Hay House
Built between 1855 and 1859 by William Butler Johnston and his wife Anne after a European honeymoon, this 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. Its marble fireplaces and gold-leafed plasterwork have kept watch over more than a century of births, deaths, and Civil War-era upheaval.
Visitors and staff describe an elegant elderly woman in a mid-1800s dress drifting 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 rise from the master bedroom, the spirits restless whenever objects are moved.
📍 934 Georgia Avenue, Macon, GA 31201, Macon, GA · Get directions