The Legend of Chloe

In the humid, Spanish-moss-draped countryside of West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana, a plantation house stands that has been called the most haunted home in America. The Myrtles Plantation, built in 1796 on land that local tradition holds was once a Tunica Indian burial ground, has accumulated so many ghost stories over its two centuries of existence that separating fact from fiction, history from legend, has become nearly impossible. But one spirit dominates the Myrtles’ mythology above all others: Chloe, a slave woman who allegedly murdered her master’s family with a poisoned birthday cake and was hanged by her fellow slaves in retribution. Her ghost, distinguished by the green turban she wears to conceal a mutilated ear, has been seen by thousands of visitors, captured in what is claimed to be one of the most famous ghost photographs ever taken, and woven so deeply into the fabric of the plantation’s identity that she has become inseparable from the place itself. The truth about Chloe, however, is far more complicated than the legend suggests, and the gap between the story told to tourists and the story told by historical records opens questions about memory, mythology, and the haunted legacy of American slavery that are as troubling as any ghost.

The Plantation

The Myrtles Plantation was built by General David Bradford, a Pennsylvania lawyer who fled to Spanish Louisiana to escape prosecution for his role in the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794. Bradford received a land grant from the Spanish government and constructed a modest house on the property, naming it Laurel Grove. The house was expanded and renamed The Myrtles by subsequent owners, most notably Clark Woodruff, who married Bradford’s daughter Sara and took possession of the property in the early 1800s.

Under Woodruff’s ownership, the plantation grew into a prosperous operation dependent on the labor of enslaved people, as were virtually all significant agricultural enterprises in antebellum Louisiana. The house itself was expanded to its present form, featuring a 125-foot gallery supported by ornate iron columns, elaborate interior plasterwork, and the gracious proportions of a successful planter’s residence. It was a beautiful house, built on a foundation of human bondage, and this fundamental contradiction between the elegance of the architecture and the brutality of the system that sustained it runs through every ghost story the Myrtles has to tell.

The property changed hands numerous times over the following two centuries, serving variously as a private residence, a failed commercial enterprise, and eventually, beginning in the 1980s, as a bed and breakfast and tourist attraction specializing in its haunted reputation. Today, The Myrtles operates as a historic property offering tours, overnight stays, and ghost-hunting experiences, and it has been featured on numerous television programs devoted to the paranormal.

The Legend of Chloe

The story of Chloe, as it is told to visitors, follows a narrative arc of exploitation, desperation, catastrophe, and supernatural persistence that is as dramatically satisfying as it is historically questionable.

According to the legend, Chloe was an enslaved woman who served as a house slave on the Woodruff plantation. She attracted the sexual attention of Clark Woodruff, who made her his mistress, a common and appalling practice on antebellum plantations where enslaved women had no power to refuse the advances of their owners. For a time, Chloe’s position as the master’s favorite afforded her certain privileges and protections that other slaves did not enjoy.

But Woodruff eventually lost interest in Chloe and turned his attentions elsewhere. Chloe, terrified of being demoted from house service to the brutal work of the fields, began eavesdropping on family conversations, hoping to learn information that would make her useful and secure her position. She was caught listening at a keyhole, and Woodruff, as punishment, ordered that one of her ears be cut off.

Chloe began wearing a green turban to conceal her disfigurement. But the loss of her ear was more than a physical wound; it was a signal that her privileged position was gone and that she was now vulnerable to the worst that plantation life could inflict. Desperate to restore her value to the family, Chloe conceived a plan that was either brilliantly manipulative or tragically miscalculated, depending on which version of the legend one follows.

She baked a birthday cake for Woodruff’s wife Sara and their two young daughters, incorporating leaves from the oleander plant, which is highly toxic. The most sympathetic version of the legend holds that Chloe intended to make the family only slightly ill, planning to nurse them back to health and thereby demonstrate her indispensability. The less sympathetic version suggests that she was motivated by pure revenge. In either case, the plan went catastrophically wrong. Sara Woodruff and both daughters consumed the cake and died.

The other enslaved people on the plantation, fearing collective punishment for Chloe’s crime, took matters into their own hands. They seized Chloe, hanged her from a tree on the plantation grounds, and threw her body into the Mississippi River. Her ghost, the legend concludes, has haunted the Myrtles ever since, still wearing the green turban that hides her missing ear, still walking the grounds where she lived, killed, and died.

History Versus Legend

The Chloe legend is a compelling narrative, but historical research has raised serious doubts about virtually every element of it. The gap between the story told to tourists and the story told by the documentary record is substantial and, for those interested in the intersection of history and the supernatural, deeply instructive.

The most fundamental problem is that there is no historical evidence that a slave named Chloe ever existed on the Woodruff plantation. Slave records from the period are incomplete, and it is possible that such a person lived and worked at the Myrtles without leaving a documentary trace. But the absence of any corroborating evidence for the central figure in the plantation’s most famous ghost story is, at minimum, cause for caution.

More damaging to the legend is the historical evidence regarding the deaths of Sara Woodruff and her children. According to contemporary records, Sara Woodruff and at least one of her daughters died of yellow fever, the epidemic disease that was the scourge of the antebellum South and that killed thousands of Louisianans during the period in question. Yellow fever was a common and well-documented cause of death in the region, and its symptoms were well known to physicians of the era. Poisoning by oleander produces a distinctive set of symptoms, primarily cardiac, that are quite different from the hemorrhagic fever and organ failure characteristic of yellow fever. The historical evidence strongly suggests that the Woodruff women died of disease, not poison.

Furthermore, Clark Woodruff himself remarried after Sara’s death and continued to live at the Myrtles, which seems inconsistent with the narrative of a household devastated by a slave’s murderous revenge. If the poisoning story were true, one would expect to find some trace of it in contemporary accounts, legal records, or family correspondence. No such trace has been found.

The Chloe legend appears to have originated in the twentieth century, possibly as part of the property’s transformation from a private residence into a commercial tourist attraction. Ghost stories enhance the marketability of historic properties, and the Chloe narrative, with its elements of sexual exploitation, physical mutilation, poisoning, and vigilante justice, is precisely the kind of vivid, emotionally charged story that attracts visitors and sells tickets. This does not necessarily mean the story was deliberately fabricated; it may have evolved organically from fragments of genuine plantation history, oral tradition, and the cultural expectations of visitors seeking a spooky experience.

The Photograph

The most famous piece of evidence associated with the Chloe legend is a photograph taken in 1992 by a visitor to the Myrtles. The image, which has been widely reproduced in books, television programs, and websites devoted to the paranormal, appears to show a figure standing between two of the plantation’s buildings. The figure is indistinct but appears to be wearing a long dress or robe and what might be interpreted as a turban or head covering. Proponents of the Chloe legend identify the figure as Chloe’s ghost, pointing to the apparent head covering as evidence of the green turban.

The photograph has been analyzed by various experts with inconclusive results. Some analysts have identified the figure as a possible photographic artifact, a shadow, a reflection, or an artifact of the developing process. Others have been unable to identify a definitive conventional explanation for the image. The photograph’s resolution and the lighting conditions under which it was taken make definitive analysis difficult.

Whatever the photograph shows, it has become an iconic image in the world of paranormal investigation, one of a handful of ghost photographs that have achieved wide recognition and that continue to be debated by believers and skeptics alike.

The Real Ghosts of the Myrtles

Here is the paradox of the Chloe legend: the story may be largely or entirely fictional, but the Myrtles Plantation does appear to be genuinely haunted. Setting aside the question of whether Chloe ever existed, the property has generated an enormous volume of paranormal reports from visitors, staff, and investigators that extends far beyond a single legendary ghost.

The sheer number of reported phenomena is staggering. Visitors describe seeing full-bodied apparitions in period clothing walking the grounds, standing on the gallery, and appearing in the house’s rooms. Shadowy figures are seen on the staircase and in hallways. The sound of footsteps echoes through empty rooms. Doors open and close without visible cause. The grand piano in the parlor is said to play by itself, always the same few chords, as if some unseen hand is attempting a melody it can no longer complete.

The children are among the most commonly reported spirits. Guests staying overnight in the bed and breakfast have described being awakened by the sound of children laughing or running in the hallways, only to find the corridors empty. Some have reported seeing small figures at the foot of their beds or feeling the mattress shift as if a child were climbing onto it. Whether these spirits are connected to the Woodruff children or to other young people who lived and died on the property is unclear, but the reports are persistent and consistent.

A woman in period dress has been seen on multiple occasions standing on the gallery and looking out toward the road, as if expecting someone’s arrival. This figure, sometimes identified as Sara Woodruff and sometimes simply as “the lady of the house,” is one of the most frequently reported apparitions and has been witnessed by people with no prior knowledge of the plantation’s haunted reputation.

The mirror in the main hallway is a particular focus of activity. According to tradition, the mirror was present in the house when Sara and her daughters died, and funeral custom of the era required that mirrors be covered during the period of mourning. The Myrtles mirror was allegedly not covered, trapping the spirits of the dead within it. Visitors report seeing strange shapes, handprints, and even faces in the mirror’s surface that are not present in the room itself. The mirror has been cleaned and restored multiple times, but the anomalous marks reportedly return.

The Weight of History

The Myrtles Plantation sits at the intersection of American history’s greatest crime, chattel slavery, and the deeply human desire to believe that the dead are not truly gone. The ghosts of the Myrtles, whether real or imagined, speak to the suffering that occurred within its walls, suffering that was not extraordinary by the standards of the antebellum South but that was no less terrible for being commonplace.

The Chloe legend, for all its historical inaccuracies, encapsulates the central horror of the slave system: the utter powerlessness of enslaved people, the sexual exploitation of enslaved women, the casual cruelty of physical mutilation, and the desperate measures that human beings will take when they have been stripped of all agency and dignity. Whether or not Chloe existed as a historical person, the conditions described in her story were real. Enslaved women were raped by their owners. Enslaved people were mutilated for minor infractions. And enslaved people sometimes did resist, through poisoning, arson, flight, and violence, because the system left them no other recourse.

The ghost of Chloe, wearing her green turban, walking the grounds of the plantation where she suffered, may be the spirit of a specific historical individual or may be a composite figure representing the countless enslaved people whose stories were never recorded and whose suffering has been largely forgotten. In either case, she haunts the Myrtles in a way that transcends the question of supernatural reality: she haunts it as history haunts, as unresolved injustice haunts, as the consequences of cruelty persist long after the perpetrators and victims are dead.

Visiting the Myrtles

The Myrtles Plantation operates today as a bed and breakfast and historic property, offering daytime tours, evening mystery tours, and overnight accommodations for guests willing to share the house with whatever dwells within it. The property has been featured on numerous television programs and has been investigated by many of the most prominent paranormal research organizations in the country.

Guests who stay overnight report a wide range of experiences, from the subtle, unexplained feelings of being watched, sudden drops in temperature, the sense of a presence in an empty room, to the dramatic, full-bodied apparitions, objects moving without cause, and the sound of voices in spaces where no living person is present. The frequency of these reports, and their consistency over decades of hospitality, suggests that whatever one believes about the supernatural, something unusual is happening at the Myrtles.

The property’s setting enhances the atmosphere immeasurably. The live oaks draped in Spanish moss, the creak of the gallery’s wooden floor, the shadows cast by candlelight through wavy antique glass, all of these create an environment in which the boundary between past and present seems unusually thin. Whether this atmosphere produces genuine supernatural experience or merely primes visitors to interpret ambiguous sensations as paranormal is a question that each visitor must answer for themselves.

Between Legend and Truth

The Myrtles Plantation and the legend of Chloe present a fascinating case study in how ghost stories evolve, how history is shaped by the needs of the present, and how the desire for narrative can transform ambiguous evidence into accepted truth. Chloe may not have existed. The poisoning may never have occurred. The green turban may be a narrative invention.

But the Myrtles is haunted. Not necessarily by Chloe, not necessarily by the spirits of the Woodruff family, but by something. The volume of reports, the consistency of descriptions, the experiences of visitors and staff who knew nothing of the property’s reputation before encountering its phenomena, all of these point to a genuine anomaly that exists independent of any particular legend.

Perhaps the most honest assessment is that the Myrtles is haunted by its own history, by the accumulated weight of two centuries of human experience that includes love and loss, privilege and oppression, violence and its aftermath. The specific ghost stories may be partly or wholly invented, but the emotional residue of real human suffering permeates the property in a way that visitors consistently feel and report. Whether that residue is supernatural in nature or merely psychological, whether the ghosts are real spirits or vivid echoes of historical trauma, the Myrtles Plantation reminds us that some places carry their past with them, that the walls remember what the records forget, and that the dead, whoever they were, have not yet found their rest.

Sources

• Wikipedia search: “The Legend of Chloe”
• Library of Congress — American Folklife Center — American folklore archive