The Myrtles Plantation

Remaining in Louisiana, we now focus our attention on the 215-year-old Myrtles Plantation in St. Francisville. The site was commissioned in 1796 by General David Bradford, nicknamed "Whiskey Dave" because of his participation in the Whiskey Rebellion. You kids remember the Whiskey Rebellion from high school history class, right? RIGHT? Anyway, after Whiskey Dave's passing, the plantation was left to his daughter Sara and her husband, Clark Woodruff, who had been one of his law students.

Perhaps the most infamous Myrtles ghost is Chloe, said to have been a slave working at the plantation when it was owned by Sara and Clark Woodruff. Depending on the version of the legend, Chloe was either raped or punished for some offense by Clark, resulting in the loss of her ear (where she would from then on cover up with a green wrap or turban.) Chloe then apparently used oleander leaves growing on the plantation to bake a poison cake for Clark, but instead, Sara and both of her daughters ate it and were killed. Chloe, distraught and fearing punishment, then drowned herself in the Mississippi River. [Other versions of the story say that the other slaves hung or drowned Chloe as retribution.] Today, it is said that a woman in a green turban haunts the grounds.

It was also customary at the time in the South to cover all the mirrors in a home after the people who lived there die. But this was not done to one mirror in particular in the plantation, and now it is believed the souls of Sara and her daughters are trapped inside. (Some have claimed to see handprints on the mirror where the spirits have tried to escape.)

According to local legend, the plantation is home to a total of 12 ghosts. Though it's also been said that over 10 murders have happened on the site, the only one that has been verified in the historical record is the death of William Winter. He was shot and killed there in 1871, after being interrupted from teaching a group of children a Sunday school lesson. (His killer went unidentified and unpunished.) According to the legends, after being lured outside and shot by a mysterious rider, Winter then re-entered the house, looking for his wife, and began climbing the central staircase to reach her, making it only to the 17th step before dying. Today, they say, you can still hear his footsteps echoing through the hallway, trying desperately to reach his beloved but never quite making it to her.

Other rumors point to the plantation as having been built on an Indian burial ground (again, reminiscent of the film "Poltergeist") carrying with it a terrible curse.

Boring Rational Explanation: First off, the historical record does not support any part of the "Chloe" legend. In fact, it does not appear that the Woodruffs even owned or used slaves while living at the plantation. Additionally, it seems that Sara and some of her children may have died of the yellow fever, as opposed to poisoning, though it's thought that at least one of the Woodruff's children – Mary Octavia – survived to adulthood.

In the 1950s, a resident of the house named Marjorie Munson started theorizing that it may be haunted, and her decidedly non-scientific "investigation" is suspected of being the origin of the "Chloe" myth. In that era, the original "spirit" Chloe was thought to be an old woman wearing a green bonnet, not a young slave in a turban. As the years went on, the story grew in the telling, giving rise to the added complications of the poisoning plot and the severed ear.

The rest of the stories are a bit tougher to discount, particularly the Winter legend, as the man really did die in the house. He almost assuredly died on the spot he was shot, on the porch, rather than making it to the inside staircase. During the Civil War, Union Soldiers who were occupying the house claimed to have found a human-shaped blood stain near the front door that would not come off, regardless of how much you scrubbed. So there's that.

On the basis of there being so many different accounts of supernatural or strange activity at the Myrtles Plantation, it may be the most likely spot in America for a haunting, should one ever actually occur.