Myrtles Plantation Haunting

The Myrtles Plantation rises from the Louisiana landscape like a fever dream of the antebellum South, its broad veranda draped in lace-like ironwork, its grounds shaded by ancient oaks hung heavy with Spanish moss, its atmosphere thick with the weight of a history that encompasses beauty and horror in equal measure. Built in 1796 on land said to be a Tunica Indian burial ground, the plantation in St. Francisville has earned a reputation as one of the most haunted houses in America, a claim supported by two centuries of reported encounters with spirits that range from the pitiable to the terrifying. At least twelve ghosts are said to inhabit the property, their origins spanning the full arc of the plantation’s troubled history. But among the many spirits of the Myrtles, one figure dominates: Chloe, the enslaved woman in the green turban, whose ghost has been photographed, witnessed by thousands, and whose tragic story encapsulates the particular horrors of the plantation system that gave this beautiful, terrible place its reason for being.

The Founding and the Curse

The history of the Myrtles Plantation begins with General David Bradford, a Pennsylvania lawyer and political figure who fled to the Spanish-controlled Louisiana territory in 1796 to escape prosecution for his role in the Whiskey Rebellion. Bradford obtained a land grant of approximately 650 acres and constructed the original house, a relatively modest eight-room structure that would later be expanded into the grand plantation home that stands today.

According to local tradition, the land Bradford chose for his plantation was already significant in ways he may not have understood. The property was said to be located on or near a burial ground of the Tunica people, a Native American nation that had inhabited the area for centuries before European colonization. The disturbance of sacred burial ground is one of the oldest and most universal sources of supernatural trouble in folklore worldwide, and the Myrtles’ alleged position atop Tunica graves has been cited by many as the foundational cause of the property’s persistent paranormal activity.

Whether the burial ground story is historically accurate has been debated. Some historians have questioned whether the Tunica had significant burial sites in the specific area of the plantation, while others point to the general presence of Native American habitation throughout the region as sufficient to support the claim. What is not disputed is that the Myrtles has experienced a remarkable concentration of tragedy, violence, and reported supernatural phenomena since its founding, a concentration that seems to exceed what mere chance would produce.

Bradford died in 1808, and the property passed through a series of owners, each of whom expanded and improved the house while apparently accumulating an ever-growing population of resident spirits. Clark Woodruff, who acquired the property through marriage to Bradford’s daughter Sara, was the owner during the period associated with the Chloe legend, the story that has become the Myrtles’ most famous and most frequently told ghost tale.

The Legend of Chloe

The story of Chloe, as told by generations of guides, authors, and visitors, is a tale of exploitation, desperation, and terrible consequences that captures the inherent violence of the slave system in microcosm. According to the legend, Chloe was an enslaved woman who served in the Woodruff household during the early nineteenth century. She was, the story goes, forced into a sexual relationship with Clark Woodruff, the master of the plantation, a circumstance that was tragically common in the antebellum South and that placed enslaved women in impossible positions of vulnerability and powerlessness.

As the legend continues, Chloe became fearful that Woodruff was losing interest in her and that she would be sent from the relative comfort of the household to the brutal conditions of the fields. To make herself indispensable, she began eavesdropping on family conversations, hoping to gather information that would prove her value. When she was caught listening at a door, Woodruff punished her by cutting off one of her ears. To hide the disfigurement, Chloe began wearing a green turban wrapped around her head, the detail that would become her most recognizable attribute in both the ghost stories and the famous photograph.

Desperate to regain her position in the household, Chloe devised a plan that went catastrophically wrong. She baked a birthday cake for one of the Woodruff children, lacing it with extract of oleander, a poisonous plant. Her intention, according to the legend, was not to kill but to make the family mildly ill, so that she could nurse them back to health and thereby restore her standing in the household. But Chloe miscalculated the dosage. Sara Woodruff and two of her children ate the cake and died from the poison.

The other enslaved people on the plantation, fearing collective punishment for Chloe’s actions, seized her and hanged her from a tree on the property. Her body was then thrown into the Mississippi River. According to the legend, Chloe’s ghost has haunted the Myrtles ever since, wandering the grounds in her distinctive green turban, perhaps seeking forgiveness for the deaths she caused, or perhaps still trying to prove her worth to a master who used and discarded her.

Historical Questions

The Chloe legend, while compelling and emotionally resonant, does not align neatly with the verified historical record. Historians have found no documentation of an enslaved woman named Chloe at the Myrtles, though this is not necessarily significant, as records of enslaved individuals were often incomplete or nonexistent. More problematically, the deaths of Sara Woodruff and her children by poisoning are not supported by available death records, and some researchers have argued that the family members in question died of yellow fever, which was epidemic in Louisiana during the relevant period.

These historical discrepancies have led some scholars to characterize the Chloe story as a legend rather than a factual account, a narrative constructed from fragments of real plantation history and shaped by the storytelling traditions of the region. The story may incorporate elements from multiple real incidents, combining the experiences of different enslaved women, different acts of violence, and different deaths into a single, coherent, and dramatically satisfying narrative.

However, the historical accuracy of the Chloe legend is in some ways beside the point. Whether Chloe was a real individual or a composite figure, her story captures genuine truths about the plantation system: the sexual exploitation of enslaved women, the arbitrary and brutal punishments inflicted on those who transgressed, the impossible choices forced upon people with no power, and the cascading violence that the system generated. Chloe may be a legend, but she represents realities that were all too common.

And whatever the historical basis for the story, the ghost is real, at least in the sense that something has been seen, photographed, and experienced by thousands of visitors to the Myrtles Plantation over the course of decades.

The Famous Photograph

In 1992, a photograph was taken at the Myrtles that would become one of the most famous and widely debated images in the history of paranormal photography. The image, taken during a routine tour or visit to the property, appears to show a figure standing between two of the plantation’s outbuildings. The figure is wearing what appears to be a long dress and, most strikingly, a head covering that closely resembles the green turban described in the Chloe legend.

The photograph has been subjected to extensive analysis by both believers and skeptics. Proponents argue that the figure’s position, posture, and attire are consistent with an apparition and that no living person was present in the area when the photograph was taken. The turban-like head covering is cited as particularly compelling, since the photographer could not have known about the Chloe legend’s specific detail of the green turban at the time the image was captured.

Skeptics have offered various explanations, including the possibility that the figure is a living person who happened to be in the area, a shadow or light artifact caused by the camera or developing process, or a deliberate hoax. The image’s resolution is not sufficient to definitively identify the figure as either living or spectral, and the debate over its authenticity has continued for decades without resolution.

Whatever the truth of the photograph, it has become an iconic image in paranormal culture, reproduced in countless books, television programs, and websites. It has also become inseparable from the Myrtles’ identity as a haunted location, the visual proof that Chloe’s ghost walks the grounds in her green turban, still bound to the plantation where she lived, suffered, and died.

William Winter’s Ghost

While Chloe may be the most famous ghost of the Myrtles, she is far from the only one. William Winter, who owned the plantation during the Reconstruction era, was murdered on the front porch in 1871 in an incident that has produced one of the property’s most persistent and dramatic hauntings.

According to historical accounts, Winter was called to the front porch by a rider on horseback and was shot in the chest. Mortally wounded, he staggered back into the house and attempted to climb the staircase to the second floor, where his wife was waiting. He collapsed and died on the seventeenth step of the staircase, a specific detail that has been preserved in the haunting that followed.

Visitors and staff at the Myrtles have reported hearing the sound of heavy, faltering footsteps on the main staircase, footsteps that begin at the bottom and ascend, growing slower and more labored, until they stop abruptly at the seventeenth step. The footsteps are heard at various times, sometimes during the day and sometimes at night, and are described as unmistakable, the sound of a man struggling to climb stairs while grievously wounded. Those who have heard the footsteps describe them as deeply unsettling, not because of their volume or suddenness but because of the desperate, failing quality of the sound, the audible representation of a man using his last strength to reach his wife and not quite making it.

The seventeenth step has become a focus of paranormal investigation at the Myrtles, and multiple research teams have reported anomalous readings, cold spots, and electromagnetic fluctuations in its vicinity. Some investigators have reported feeling a sudden, overwhelming sense of urgency and despair while standing on or near the step, as if briefly experiencing the dying William Winter’s final emotions.

The Ghost Children

Among the most frequently reported apparitions at the Myrtles are the ghosts of two young girls in period clothing who have been seen playing on the veranda, in the gardens, and inside the house. These child spirits are believed to be connected to the children who died at the plantation, whether from Chloe’s alleged poisoning, from the yellow fever epidemics that devastated the region, or from other causes lost to history.

The ghost children are typically described as appearing happy and playful, apparently unaware of or unconcerned by the living people who observe them. They have been seen chasing each other around the columns of the veranda, playing with what appears to be a doll or a ball, and sitting together on the front steps of the house. Their clothing is described as consistent with the early nineteenth century, long dresses and bonnets for girls of a prosperous household.

Some witnesses have reported hearing children’s laughter in areas of the house where no children are present, a light, silvery sound that seems to come from just around a corner or just behind a closed door. Others have described the sound of small feet running on the wooden floors of the upper story, accompanied by giggling and the kinds of sounds that playing children make. These auditory manifestations are reported frequently enough that staff have come to regard them as a regular feature of life at the Myrtles.

The Haunted Mirror

One of the Myrtles’ most intriguing paranormal objects is an antique mirror that hangs in the main hallway. According to tradition, the mirror was not properly covered after a death in the house, violating the widespread folk custom of covering mirrors when someone dies so that the soul of the deceased will not become trapped in the glass. As a result, at least one spirit, and possibly several, is believed to be trapped within the mirror.

Visitors to the Myrtles have reported seeing figures in the mirror that do not correspond to anyone in the room, shadowy shapes that appear to move independently of the reflections of living people. Handprints have been observed on the mirror’s surface, prints that reappear after the glass has been cleaned and that do not match the hands of any living person who has touched the mirror. Some visitors have reported seeing what appears to be a woman’s face looking back at them from the glass, a face that is distinct from their own reflection and that vanishes when they look more closely.

The mirror has been examined and cleaned numerous times, and the recurring handprints and figures have never been satisfactorily explained. The glass itself has been analyzed and found to be ordinary period glass with no unusual properties. Yet the phenomena persist, adding to the Myrtles’ already considerable reputation as one of the most actively haunted locations in the United States.

The Experience of Overnight Guests

The Myrtles operates as a bed-and-breakfast, allowing guests to spend the night in one of the most haunted houses in America. The experiences reported by overnight guests are numerous, varied, and remarkably consistent across decades of visits.

Guests have reported being awakened by the sound of footsteps in empty hallways, by doors opening and closing by themselves, and by the sensation of someone sitting on the edge of their bed when no one is visible. Some guests have described having their bedcovers pulled gently but firmly from their grasp by unseen hands. Others have reported hearing piano music drifting through the house in the middle of the night, the soft, melancholy sound of someone playing an instrument in a room that proves to be empty when investigated.

The grand piano in the parlor has been a particular focus of nocturnal activity. Staff and guests have heard it playing at hours when no one is near it, producing notes that are sometimes random and discordant and sometimes form recognizable melodies from the antebellum era. The piano has been examined for mechanical faults that might cause keys to depress on their own, and none have been found.

Temperature anomalies are a constant feature of the Myrtles experience. Cold spots appear in rooms that should be warm, and the temperature in certain areas of the house can drop noticeably within seconds. These cold spots are not fixed but seem to move through the house, as if carried by something, or someone, passing through.

Investigations and Evidence

The Myrtles Plantation has been the subject of numerous formal paranormal investigations by research teams equipped with modern monitoring technology. These investigations have produced a substantial body of evidence that, while not conclusive, is suggestive of genuine anomalous activity.

Electronic voice phenomena, or EVP, recordings made at the Myrtles have captured what investigators interpret as disembodied voices speaking in whispers, making sounds that could be words or phrases, and producing sounds that do not correspond to any identified source. Some of the most compelling EVP recordings appear to capture a female voice, sometimes whispering, sometimes weeping, in areas of the house associated with the Chloe legend.

Video monitoring has captured unexplained light anomalies, moving shadows, and what some investigators interpret as partially formed apparitions in various rooms and hallways. While video evidence is always susceptible to mundane explanations such as insects, dust, and equipment artifacts, some footage from the Myrtles has resisted easy explanation and has been cited by researchers as among the more compelling visual evidence of paranormal activity captured at any location.

Electromagnetic field detectors have registered anomalous readings in specific areas of the house, particularly on and around the seventeenth step of the main staircase, in the vicinity of the haunted mirror, and in the bedrooms most frequently associated with guest experiences. These readings show sudden spikes and fluctuations that do not correspond to known electrical sources and that correlate, in some cases, with reported visual or auditory phenomena.

A House of Memory

The Myrtles Plantation is more than a haunted house. It is a repository of memory, a place where the triumphs and tragedies of two centuries of Southern history have been preserved not only in the architectural details and the furnishings but in the very atmosphere of the building. The ghosts of the Myrtles, whether they are understood as genuine spirits, as psychological projections, or as the emotional residue of a deeply troubled past, serve as reminders that history is not something that happened long ago and far away. History is present. History has weight. And in places like the Myrtles, history refuses to stay in the past where the comfortable would prefer it to remain.

The Spanish moss still hangs from the oaks. The veranda still stretches across the front of the house, its ironwork casting intricate shadows in the afternoon light. And inside, in the dim corridors and the quiet rooms, the footsteps still sound on the staircase, the piano still plays in the empty parlor, and a woman in a green turban still walks the grounds of a plantation that enslaved her in life and will not release her in death. The Myrtles is beautiful, haunted, and heartbreaking, a Southern Gothic masterpiece that tells its stories whether the living are ready to hear them or not.

Sources

• Wikipedia search: “Myrtles Plantation Haunting”
• Library of Congress — American Folklife Center — American folklore archive