Louisiana

Centerville

Susie Plantation

The Home was built in early 1800's by the parents of Addie E. Harris. The working plantation was given to her husband, James Stirling Hereford two years before she died as a wedding dowry.

Addie was joyous when she found she was pregnant and never suspected that she would die giving birth to her child. She was only twenty-two years old when she died in 1876.

She was buried along with her child in a tomb standing beside the house with a marble slab that reads "Weep not for me, I am not dead, I only sleepth". This may be true for she appears in photographs taken on the property and is seen by people in many places in the house.

Susan and William Smith, natives of Virginia, owned the house in the early 1880s. According to coroners notes discovered recently, Ann Smith, age fifty-years old, apparently with heart problems died in the extreme heat in front of the home on 18 Jun 1883. Perhaps this is another cause of the strange things that happen in this house.

Oak Alley

Plantation Oak Alley

Probably the best known of all Louisiana plantations because of its double row of 28 three hundred year-old liveoak trees, Oak Alley was constructed in 1836 by Jacques Roman' in as a classic Greek-revival style antebellum home.. It's original name was Bon Secour, which means "pleasant visit", but the current name stuck after someone noted the 300-yard long rows of trees resembled an alley. The most famously photographed Louisiana plantation,Oak Alley Plantation has been called the "Grande Dame" of the Great River Road. Located at 3645 La 18, Vacherie, La between New Orleans and Baton Rouge on the Mississippi River.

St. Francisville

The Myrtles Plantation

The Myrtles Plantation was the home of David Bradford, a lawyer who had been the "most violent leader" of the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794. An insurrection against a tax on distilled spirits, the uprising consisted largely of western Pennsylvania and Virginia farmers, most of Scotch-Irish descent, who made whiskey from their grain. The rebellion was put down by militia under the order of President Washington, and Bradford "escaped down the Mississippi River" ).

Bradford established the Myrtles and built the plantation house in 1796 on a Spanish land grant (Spain having owned Louisiana from 1762 to 1800). According to a historical marker on the grounds, "the architecture, elaborate plaster work and lacy ironwork make this twenty room mansion one of Louisiana's most unusual planation homes." Bradford's fourteen-year-old daughter married Judge Clarke Woodruff, the subject of a "legend" relating to a purported ghost of the Myrtles.

The Myrtles was built in an oak grove and took its name from the many myrtles that cover the property. Ten murders have been committed on this site and rumor has it that the site is on top of an ancient Indian burial ground.

The plantation was acquired in 1834 by a jovial Scotsman, Ruffin Gray Stifling, whose family came to include nine children. Their one girl, Sarah, married a St. Louis attorney named William Winter, and the couple settled at the Myrtles. In 1871, Winter was shot and--according to legend--staggered upstairs reaching the seventeenth step before expiring. Allegedly "labored footsteps" of Winter's ghost could be heard on the stairs until they ceased in 1985.

The most retold of the stories centers around Cloe, a beautiful mulatto housemaid who became the property master's mistress. When the relationship ended, she began eavesdropping on the family. She was caught and as punishment, had one ear cut off and was sent into the fields to work.

Cloe wanted revenge and soon afterward, baked at cake for a family birthday party. She put a small amount of poison into the cake. it is not known if this was for revenge, or if she hoped to make the children just a little sick so she could come back to the main house and take care of them. The family's two children and the mother all ate pieces of the cake, and fell instantly ill. Cloe was indeed asked to take care of them and nurse them back to health.She was sure when they recoveredwould she would win the Judge's gratitude, and/or administer a magic cure that would cause the family to regard her "as a powerful voodoo priestess" and thus return her to her former status.

Unfortunately, the wife and two children died. The other slaves, fearful of the plantation owner's wrath, dragged Cloe out of the house and hung her. At least one source has somehow learned that after the hanging "Chloe's body was weighted with rocks and dropped in the nearby Mississippi River."

The ghosts of Cloe, the two children and the mother have all been spotted in and around the house. Other ghostly activity noted at the plantation include the ghost of a French woman who wanders from room to room in search of something or someone; a ghost at the grand piano who practices one chord over and over again; a portrait that changes expressions; and a young girl who only appears just before thunderstorms. There are unexplained apparitions and noises, bed that are mysteriously rumpled, orbs and shadowy figures, an oil portrait whose features become animated, a "bloody handprint" on the adjacent wall, doors that inexplicably open or close, and other phenomena, including fingerprints in the silvering of a mirror.

A visitor to the Myrtles wrote "We took a picture,although we were not supposed too, of the room that had a ghost. And guess what - there was a strange white image in a mirror in the photograph."

Incidents also include children playing during the night when there are no children in the house, guests waking up freezing cold and unable to move, contact with the spirit of a little girl who holds the hands of visitors on the grounds.

This picture shows a wall hanging where Cloe’s face is in one picture and not the other.

Visitors were having dinner in the Carriage House, which is in the back across the courtyard from the rear veranda of the house. Sitting beside a large window, they had a clear view of everything. From the far left, a woman appeared. She was dressed in a long, old-fashioned skirt and white blouse, her hair in an old-fashioned style. She floated, rather than walked and started across the courtyard. They watched her float across the courtyard, up the back steps, then to the right across the veranda. Then she disappeared straight through a closed door.

Handprints in a mirror. There are, however, clearly discernible handprints in the front hallway. With its ornate, gilded frame, the mirror dominates the immediate area. Guide Hester Eby stands beside it to tell of local superstition at the time of Chloe's alleged poisoning of Mrs. Woodruff and the two girls. If the mirrors were not covered with black cloth, Eby says, it was believed that spirits of the dead could be trapped inside. "During the time of the poisoning of Sarah and her daughters, there was so much confusion that this mirror was left uncovered. It's believed those people's souls still live inside this section of the mirror".

Judge Bradford died on the seventeenth step after being shot by an unknown assailant. Often people hear footsteps that climb up the front stair way, seen in the mirror and stop on step seventeen.

One guest reported that althought they didn't see a ghost, the chandelier would sway back and forth on its own. There were three witnesses to the chandelier dropping water, wetting the bed cover as it moved back and forth. They could find no air movement or leak of any kind. They were told someone was hung in that room.

Others guests wrote, "My husband and I stayed in this room.We couldn't sleep at all because we kept hearing a woman's voice "chanting",and it was freezing cold. Also, our light kept swinging in circles."

"I was sleeping in this room, I felt someone brush against my hand then a tug on the covers, the room was very cold because of air con. but I woke up in a sweat".

'My husband and I spent July 20th in this room. We both woke up sweating numerous times even after the temperature was 61 degrees in the room. We also have a recording with voices and unexplained noises."

This picture was taken in 1995 by Jack Roth in 1995. Notice the figure in the background on the porch. It appears to be a black woman who may be Chloe.

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