Everyone knows in our area about the plantations
and them bein' haunted,
or visited by people that have lived here before.
But I never opened myself up to ghosts or anything like that.
We came over here to visit a friend and we planned to go to dinner.
After the dinner, my husband wanted to do the tour.
We walked into this room, and I'm takin' pictures.
No flash, not expecting to see anything.
I ended up, like, ya know, takin' pictures this way.
And, um, obviously, havin' to go around the bed.
Takin' pictures and heading out the door. And I was the last in the room.
So it was, like, during the week,
after work, after dinner,
sittin' on the couch,
and remembering that we had been to the Myrtles.
Flipping through some of the pictures, and they were all... they were horrible.
They were brown and blurry and smeary.
But then I roll into one of 'em that was really shocking.
So, this is the picture of...
It looks like this pane.
The image is much smaller than if a person was standing near it.
So, the size doesn't really make... sense.
The Myrtles Plantation
is a place with a dark and complicated past.
For over 40 years, visitors have flocked to its grounds,
wanting to experience
the paranormal activity said to occur here.
Welcome to the Myrtles. My name is Hester Eby,
and I'll show you around a little bit.
This is one of my favorite rooms, the main dining room.
You say the Myrtles Plantation, you say haunted house.
And-- But it's so much more to it, so much more.
And I've learned that through the years.
The Myrtles has always been known and referred to
as one of America's most haunted homes.
The flashlight just turned on on its own.
As we sleep, the strange noises intensify.
I legit felt somebody straight-up whisper in my ear.
The Myrtles, located here in St. Francisville, Louisiana,
which is about 25 miles north of Baton Rouge.
It's a small, quaint, ya know, bed-and-breakfast-type community.
It packs a mighty punch with a lotta charm,
and there's a lotta character.
This is the French bedroom.
This room holds all of the original pieces.
Our dolls are just a bit of our decorations,
but a lot of people have stories.
Especially the dolls that you'll find in the Fanny Williams room.
A lot of people get a little parano--
They say that they, uh, change directions.
People have told me, "Ya know, it's someone over there."
"Ya know, you may not see them, but they're over there."
And I believe them.
Or some people may leave and say, "Do you really believe in this?"
And I'll say, "Yes, I do."
My history of the Myrtles began with needing a job years ago,
looking through the phone book, and I dropped it,
and it fell on "M, Myrtle's Plantation Home."
A house was built in 1796.
A man named General David Bradford built it.
He led the Whiskey Rebellion in Pennsylvania.
So he came here to Louisiana running for his life.
This is-- Will give you an idea of how General Bradford looked.
And like any father, he arranged for his daughter's marriage.
And he thought the man suitable for her was a man named Judge Clark Woodruff.
He married the general's daughter, Sarah. He took over.
Changed the name from Laurel Hill to the Myrtles
because of their love for crepe myrtle trees.
I came to be the owner of the Myrtles Plantation
because I grew up here. I suppose I was-- was born into it.
My family purchased the property in '92, when I was eight months old.
They were really intrigued with the idea of movin' onto the property
and makin' it home.
They thought it would be cute to raise an infant
at a sleepy bed and breakfast in-- in the country,
and-- and little did they know.
My parents knew that the Myrtles had been known
as one of America's most haunted homes when they purchased the property in '92.
I don't know that they were necessarily big believers of that.
I've definitely had a couple of experiences,
mostly related to just, like, seeing things out of my peripherals,
or just somethin' that's very descriptive that I was certain that I was seeing,
and that-- that I could describe the experience that I was having,
and then it would go away.
Some people sense things.
They don't have to see so much because they can sense it.
And I feel sometimes if I can turn around fast enough,
it's someone right by my side, but I can't move fast enough to see them.
Or outta the corner of my eyes, someone is there.
Sometimes it's a fragrance.
Sometimes it's-- it's just the feel, or-- or, "That rocker rocked."
"Did you see that?"
"Yeah, I saw it." Explain it? I can't.
This photo is one that was taken by my mom in late 1992.
She was takin' photos on the property for, uh, insurance purposes.
They were just workin' on reinsuring the property for the followin' year.
And she wasn't to have any people in her photo,
so she had chosen to do it on a day that she was there by herself.
She took these photos,
submitted 'em to the insurance, and then they called her back,
sayin' that there was a person in one of her photos.
My folks were a bit skeptic
of the whole paranormal activity of the property
whenever they had purchased it.
And I think this was, like-- this was the shift for them.
I'm a paranormal investigator.
Which, I have a group that we investigate houses,
uh, belonging to families that are being bothered
by things that go bump in the night.
My wife and I decided to come here
on our tenth anniversary to spend the night.
And all of a sudden, the windows right there in front of us...
...ya know, started vibrating v-- violently.
And there's no mechanism around that-- that would cause that.
And I went up to touch the window,
and right before I touched it, it stopped.
And then I step outside and-- to take a picture.
And I didn't see it at the time, but when I developed the film later on,
it appears to be a little girl climbing outta the window.
I mean, you can see her hairline. You can see the puffy sleeves.
But most of the things that occur here are very subtle. They're audible.
You might put your glass down on a table, and you turn to do something,
and that might-- glass might be six inches over.
Or you might take off your earrings,
and you put your earrings out and you find out one is missing.
Supposedly one of the spirits here is very OCD.
If you move things, she'll put it back.
My wife, she's a skeptic, but except for this place.
But my other ghost investigations,
she's always, "That's nothing. That's not-- That didn't happen."
She'll point out things to me that I-- I mean, I'm so involved with it.
"Well, did you think about this? It could've been this,
it could've been that."
But, uh, as for this house, she's a hundred percent involved.
She, uh-- I don't think there's an ounce of skepticism in--
when it comes to the Myrtles.
'Cause, you know, we-- we've lived it.
One time, we were waiting for a group to go in the house,
and it was a little girl with her mother.
I greeted her.
And she said, "Why are you dirty?"
And so I look down, ya know, tryin' to make sure.
So, I looked fairly decent.
And she said, "Are you hungry?"
And she was very serious.
It was time for them to go in the house, and as I walked 'em to the door,
she had turned around and she was looking back
where we were talking earlier.
And her mother and I realized she was not talking to me.
She was talkin' to someone else.
She was looking at someone beyond me.
And whoever that person was may have been a little dirty,
and perhaps they looked like they were hungry.
There is an opening with kids that adults don't have.
We learn to question everything. And children just don't do that.
I don't know who she saw.
I cannot say it was Chloe.
I cannot say it was not another house servant.
But I do know she was not talking to me.
The little girl on tour is not alone.
Other guests have caught sight
of what they perceive to be a ghost called Chloe.
It's said that there was a young slave girl that lived in the house
in the early 1800s.
Her name was Chloe.
The story goes, Judge Woodruff took on a house servant.
From the neck up, she's a Black woman.
Her left ear is not there.
She was wearing a green turban to cover that area.
It was allegedly not enough that he enslaved her,
but was abusing her too.
And she knew she had to go along with it
because if she didn't, she'd be out working in the fields,
which was the hardest and worst labor on the plantation.
She was caught listening in,
eavesdropping on some of their family business.
It is said that she had one of her ears cut off
in punishment for that.
And then, the story goes,
she was spending most of her time plotting what she could do
to make herself important to the family again.
She decided she would bake a birthday cake for the judge's oldest daughter.
Used the juices from the popular but poisonous oleander.
Some people believe it was just to make them sick
so that she could nurse the family back to health
and prove how important she was.
Others believe that it was done out of revenge.
That she had put the poison in the cake to-- to kill the family.
Sarah, at the time, was said to have been pregnant
with her third child.
The children and Sarah ate the cake,
and, instead of getting sick, the poison killed them.
After confessing, Chloe was hung.
And they believed if they weighed down the body in the river,
the spirit could not rise and harm anyone.
Well, something went wrong that night.
Her spirit is certainly here.
A lot of people spend a night, they have a very quiet night.
Others do not. Others claim that they see her.
The story of Chloe is one of the Myrtles' most famous,
but the recorded history surrounding it leaves some unanswered questions.
When I was writing a book about very famous places
in the United States that are said to be haunted,
of course I had to come here to the Myrtles Plantation.
I call myself a skeptic, but I'm not a cynic.
So I try to keep an open mind.
The first time I came here,
uh, I did a tour during the day,
and then I did one at nighttime as well.
It seems like every tour I go on there are new stories about new ghosts.
So, it's constantly being added to, constantly evolving.
The most famous ghost story connected to the Myrtles, unfortunately,
is the one that doesn't have much authenticity behind it.
And that's the story of Chloe.
She's been seen many times
as a woman wearing a green wrap or a green turban around her head.
In the 1950s, when Marjorie Munson took over this plantation
and she started to hear some of the ghost stories,
she was told about an experience with a woman in the house
who wore a green turban, or a green wrap, around her head.
And this story sorta stuck around,
that there was a ghost who haunted the house.
She seemed to be the resident spirit here, a woman in a green turban.
Well, when the story of Chloe was created out of thin air,
it was using the story of the ghost with the green turban,
even though the descriptions didn't match.
But we don't wanna let facts get in the way of a good story.
At least that's what happened.
So, initially, she was a little old French lady
who wore a green dress.
And then, as time has worn on,
she has become a young French-Canadian nanny
who wears a green bonnet.
Sometimes she's said to be white.
Other times she's said to be Black.
In some stories, she's said to be young and beautiful.
In other stories, she's a large, older woman.
There are numerous issues with this story.
Uh, not the least of which is there's no record
that the, uh, Woodruff family ever had a slave named Chloe.
There are records of their other slaves written down by name,
but there's no Chloe in the records.
I think there are so many different versions of Chloe
because Chloe needs to fit in with our time.
If we go back further in time,
there's more of a connection to French-Canadian history.
And so, back in the 1920s and the 1940s, that would've made sense as a ghost.
Whereas today,
what's one of the worst things we can think about in society?
It's racism. It's enslavement.
So, I think that the ghost is always really a figment of our imagination,
connected to our times.
I think that's probably what bothered me more than anything else
about this place when I first came here.
Looking for authentic history
and realized that the history that was being told,
and is still being told, is impossible.
I think that the stories of the Myrtles are-- are definitely--
They're folklore stories that have been passed down.
I've been told these stories my entire life.
There's parts of the story that we know have been proven to be inaccurate,
but it's just-- it's so ingrained, uh, into those folklore stories,
that the stories continued to be told.
It's stayed the course
with just tryin' to be a property that's there to entertain.
There is room for different beliefs.
"Are you sure it happened this way? You sure it happened that way?" Always.
We're not here to prove anything to anyone.
I-- I enjoy telling you the stories.
We as tour guides enjoy telling stories, and that is it.
We like to entertain our guests.
I think it's okay to tell the folklore.
I-- I think it's-- it's a part of this house.
All of these stories are attached to the house,
and they've been around for a long time,
over 100 years.
That's not to be discounted, people's experiences and their stories.
We can focus on a story like Chloe
and say, "Oh, hey, look how awful this is."
And I suppose somebody might say, "Oh, it's an inclusive story."
"The star of the story is an African-American woman."
But she's the villain,
and she didn't exist, and she didn't do anything wrong.
Chloe's just one of the people who died here and one of the stories.
So, whether she existed or did not exist,
there's been other murders and deaths here and other family tragedies as well.
Even though the folklore and ghost stories told at the Myrtles
may not be entirely true,
one thing is certain.
Countless visitors have reported experiences
that cannot be explained.
I think the Myrtles definitely has
all the ingredients of a place that's haunted.
It-- It certainly has the history behind it.
I just went into the records to get to the bottom of the story.
When David Bradford came down here in the 1700s,
he brought his family down, started a plantation.
He had been an attorney
and decided to open up in the area to people who wanted to study law.
And one of his students was a man named Clark Woodruff
who came here to learn to be a lawyer.
And he also fell in love
with, uh, Judge Bradford's daughter, Sarah Matilda.
They ended up getting married and had three children.
After Bradford died, they took over the house.
In 1823, Sarah died.
But not from poison birthday cake.
It was easy to check the records
and discover that Sarah died from yellow fever.
It was pretty tragic,
but he remained behind with his children at the house.
The following summer, two of his children died,
also from yellow fever.
No one ever died from poisoned birthday cake.
Also, Sarah was supposed to have been pregnant
with their third child, which meant that Octavia would've never existed,
but she very clearly did.
He sent his oldest daughter away to boarding school
and sold the place to the Stirling family a few years later.
And then they suffered tragedies here too.
Four of their nine children only made it to adulthood.
The rest died from natural causes here at the house, on the property.
After that, the house was sold and resold many times.
More tragedies happened.
The real history of the Myrtles does deal with a lot of tragedy,
a lotta trauma.
There have been quite a few deaths that have occurred inside the house.
The son-in-law of the Stirlings was murdered.
That murder was never solved.
Someone drowned after chasing some stray cattle.
And the list just kept going on.
So, if we believe that ghosts remain behind
because of unfinished business, this is a place that certainly has that.
This house, for some reason, I dunno what it is,
it-- it's just the history of all the-- the angst
and the anger and the-- the sorrow and stuff.
And that-- if that has been imprinted in this house, is-- is a theory.
Boy, based on the people who don't know each other,
have no connection whatsoever,
and yet have reported
very similar, uh, encounters and happenings in the house,
I certainly think it can be haunted.
Now we're outside on the back porch.
And, you know, we've had people just relaxing on the porchway,
they would say how nice it is
to have the waitresses or waiters in costume.
We do not have them in costume.
Who they're seeing flowing around back and forth, we don't know.
These ghosts here, these spirits here,
maybe they get an attachment with you.
You know, I-- I-- I know there's one girl that likes to have children around.
And, my son, he didn't remember this, but he-- when we brought him here
when he was a kid, and I said, "Where you been?"
He said, "Oh, I was playing with the little blond girl over there on--"
There was no kids on the property, ya know?
There are a lot of children who were here in the house.
You know, the Stirling family lost a number of their children at a young age.
So, it's possible that their ghosts could remain behind as well.
There are stories that you, ya know, ca-- might see the children in the mirror,
or that, more commonly, people hear them laughing and playing.
There have been children seen on the front porch
in-- in period clothing.
Everybody has their, really, own experiences and stuff, and, uh,
and it-- sometimes it--
People experience something dark.
So I don't know what-- what sparked that,
but I do know that they have a tendency to, ya know, show themselves with us.
One time, we were checking out,
and we went back up in the room to see if there was anything we might've left.
And there in the middle of the room was a big marble.
Now we would've seen that marble, ya know, during the night and everything.
And I said, "Wow."
I looked down, I picked it up, I said, "Where'd this come from?"
And under that same dresser a marble came rolling out.
I usually walk around with a recorder with me.
And we were just packin' away stuff, my wife and I.
And then this woman next to me, who was not there,
she goes, "I hate you."
And I played it back later, and I said,
"Wow, obviously I must've pissed off somebody."
I hate you.
We ask questions. "Are you here?"
Things like that. And if you're lucky,
you'll get a response, an intelligent response.
Are you cryin' for me?
Did you hear that?
There's four rooms here up on the top floor here,
as you well could see.
And they're all named after certain people that are associated with this house.
In this room, the John Leake Room, I had my foot sticking outta the bed
and somebody grabbed my ankle and started playing with my toes.
One time we were sitting downstairs, about one o'clock in the morning,
and all of a sudden the chandelier...
...started swooping back and forth.
I thought it was gonna fall right outta the ceiling.
And then this young lady who I met that first time that night,
she goes, "Do you see her?" And I go, "See who?"
"She's right in front of you." And my hair's standing on end. I was cold.
And, "She's-- She's really angry at you."
"She's wagging her finger in front of you, your face,
and yellin' at you."
And I'm, ya know, like, "Wow."
Like, I'm watching-- I'm just watching the chandelier just goin' crazy.
And then it starts diminishing a little bit.
I go, "Is she here in front of me now?" "No, she just walked past me."
"She went into the children's dining room area
where you had your camera set up."
And so I went in there and...
...started takin' pictures left and right, both cameras.
And I took the-- the roll of film to, uh, a dealership
that I knew was really good at, uh, processing film quickly.
He comes out, he said, "Did you just come from the airport?"
And I said, "No, why?" He said, "All your film is burned."
Why do you keep coming back?
That's a good question. Many people have asked that.
I guess it's like riding a Ferris wheel or a roller coaster.
Ya know, you-- you're petrified as that-- that car
is going to the peak of the roller coaster,
and then that-- that ride--
"Oh, come on. Let's do it again."
But, overall, I'm just a paranormal enthusiast
who loves the Myrtles Plantation.
The paranormal activity at the Myrtles
ranges from benign sightings to physical disturbances.
But what is it trying to tell us?
If you were to put the 21st-century Myrtles
on a longer historical timeline,
I think it's part of a 200-year-old story
of trying to make a plantation as profitable as possible.
Before Emancipation,
that meant forcing enslaved people to grow cotton.
As the cotton industry collapsed in the early 20th century,
the moneymaker became a certain brand of racial tourism
that engaged in white Americans' fantasies of power and supremacy.
That dynamic continues to this day.
But in the 21st century,
there are more and more Americans who are uncomfortable with that
or who see real problems in it.
We're operating a plantation property in modern day,
and we're modernizing it,
to the sense that it is here for-- for everyone
and of all walks of life.
I'm not tone-deaf to, um-- to the idea that that's offensive to some.
And those that it is triggering to or offensive to,
I wanna know what can we do to it to better that and to improve that.
The plantation owners around here left behind,
in many cases, very detailed records.
And we can look at what day-to-day business
on these plantations was like.
Bennet H. Barrow,
a planter who lived a little under a mile from the Myrtles Plantation,
he kept a daily diary.
And in that diary, he recorded the torture that he personally inflicted
on the roughly 100 people that he held as property.
Whippings, dunking slaves' heads underwater...
This really barbaric, terrifying mixture of corporal pain and public humiliation.
I think, really, the focus of this place should change in that...
Tell the story of Chloe, and then tell people that's not real.
It's not only the Myrtles
that has avoided a more historically-minded approach
and instead pivoted to tourism.
Many other plantations have done the same.
And, as seen across social media,
many are opposed to the idea.
And this plantation was turned into a bed and breakfast.
Like, a place where my ancestors were killed, beaten, raped--
It's really weird that people get married at plantations.
God knows how many slaves were lynched or tortured or buried.
And then getting married there and having the happiest day of your life there.
The history of slavery in this country is constantly denied.
And now it's being mocked by being turned into a luxurious vacation spot.
I want us to focus our energies on recovering
the stories and perspectives of enslaved people.
People trying to survive and endure
under situations of extreme hardship and oppression.
Trying to build families and communities and transmit culture.
I find those stories to be much more powerful
and much more meaningful and intriguing
than stories that celebrate women in hoop skirts,
eating cucumber sandwiches on the veranda.
Unfortunately, most of the stories
of those enslaved at the Myrtles have been lost,
because at the time,
records of their lives were not consistently kept.
There's so much to unpack. It's somethin' that's,
behind the scenes and off-camera, is-- is super important to us,
so that we wanna make sure that-- that we're getting right.
It's-- It's challengin' and uncomfortable.
However complicated the history behind the Myrtles
and present-day use of the property is,
one thing is clear.
Ghosts of many kinds reside here.
It was believed whenever anyone died
on the plantation grounds
that all the mirrors were to be covered with a black cloth.
Durin' the time that Judge Woodruff lost part of his family,
it was supposed to have been so much confusion
that it's believed that this mirror was hanging in the main dining room.
And it was left uncovered.
You see on this side of the mirror, it looks like handprints or paw prints.
It's believed that the spirits from those people's souls
still live inside.
A lot of people take pictures of this mirror.
The faces of two small children will come out
in that section of their photographs.
Well, it's spazzing out by the mirror. Look, right by the stains.
The mirror, I don't believe that. It's 200 years old.
It's not original to the house.
To look at the supposed face
and the a-- alleged hand marks and claw marks,
it looks more like imperfections in the mirror.
The handprints seem to be there,
and they could be the handprints of people who made the mirror.
I saw stuff in that mirror.
It was about one or two o'clock in the morning,
my brother-in-law and I were still up.
I was looking in it and I thought I saw a light inside the mirror,
and I'm thinkin', "Okay, it's car traffic outside."
And we got up and looked at it.
Inside the mirror were these three balls of light.
And they were bouncing around inside like a pinball.
Then I looked at my brother-in-law, and he was, like, in an aura.
His-- His shirt-- He had a white shirt on,
and it was lit up like he was in a nightclub with, uh, black lights.
And we were-- All our hair was standing on end, and it was just--
You felt very-- a lotta energy, and then it-- Poof! It went away.
And the light-- Everything went out.
There's a lot of people who have seen things in the mirror,
whether it's with their eyes
or, um, in their photos that they've taken.
And it is the most photographed place in the plantation.
A lotta people come here and take photographs
and later on will discover that there are pictures of ghosts.
There are little girls or, um, they see Chloe.
But usually after they have taken the photograph.
So, I've examined a number of these photographs
and recognize some of these ghosts.
Sometimes they come from ghost apps.
So, they're used a lot in photographs of other famous places too.
There are dozens of ghost apps out there,
and you can easily create these ghosts yourself.
You take a picture of something.
There's nothing there, and then you insert a picture of a creepy little girl,
and you've got a ghost.
If we take a look at the legendary ghost photograph,
it's not very good quality.
So it's very blurry.
- It's difficult to-- to see detail.
And there are lots of natural explanations for what the photograph is of.
It could be a photograph of a-- a shadow.
- It could also be tools or equipment
or other things that were stored there at the time.
I think it fits in with the-- the beliefs of a lot of people that this is Chloe.
This is what people want to see in that photograph.
But not every photo captured at the Myrtles
has a logical explanation behind it.
One time it poured down rain. It really came down hard.
And there was a-- really, a cool, foggy mist
on the pond out there.
I said, "I'm gonna go out there and take some pictures."
So I set up the tripod, I used that, ya know, 1600 speed film.
So, I processed the film,
and I wish I'd taken more photos.
There was a little red light in the gazebo,
and then it got bigger and it looked like a woman with a hat on.
That's my interpretation of it. It could be a lot of things,
but you could see it, you know, so-- something.
I wish I had taken more shots, because seems like something
was progressing into something a little bit more.
I would say absolutely come to the Myrtles Plantation
and enjoy the folklore, enjoy the stories.
Enjoy that experience as entertainment.
But that it's very important
to also honor the history.
History's incredibly important,
and we want to, uh-- to not-- not erase that with fiction.
I tell everybody,
"Come in with an open mind, pay attention to everything."
"Just respect the house," more than anything else.
"Respect the history."
I hope that people continue to get excited
over the paranormal side of the property
and just play with the haunts and folklore that that all is.
But I also hope to move the property in a direction
that is a place that continues to broaden why people are comin' onto the property,
and ultimately just continues to be a venue,
a-- a place to entertain and to host people of all walks of life.
I've known Morgan ever since he was 18 months old.
Now he's running the Myrtles and he's doing such a good job.
And he will tell you, if he's not already told you,
it's not that he runs the Myrtles. The Myrtles runs him.
A lot of people ask me, before I came to the Myrtles, did I believe in ghosts?
Yes, I've always believed in ghosts.
But there's something about being here and believing in ghosts,
and then just opening myself to what is here.
It's so much that we do not know.
There's an old spiritual song that says that,
"I'll know about it better in the by and by."
It's so much you don't know about, but am I ready for it yet?
You know, I can wait.
But when I take those pictures,
and it's something there that I can't see with the naked eye,
it makes you wonder, you know, what is really going on?
Who's watching you?
The real history of the Myrtles may always be unclear,
but one thing is certain.
We are the visitors.
They are not.