There are many haunted homes in the United States and
Louisiana seems to have more than its fair share. However, only one can
legitimately lay claim to being “the most haunted house in America.” The
Myrtles” has earned that title in part by being the abode of as many as 14
ghosts. Serving as a respected Bed & Breakfast establishment now, even
without the ghosts, the place would be creepy merely due to its bloody history
and the mysteries it holds secret.
In 1791, General Daniel Bradford, a hero of the American
Revolution, was a leader of the Whiskey Rebellion, a violent protest of the new
U.S. government’s imposition of a tax on whiskey. In July, 1794, a government militia
force of over 13,000 men marched into western Pennsylvania to put down the rebellion
and enforce the tax laws that were being protested by 500 distillers. Bradford
decided discretion was the better part of valor so, after retrieving a small
fortune in funds and leaving his wife and 5 children behind, he high-tailed it
out of the government’s reach down to Spanish-held Louisiana.
In 1796, General Bradford purchased a 650-acre tract of land
to begin a plantation and chose to build a large house on the highest point of
the estate. What he didn’t know,
however, was that the spot was the exact site of an ancient burial ground of
the Tunica Indians. It took several years for the construction crew and artists
to complete Bradford’s mansion and for the plantation, which he named Laurel Grove,
to be established. Stories handed down indicate that before building began and
also during the construction, he spent a number of nights at the site. During
those nights, his sleep was often disturbed by the appearance of a nude Indian
maiden who would slowly shake her head from side-to-side while looking at him. He
said he somehow understood the apparition was trying to tell him not to build
on the sacred ground, but not believing in omens, he chose to ignore the
warning.
In 1798, President John Adams pardoned Bradford for his
actions in the Whiskey Rebellion. That same year, he travelled back to
Pennsylvania and brought his wife and children back to live with him in Louisiana.
They lived there, peacefully building a life together, until 1808 when Bradford
died in bed. After his death, the house passed ownership to his oldest
daughter, Sarah, who soon married a lawyer, Clarke Woodruff. Over the next few
years, the couple had 3 children and owned a large number of slaves to work the
plantation and take care of the house.
One of those slaves was a beautiful, young mulatto girl
named Chloe who the master of the house forced to become his mistress. Clarke
treated his slave mistress better than any of the other slaves, making her the family’s
cook and the children’s nanny. A year
later though, Clarke took a different slave girl to be his new mistress and
threatened to put Chloe back in the fields if she told anyone of their coupling.
Being fearful of being relegated to backbreaking work in the fields or being
sold and separated from her family, Chloe began listening at keyholes to her
master’s private conversations for information concerning her fate. One day
Clarke caught her and in a fit of rage, cut off her ear. She survived and for
the rest of her life wore a green turban on her head to hide the missing ear.
Chloe was sure she would be dealt an even harsher punishment even
as time passed so when an opportunity finally presented itself, she concocted a
plan to get back into Clarke’s favor. The family was having a birthday party
for one of the young daughters and she was instructed to bake a cake for the occasion.
Chloe laced the cake with oleander, a poisonous shrub. She only meant to make
the family sick so she could then nurse them all back to health and prove how
essential she was. Unfortunately, she used too much poison and Sarah and 2 of
their children died lying in their beds in spite of Chloe’s efforts to nurse
them back to health.
The night of the funeral, Chloe was very distraught and when
her fellow slaves asked her what was wrong, thinking they would keep her secret,
she confessed to what she had done. However, in those times, a serious
infraction of the law by a slave would bring quick and painful retribution not
just to the perpetrator, but also to the other slaves on the plantation and Chloe
surely had broken a major law of the white man. Before a white mob could come for them in
revenge, the other slaves decided to take matters into their own hands. Later
that night, pulling Chloe from her bed, they dragged her to a tall oak tree near
the house and hung her until she choked to death. Just before dawn when they
were sure she was dead, they cut her down and threw her body into the nearby
river and let it wash away.
After the death of Sarah and the two children, Clarke left
the plantation in the hands of a caretaker and moved with his surviving daughter
to Covington, Louisiana and in 1834, sold the plantation, the house and the
slaves to Ruffin Stirling. Before he and his wife Mary and their 9 children
moved in, they spent a considerable amount of money remodeling and adding to
the original structure. Renaming the plantation & house to “The Myrtles,” by
the time they were finished, the house was twice as big. No matter as the ill
will of the house did not abate. Five of the Stirling children died in the
house at a young age and Ruffin himself died there in 1854.
In the early 1860’s, the eldest surviving Stirling daughter,
Sarah, married William Winter and in 1865, Mary Stirling, who had inherited The
Myrtles upon Ruffin’s death, hired William to manage the plantation. William
and Sarah lived in the house along with her mother. The Winters, not faring any
better than previous occupants, had a daughter, Kate, who died at the house
from typhoid when she was only 3. Facing hard times after the Civil War, the
family was forced to sell The Myrtles in 1868, but William began making a good
living as a lawyer, won several big cases, and they were able to buy the
plantation back by late 1870.
The following year, a man on horseback rode up to the house
and called to William for the purpose of hiring him as a lawyer. When Winter
came out onto the porch, the man shot him in the chest and rode off into the
night. William staggered back into the house and, evidently trying to reach his
wife who was upstairs, began climbing the staircase. He made it to the 17th
of the 20 stairs where he collapsed. Sarah ran to him and cradled his head in
her lap as he died. The sheriff and the doctor were summoned and when they
arrived, they found a sobbing Sarah sitting on the stairs still holding the
corpse of her husband. When his body was removed, a large pool of blood
remained on the step where he died. The gunman was never found, the case never
solved.
The bloody history of The Myrtles did not end with William
Winter’s murder. William’s widow Sarah remained at the house with her mother
Mary until she died there in 1878. Mary died in the house 2 years later in 1880
and the plantation went to her son, Stephen. By this time, the plantation was
heavily in debt and Stephen sold it in 1886. Shortly thereafter, a man was
stabbed to death in the hallway over a gambling debt. The Myrtles then changed
hands a number of times over the next few years until in the early 1900’s, the
land was divided up among the last buyer’s heirs after he died and the house
itself was sold to a new buyer. In 1927, the overseer of the large house was
stabbed to death during a robbery attempt. With its history of violence and
death, the house changed hands numerous times, seeming to bring ill will to
most of its owners until the 1970’s when James and Frances Myers purchased it.
After extensive repairs and remodeling, they turned it into the Bed &
Breakfast it is today.
With all of the deaths experienced in the house, it’s no
wonder the home has earned its reputation as being extremely haunted. Not long
after the death of the slave girl named Cloe came the first reports from
residents and visitors of an apparition wearing a green turban. She apparently
is still hanging around and still very active over 200 years later. Many guests
have awakened from a sound sleep to see the green-turbaned specter standing
over them. Often, a baby’s cry is heard when Chloe appears. By standing over the
person’s bed and gazing down on them, it is thought she is still carrying out
her duties as a nanny, checking on the children she used to care for.
Two other spirits are sometimes seen looking through bedroom
windows or standing at the foot of beds in the dark of night – two blond-headed
girls with long corkscrew curls wearing antebellum dresses. Children’s happy
voices are heard playing in the hallway, laughing and squealing as they invisibly
run from one end of the hall to the other. Sometimes, guests return to their locked
room after the service staff has carefully made their bed only to find the bed
clothes rumpled with the unmistakable indention of a child’s footprint, as if a
child had been jumping on the bed. Apparently, Cloe’s young victims are still
hanging around.
One of the most reported mysteries is a thumping sound, as
if someone is staggering across the foyer and climbing up the stairs. The sound
always stops on the 17th step and then the thud of a falling body is heard.
Upon investigation, there is nothing seen, nothing at all, except for the dark blood-colored
stain on that step, and no amount of scrubbing or bleaching has ever been able
to remove it.
Other spirits seem to have made The Myrtles their home as
well. Guests of the current Bed & Breakfast have told the owners they
witnessed a lady softly playing the grand piano late at night. However, the
owners do not know how to play piano and when asked, none of the other guests at
the time claimed to know how either. A slender young man in a fancy vest and
top hat has been sighted on numerous occasions wandering around the grounds.
The clothes and appearance of the man exactly match the description of the
gambler killed in the foyer over his gambling debt. There is also the female apparition
dressed in a long black skirt who floats about a foot above the floor, dancing
to music nobody among the living can hear. Occasionally, after everyone has gone to bed
and all is quiet in the dark of the night, the sounds of laughter, music, and
the clinking of glasses can be heard coming from the parlor. Perhaps the ghosts
are enjoying a lively social gathering.
The media has often reported on the many phantoms at The
Myrtles. It has been featured in Life magazine, Southern Living, and numerous
tabloids. A number of television documentaries have featured the old house and
its stories through the years. With its location on a Louisiana bayou,
surrounded by huge oak trees, Spanish Moss hanging from their branches
providing an eerie atmosphere, it has even been featured as the setting for a
number of big-budget movies.
A group of paranormal investigators recently spent time at
the place and with their video cameras and assorted electronic sensing
equipment, they succeeded in documenting several paranormal phenomena.
Unexplainable drops in temperature, tape recordings of footsteps in empty rooms
and on the stairs, strange whistling sounds emanating from unoccupied rooms and
video recorded glowing orbs of bright light strangely whizzing around unseen by
the naked eye were a few of the things they documented. Two of the
investigators were returning to the house after walking around the grounds when
they noticed a gray cat looking at them from the porch. Not knowing what it was
at first, they shined their flashlights on it. The cat did not run away, it
just sat there looking at them. One of them said, “That cat is creepy” and then
both noted something really strange – the cat’s eyes did not reflect the light
the way a normal cats would have. One of them grabbed his digital camera and
took a picture of it. As soon as he did, the cat disappeared. Looking at the
picture later, there was no cat, just a small white orb that seemed to be
streaking toward the edge of the photo. When the owners were asked about the
cat the next day, they reported it was a family pet named Mert. There was just
one problem – Mert had died the year before.