The Facade of St. Francisville
The drive into St. Francisville, Louisiana, performs a subtle temporal trick on the mind. About thirty minutes north of Baton Rouge, Highway 61 sheds the industrial skin of the modern petrochemical corridor and slips into something older, greener, and significantly heavier. The air here feels different—weighted by a humidity that clings like a wet wool coat, carrying the scent of river mud and sweet rot.
When you turn onto the gravel drive of The Myrtles Plantation, the world narrows. The canopy of centennial live oaks, draped in the grey rags of Spanish moss, creates a tunnel effect that dims the midday sun. At the end of this tunnel sits the house: a sprawling cottage of white clapboard and green shutters, wrapped in a 120-foot veranda that features some of the most intricate ornamental ironwork in the American South.
It is objectively beautiful. It is the architectural embodiment of the "Moonlight and Magnolias" myth—a pristine relic of a bygone era. But this beauty is a facade. It is a stage set that hides a "bruised history," a landscape where the soil is thick with the trauma of the past.
Globally marketed as "One of America's Most Haunted Homes," The Myrtles has become a pilgrimage site for thrill-seekers, paranormal investigators, and tourists hungry for a scare. They come for the ghost stories. They come to see apparitions in the mirrors and orbs in their photographs. But to treat The Myrtles simply as a haunted house is to miss the true horror of the place. The ghosts here—if they exist—are not merely jumping out of closets. They are the psychological residue of a plantation system built on human chattel, sudden death, and the desperate attempt to whitewash history with folklore.
This is not a ghost story. This is an autopsy of a legend.
Origins in Exile: The Whiskey Rebellion
To understand the atmosphere of The Myrtles, one must understand that it was born not in aristocratic comfort, but in treason and exile. The narrative of the "Southern Gentleman" usually evokes images of established lineage, but the founder of this property, General David Bradford, was a fugitive.
In the 1790s, Bradford was a prominent lawyer and deputy attorney general in Washington County, Pennsylvania. He became a ringleader of the Whiskey Rebellion, a violent uprising against President George Washington’s excise tax on distilled spirits. When Washington mobilized an army of nearly 13,000 troops to crush the rebellion, Bradford became a wanted man. With a price on his head, he fled down the Mississippi River, leaving his family behind, and vanished into the Spanish territory of West Florida (now the Louisiana Florida Parishes).
In 1796, Bradford secured a land grant from the Spanish Baron de Carondelet. He named his isolation "Laurel Grove." It was here, in the shark-tooth wilderness of the indigo-growing frontier, that the house began. This origin story sets a specific vibration for the property: it was established as a hideout. It was a place built by a man looking over his shoulder, a sanctuary carved out of fear and defiance. The house did not begin as a monument to Southern grandeur; it began as a desperate shelter for a rebel on the run.
The Architecture of Illusion
The structure that stands today is a palimpsest of renovations, expanding from Bradford’s modest four-room cottage into the sprawling 22-room mansion we see now. The architecture is distinctly "Louisiana Creole Cottage" blown up to grand proportions. It sits raised on brick piers to breathe in the damp climate, featuring a wide breezeway (or dogtrot) designed to pull cool air through the center of the home.
In the 1830s, under the ownership of Ruffin Gray Stirling, the house underwent a massive transformation. Stirling added the grand central hallway and the intricate frieze work—the famous iron lacework that casts long, prison-bar shadows across the porch when the sun sets. It was Stirling who renamed the property "The Myrtles," after the abundance of crepe myrtles that surrounded the house.
The sensory experience of the grounds is overwhelming. The heat in St. Francisville is acoustic; it hums with the drone of cicadas and tree frogs. The crepe myrtles themselves are beautiful but eerie, their smooth, shedding bark often compared to bone or skin. Even without the ghost stories, the architecture evokes a sense of claustrophobia. The low ceilings of the second floor (originally meant for children and servants) and the darkened parlors create spaces that feel like they are holding their breath. It is a perfect theater for the Gothic imagination.
The Legend of Chloe: The Moonlight Narrative
If you take the guided tour, or if you browse the thousands of blog posts dedicated to The Myrtles Plantation history, you will inevitably encounter Chloe. She is the superstar of the Myrtles’ mythology, the ghost that sells the tickets.
As the story is typically told by the tour guides—often with theatrical hushes and dramatic pauses—Chloe was a household slave owned by Clark and Sara Woodruff (Clark was General Bradford’s son-in-law). According to the legend, Chloe was forced to be Clark’s mistress. Fearful of being sent back to the brutal labor of the cotton fields, she began eavesdropping on Clark’s business conversations to gauge her standing in the house.
One afternoon, Clark caught her listening at a keyhole. To punish her, he ordered her left ear cut off. To hide her disfigurement, Chloe began wearing a green turban.
The legend spirals into tragedy: desperate to prove her value to the family, Chloe baked a birthday cake for the Woodruff children. She laced the batter with oleander leaves—a poisonous plant common in the garden—intending only to make them sick so she could nurse them back to health and regain the family's favor. But the dosage was wrong. Sara Woodruff and two of her daughters ate the cake and died in agony. The other enslaved workers, fearing Clark’s wrath would come down on all of them, dragged Chloe from her room and hanged her from a nearby live oak tree.
Visitors are told that Chloe still roams the property, a wandering figure in a green turban, peering at guests from the shadows, eternally seeking redemption for her accidental murder.
Deconstructing Chloe: The Historical Vacuum
The story of Chloe is cinematic, tragic, and compelling. It checks every box of the Southern Gothic genre: forbidden sex, mutilation, poison, and a ghost seeking forgiveness.
It is also almost certainly a complete fabrication.
When one steps away from the campfire and consults the archives, the "Legend of Chloe" dissolves into a historical vacuum. Extensive research into the Woodruff family records, estate inventories, and death certificates reveals two critical, legend-shattering facts:
- There is no record of an enslaved woman named Chloe. The probate records and slave inventories for the Woodruff household during that period list the names of the enslaved people held on the property. "Chloe" does not appear on these lists.
- The Oleander Myth is medically false. Sara Woodruff and her children, Cornelia and James, did indeed die—but they did not die simultaneously from a poisoned cake. Historical records verify that Sara and two of her three children died of Yellow Fever during the epidemics of 1823 and 1824. This was a grimly common fate in the Louisiana Delta, where mosquitoes flourished in the swampy heat. They did not die at the dinner table; they died slowly, in their beds, consumed by a viral hemorrhagic fever.
Why, then, does the legend persist?
The persistence of the Chloe myth serves a psychological function for the white narrative of the South. It transforms a systemic tragedy (the ownership of human beings) into a domestic melodrama. By framing the death of the Woodruffs as the result of a "vengeful" or "misguided" slave, the story subtly shifts the victimhood to the slaveholders. It masks the banal horror of Yellow Fever and the brutal reality of slavery with a sensationalized tale of a "bad apple." It is a classic example of folklore filling the gaps where history is too painful, or too boring, to recount.
The Haunted Mirror: Vanity and Vapor
Inside the main hallway of the house stands a massive French mirror, its glass slightly desilvered by age. This object is perhaps the second most famous "character" at The Myrtles.
The superstition surrounding the mirror is rooted in Victorian death customs. It was believed that upon a death in the house, all mirrors must be covered to prevent the soul of the deceased from becoming trapped in the reflection. The legend claims that after the poisoning of the Woodruffs, a servant failed to cover this specific mirror. Consequently, the souls of Sara and her children are said to be trapped within the glass.
Tour guides will shine flashlights onto the surface, pointing out "residue," strange drip marks, and what appear to be the outlines of small handprints near the bottom of the frame. The lore insists that no matter how many times the glass is cleaned or the silvering is replaced, the handprints return.
Whether one believes in trapped spirits or not, the mirror serves as a powerful metaphor for the Myrtles experience. We look into it expecting to see the past, but we are often just seeing our own projections—our desire to see something magical in the mundane degradation of antique silver.
The Murder of William Winter: Blood on the Porch
While Chloe is a phantom of folklore, William Winter is a ghost of verifiable history. Of all the stories told at The Myrtles, the death of William Winter is the one that anchors the haunting in the bloody reality of the Reconstruction era.
William Winter was an attorney and the agent for the plantation in the post-Civil War years. The date was January 26, 1871. The atmosphere in St. Francisville was politically volatile; the old social order had collapsed, and violence was a common language of dispute.
Winter was standing on the side gallery of the house (the porch) when a stranger rode up on horseback. A hail of words was exchanged, followed immediately by the roar of a shotgun. The stranger fired, blasting Winter in the chest with buckshot.
This was not a romantic duel. It was an assassination.
The verified historical account is far more visceral than any ghost story. Winter, chest heaving and blood pouring onto the cypress floorboards, staggered through the gentleman’s parlor and into the house. He was trying to reach his wife upstairs.
The 17th Step: Where Reality Ends
The legend states—and the tour guides emphasize—that Winter managed to claw his way up the central staircase. He reached the 17th step, where he collapsed into his wife’s arms and died.
Today, visitors report hearing heavy, staggering footsteps on the stairs that stop abruptly at the 17th step. It is the audio replay of a man bleeding to death.
This story induces a specific kind of intellectual vertigo. Unlike the Chloe legend, which requires a suspension of disbelief, the Winter story forces the visitor to confront the violence of the site. You are standing on the stairs where a man’s life ended in a chaotic, messy murder. The contrast between the polite, air-conditioned tour and the image of Winter scrambling up those stairs, clutching a shotgun wound, tears the "romantic" veil off the plantation. It reminds us that this house was not just a venue for balls and banquets; it was a place where political disputes were settled with lead.
The Civil War and The Aftermath
It is a miracle, in some respects, that The Myrtles stands at all. During the Civil War, St. Francisville was shelled by Union gunboats, and many plantation homes were looted or burned to the ground. The Myrtles survived, though not unscathed.
Stories of looting are woven into the haunting narrative. There are tales of Union soldiers ransacking the parlor, searching for valuables. One particular legend claims that three Union soldiers were killed in the house and that a bloodstain in the doorway refused to be scrubbed away, eventually necessitating the replacement of the floorboards.
While the "unwashable bloodstain" is a common trope in haunted house folklore (appearing in stories from Canterville to Edinburgh), the reality of the occupation was stark. The house was stripped of its wealth, its economy shattered. The post-war years were a slow descent into decay, a period that allowed the "haunted" atmosphere to fester as the paint peeled and the gardens grew wild.
The Commercialization of Trauma
This brings us to the central paradox of St. Francisville dark tourism. The Myrtles Plantation is no longer a private residence; it is a commercial entity designed to sell the experience of fear.
The "Mystery Weekend" packages invite guests to sleep in the very rooms where people supposedly died. Guests pay a premium for the chance to feel a "cold spot" or hear a mysterious creak. There is a profound dissonance in this transaction. We are paying to be entertained by the echoes of tragedy.
This is the "uncanny valley" of tourism. By repackaging the deaths of Sara Woodruff, the murder of William Winter, and the suffering of the enslaved into "spooky tales," we create a buffer between ourselves and the reality. It is easier to be scared of a ghost in a green turban than it is to contemplate the reality of a mother watching her children die of Yellow Fever with no medical help. It is easier to look for orbs in a photo than to think about the human beings who were bought, sold, and worked to death on this soil.
The commercialization of the haunting effectively sterilizes the trauma. It turns history into a funhouse attraction.
The Invisible Workforce: Slavery at Laurel Grove
The most significant haunting at The Myrtles is the one that is rarely mentioned on the "spook" tours. It is the presence—or rather, the conspicuous absence—of the enslaved community.
During the height of its operation as "Laurel Grove" and later "The Myrtles," the plantation relied on the forced labor of a significant number of enslaved people. They cleared the forests, built the 120-foot veranda, fired the bricks, and tended the crops. They lived, loved, suffered, and died on this land.
Yet, aside from the fictionalized "Chloe," their names are largely absent from the tourist script. There are no famous ghost stories about the field hands who died of heatstroke or the families separated by sale. These are the Invisible Workforce.
If one is to believe that traumatic events leave a psychic residue, then the grounds of The Myrtles should be deafening with the voices of the enslaved. Their silence in the official narrative is the true haunting. It represents a historical erasure that is far more chilling than any Victorian mirror superstition. When you walk the grounds, look away from the big house. Look at the fields. That is where the real weight of the history lies.
The Modern Experience: The Tour
Participating in a tour at The Myrtles is a study in group psychology. The experience begins on the veranda, where the humidity immediately dampens the clothes. The guide, usually dressed in period-appropriate (or at least atmospheric) attire, gathers the group.
The script is a well-oiled machine, calibrated to elicit gasps and nervous laughter. The lighting in the house is kept intentionally dim. The air conditioning struggles against the Louisiana heat, keeping the rooms heavy and still.
As the group moves from the parlor to the dining room, you can feel the collective anticipation. Guests clutch EMF meters (often sold in the gift shop) and stare intently at the corners of the ceiling. Every creak of the floorboard—and in a house from 1796, there are many—is interpreted as a signal. The power of suggestion is the strongest force in the room. The tour creates a "confirmation bias" loop: people come expecting to see a ghost, so every shadow becomes one.
The Grounds and The General's Store
Stepping out of the house and back into the sunlight can be jarring. The grounds are undeniably picturesque. The weeping crepe myrtles, bent with age, frame the house in a way that feels curated for Instagram. There is a large pond, a gazebo, and the ubiquitous moss-draped oaks.
However, the "Uncanny Valley" effect returns with full force at the General’s Store—the gift shop. Here, the tragedy of the site is commodified into trinkets. You can buy "haunted" hot sauce, t-shirts featuring the green-turbaned Chloe, and books on Louisiana ghosts.
The juxtaposition is stark. You have just walked through the room where William Winter bled to death, and now you are browsing refrigerator magnets. This is the reality of modern plantation tourism: the site must sustain itself financially, and "spooks" sell better than sociology.
Staying the Night: The Bed & Breakfast
For those who choose to stay the night, the experience shifts from theatrical to psychological. The Myrtles operates as a Bed & Breakfast, offering rooms in the main house and the garden cottages.
When the day-trippers leave and the sun sets, the house changes. The silence of the countryside takes over. The darkness in St. Francisville is absolute, lacking the light pollution of the city.
Guests who sleep in the main house often report a night of restless anticipation. The psychological priming received during the tour ensures that every settling timber sounds like a footstep. The mind plays tricks in the dark, reconstructing the stories heard earlier. It is an exercise in endurance—paying hundreds of dollars to lie awake, waiting for something to happen, and being simultaneously terrified and disappointed if it does (or doesn't).
Logistics and Visiting Strategy
If you plan to visit The Myrtles, it is best to approach it with a specific mindset: skeptical, observant, and respectful of the history.
- Location: St. Francisville is about 30 miles north of Baton Rouge.
- Best Time to Visit: Late autumn or early spring. The Louisiana summer (June–September) is brutally hot and can make the outdoor portions of the tour physically draining.
- The Context: To get a full picture of the region, pair your visit to The Myrtles with a visit to Rosedown Plantation or Oakley Plantation nearby. These sites often focus more strictly on the historical and agricultural realities of the antebellum period, providing a necessary counterweight to the ghost-heavy narrative of The Myrtles.
- Ticket Strategy: The "Mystery Tour" (evening) is the most popular for ghost hunters, but the daily historical tours offer a better look at the architecture and verified history.
SEO Note: Is the Myrtles Plantation tour worth it? Yes, but only if you view it as a cultural study of how America processes its past, rather than just a haunted house attraction.
Ethical Considerations: Dark Tourism
Visiting a plantation in the 21st century carries an inherent ethical weight. These were sites of atrocity. The "Plantation Tourism" industry is currently undergoing a reckoning, with many sites pivoting to center the enslaved narrative. The Myrtles, however, remains firmly planted in the "Haunted Heritage" category.
As a visitor, you participate in this economy. The ethical way to engage is to bring your own context. Acknowledge the enslaved people who are not mentioned in the script. Look past the ghost stories to the economic and racial systems that built the house. Do not treat the site as a theme park, but as a crime scene that has been dressed up in lace.
Conclusion: The Silence That Speaks
Ultimately, The Myrtles Plantation leaves the visitor with a sense of "intellectual vertigo." The clash between the romantic beauty of the architecture, the campy fun of the ghost tour, and the brutal reality of the history creates a dizzying experience.
What actually haunts The Myrtles?
It is unlikely to be Chloe and her poisoned cake. It is not the vapors in the mirror.
The Myrtles is haunted by the unresolved weight of American history. The ghosts are manifestations of a past that refuses to stay buried, a history of violence and subjugation that we have tried to paint over with stories of heartbroken lovers and green turbans. The scariest thing about The Myrtles is not the supernatural; it is the reality of human cruelty.
When you leave the property, driving back out through the tunnel of live oaks, the feeling that lingers is not fear of the dead. It is a heavy, somber recognition of the silence. The silence of the fields. The silence of the 17th step. It is the silence of a history that is still waiting, patiently, to be fully told.
Sources & References
- The Center for Louisiana Studies: Historical context on the Florida Parishes and the Whiskey Rebellion.
- National Register of Historic Places: Architectural details and verified historical significance of The Myrtles (listed as the Myrtles Plantation).
- Louisiana State University (LSU) Libraries Special Collections: Plantation records and genealogy of the Woodruff and Stirling families.
- The Advocate (Baton Rouge): Archival news reports on St. Francisville history and the William Winter murder.
- "Haunted America" by Michael Norman and Beth Scott: Analysis of American folklore and the Chloe legend.
- Find A Grave / Vital Records St. Francisville: Death records for Sara Woodruff and children (verifying Yellow Fever).
- Slavery and the Making of America (PBS): Contextual history on the lives of enslaved peoples in the Louisiana Delta.
- Dark Tourism Research (Academic Journals): Studies on the commercialization of plantation sites and "Dissonant Heritage."
- Travel & Leisure: "America's Most Haunted Homes" (for contrast on the commercial narrative).
- Historic St. Francisville: Local historical society publications regarding the 1871 shooting of William Winter.
