4 Savannah-Inspired Halloween Costumes

A Forrest Gump costume creation is always a winner no matter the occasion. Get a luggage bag, a cream-colored suit, a checkered blue and white button-up in a large print and some scuffed white low-top sneakers, and you’re good to go. Or for a more comedic guise, don some red running shorts with a matching red cap, an off-white tee, some white soccer socks and a bushy vagrant beard. This one will run you right to first place at any costume contest!

Valerie Fennel Aiken Boles, better known as Minerva, the reclusive voodoo priestess described in John Berendt’s, "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil," is just one of many great references in the novel to choose from for your Halloween costume this year. A muted muumuu, a walking stick and perhaps some common voodoo trinkets like sage, feathers and shrunken heads should do the trick.

American music icon Johnny Mercer is a celebrated figure who’d make a great source of inspiration for your Savannah-based costume. A typical 1940’s getup including a pin-striped suit, crisp white button up, dark tie and slicked-back do will work just fine. Make it more resonant with an old-school microphone, and perhaps sing a few lines from Mercer classics like “Moon River” and “Personality” here and there.

The Bird Girl statue is most well-known for being on the cover of the novel "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil." Her sullen disposition, uncertain posture and monochrome features make her a haunting focal point. If you can cast yourself from head to toe in dark bronze paint, do it! But if not, a plain prairie dress, a short hairstyle, two wide-lipped shallow bowls in each palm, and a head titled in contemplation will communicate the reference.