The evening before I took the Midnight of the Garden of Good and Evil Tour, a two-hour walking tour through Savannah visiting the locations mentioned in “The Book,” as it is referred to down here, it seemed only fitting that I should be checking into the Hamilton-Turner Inn on Lafayette Square. In John Berendt‘s best-selling tome, which chronicles the eccentricities of this most southern of cities, the four-story, French Empire chateau built in 1873 was one of the places where the impoverished aristocrat Joe Odom and his girlfriend, Mandy, lived. In the charming rascally way that epitomizes the lifestyle of Odom, he charged a fee for touring the house, which had fallen on hard times, when he didn’t even own it.

Now restored, the inn is all luxury with a spa and period antiques. Plus, it's within Savannah’s two-and-a-quarter-mile historic district, the largest in the country. Designed by founder General James Oglethorpe, the city had 24 garden squares (now down to 21). Each is a precious gem of emerald lawns, towering trees, and luscious flowers. Some have statues, some fountains, and one, Greene Square, a gravesite, that of Revolutionary War hero Nathaniel Greene. Jim Williams, an antique dealer of refined tastes, who was accused of murdering his young protégé and is the main character in the book, lived in the old Mercer House on Monterrey Square. The century-old house, which he restored, was originally built by an old Savannah family whose most famous member is the composer Johnny Mercer, author of over 1100 songs, including four Academy Award winners. As we walk past it, some sing such Mercer songs as “Moon River,” “Days of Wine and Roses,” and “Satin Doll.”

While that may be considered odd in some places, as Brandt points out, Savannah not only tolerates its eccentrics, it thrives on them.

Bonaventura Cemetery

No “Book” tour, and surely no trip to Savannah would be complete without visiting the Bonaventura Cemetery. After all, it was here that the Bird Girl, who graced the cover, used to mark a grave (though she has now been moved to a museum). Bonaventura, which is listed on the National Historic Register, is the final stopping place for many of Savannah’s famous people. The Mercers rest here, as does novelist and poet Conrad Aiken, who, in the traditional Savannah high style, has as his grave marker a bench poised on a bluff overlooking the river so that people can sit and rest.

John Berendt drank martinis from a silver cocktail shaker and listened to the wicked history of many of the characters who made their way into his story while sitting there in one of the first scenes in his book. A century before, Aiken frequently sat in this spot. He once saw a ship with the words Cosmos Mariner painted on the bow. Because cosmos was a word that appeared frequently in his poetry, he was delighted with the name and looked up the ship in the news that night (this was a time when ships' comings and goings were published in the paper). The name was followed by the words “destination unknown.” The words and the feeling they conveyed so entranced him that he had them inscribed on the bench: Cosmos Mariner Destination Unknown.

But Midnight wasn’t the first book or movie to be made in Savannah. This city that was spared by General Sherman on his march to the sea because of its great beauty (he stayed for three months and then left to burn Atlanta) has figured as a location in movies since the early 1900s.

Movies and movie stars

The old Greenwich Plantation was the setting for the 1915 movie, “Under Southern Skies,” set in colonial times and starring Mary Pickford and Francis X. Bushman. Before it burned in 1923, Greenwich was said to rival Biltmore in its splendor, costing $500,000 to build and $100,000 to furnish (in late 19th-century dollars).

The Robert Mitchum and Gregory Peck movie, “Cape Fear,” was filmed in Savannah. When Mitchum journeyed here to make the film in 1962, there was an outstanding arrest warrant from years earlier when he was a rambunctious teenager. The swaggering Mitchum boasted, “I spent a lot of nights down in the jail here and now here I am, the toast of the town.”

High above the streets, on the corners of Congress and Barnar,d is a neon fish sign, erected in the 1930s, that was featured in a scene from “The Legend of Bagger Vance” starring Will Smith, Matt Damon, and Charlize Theron. Across the street from the Foley House Inn, a 1896 bed and breakfast, is where Tom Hanks as Forrest Gump sat on the edge of Chippewa Square, waiting for the bus, holding his box of chocolates. As an aside, a skeleton was discovered during renovations at the Foley House in 1987, and it was later determined to be the remains of a boarder who disappeared in the late 1800s.

Savannah ghosts

Of course, there are ghosts and ghost tours. But I’m told I don’t have to go much further than where I’m staying. The Hamilton-Turner Inn is said to be haunted by a variety of spirits, including a man smoking a cigar on the roof, the sounds of clacking billiard balls, and giggling children when none are around. It’s said to have been the inspiration for Walt Disney's Haunted Mansion, but despite all this, during my stay there was nary a ghost encounter. Maybe they had all headed down to the Old Pink

But alas, while dining at the Old Pink House, a wonderful restaurant housed in a Georgian manor painted, you guessed it, pink, there are no ghosts wandering around. And I think I would recognize at least one of the spooks as he wears colonial-era garb. That would be the first owner, James Habersham Jr, who is said to have committed suicide in the basement in 1799 after learning of his wife’s infidelity. He sometimes is spotted helping straighten out the table settings or at the bar with another Habersham relative, also long deceased.

Pink is not an unusual color for homes in Savannah. That includes the Benjamin Wilson Home, said to be among the most haunted (but keep in mind that Savannah likes its ghosts—so many places vie for the most haunted category). Anyway, the ghosts here include the daughter of the original owner and several children.

The Davenport House boasts both a ghost cat and a ghost girl. But besides that, it’s one of the city’s most popular museums.

Other haunted houses include The Pirates House Restaurant, part of which dates back to 1734, making it one of the oldest buildings in the state. Robert Lewis Stevenson, the author of “Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” and “Kidnapped,” was said to have used the tavern as a setting for his book “Treasure Island.” Sometimes, a man dressed as a pirate stands out front and jumps on tour buses to give a hearty pirate’s laugh. We told you that Savannah is a place that embraces eccentricity.

Because of its reputation as a haunted city, carriage-driven ghost tours are popular, particularly after dark. One particularly dark night, I take a carriage for the tour. Horseshoes pound on old brick streets while the guide talks of sailors who never returned and the women who still wait for them centuries later and Revolutionary soldiers who wander the Colonial Cemetery on Abercorn Street. The moon is full, and a soft mist rises up around the old-fashioned streetlamps.
With harnesses jingling and the mansions, with their lighted windows appearing through the fog, it’s easy for one brief moment to become part of this ghostly past. But then, isn’t that what Savannah is all about?

As the American writer William Faulkner said about the South, “the past is not the past, it is part of the present.”