Historic Railroad Hotel in a Disputed Georgia Ghost Town
Toomsboro, GA 31090
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
No public access to the hotel as a working business. The town's central historic properties have been on the market for years.
Access
Limited Access
Rural town streets, historic buildings of variable condition
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1904 · Central of Georgia Railroad · Wilkinson County Heritage · Town For Sale Phenomenon
Toomsboro grew up around the Central of Georgia Railroad, the line connecting Savannah and Macon County, built between 1835 and 1843. The town itself was formally chartered in 1904 and named for Robert Augustus Toombs, a Georgia congressman who later served as the Confederate States' Secretary of State.
During the early years of the railroad's commercial peak, Toomsboro hosted a working town economy with depot, hotel, opera house, schools, and small mills. The Willett Hotel, the historic hotel central to local lore, accommodated traveling salesmen and newly arrived teachers as Toomsboro grew. The Swampland Opera House, built in 1916, originally housed a dry goods store and a bank.
The town's economic foundation eroded during the second half of the twentieth century. By the 2010s, much of central Toomsboro had been consolidated under the ownership of Tim Bumgardner, who listed the assemblage of properties, more than 30 buildings on roughly 40 acres, for $2.5 million in 2012 and later for $1.7 million. The package includes the historic inn, syrup mill, opera house, schoolhouse, railroad depot, cotton warehouse, restaurant, barbershop, water wheel, grist mill, workshop, filling station, and several houses. Coverage in Atlanta Magazine, the Tampa Bay Times, and ABC News framed the listing as a chance to buy a town.
The town's mayor has clarified that the listing covers only Bumgardner's privately held properties, not the incorporated town. As of recent reporting, the historic property cluster remains substantially listed for sale and not in active commercial use as a hotel.
In the years since 2020, separate development activity has occurred in Toomsboro. Following the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, a group of 19 families cooperatively purchased 96.71 acres in the town to establish a Black community.
Sources
The paranormal accounts associated with the Old Toomsboro Hotel cluster around two specific patterns. First, late-night lights and unidentified noises observed from outside the building, the kind of report common to large vacant historic hotels along quiet rural streets. Second, more idiosyncratically, items being moved or simply missing during a previous restoration effort by a former owner, with tools or materials reappearing elsewhere on the property days later.
The building has been part of the broader Toomsboro for-sale property cluster for years, and most coverage of the hotel as a haunted location is a footnote within larger pieces about the town being on the market. Strange lights have been seen by staff and guests of the hotel along with weird noises, according to regional listings, but the hotel is not currently operating as a guest property and does not run paranormal programming.
The broader appeal of the Old Toomsboro Hotel for anyone interested in historic atmosphere is the town context: an essentially intact small Georgia railroad town in slow decline, with a 1916 opera house, a depot, a syrup mill, and a cotton warehouse all clustered within a short walk. The haunted reputation is one layer in a richer story about the survival and gradual loss of a Wilkinson County rail town.
Media Appearances
View the exterior of the Willett Hotel from public streets in Toomsboro. The hotel is part of a 40-acre historic property cluster currently listed for sale by private owner Tim Bumgardner. Do not enter without permission.
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