👻 HAUNTED PLACE · EXP. Nº9477
ACTIVE
21 West Bay Street (former Moon River Brewing Company)
21 West Bay Street (former Moon River Brewing Company) is a location reputed to be haunted in Georgia, US. Its reputation comes from reported apparitions, unexplained phenomena and eyewitness accounts gathered over time.
Where is 21 West Bay Street (former Moon River Brewing Company)?
- Location
- Georgia, US
- Type
- Hotel / inn
- Coordinates
- 32.081, -81.092
- Testimonies
- 0
- Last updated
LOCATION
Why is 21 West Bay Street (former Moon River Brewing Company) said to be haunted?
Moon River Brewing Company closed for good at 10 p.m. on Sunday 16 June 2024, after twenty-five years at 21 West Bay Street in Savannah, Georgia. The four-storey building it occupied is far older. William Jay designed it for Eleazer Early, and it opened in 1821 as the City Hotel, the first hotel in Savannah, with the city's first US Post Office branch and a branch of the Bank of the United States under the same roof. On 10 August 1832 the Georgia legislator James Jones Stark was shot dead in its bar room by Dr Philip Minis, who was tried over six days and acquitted the following January. The ghost stories are much younger than the violence. The fullest account that can be dated is a Savannah Morning News feature of 9 October 2008, in which the pub's operations manager, Christopher Lewis, described bottles thrown off a shelf, a woman in white on the staircase and a cellar figure the staff had named Toby — adding, of Toby, that "we don't know why he's here". The building is empty today and under renovation; its upper floors have been vacant for over thirty years.
What is the history of 21 West Bay Street (former Moon River Brewing Company)?
The building at 21 West Bay Street was designed by the English architect William Jay, who gave Savannah several of its finest Regency houses, for Eleazer Early of Charleston. The land was bought in 1817 in the name of Early's wife, Jane; when the great fire swept the city in January 1820 and damaged the half-built shell, she transferred the property into her husband's name. It was finished in 1821 as the City Hotel, the first hotel in Savannah: four storeys of Georgian brick, with marble mantels, curved doorways and a grand staircase set inside curved walls. The city's first branch of the United States Post Office and a branch of the Bank of the United States operated under the same roof.
Early never made it pay. He leased the hotel to Orran Byrd, also of Charleston, at $4,000 a year, and in May 1829 the property was sold at public outcry in front of the Cotton Exchange, having passed from Early to the Bank of Darien and from the bank to William J. Scott.
What made the building notorious happened in its bar room on 10 August 1832, a Friday. James Jones Stark, a Glynn County man who sat in the Georgia legislature, had insulted Dr Philip Minis in another Savannah bar that spring. A challenge followed, then a botched negotiation between the seconds, and finally the two men met in the hotel bar. Minis shot Stark through the chest and Stark died almost at once. The Savannah Anti-Duelling Association wrote the failure into its own minutes, noting that its conciliation letters had gone out barely an hour earlier: "About an hour after the sending of these letters, Mr. Stark was attacked and slain with a pistol at the City Hotel, on the Bay, by Dr. Minis." The newspaper The Georgian reported the death in four flat sentences. Minis was indicted, tried over six days in January 1833 before Judge Charles Dougherty, and acquitted after the jury deliberated for two hours.
Four months after the shooting, in December 1832, Captain Peter Wiltberger — a packet captain who had been talked into leaving the water and becoming an innkeeper — bought the property and renovated it. Under him the City Hotel was known for its cellars of European wine and for a bar that was, in Thomas Gamble's phrase, "the rendezvous of the leading young men of the city". Wiltberger closed the hotel on 1 November 1841 although it was still trading well; it reopened within a month under the Irishman John McMahon, who later sold it to James B. Foley. Foley kept it open right through Savannah's yellow fever epidemic of 1854, the only public house in the city that did not close, and was thanked publicly for it. The City Hotel's last guest checked out in 1864, shortly before Sherman reached Savannah.
Then came a long industrial afterlife: lumber and coal warehouse, general storage, and in the 1960s an office-supply store with a large printing press. Hurricane David tore off the roof in 1979 and the business closed. The building stood empty for sixteen years until Oglethorpe Brewing Company began converting it in 1995 and gave up before finishing. Moon River Brewing Company opened in the ground floor and basement on 10 April 1999, added a beer garden on the adjoining lot at 2 Whitaker Street in 2012, took gold at the Great American Beer Festival and the World Beer Cup, and closed for good at ten o'clock on the night of Sunday 16 June 2024, after twenty-five years. By December of that year the building was back on the drawing board.
Timeline: the documented record of 21 West Bay Street (former Moon River Brewing Company)
- 1817 Jane Early buys the Bay Street lot in her own name for her husband Eleazer Early, who commissions the English architect William Jay. A city fire damages the half-built shell in January 1820 and the property is put into Eleazer's name.
- 1821 The four-storey building opens as the City Hotel, the first hotel in Savannah, housing the city's first branch of the United States Post Office and a branch of the Bank of the United States.
- 10 August 1832 Dr Philip Minis shoots the Georgia legislator James Jones Stark dead in the hotel bar room. The Savannah Anti-Duelling Association records that its conciliation letters had been sent barely an hour before; the newspaper The Georgian reports it shortly afterwards as having happened "on Friday last (August 10)".
- December 1832 Captain Peter Wiltberger, a packet captain turned innkeeper, buys the hotel and renovates it. The brewery's own history page would later date this purchase to 1851, nineteen years late.
- January 1833 Minis is tried over six days before Judge Charles Dougherty, brought in from the Western Circuit. The jury returns a verdict of not guilty after two hours.
- August-November 1854 Yellow fever kills 650 named people in Savannah. James B. Foley keeps the City Hotel open — the only public house in the city that does not close — and is thanked in print for it. The hotel is never used as a hospital in the epidemic.
- 1864 The City Hotel's last guest checks out shortly before Sherman reaches Savannah. The building becomes a lumber and coal warehouse, then general storage, then in the 1960s an office-supply store with a printing press.
- 1923 Thomas Gamble publishes Savannah Duels and Duellists with several pages on the Stark-Minis killing and a photograph captioned "Old City Hotel on Bay Street". The word "ghost" does not appear anywhere in the book.
- 1979 Hurricane David tears the roof off and the office-supply business closes. The building stands empty for sixteen years until Oglethorpe Brewing Company starts a conversion in 1995 that it never finishes.
- 10 April 1999 Moon River Brewing Company opens in the ground floor and basement. The upper floors are not part of the premises and stay empty.
- 9 October 2008 The Savannah Morning News publishes the earliest full account of the haunting that can be dated. Operations manager Christopher Lewis names the cellar shadow Toby and says plainly, "We don't know why he's here." Bartender Chase Harting relays a colleagues' sighting of a woman who faded away at the bar.
- 17 July 2009 The Travel Channel broadcasts the Moon River investigation as season 2, episode 7 of Ghost Adventures. The brewery embeds the episode on its own site, alongside a Ghost Hunters segment and, later, BuzzFeed Unsolved.
- 16 June 2024 Moon River Brewing Company closes for good at 10 p.m. on a Sunday, after twenty-five years. The owners announce it on Facebook without giving a reason and never relocate.
- 8 January 2025 The Historic District Board of Review approves the renovation petitioned by owner DAI Commercial Realty: a new restaurant tenant on the basement and street level, apartments on floors two to four, and a Bay Street porch rebuilt from an 1837 painting. No tenant had been announced as of August 2026.
Is there a rational explanation for 21 West Bay Street (former Moon River Brewing Company)?
The ghost stories of 21 West Bay Street can be dated, and dating them changes them.
The fullest early account is a feature published in the Savannah Morning News on 9 October 2008 by Cate Mafera Adams. In it Christopher Lewis, four years into the job as the pub's operations manager, said: "I've been sitting in my office before and had bottles thrown at me off the shelf. I've seen shadows walking by and heard little kids playing that aren't really there." He described a shadow in the billiard room at the back of the banquet cellar that the staff had christened Toby, and he was candid about what he did not know: "We don't know why he's here, but he likes to play tricks on people." A bartender, Chase Harting, passed on a second-hand account of two colleagues watching a young woman walk in, approach the bar and fade out. Every biography later attached to Toby — that he was a murdered bartender, or an enslaved man held in the cellar — post-dates the man who named him and contradicts him; tour operators who repeat the enslavement version usually concede in the same breath that there is no evidence for it.
Two of the building's better-known claims run the other way from the record.
The first is that the upper floors were a yellow fever hospital in which hundreds died, most of them children. Tim Lockley's peer-reviewed study of the 1854 epidemic reconstructs it from the burial registers of Laurel Grove and the Catholic cemetery, the minutes of the Board of Health and the death lists printed in the Savannah Morning News, and names the 650 people who died between early August and the end of November. It mentions the City Hotel exactly once, and for the opposite reason: its proprietor James B. Foley stayed open while others fled, housing "temporary residents who otherwise had nowhere else to go", and the Savannah Morning News praised him at the time for having "waived personal interests for the public good". The temporary hospitals of 1854 were the Savannah Poor House and wards opened by visiting doctors from Mobile and New Orleans. In a study of 78,564 characters in which "yellow fever" appears 152 times and "1854" 121 times, the hotel appears as a refuge and never as a ward.
The second is that the upper floors are so haunted that renovation work can never be finished — a story the brewery told in verse on its own website, and which it traced back to Oglethorpe Brewing, whose people, the operations manager said in 2008, "claimed it was because of ghostly spirits that they couldn't finish construction". The petition filed with the Savannah Metropolitan Planning Commission on 12 December 2024 by the architect Scott Cook gives the ordinary version: the upper floors have been vacant for over thirty years, the connector between the main building and the carriage house is to be demolished because of water and structural damage, the existing upper windows are not historic, and the owner is applying for historic tax credits to pay for the work. Moon River itself only ever occupied the ground floor and the basement.
Then the superlative, which belongs to the house. The brewery's own site told readers that Savannah had been named the most haunted city in America in 2003 and asked, "what's widely regarded as the most haunted place in Savannah? You guessed it!" — on a page that also listed eight ghost-tour companies whose routes stopped at the door. That is a claim by an interested party, not a finding.
One negative check, made in August 2026. Thomas Gamble's Savannah Duels and Duellists (1923) devotes several pages to the Stark–Minis killing and prints a photograph captioned "Old City Hotel on Bay Street". In its full text of 714,167 characters, "duel" appears 1,149 times, "Minis" 32 times and "City Hotel" seven times; "ghost", "haunted" and "apparition" appear zero times. The building's violence was in print, illustrated, eighty-five years before the earliest ghost account I have been able to date.
Can you visit 21 West Bay Street (former Moon River Brewing Company)?
There is nothing to visit. Moon River Brewing Company shut at 10 p.m. on Sunday 16 June 2024 and did not reopen or relocate; the owners announced the closure on Facebook and never gave a reason. Any guide, listing or map entry that still shows it trading — and there are many — is out of date.
The building stands at 21 West Bay Street, Savannah, Georgia 31401, on the block between Whitaker and Bull, one street up from River Street. It is private property and closed to the public. The former beer garden on the adjoining lot at 2 Whitaker Street is shut as well.
Do not use the old website. The domain moonriverbrewing.com was last captured serving the brewery's own pages on 1 August 2025; it now bounces through a chain of unrelated sites and ends on a foreign-language gambling page. The old telephone number deserves the same treatment.
The building is a contributing structure in the Savannah Downtown Historic District, and its owner, DAI Commercial Realty, is renovating it. Plans drawn by Cook Architecture and approved by the Historic District Board of Review on 8 January 2025 put a new restaurant tenant in the basement and on the street level and turn the second, third and fourth floors — vacant for more than thirty years — into apartments. The Bay Street front is to get a wooden porch reconstructed from an 1837 painting by Joseph Fermin Cerveau, which will need an encroachment permit from the city because it oversails the pavement. No tenant and no opening date had been announced as of August 2026.
Until then the only legitimate way to see the place is from the pavement, which is where Savannah's ghost tours stop anyway. Bay Street is busy and well lit after dark; the sidewalk in front of the building is narrow, and the ramps and stairs down to River Street are steep and cobbled, so wheelchair users and anyone unsteady on their feet should approach along Bay rather than from the river.
Sources consulted
- Thomas Gamble, «Savannah Duels and Duellists, 1733-1877» — Review Publishing & Printing Company, Savannah, 1923 book
- Cate Mafera Adams, «Moon River: Watch out for ghosts throwing bottles» — Savannah Morning News, 2008 newspaper archive
- Scott Cook, AIA (Cook Architecture), «21 West Bay Street Renovation: petition narrative to the Savannah Historic District Board of Review» — Metropolitan Planning Commission, Savannah, 2024 report
- Tim Lockley, «'Like a clap of thunder in a clear sky': differential mortality during Savannah's yellow fever epidemic of 1854» — Social History 37(2), 166-186, 2012 academic
- Moon River Brewing Company, «A Haunted History (official site, archived 17 June 2024)» — moonriverbrewing.com via the Internet Archive, 2024 archive
- Eric Curl, «Renovation plans unveiled for historic Moon River Brewing Company building» — Savannah Agenda, 2024 newspaper archive
- Wikipedia contributors (citing Malcolm Bell Jr., Georgia Historical Quarterly 76:3, 1992), «21 West Bay Street» — Wikipedia, 2026 web
- e-malt / Beverage World, «USA, GA: Savannah's Moon River Brewing closes for good» — beverage-world.com, 2024 web
- Wikipedia contributors, «List of Ghost Adventures episodes (season 2, episode 7)» — Wikipedia, 2026 web
Reviewed by V. Serrano on 2026-08-13 · How we verify our content
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