Panola Hall
Panola Hall, a stately Greek Revival mansion with fluted Doric columns, was built in 1854 for Henry Trippe along Eatonton's crown-jewel stretch of North Madison Avenue, later home to banker-botanist Dr. Benjamin Hunt and his poet wife Louisa Prudden. Local lore holds that a young woman named Sylvia, dressed in a white gown with a rose tucked in her dark hair, was being forced into a marriage she did not want; trying to flee through an upstairs window, she met her death, and her body was never found. Since the Civil War era she has lingered as a gentle, even mischievous presence, slipping open and closing drawers and nudging furniture about as if to remind the living she remains. Residents and visitors describe her as welcoming rather than frightening, and those who pause on the lawn at dusk sometimes glimpse her figure smiling down from the second-story window.
📍 400 N. Madison Avenue, Eatonton, GA 31024, Eatonton, GA · Get directions