The Myrtles Plantation Ghosts

The live oaks that line the approach to the Myrtles Plantation are draped in Spanish moss so thick that even the Louisiana sunlight struggles to penetrate, creating a perpetual twilight along the drive. The house itself emerges from this green gloom like something from a fever dream: a long, low antebellum structure wrapped in a 125-foot veranda supported by ornate iron lacework, its facade a study in faded Southern elegance. It is beautiful in the way that certain things are beautiful when you know their history, when you understand that beauty and horror can inhabit the same space without contradiction. The Myrtles Plantation near St. Francisville, Louisiana, has been called the most haunted house in America, and while such claims are impossible to verify, the sheer volume and consistency of paranormal activity reported within its walls and on its grounds make it one of the most compelling cases in American supernatural history.

A House Built on Flight

The story of the Myrtles begins with a man running from the law. General David Bradford, a prosperous attorney from Pennsylvania, had played a prominent role in the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794, the violent resistance to the federal excise tax on distilled spirits that represented one of the first serious challenges to the authority of the new American government. When President George Washington dispatched thirteen thousand militia troops to suppress the rebellion, Bradford fled south, eventually settling in the Spanish-controlled territory of West Florida, beyond the reach of federal prosecution.

In 1796, Bradford built the house that would become the Myrtles on a 650-acre land grant, naming it Laurel Grove for the profusion of crepe myrtle trees that grew on the property. The house was modest by the standards of Louisiana plantations, a simple frame structure that reflected both Bradford’s diminished circumstances and the frontier nature of the region. Bradford received a presidential pardon in 1799 and could have returned to Pennsylvania, but he chose to remain in Louisiana, where he died in 1808.

The property passed to Bradford’s daughter, Sara Matilda, and her husband, Clark Woodruff, a lawyer and aspiring politician who expanded and improved the house. It was during the Woodruff years that the most famous of the Myrtles’ ghost stories is said to have originated, a tale of cruelty, poisoning, and revenge that has become inseparable from the plantation’s identity, even though its historical accuracy has been seriously questioned.

The Legend of Chloe

No ghost at the Myrtles is more famous than Chloe, and no ghost story in American folklore is more frequently told or more hotly debated. According to the legend that has been passed down for generations and is recounted to every visitor who walks through the Myrtles’ doors, Chloe was an enslaved woman who served in the Woodruff household. She was, the story goes, forced into a sexual relationship with Clark Woodruff, a common and despicable practice on antebellum plantations. When Woodruff’s interest in her waned and he turned his attention to another enslaved woman, Chloe feared that she would be sent from the comparative comfort of the house to the brutal labor of the fields.

Desperate to maintain her position, Chloe began eavesdropping on the family’s private conversations, hoping to gather information that would make her indispensable. When Woodruff caught her listening at a keyhole, he had one of her ears cut off as punishment. Thereafter, she wore a green turban to conceal the disfigurement, a detail that has become the defining visual characteristic of her ghost.

The legend’s darkest chapter concerns Chloe’s alleged act of revenge. She baked a birthday cake for one of the Woodruff children and laced it with extract of oleander, a plant that is lethally toxic. Whether she intended to merely sicken the family members so that she could nurse them back to health, thereby cementing her value to the household, or whether she intended murder, the legend does not agree. What the legend does agree on is the result: Sara Matilda Woodruff and two of her children died from the poison. The other enslaved people, fearing collective punishment, seized Chloe, hanged her from a tree on the property, and threw her body into the Mississippi River.

The historical evidence for this story is thin to the point of nonexistence. Parish records show that Sara Matilda Woodruff and at least two of her children did die, but the recorded cause of death was yellow fever, not poisoning. No contemporary documents mention an enslaved woman named Chloe, an ear-cutting, a poisoning, or a hanging. Historians who have examined the available records have found no evidence to support any element of the legend beyond the deaths themselves, which are well documented but attributed to disease rather than murder.

None of this has diminished Chloe’s prominence as the Myrtles’ most celebrated ghost. She has been seen by hundreds of witnesses over the decades, a figure in a green turban glimpsed on the veranda, in the windows, and between the buildings. She appears in what may be the most famous ghost photograph ever taken at the plantation: an image captured during a tour that appears to show a figure standing between two of the plantation’s buildings, wearing what looks like a turban and a long dress. The photograph has been analyzed extensively, with believers seeing clear evidence of a spectral presence and skeptics identifying lens flare, shadow play, or the outline of another visitor partially hidden by the building’s corner.

The Murder of William Winter

If the Chloe legend is historically questionable, the story of William Winter is anchored in documented fact. Winter, a lawyer who owned the Myrtles in the 1870s, was shot on the front veranda of the house on January 26, 1871. According to the account that has been passed down, a stranger rode up to the house and called Winter outside. When Winter stepped onto the veranda, the rider shot him. Mortally wounded, Winter staggered back into the house and attempted to climb the main staircase to reach the second floor, where his wife waited. He collapsed and died on the seventeenth step.

The identity of the shooter and the motive for the killing have never been definitively established, though several theories have been proposed involving personal grudges, business disputes, and Reconstruction-era political violence. What has been established, through the testimony of countless witnesses over more than 150 years, is that the sound of William Winter’s final journey is replayed in the house with disturbing regularity.

Guests staying at the Myrtles, which now operates as a bed and breakfast, report hearing footsteps in the main hallway, followed by the sound of someone climbing the stairs. The footsteps are heavy, labored, and uneven, consistent with a man grievously wounded and struggling to ascend. The steps continue upward, one at a time, growing fainter and more halting, until they stop abruptly at the seventeenth step. Then silence. Guests who have heard the phenomenon describe it as unmistakable: these are not the sounds of a house settling or of animals in the walls. They are the footsteps of a dying man, replaying his final moments in an endless, agonized loop.

Some witnesses have reported seeing a figure on the staircase, a man in nineteenth-century clothing clutching his chest or abdomen, his face contorted with pain. The figure climbs slowly, gripping the banister, before fading from view at the same point where the footsteps cease. The consistency of these accounts across decades and among witnesses who had no prior knowledge of the Winter story is one of the strongest pieces of evidence for genuinely anomalous activity at the Myrtles.

The Ghost Children

The Myrtles’ hallways and grounds are reportedly haunted by the spirits of children, a detail that adds particular emotional weight to the plantation’s supernatural reputation. Guests and staff have reported hearing children’s laughter in empty rooms, the sound of small feet running on wooden floors, and the patter of play in hallways where no children are present. Toys that belong to the house’s historical collection have been found moved from their display positions, sometimes arranged in patterns that suggest deliberate play rather than random displacement.

The identity of the ghost children is uncertain. They may be the spirits of Sara Matilda Woodruff’s children, whether they died of yellow fever or, as the legend insists, of poisoning. They may be the ghosts of other children who lived and died on the plantation over its long history. Or they may be unidentifiable presences, children who left no mark on the historical record but whose spirits remain attached to a place where they once knew some measure of happiness.

A former enslaved caretaker is sometimes seen in connection with the ghost children, a woman in simple clothing who appears to be watching over them or guiding them through the house. Her presence suggests a relationship that death has not severed, a bond of care and responsibility that persists beyond the grave. Whether she is a specific historical figure or a composite of the many enslaved women who raised children at the Myrtles, her appearances add a dimension of tenderness to a haunting that is otherwise dominated by violence and tragedy.

The Mirror and the French Room

Among the Myrtles’ most famous features is a large mirror in the main hallway that is said to contain trapped spirits. According to the tradition, the mirror was not covered after the deaths of Sara Matilda and her children, a violation of the funeral customs of the era that held that mirrors should be draped in black after a death in the house to prevent the deceased’s spirit from becoming trapped in the glass. As a result, the spirits of the dead became imprisoned in the mirror, visible to those who look carefully enough.

Visitors have reported seeing handprints on the mirror’s surface that cannot be wiped away, drip marks that appear and disappear without explanation, and, most dramatically, the faint outlines of human figures visible in the glass, figures that do not correspond to anyone standing in the room. Photographs of the mirror frequently show anomalies that believers interpret as spirit images, though skeptics attribute them to imperfections in the old glass, reflections of light from the chandelier that hangs nearby, or artifacts of the photographic process.

The French Room, one of the guest rooms available at the bed and breakfast, has a particularly intense reputation for paranormal activity. Guests staying in this room report a range of phenomena including unexplained cold spots, the sensation of being touched or having the bedcovers pulled, the sound of whispered conversations in French, and the appearance of a woman in a black dress who stands at the foot of the bed watching the sleeping occupant before vanishing when they fully awaken. The room has been the subject of multiple investigations and has produced some of the Myrtles’ most compelling photographic anomalies.

The Grounds and the Gate

The paranormal activity at the Myrtles is not confined to the house itself. The grounds, including the approach drive with its canopy of live oaks, the gardens, and the area around the outbuildings, are all reportedly active. The ghost of a man in khaki clothing has been seen walking among the trees, his identity unknown. A woman in a white gown has been observed on the veranda late at night, rocking in a chair that moves by itself. The sound of a piano being played drifts from the house at hours when no one is inside.

Perhaps the most unusual phenomenon associated with the Myrtles’ grounds involves the front gate. According to local tradition, the gate is haunted by the spirit of a soldier who was killed during the Civil War. The gate reportedly opens and closes by itself, not randomly but in response to some unseen presence approaching or departing. Staff members who have witnessed the phenomenon describe the gate swinging open smoothly and deliberately, pausing as if to allow someone to pass through, and then closing behind them. No wind, no mechanical failure, and no human hand can account for the movement.

Investigations and Evidence

The Myrtles has been the subject of numerous formal paranormal investigations, and the results have been among the most productive in American ghost hunting. Teams have recorded electronic voice phenomena, including distinct voices responding to questions, speaking in English and, on some occasions, in French. Infrared cameras have captured what investigators describe as moving figures in rooms that were sealed and empty. Electromagnetic field meters have detected anomalies that correlate with reported cold spots and areas of visual activity.

The plantation has been featured on multiple television programs dedicated to paranormal investigation, including episodes of Ghost Adventures, Ghost Hunters, and various documentary series. These programs have introduced the Myrtles to a national audience and have, in some cases, captured footage that has become part of the canon of televised paranormal evidence. A shadowy figure crossing a hallway, a door opening by itself, an inexplicable sound captured on audio equipment: the Myrtles consistently delivers the kind of experiences that keep investigators returning.

Professional skeptics have offered alternative explanations for many of the reported phenomena. The house is old, and old houses make noises: wood expands and contracts, floorboards creak, pipes rattle, and animals nest in walls and attics. The Myrtles’ location in the humid, insect-rich environment of rural Louisiana means that the building is subject to constant assault from the natural world, and some of the sounds attributed to ghosts may have entirely mundane origins. The power of suggestion, amplified by the plantation’s well-known reputation, may cause visitors to interpret ordinary experiences as supernatural.

But the volume and consistency of reports from the Myrtles exceed what can be comfortably explained by creaking timbers and overactive imaginations. When hundreds of people over two centuries, many of them unaware of the specific ghosts said to inhabit the house, report the same phenomena in the same locations, something more complex than simple suggestion is at work. Whether that something is genuinely supernatural or represents a yet-unexplained natural process is a question that the Myrtles has posed for over two hundred years and that remains unanswered.

The Weight of History

The Myrtles Plantation is haunted not just by individual ghosts but by history itself, by the accumulated weight of two centuries of human experience in a place that witnessed the full spectrum of antebellum Southern life. The house was built by a fugitive, sustained by the labor of enslaved people, passed through the hands of families who knew both prosperity and tragedy, and survived a civil war that transformed the world around it. Every generation that lived within its walls left something behind, some trace of their presence that refuses to fade entirely.

The ghosts of the Myrtles, whether they are the spirits of the dead or the emotional residue of lives lived under extreme conditions, are inseparable from the history of the place. Chloe, if she existed, represents the horror of slavery and the desperate measures to which enslaved people were driven. William Winter represents the violence and instability of the Reconstruction era. The ghost children represent the fragility of life in a time when disease could sweep through a household and carry away an entire generation in a matter of days.

To walk through the Myrtles is to walk through that history, to feel it pressing in from every side, to hear it in the creak of floorboards and the whisper of wind through the live oaks. The Spanish moss hangs like funeral shrouds, the old mirrors catch reflections of things that are not there, and the staircase echoes with footsteps that never reach their destination. The Myrtles does not merely preserve the past; it is possessed by it, a house where history refuses to remain safely in the past tense and where the dead continue to make their presence known to anyone willing to listen.

Sources

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