My guide, Karen Wortham, led me on a path from Johnson Square, one of the many quadrangular parks that give Savannah, Ga., its distinct character, down to River Street, which runs along the Savannah River. We stopped in front of a relatively modest statue that depicted a black family with an inscription from Maya Angelou below. The statue, Ms. Wortham explained, was a compromise after a yearslong battle with the city. Originally, she said, the monument was to depict a more real, raw picture of slavery in Georgia. The city balked, and the monument’s designer settled on a family of four in church clothes, with chains lying at the family’s feet. The quotation, too, was called into question for its graphic language, but it was, Ms. Wortham said, simply the reality of what happened.

Savannah is a gorgeous place — Spanish moss drips gloomily from gnarled oak trees and old colonial-style houses line its dignified streets — but it is also a city of great complexity. Old Southern money coexists with a majority African-American population, who in turn share Savannah with a steady flow of tourists — some headed to nearby Tybee Island and others hoping to enjoy the city’s relaxed open container laws. Mix in a slew of young business owners and students from the Savannah College of Art and Design and you’ve got a fascinating demographic in a city with no shortage of history, sultry beauty and architectural delights. It’s a place well worth getting to know, and, as I found over a recent weekend visit, it needn’t cost an arm and a leg.

It is also, apparently, one of the most haunted cities in America. That, according to my friendly Uber driver, Charlene, originally from Tennessee but a 40-year resident of the city. “In my own house I’ve experienced some stuff,” she said. “I was talking to my girlfriend on Skype and she said, ‘Do you have a cat?’ I looked and there was like a cloud, dancing beside me. It freaked her out and me, too.”