Hay House
Built between 1855 and 1859 by William Butler Johnston and his wife Anne after a European honeymoon, the 24-room Italian Renaissance Revival mansion atop Coleman Hill was so opulent it earned the name "Palace of the South," passing through the Felton and Hay families before becoming a Georgia Trust museum in 1977. Today its marble fireplaces and gold-leafed plasterwork keep watch over more than a century of births, deaths, and Civil War-era upheaval within its walls. Visitors and staff describe the figure of an elegant elderly woman in a mid-1800s dress drifting through the hallways, sometimes glimpsed bent over an antique chest of drawers as if searching for something long lost. Cold spots gather without warning, footsteps echo through empty rooms, doors slam on their own, and low moans have been reported from the master bedroom. Those who tend the house say its spirits grow restless when objects are moved, as though the original residents still consider every room their own.
📍 934 Georgia Avenue, Macon, GA 31201, Macon, GA · Get directions