Light out everybody what's up everybody welcome back to another episode of the lights out podcast i'm your host josh as always i've got my brother and producer joel here in the studio with me today we are going to be covering one of the most haunted places in all of the united states Then this place has an extremely dark very very tragic history and that is the myrtles plantation in saint francisville louisiana lots of history to this one and lots of paranormal activity that's been recorded and still goes on today because this is actually a huge
haunted tourist attraction and hopefully one day we'll get to go and visit it i'd be so sick because this place is i truly believe Haunted i mean there's just so much you know history and dark history that's happened here that there's no way it's not yeah man that'd be so cool to go see and i wonder if they'll let us even bring our ghost equipment oh well i'm sure they would if we would be cool i mean everybody's going there with our meter that's their emf yeah evp has been recorded there so we'll and We'll
have all of that in today's episode before we get into that though i wanted to just thank everybody who reached out to us in our last episode we mentioned that we're looking for some merch designers people that have graphic design talent and boy did you guys show up really appreciate it you know we're going through all the emails i think we got over 300 some emails So we've got a lot to sort through and you know if we we feel like you might be a good fit for as an artist to work with on our
next merch collection we'll definitely reach out to you and uh yeah also we got a ton of people with suggestions for cases yeah i really really appreciate it because i actually found a couple cases we're going to be covering here in the show On the next couple of weeks which are really really interesting paranormal cases hell yeah haunting so keep it coming again if you have any suggestions or you're a graphic designer you know you think you might have some stuff we like you can hit us up at llp milehire.com also i wanted to thank
everybody that's been leaving us ratings and reviews on apple podcasts really appreciate that like honestly Yeah it helps us gauge like how we're doing and if you're enjoying the show and the topics we're covering so if you haven't left us a reviewer rating on apple podcast yet please do that the link will be below and yeah it just really helps us out plus we like to see what your thoughts are and on youtube i mean you can always give us a comment there definitely obviously we get lots of Comments and we appreciate all that it
does really just help us you know without we want to make a show that's like you know going to give you the best experience exactly it's all about the you know experience you get it and like for joel he likes to hear about production and audio and things like that so any feedback on that you know maybe things You like or suggestions right we're always open to it because i get it i mean i've been adding a lot of sounds uh you know and some people think it's corny and stuff and i get that that
side of it but at the same time i mean i do think it brings just a lot more to what we're talking about in my opinion yeah 100 i mean initially when i kind of thought up this idea of of the lights Out podcasts i really wanted to be an immersive experience as much as i possibly could obviously i can do a lot with my words but i think it really adds a lot when you have some sound effects and you have some drones or some just yeah you know kind of create that ambience you
know that's right you need for some of these stories because you know i can only do so much as a host But yeah what joel does to add in you know the visuals and all these different things to help kind of create the ultimate experience for you i think for sure super valuable and yeah appreciative absolutely for the show and i just want to clear this up too is you know my role on the podcast is yeah i'm the producer so I just make sure all that media and stuff is on point and you know
all the editing and stuff i'm not a co-host so it's not because i'm shy that i don't talk a lot it's because this podcast is more in a narrative style right so you know josh is the host i'm the producer so that's why josh does the majority of the talking it's just the style of our show Yeah exactly i mean maybe you're you know new and you're kind of wondering like what joel's role is yeah and that's just kind of how i wanted to lay it out because there's so much to these stories that if
we were to like go back and forth this would be like yeah three or four hours per episode and that's right honestly way too much like and your voice is like soothing honey bro So also i am working on a very cool project yeah which i i will we both are yeah yeah we are both tackling a new project together um which it's not related to this or paranormal but it is a very interesting thing i think many of you will actually be pretty excited about so more on that to come here in the future
but let's not waste any more time let's go ahead and get Into the haunted myrtles plantation this episode is also brought to you by honey and a louisa and candid co so the myrtles plantation is located in saint francisville louisiana and was actually built in 1796 by general david bradford a lot of what has happened there over the next 150 years has been disputed by official records but the stories have been passed Down through generations and have become part of the history and the legends that surround this very unique property david bradford was also known
as whiskey dave and he was a lawyer a politician and a leader in the whiskey rebellion which was an insurrection caused partly by an excessively high tax on whiskey at the time so in 1794 his militia marched to pittsburgh to protest the tax george washington Sent troops to stop the rebels and order the immediate rest of whiskey dave at the same time all this was happening david was getting death threats from a local slave owner he had argued in court that the man's slave should be freed and actually won the case and now the former
owner wanted revenge so david fled the colonies and ended up in a spanish-controlled area of the south Which is now present-day saint francisville louisiana once he got there he purchased 600 acres of land that would one day become the myrtles plantation he started construction on a one and a half story house and lived on the property alone until the construction was complete once the main house was built his wife elizabeth and their five children joined him and they named the property laurel grove David though remained a wanted man until 1799 when president john adams pardoned
him for his role in the whiskey rebellion while they lived there david and elizabeth had several more children and ended up with five sons and seven daughters 12 children can't even imagine what that must have been like for nearly a decade their family was peaceful and the plantation thrived what they Didn't know was that their home had been built on an ancient burial ground of the tunica people which is a tribe that was forced south by hostile europeans and eventually settled in present-day louisiana the tunica tribe had extensive burial rituals that included a four-day fast
and mourning period And their burial grounds had full-time guards in order to make sure no one disturbed the dead and i think that's what's so interesting and why so often there's so many places that are haunted because the ground itself is haunted and it was protected by these tribes i mean they took you know death and burials extremely seriously and really wanted to protect this sacred Ground yeah and so it makes complete sense that when somebody comes and disturbs sacred ground that right in turn you get you know haunting or you start experiencing paranormal activity
because you know whatever mysticism they you know they used or knew you know i think they knew a lot more about the paranormal side of life than we do yeah and they really use that to Their advantage so and for an example we've seen that in the you know skinwalker ranch uh story was the native tribes performed these giant rituals on the land yeah you know too and that's why it's one of the most paranormal hot spots in the entire world right and it's really interesting because i have mad respect for the native peoples and
Especially the native native americans and all of the tribes that were here long before we ever got here uh european you know settlers that arrived and just took everything from them and you know it sucks that there's not a way you know it's not as easy to know where these grounds are because yeah oftentimes we've built on top of them right and we don't even know it but No one ever tells you that you know for all i know the studio could be built on yeah you know native americans absolutely burial grounds i don't know
and no one probably knows that i could call up right now and it's it's truly a shame that we didn't actually like keep you know their lands sacred i guess you could say yeah and build around them why'd we have to go on Top of them yeah right so i don't know it to me it's just it makes a lot of sense that these places that are often haunted are ancient burial grounds of these tribes that have been here totally far before we were so when david constructed his house on these burial grounds it literally
kicked off what would become centuries of paranormal activity on the property From the time it was built to present day at least 10 people have been murdered there and it's regularly haunted by at least 12 spirits or ghosts including the spirit of a young tunica woman who is said to roam the property to this day the bradford's family's peaceful life came an abrupt end when david died in 1808. he was only 48 years old After david died elizabeth recruited one of david's law students clark woodruff to help manage the property as well as the slaves
who worked there clark ended up marrying elizabeth's daughter sarah matilda in 1817 and together they had three children cornelia james and mary octavia and once again the plantation was thriving under clark's leadership he took a special interest in one of the family's Slaves a teenage girl named chloe clay was a smart confident girl and she knew it was important to learn as much as she could about her master and his plans for the plantation her curiosity caught clark's attention though and he brought her into the home to care for his children and to just keep
a watchful eye on her in the early 1820s when sarah was pregnant with her third child Clark forced chloe into a sexual relationship she's often referred to as his mistress but in reality she was literally his sex slave one night clark had several business associates over for dinner and after they ate he took them into the men's parlor which was right next to the identical women's parlor chloe was cleaning up after dinner when she heard The men speaking in hush voices so she crouched low to the ground in order to keep the floorboards from creaking
and then snuck up to the tiny crack in the door to see if she could hear what they were saying and there are a few reasons why chloe might have done something this risky there were rumors that clark was getting tired of her so maybe she wanted to find out what he was planning to do with her There was another rumor that sarah had found out about the relationship and planned to punish chloe or maybe she just wanted to understand the temperament and motives of her master we don't really know so she touched the glass
knob to push the door open just a little wider and strained to hear what the men were saying but suddenly the door swung open and she gasped and fell to the floor her master was standing on the opposite side Looking down at her and he was furious he grabbed chloe by the arm and pulled her to her feet and she frantically tried to explain that she didn't hear anything and that it would never happen again but clark dragged her into the courtyard and threw her onto the ground and chloe's just continuing to apologize and beg
for mercy because she knew she was most likely about to die He pushed her all the way down and put his boot on her neck and she flailed under the boot as clark pulled out his dagger he positioned the blade behind her left ear and in one swift motion he cut it off clean chloe screamed in pain and in horror as she saw her severed ear on the ground in front of her she stayed on the ground his blood dripped from her head forming a pool in The dirt she was overwhelmed by the sheer amount
of pain but also thankful that he didn't kill her from that day forward she always wore a green headscarf to hide her missing ear but that wasn't her only punishment she was also banished from the main house and forced to work in the kitchen she was forbidden from interacting with any member of the clark family which working in the kitchen meant more Hard labor for chloe it was a demotion and complete change in status for her so she devised a plan on sarah's birthday chloe was told to have a cake made by dinner time her
motivations for what she did next have been debated throughout the years the recipe she used had a secret ingredient the extract of boiled and reduced Oleander leaves a highly toxic plant similar to arsenic that can cause serious illness or even death no one knows for sure she meant to make the family sick so she can nurse them back to health or if she meant to murder them all she seemed to genuinely care about the children but she was so traumatized by this point it's impossible to know she served the poisonous cake to the family william
and his daughter mary Octavia didn't eat any but his wife sarah and the other two children cornelia and james ate the cake and got severely ill and then died shortly after the next part of the story is also unclear but chloe was hanged by a tree somewhere on the property by a lynch mob the other slaves might have killed her too to make sure that they didn't get in trouble for what she had done Or clark may have eventually figured out that his wife and children had been poisoned and ordered her to be hung either
way she was beaten and hung in her lifeless body was cut down from the tree and carried a mile and a half to the mississippi river where she was weighed down with bricks and thrown into the water the official cause of death for sarah and her children was yellow fever And according to records from the time sarah died in june 1923 and cornelia died in july 1924 and james died the next month in august 1924. the yellow oleander can be found in multiple regions of louisiana and the symptoms can range from nausea vomiting jaundice and
renal failure and often mimic yellow fever hence why it was diagnosed As yellow fever no matter how they died clark was devastated by the deaths of his wife and two of his kids he sealed off the children's dining room where the birthday party took place and never allowed anyone else to use it his mother-in-law died in 1831 and in 1834 he sold the plantation and all the slaves to rough and gray sterling clark then moved to new orleans with mary octavia His only surviving child and never returned ruffin sterling was a wealthy scotsman who owned
several other plantations and he moved to laurel grove with his new wife mary catherine cobb the couple added a huge addition to the main house and second floor nearly doubling it in size and the inside was fully renovated they also renamed it to the myrtles plantation After the crepe myrtle trees that grew on the property the two-story home now had 22 rooms and a variety of new unique features like a 125 foot long wrap-around veranda with intricate ornamental iron work and a 300-pound baccarat crystal chandelier imported from france mary significantly increased her status when she
married ruffin and she was enjoying spending her Husband's wealth in order to create her dream home she was also very superstitious and knew about the tragedies that struck previous owners to protect them she installed cherub and angel statues all around the property and included decorative angels around mirrors and picture frames four nuns were painted on the ceiling around the chandelier facing north south East and west to protect them from all sides and to discourage malevolent spirits from entering the house mary added a hand-painted stained glass entrance including a french cross pattern that she thought would
ward off evil as a final defense she installed all the keyholes in the house upside down and she was convinced that this would confuse any evil spirits trying to break In but all her efforts to keep the spirits out were pointless because the spirits had never left clark woodruff left behind a lot of his possessions in a hurry in order to get away from the plantation and one of these items was a large mirror in a golden frame that hung in the foyer after his wife and children died their bodies were buried But their spirits
stayed in the home a common belief at the time was that when people died their souls rose from their bodies and continued into the afterlife but if the soul passed a mirror on the way it could get trapped inside while he mourned clark never covered this mirror so to this day strange streaks and markings appear on the mirror out of nowhere No amount of cleaning can get rid of them the marks resemble the silhouette of a woman and could include tiny hand prints the streaks look like tears or blood dripping down or sometimes scratches as
if someone is trying to break through from the other side many people believe that sarah woodruff is trapped inside the mirror with the two children who died with her and the streaks are her tears as she Cries out for her husband and only living child others believe the woman trapped in the mirror is chloe and the streaks are the blood dripping down her face from where clark woodruff sliced off her ear if chloe is inside the mirror she's not permanently trapped her ghostly figure is often seen wandering the halls of the main house or on
the property wearing her signature green headscarf when someone sees chloe The sounds of children crying usually follow her when the figure is seen without the green headdress many believe it's the spirit of a french governess hired by clark woodruff to care for mary octavia her own child had been taken away from her and she had been horribly mistreated by her previous employer after she died her spirit stayed on the plantation and now roams the halls searching for her lost child She's been known to wander into people's bedrooms at night and lean in close to their
faces almost like she's studying them until they wake up and then she disappears but despite the property's tragic history ruffin and mary sterling stayed there they had nine children seven sons and two daughters but unfortunately five of their children died before reaching adulthood Which back in this time period this was pretty pretty common for people not to make it to their to 50 even 30 or 40 right doing pretty good ruffin actually died in 1854 of tuberculosis leaving mary alone to run the plantation keep the family together it turned out mary had a knack for
business and the plantation did very well under her management her daughter sarah Married william winter a prominent lawyer and mary hired him to help manage the property the couple lived at the myrtles plantation and actually had six children and in early 1861 their three-year-old daughter kate got very sick some accounts say she had typhoid and others say yellow fever desperate to cure their young daughter william and sarah hired a local voodoo priestess Named cleo in order to treat her and cleo spent several days with kate as she lay dying in her bed she performed multiple
rituals to help heal the young girl but nothing worked and kate ended up dying in january 1861. williams was overwhelmed by grief and anger and blamed cleo for his daughter's death for him the only suitable punishment was death so he had cleo hung on the plantation and the room where Kate died was never the same guests who stay there experienced strange things like the bed shaking and lifting off the ground the wooden floor has deep gouges from the bed slamming down in it over and over again after kate died a half-finished painting of her was
completed in the portrait she's holding a black doll which symbolizes death and it still hangs in the main house and The guests have sworn kate's eyes move to follow them as they walk past the painting the same year kate died the civil war started and both sides fought for control of the mississippi river all the surrounding plantations were ransacked including the myrtles plantation and everything of value on the property was stolen three union soldiers actually broke into The myrtle's plantation and were shot to death in the men's parlor one of these men died in a
doorway and left a man-sized blood stain on the floor and multiple people tried to clean the stain but an unseen force stopped any mops or brooms from coming anywhere near it in 1854 lewis sterling the oldest surviving son of ruffin and mary died in the house When he was just 23 years old according to records he died of yellow fever but many locals believed he was stabbed to death after failing to pay back a gambling debt the civil war ended in 1865 and the family's fortune was tied up in confederate states dollars so by the
end of the war it was worthless they literally lost everything they were broke so mary asked her son-in-law william to take over running The plantation and by 1868 william was bankrupt and they were forced to sell it two years later the plantation was sold back to his wife sarah the last heir of the ruffin sterling in those few years they had regained their fortune were actually doing very well but in january 1871 tragedy struck again william was in the men's parlor teaching a sunday school lesson when he heard someone approaching outside on horseback The man
yelled his name and called out that they had unfinished business so when he heard his name be called william went outside and as far as anyone knows he didn't know who this man was no one heard him address the stranger by name as he stood on the veranda on the south side of the house the stranger shot him multiple times and william collapsed and the shooter just rode away He then dragged himself inside the house up the staircase trying to get to his wife sarah he made it part way up the stairs before collapsing on
the 17th step and sarah found him there and held him in her arms as he died some believe the murder was politically motivated because william was involved in reconstruction after the civil war a man named e s weber was a suspect According to a local newspaper but no trial was ever recorded and the murder is still unsolved to this day over a century after his death residents and workers in the house still hear the sounds of william dying on the stairs they hear heavy footsteps and someone gasping for breath once the spirit reaches the 17th
step the sounds abruptly stop after her husband's murder sarah stayed at the house with her mother mary and Her brothers but she died in 1878 at the age of 44 and mary died just two years later in 1880 her son steven sterling then bought the property it was deep in debt and he allegedly lost it gambling on a game of chance in 1886. after that it was sold multiple times until a widower named harrison milton williams Bought in 1891. harrison moved to the property with his second wife franny and their young son and when they
lived there they eventually had six more children harrison worked hard to rebuild the plantation which had never really recovered after the war just as things were really starting to look up though tragedy struck the myrtles plantation again one night during a bad storm Harrison and franny's oldest son harry went out to round up some straight cattle that had wandered near the river when harry lost his balance and fell into the water and was swept away by the current and subsequently drowned harrison was devastated by harry's death and turned the plantation over to one of his
younger sons franny's brother eddie harrelson was staying on the property around this time And his nephew let him live in a small structure near the main house but one day a stranger broke in to rob the place eddie was home at the time but the burglar killed him there was also another story of an elderly caretaker being murdered in the main house during a robbery in 1927 and one or both of these spirits had been seen sitting in trees on the property Staring down at whoever is below by the 1950s the property was divided up
amongst harrison's surviving sons the house and a small amount of property around it were sold to marjorie munson soon after marjorie was a wealthy widow who made her fortune on chicken farms and around this time the ghosts that haunted the myrtles plantation really started to make themselves known marjorie asked around about the history Of the property and met the granddaughter of harrison and franny williams lucille lucille said she had heard stories in her childhood of a ghost haunting the property a woman wearing something green around her head like a bonnet or beret in her version
of the story it was an older woman who was having an affair with the master of the house and after digging more into the plantation's history margery connected The story lucille told her to the story of chloe the slave girl next she heard about the murder of william winter and how he had died on the staircase in his wife's arms marjorie and her guests had often heard footsteps on those steps that stopped part way up the strange things happening around the property were all starting to make sense after experiencing one too many paranormal events She
sold the house and over the next decade or so it had several owners and underwent another major renovation one owner reported that he was almost killed when amir flew 20 feet off the wall and hit him in the head so clearly this house is just plagued with traumatic things that have happened deaths murders so much negativity surrounding it So much just negative energy filled in this place so much death and destruction and hate i mean definitely has to be a major magnet for these you know spirits to dwell in yeah i mean they're definitely feeding
off that and it's just creating more and more negative events yeah to occur because people are affected by that energy right whether you believe it or not and you know especially the mirror the Mirror thing i mean mirrors i 100 believe that mirrors you know have the ability to capture you know and whether it's energy or parts of somebody's spirit and hold on to that for sure there's so many haunted locations that have haunted mirrors where if you look into it you might see you know whoever is contained within the mirror yeah and even the
zac bagan's Museum you know they have a haunted mirror i think it's like the third exhibit that you walk through and you know they give you the history of it and then they let each person walk up to the mirror and stare through it and sometimes people see some people see [ __ ] yeah or like if you take pictures of mirrors too because sometimes you're not just gonna like see it with your own Eyes too but sometimes if you take pictures that's where you'll actually capture things uh like for example the stanley hotel oh
yeah they have a haunted mirror in the basement of that place and uh on one of the last tours i did there i could swear that i saw saw something in that everybody's just laughing at me of course you're like Whatever josh you're just seeing what you want to see but but maybe the spirit knew that yeah like yeah well the tour guide too like he had a he showed me some pictures and like definitely seen some some wild stuff so this idea that it can almost capture it's very interesting i think the tour guide
job at stanley or even the zac bagan's museum what a job right now that's a honestly be kind of fun I'm sure they see [ __ ] all the time seriously we just probably get used to it but so many people are skeptical a lot of people think that they just kind of like fake the evidence in order to sell the experience you know sell the tour you never know what you don't yeah you don't know but it's like it's it's believable that they do do that to like free for freak you out more yeah
yeah make you Really believe i mean i guess it comes down to your beliefs and yeah what do you think about the paranormal but true i mean i know that myrtle's plantation there's so many countless stories of that mirror where people are seeing stuff that it's just it's hard to even dispute that it's [ __ ] it's seems very real to me especially when you know all this history i mean you may go all The way back to the beginning i mean the amount of death and destruction there and places built in the 1700s i
mean it's been around a long time a lot of people a lot of souls have been through a lot of souls yep so it doesn't surprise me that this place is so haunted so now we're going to dive into sort of the modern history and you know haunting stories of the Myrtles plantation but before we get into that i'm going to take a quick ad break and we'll be right back we all shop online right and we've all seen that promo code feel taunt us at checkout gosh don't you hate it when you know you
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use code lights out that's candidco.com lights out use code lights out take advantage of this limited time offer to save 75 On your starter kit again check out candidco.com lights out and make sure you use that code lights out today the myrtles plantation changed ownership quite a bit over its history and in the 1970s it was purchased by james and francis kerming myers a young couple in their 20s when they saw the house they decided you know what this is pretty cool and bought it on a whim and once they Bought it they renovated it
again and turned it into a bed and breakfast the sign that they made literally says the myrtles plantation the home of mystery and intrigue but one day frances was sleeping on the first floor of the main house when she woke up because she felt like someone was watching her a black woman was standing beside the bed and she was wearing a long dress And a green scarf wrapped around her head the woman stood perfectly still holding a candle stick and frances could see the light of the flame she put her head under the covers and
started screaming for james and when she looked again the woman was still there she hadn't moved a muscle francis slowly reached out to touch her but her hand passed right through her and the woman vanished after this whole experience Frances and james asked around and the locals filled them in on the many tragedies that happened there as well as the ghosts who still haunted the property the couple felt like they were always being watched and they heard children crying footsteps on the stairs and rattling doorknobs lights also turned off and on by themselves guests also
started reporting similar Experiences almost everyone who stayed at the bed and breakfast experienced something paranormal while on the property james and francis incorporated the ghost stories into their marketing of the bed and breakfast and soon it was being featured in books and magazines including the november 1980 edition of life magazine the life journalist planned to write a story about the centuries-old Architecture featured on the main house but while he was there he saw two ghostly figures that looked like children and they called him by name before they vanished people from across the country flocked to
the myrtles plantation and tv crews from shows and documentaries showed up to experience the paranormal events for themselves in 1985 part of a mini-series called the Long hot summer was filmed at the myrtles with big names like don johnson and cybill shepherd the story had nothing to do with the property or the paranormal but the actors and crew still experienced a lot of strange things while filming there they filmed scenes in the dining room and the game room and before shooting the first scene the crew moved all the furniture from These two rooms but when
the actors got there all the furniture had been moved back to the original positions no one had been in either room during the brief time the crew was away and this happened every time they had to move furniture in the house and once they were done shooting the actors were relieved to be leaving the myrtles plantation francis kept notes on everything that Happened while they lived there and she actually wrote a book about their experience called the myrtles plantation the true story of america's most haunted house and it was published in 2005. by 1992 james
and francis had enough ghost stories to last a lifetime that they ended up selling the property to jon and tita moss the couple and their two young sons Lived upstairs in the main house and continued to run the bed and breakfast downstairs they knew about the ghost stories but didn't believe them one day while jon was out she heard him calling her name and she hadn't realized he was back already and went to go and find him she searched all over the house and outside but he wasn't there and when john actually got home she
told him that she had heard someone calling Her in his voice she called a friend who was an expert in the paranormal who told her that spirits in the house used her husband's voice as a way to be more welcoming tita wasn't so sure though if the ghosts were friendly the following week she was along the house again when she heard a woman calling her name she recognized the voice immediately it was one of her close childhood friends shortly after they moved in tita was Taking pictures around the property to send to the insurance company
and accidentally captured history she didn't look too carefully at the pictures she just sent them to the insurance company but they sent one back and asked her to retake it without a person in the frame tita was surprised there was no people in the pictures she took she was absolutely sure of it but when she looked at the photo She was shocked to see a translucent figure standing between the general store and the butler's pantry of the main house it was clearly a woman but tita could see right through her if you look at the
picture you can clearly see what looks to be a woman figure that looks looks translucent because you can see the siding of the house through her standing right there going between those Two locations that's wild it's always wild when you just see like randomly like that's where i'm like well how could they have faked that like that's clearly they captured this phenomenon like by accident i mean she that doesn't even look like a real person it looks like a ghost and this is a full-blown operation i mean yeah but it's still translucent You can still
see through which is interesting but it is a full-blown apparition i mean it's i feel like it's pretty rare to see full-blown apparitions like that but the fact that she just happened to capture that she didn't notice it at the time and that's what's so wild is that it was the camera that picked it up she even tita didn't even notice it when she took that picture That's pretty crazy yeah very interesting yeah a few years later in may 1995 a patent researcher named norman benneau enlarged the picture he took measurements of the figure including
the circumference of the head the length of the shoulders to the elbow and the length of the elbow to the wrist and they all lined up with human dimensions norman was also able to prove that the picture was authentic using Shadow density analysis and this test proved that the photo wasn't edited or altered in any way a film crew for the national geographic explorer also studied the negatives and they agreed that the photo contained what looked like the ghost of a slave girl the horizontal exterior boards of the mansion can be seen right through her
the picture was made Into a popular postcard called the chloe postcard and has become a way for guests to feel more connected to her some people believe that this isn't a picture of chloe but of cleo the voodoo priestess who was hanged by william winter multiple visitors have claimed to see cleo wandering the property and those who stay in the bedroom while their three-year-old kate died Believed the bed is possessed by cleo and that she's still performing voodoo rituals doomed to spend eternity trying to save kate in 1993 john and tita's youngest son morgan was
just 10 months old and one day he was asleep in his room in an antique crib tita was in her office typing the menu for the day and her and john were working around the clock so they had a nanny to watch the Kids during the day and while she typed tita heard a deep raspy voice say chuck your baby she was so exhausted she assumed she was just hearing things but then the voice said it again more forcefully check on your baby and she jumped up and hurried into morgan's room and the crib was
empty and there was no sign of him or the nanny tita started screaming for morgan and Ran in and out of every room looking for him she ran outside and saw him walking unsteadily toward the pond and that's when she grabbed him just before he fell in at that moment she felt a blanket wrap around them and she could feel the fabric and warmth but nothing was there then she heard the voice again and it said You need not worry your family will never be harmed here and from that day forward she believed the ghosts
that haunted the myrtles plantation were guardian angels who were there to protect them her sons grew up alongside the kids who died there and they would often hear them playing or see them running through the walls over the years john and tita have built their business and made it a huge Success a big part of it is the historic and ghost tours of the property hester ebby has been the director of tours at the myrtles plantation for over 30 years and she has become a fixture on the property and still does private tours by request
here's her talking about some of the ghost activity she's experienced you might come in the house and you feel Someone touch you on the shoulder or you feel someone stroke your hair or like i have so many times walking through the house they'll tug on my clothing like the other employees she's experienced a lot of paranormal activity first hand one day a man walked up to hester to buy tickets for a tour for him and his wife his wife was several steps behind him and a little girl was skipping alongside The girl had long blonde
hair and was wearing an old-fashioned white dress and hester asked the man if he wanted to buy a ticket for their daughter too and he suddenly got very serious and told her they couldn't have children and he gave her look that said why would you mention children in front of my wife hester gave him two tickets and walked them to the main house and when she turned around the girl was Gone she went back outside and found her on the veranda and she just laughed and said hello before she vanished this was the first time
hester had ever seen the ghost of a child at the myrtles plantation she got the feeling that this little girl was being playful and that's when she realized tita was right about the ghosts they were protective spirits who wouldn't harm Them and there are countless stories just like this from hundreds of people have spent time on the plantation people have seen kids playing on the veranda a boy and a girl who matched the descriptions of cornelia and james woodruff a young girl in old-fashioned clothes has been spotted hovering outside the window of the game room
She cups her hands around her eyes to get a better look inside and the same girl sometimes wanders into guest's rooms to jump on the bed guests who stay in the doll room also called the fanny williams room have woken up to find dolls thrown all over or even in bed with them some have reported their clothes or hair being tugged on from below as if by a small child or even feeling freezing cold hands touching them when No one else is around people hear the sounds of furniture being scraped against the floors chains clanging
and whispers in the middle of the night bags and suitcases move across the floor on their own and when guests try to take pictures something slaps their phones right out of their hands objects sometimes disappear in front of people's eyes and strange smells And cold spots materialize out of nowhere there's also at least 20 black cats who live on the property and they often sit outside for hours waiting for a particular guest to come back outside streaks appear on the pictures of the staircase where william winter collapsed and died after being shot and people believe
these streaks are his blood guests and employees have seen a woman in black A man who falls guests around when they're outside and glowing orbs darting around the rooms one guest woke up to an invisible force holding down their feet another felt something grab onto their shoes and shake them it felt like an electrical surge when they tried to jump up they were paralyzed for about a minute when someone brought their dog to the property the dog refused to go upstairs In the main house which doesn't surprise me because animals have a very have that
like sixth sense that they can i feel like they can see a lot of these paranormal entities that we can't another guest left in the middle of the night yelling nope i can't take this when a tough looking biker and his wife were checking out one day he told his wife she had to get the bags because he was not stepping Foot in that room again the eyes of the paintings follow people around the rooms especially the portrait of clark woodruff the grand piano on the first floor can start playing by itself and it repeats
the same short tune for hours at a time but when someone gets too close to the piano it just stops multiple guests have recorded electronic voice phenomena or evp While visiting the plantation the employees who work at the myrtles plantation get some of the worst of the paranormal experiences in fact one day an employee was working at the front gate just greeting guests when he saw a woman in a white dress walking toward him and he tried to greet her but she just glided past him looking straight ahead and not saying a word and as
he watched her Confused he realized her dress and hairstyle were very old-fashioned she then walked up to the main house and expected to see her open the door instead she passed right through the door and vanished and when this employee witnessed this event he immediately quit and never came back can you imagine that like that's crazy but at the same time that employee is so lucky i know to be able to even know That yeah why quit maybe maybe the spirit's now comfortable with them and so here's some more a lot of people i feel
like especially you know people with religious beliefs don't don't even want to [ __ ] around with spirits because they associate it with the devil right a lot of people associate apparitions and Of demonic activity and that all these spirits are just demons you know right impersonating human spirits and i think quite the opposite i think absolutely these could just be normal-ass people that you know are manifesting themselves into these apparitions they're not harming you they're not saying anything to you they're just doing what they need to do and I feel like there's good and
bad spirits right right so that's that's true seems like this woman's a good spirit yeah but it's enough to scare the hell out of this guy he just quits quits his job and never comes back but i've seen it before i mean i've seen people wig out when they see something like that they're just like nope i don't [ __ ] with that i don't [ __ ] with ghosts Spirits no yeah this wasn't what i signed up for yeah why'd you take a job at a haunted plantation it's just crazy to me that like
nobody knows the history as it passes through they have to go ask people to figure out what it is it's like really you didn't you didn't even do a google search on the myrtles plantation before you buy it or visit it or start working for it And because i mean if you just google it you're going to get haunted this haunted well during this time i'm sure there are some books in the library about it too i mean yeah lots of good evidence so i guess people are there's people are super skeptical man and i
think some people are just so skeptical that they're like ah whatever haunted yeah right yeah until something some [ __ ] happens to you and they're Like oh [ __ ] all right [ __ ] this i gotta take this take this a little bit more seriously oh yeah pretty wild stuff though but during a reenactment the actress hired to play chloe the slave girl was waiting behind a dressing screen for her cue the top of the screen was made of glass so she could see the rest of the room and the only light was
from the candle She was holding when suddenly the room temperature dropped it became ice cold and she looked around and saw an orb of blue light levitating in the corner of the room and this orb of light moved toward the center of the room as it got bigger and bigger and then it stopped and dissolved into green mist as the mist fell the actress saw the image of a slave woman with a Green scarf wrapped around her head just like she was wearing to play the part of chloe the actress was so scared after this
she couldn't move or scream the glowing figure smiled and held a finger to her lips and she blew on the glass part of the dressing screen and her breath was so cold that the candle blew out the room was lit up by her glowing blue light and then she just dissolved back in the mist And disappeared and within seconds the temperature returned to normal as if coming out of a trance the actress started screaming hysterically and she dropped the candle just ran out of the room and even out of the house and she was literally
sprinting as fast as she could and after this she refused to never step foot on the property again experts have traveled all over to stay at the myrtles plantation and study the Paranormal activity that goes on there in 2001 unsolved mysteries filmed a segment about the plantation and the production crew had constant technical difficulties that no one could figure out cameras walkie-talkies and cell phones malfunctioned for no reason in 2005 the team from ghost hunters featured the myrtles plantation and while on location they saw a lamp move across the table when no one was Near
it the crew had expected to debunk the legends surrounding the plantation but they couldn't deny that there's definitely paranormal activity there guests have caught unusual things in pictures like creepy faces strange figures and even a fourth person when there was only three in the room so this is a picture from looks like january 18 2018 And it's a very weird picture it's really hard to discern there's like some movement in the front of it but there's clearly two people on the bed and then there's another figure standing beside the bed in a robe very bizarre
i would must say that people on the robes are creepier than the yeah this thing of like appearing in front of them but yeah very strange then another Picture shows looks like somebody's just taking a picture of her and her daughter maybe and then behind them in the window it almost looks like a dark shadowy figure yeah that's standing between kind of curtains in the window kind of looks like bent neck lady a little bit oh god and then another picture shows some type of whoa dude a face look at that yeah that's why Whoa
that's creepy that's scary man holy [ __ ] it's like faint enough yeah where it's believable yeah you know imagine taking a group of a group photo with your ladies at the bed and breakfast and there's this creepy face yeah i mean the likelihood of them making altering this photo to put that back there very low i feel like i must say though i Do think the way all these ladies are standing made it to where they could have that far right window that's completely visible to perhaps a photoshop that's true maybe they did it
it does look a little too defined for a yeah a normal because it's like a shadow if this lady on the far right kind of moved in closer she'd be covering the window a bit And i think that would be a little more believable um but it seems like it kind of to me seems like they want you to look at that window maybe yeah but i could be wrong it could be real yeah that's wild though either way but the myrtles plantation had a string of bad luck in recent years in 2014 a fire
caused major damage to the general store located behind the main house and this is where general david bradford Lived while the original house was being built in 2017 another fire destroyed the restaurant and after that the myrtles plantation was rebranded to emphasize the historical significance of the plantation guests can learn about the property's history including the ghost stories through daily mystery tours evening mystery tours or private tours by Request a new farm table restaurant opened in early 2019 and visitors can buy gifts and souvenirs in the rebuilt general store today the myrtles plantation is a
popular tourist attraction with over 60 000 annual visitors and it's even listed on the national register of historic places we have to go like it looks really cool it looks so Cool it looks beautiful too like just the property itself i've never uh been to like any area of of uh louisiana like this before actually i've never even been to louisiana yeah same here i would love to go down there and stay here this looks really cool it really does despite its dark history it looks like a nice place to stay For sure possibly capture
some some activity for sure oh yeah it seems like we would have a high chance yeah well chloe still makes her presence known by stealing earrings from guests usually as they walk from the men's parlor to the women's where she was caught eavesdropping by clark woodruff she always just takes one of them for her one remaining ear and then leaves them around the property Employees put the single earrings in a glass top jewelry case in the dining room like a fancy lost and found this is a real thing that happens the large mirror with the
golden frame left behind by clark woodruff still hangs in the foyer the glass has been replaced multiple times but the marks and streaks from the souls trapped inside always come back before tours begin Everyone is asked to turn off their cell phones the mirror is the only part of the tours where people are allowed to take pictures video and audio recordings are never allowed on the tours but regardless of how accurate the legends are it's a fact that a ton of tragedies happened on this property and many of the former residents died there So it
is very very possible that many of these people never actually left and that maybe a piece of them a piece of their soul their spirit still lingers on on the myrtle's plantation wow what a really like just mind-blowing story so many things that happened you know that were tragic and painful and you know yet you know it's been able to Stand the test of time you know the fact it's still around today and you can visit it right i'd be interested to hear anybody's experience out there i'm sure there's somebody out there that's been to
the myrtles plantation have you stayed there have you had your own experiences there do you believe that it's haunted i mean to me it seems very very clear that if any place is going to be haunted This plantation for sure and i'm sure there's endless other plantations out there that are haunted as well i mean just from days of human slavery i mean you know all that negativity that happened and all the horrible disgusting things that happened to people that were slaves i mean we talked about madame lalorie and her disgusting her [ __ ]
crazy ass and you know it doesn't surprise me that Places where there was literally human slavery sex slaves and all that there's paranormal activity as a result because i mean this just seems like how it works you know yeah especially like obviously there's positive spirits and positive ghosts that are just you know they hang on to things that they love and yeah and that's why we experience their spirits but i do think there's a Possibility there is something more evil happening here and there is always a possibility that maybe these evil entities manifest themselves as
you know it's not like every demonic spirit is gonna be this nasty looking demon when they manifest themselves right they're gonna manifest in something that is gonna you're gonna actually be okay with seeing with i guess you Would say like a woman or something like that so is there you know a fear there is there fear that you might become possessed if you stay here or have a negative experience yeah i do think that's cool that these spirits like manifest maybe in their previous bodies when they were alive you know but yeah but we've seen
in you know previous paranormal episodes that People try to summon bezel bubba himself you know some of these demons yeah well there was a voodoo priestess in there so i mean you never know what types of rituals she did so you never know what other types of portals may have been opened or gateways i mean you just never know so in these places of high paranormal activity i always wonder i'm like is it all positive spirits is it All you know just happy-go-lucky ghosts that are just cruising around saying hello and you know or is
there something darker and more sinister than i play and i want to be surprised if there's way more spirits than you know it's even named right oh yeah and what witnesses have even seen totally yeah because i i feel like a lot of spirits do like to hide themselves or camouflage themselves from Employment yeah in plain sight make sense gain your trust yeah it happens all the time man it really does yeah so yeah super interesting it is love covering these type of paranormal put this on the place is the visit list for sure oh
for sure dude myrtle's plantation man we'll have to we'll have to go to zach bacon's first and Start our paranormal road tour there and then work our way down go down to uh new orleans and louisiana that sounds that sounds good to me let's do it love haunted objects and uh you know kind of what we're gonna be covering next week another haunted object case lots of lots of paranormal coming out you know we're just gonna go on a paranormal kick for a while and you know we'll return to the uh serial Killers in a
little while but you know i'd like to take a little d2 or three for sure the the paranormal neighborhood for a while and one of her a big comment we got on our last video was you know please stop please don't stop covering serial killers and stuff and just want to make it perfectly clear that we're not oh no we're going to get one very soon a one that's Very very interesting that has a new netflix documentary on it that looks very very good so um yeah we'll definitely be tackling another serial killer here very
soon but uh in the meantime we're gonna hang out with uh the paranormal for a little while so yeah hopefully you guys enjoyed this episode of the lights out podcast if you did we'd really appreciate it if you Subscribe to us on apple podcast and youtube it really does help us i mean it's it's a free way to help us so if you wouldn't mind doing that and making sure you're subscribed we would 100 appreciate it and also just want to remind you if you're not following us on social media you can find us on
instagram twitter at lights out cast and we post updates for the show there we post highlights clips Intro just interesting [ __ ] that we come across so make sure you're following us on social media but that is it for us today and we will see you next week and until then lights out everybody [Music] you
