Sorrel-Weed House, Savannah: History, Tours and the Molly Story

Before the stories, the plain facts. The house is one of Savannah's largest, and it has passed through a short and well-documented list of owners. This table pulls together the basics from the historical record and from the museum's own visitor information, so you know exactly what you are looking at before you book anything.

Here are the core facts in one view. Note that the admission price is not published on the official page, so call ahead if cost matters to your plan.

One practical note from visitors: the history tour runs roughly 30 to 60 minutes and involves stairs inside, so it is not a flat, step-free visit. The house sits directly on the square, so even if you skip the ticket, you can stand at the ironwork and look up at the balconies that feature in every ghost story told on the square.

Francis Sorrel was a shipping merchant, and he was also a slaveholder who kept enslaved people on this property in the middle of the city. This is urban slavery, and the evidence of it is physical: slave quarters stand on the courtyard side of the house. Any honest account of the Sorrel-Weed House starts there, because the lives of the enslaved household are bound up with the ghost stories the tours now tell.

The Sorrel years

The architect Charles B. Cluskey built the house between 1835 and 1840, and it remains one of the largest homes in the historic district at roughly 10,000 square feet. Francis Sorrel lived here with his wife Matilda and their family. Their son Gilbert Moxley Sorrel grew up in the house and later served as a Confederate brigadier general on Longstreet's staff.

The family name is joined by Weed in the house's title because Henry D. Weed, a later owner, held it from 1862 to 1914.

After the family

The house changed hands rarely. Henry D. Weed kept it for over fifty years. Then came A.J. Cohen Sr., who owned it from 1941 to 1996, and Stephen Bader, owner from 1996, under whom it runs as a museum today.

That long, documented ownership is what makes the gaps in the ghost story stand out.

Many ghost walks in Savannah tell a version of the Sorrel-Weed story. Here is what is documented and what is not, stated plainly. The historian Tiya Miles, who toured the house, drew the line clearly, and this guide follows it.

What is documented

Matilda Sorrel, Francis Sorrel's wife, died by suicide in the house. That fact is in the historical record. The house was also a place where enslaved people lived and worked, with quarters on the courtyard, and the tours acknowledge this.

Those are the two real anchors of the house's dark history, and they are heavy enough on their own.

What is legend

The story guides tell goes like this: Matilda discovered a relationship between Francis and an enslaved woman called Molly, jumped from a balcony, and Molly was later found hanged. It is a dramatic tale, and it is the one that sells tickets. But historian Tiya Miles, after visiting the house, noted that while Matilda's suicide is documented, the Molly story cannot be verified.

There are no records of a Molly anywhere in the Sorrel family papers. No name, no bill of sale, no mention. When you hear the Molly story on a tour, in this house or on a walking route outside it, you are hearing folklore, not archive.

This matters for how you choose a tour. Operators who tell the story as a story, with the caveat attached, are doing it honestly. Operators who present Molly as documented fact are not.

Nothing on this page endorses the legend as history.

The house's national reputation rests heavily on television. Ghost Hunters filmed a Halloween special here in 2005, Ghost Adventures came in 2014, and BuzzFeed Unsolved added its own episode. Those appearances turned a locally known haunted house into a stop on every ghost itinerary in the city, and they are the reason people arrive asking for Molly by name.

It is worth separating the television glow from the citywide claim. In 2002 the American Institute of Parapsychology held a conference in Savannah and named it America's Most Haunted City, though its own founder called the title more honorary than scientific, and New Orleans and Charleston claim it too. The Sorrel-Weed House rides that wave, and shows like Ghost Hunters amplified it.

None of this proves anything about the house either way. If you want the TV-famous addresses in one route, our post on the most haunted places in Savannah strings several of them together on foot.

The house itself offers three ways in, all run by the museum: a daytime history tour, night ghost tours, and paranormal investigation events. Tours meet in the courtyard on the Bull Street side. Tickets are sold by phone at (912) 257-2223 or in person, and an admission fee applies, though the official page does not publish the price, so ask when you call.

One visitor reported the history tour lasted 30 to 60 minutes and includes stairs inside.

The table below compares the three visit types offered at the house itself. Where a detail is not published, we say so rather than guess.

A caveat on booking: because the admission price and the night schedules are not published on the official page, a phone call is the only way to confirm both before you walk over. If you would rather book a fixed price online tonight, the independent walks and crawls compared on this site are the safer bet, and they put you at the gates instead of inside.

The house faces Madison Square, one of the 22 surviving squares of Oglethorpe's plan for the city. That location is a large part of the experience. You can stand in the square at night, look up at the balconies, and hear the same legends from a walking guide, all without a ticket.

One catalog tour actually starts here. The Haunted Savannah Pub Crawl and Historic District Ghost Tour meets at 7:30 pm in Madison Square at Charlton and Bull Streets, so the meeting point is the square the house faces. The crawl runs two hours, covers about 90 minutes of walking between haunted sites with 3 to 5 pub stops, and is limited to 10 participants at $35 per person.

You buy your own drinks at each stop, and it is 21 and over with photo ID. Under Savannah's open container rules, drinks travel in to-go cups within the downtown zone, which includes the squares.

The square also sits well for a wider evening. Colonial Park Cemetery is a few blocks to the northeast, closed at night, so tours tell its stories from the street. Our Colonial Park Cemetery guide covers the 9,000 graves, the 1820 yellow fever victims and the Union soldiers who camped there.

If you are mapping a self-guided loop past the haunted addresses, our most haunted places post does exactly that, house by house and square by square.

None of the independent ghost walking tours in our catalog goes inside the Sorrel-Weed House. That entry belongs to the museum's own ticketed events. What the walks do is bring you to Madison Square or nearby squares and tell the legends from the sidewalk.

Here is how the closest options compare.

Candlelit ghost walk

The Savannah Candlelit Ghost Walking Tour is the best-reviewed walking option in our comparison at 4.9 from over 3,500 reviews. It runs 90 minutes on foot through the Historic District squares by lantern light, departing at 7:00, 7:30, 9:00 and 9:30 pm, with a 5 pm daylight option. It meets at 17 W. McDonough Street facing Chippewa Square, so it does not start at Madison Square, but the route threads the downtown squares and costs $39 per person.

All ages are welcome, and there are no bathroom stops, so bring water.

Adults-only late walk

The Dead of Night Adults-Only Ghost Walking Tour carries the darker material: murder, betrayal and burial grounds, told without softening for kids. It is 90 minutes on foot, $34.99 per person, for ages 16 and over, checking in at the Nathanael Greene Monument in Johnson Square. The listing is explicit that this is outdoor storytelling with no entry to buildings or cemeteries, which keeps expectations honest.

If you want to go inside something

For an indoor night experience you can book online, two options exist. The Ghosts and Gravestones trolley goes inside the Andrew Low House on Lafayette Square and the Perkins and Sons Ship Chandlery on River Street. For a hands-on night, the Guided Paranormal Ghost Hunting Investigation at 416 W Liberty runs 1.5 hours indoors with ghost-hunting equipment training and EVP recording, capped at 16 guests, at $86 per person.

It is a different house, not the Sorrel-Weed, but it is the closest bookable equivalent to a real investigation.

Whichever you pick, book the evening slot ahead in October, when several listings already carry a likely-to-sell-out flag. Most walks run rain or shine unless the weather turns severe.

The Sorrel-Weed House rewards a curious visitor more than a credulous one. The architecture is real, the Sorrel family record is real, and Matilda's death is real. The Molly story is legend, and knowing that makes you a sharper listener on any walk that passes the square.

Start at the gates on Madison Square, then build the rest of your evening from our comparison of scary ghost tours in Savannah GA, where every format, price and start point sits on one page.