The building at 21 West Bay Street in Savannah was constructed in 1821 as the City Hotel, became the first postal address in the city, held live lions in the lobby under one owner, closed before Sherman took Savannah during the Civil War, served as a makeshift hospital during the Yellow Fever outbreaks that killed an unknown number of people on its upper floors, spent decades as a warehouse and printing shop, lost its roof to Hurricane David in 1979, and reopened in 1995 as the Moon River Brewing Company. It won a gold medal for one of its original beers in 2010. Ghost Adventures filmed an episode there for the Travel Channel. The building has been through enough that summarizing its history feels like a list of unrelated events, and yet somehow it is still standing and still serving beer.
The haunted reputation is distributed across multiple floors. The basement holds a presence the staff call Toby, most often glimpsed in corners, reliable for cold spots and disembodied voices during tours. The second floor was the site of a shooting between a local physician named Philip Minas and a man named James Stark; something restless is regularly reported in those hallways. The fourth floor — the Yellow Fever hospital — is where visitors describe hearing coughing in empty rooms and voices asking for help from no visible source. The Lady in White moves through walls on the upper floors as though the current layout means nothing to her. In the dining room, bathroom doors lock on their own and guests report being touched.
Moon River Brewing is a working restaurant and craft brewery, not a haunted attraction. The ghost stories come with it the way the history does — not as a selling point so much as an accumulated condition of the building itself. Savannah markets its ghosts aggressively enough that skepticism is a sensible default, but this particular building has had enough happen inside it that the question of what lingers is not an easy one to dismiss.
Story Source: usghostadventures.com
Address: 21 West Bay Street, Savannah, Georgia 31401
Accessibility Rating: No Public Access — Private property, active restricted site, or location no longer physically accessible to visitors.
Google Map
What Others Have Experienced
A couple who’d enjoyed dinner at the brewpub were invited downstairs for a tour of the basement afterward and found it genuinely creepy with no one else around. They said being the only two people down there made the stories about the space feel a lot more real, and they loved every minute of it.
— from TripAdvisor
One visitor on a haunted pub tour said the stop at the brewpub was the highlight of the night, recalling the guide’s stories about a past murder there and noting the basement made for an especially eerie private gathering space.
— from TripAdvisor
During a stop on a haunted pub crawl, one visitor described feeling vertigo climbing the stairs to the second floor, then a burning sensation in her throat and a feeling like something was wrapped around her neck as she tried to catch up with the group. Her sister said a yellowish mist seemed to trail her right before it happened, and the group had to step outside before she could breathe normally again.
— from TripAdvisor
Another visitor noted the brewpub had been featured on the television show Ghost Adventures and that both the basement and upper floors are reputed to be haunted, though their own visit was mostly about enjoying the on-site beers.
— from TripAdvisor
