, who designed the show, explained in a 2012 interview that the company took a River Street storefront, gutted and soundproofed it, and built an indoor ghost experience about the history of the waterfront.
A ship chandlery was a shop selling supplies to sailing ships, from rope and lanterns to tar and provisions. According to McCurdy, much of the maritime decor comes from a real Perkins & Sons chandlery in Florida. Live actors, lighting, sound and rain effects bring the old waterfront to life.
You can only get in on the Ghosts & Gravestones tour, which is ticketed and rated PG-13. Children under 6 aren't allowed.
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 Ghosts & Gravestones 'Trolley of the Doomed' pulls up on River Street more than an hour into its tour. Guests step inside the chandlery, the tour's own description says, to 'try to contact the spirits' of the old waterfront. That waterfront was home to pirates, bootleggers and hard men, and it saw the arrival of enslaved people brought into the city by boat. In the darkness of the old warehouse, the stories are told through the voices of costumed Ghost Hosts, with crashing objects, shifting light and rain.
It is theater rather than a historic haunting, built to tell the waterfront's real and darker stories in an unforgettable way.
Tips
- Hours and admission change: check the official website before you go.
- Featured on 2 ghost tours; see the links below.
