During our trip to New Orleans, we visited several plantation homes: Oak Alley, San Francisco, Myrtles, and Destrehan. We were hoping to visit a couple of others-- Laura, and Tezcuco--but sadly we learned that the Tezcuco plantation home burned down in 2002, and we ran out of time to visit the Laura plantation.

All of the plantations we visited are supposedly haunted, but by nature I'm very skeptical about such things and didn't expect to see or feel anything unusual. Funnily enough, none of the tours even mentioned anything about hauntings other than the Myrtles Plantation. I guess that's their hook, even if some of the history behind it is a bit suspect from what I understand through my online wanderings.

We'd seen on a Travel channel Halloween special that the Myrtles Plantation is one of the most haunted sites in the country, so we decided with some trepidation to head out there one day while we were holidaying in the area.

The plantation, built around 1796, is situated in St. Francisville, Louisiana, about 2 hours drive from New Orleans. It gets its name from the Myrtles growing on the property, and from what I understand, that is not the name given to it by its original owners. There doesn't seem to be much else of interest out that way, although we did find a cozy place in town to have some po' boys for lunch on the way back. The plantation has a restaurant, but that was closed on the day we went (Monday, November 15th).

When we arrived, we visited the gift shop in an adjoining building, picked up our tickets and were told to be in the courtyard in 20 minutes time for the next tour. There were already some people going through the home, so we were free to look around the grounds meanwhile.

We wandered around to the gazebo around back, then around the side and the front of the house. The place looked quite creepy, and I was feeling a little on edge, not knowing what to expect. I took lots of pictures with my Nikon Coolpix 880 digital camera, including some of the kittens playing around in the backyard. After that we sat in the courtyard and waited for our tour to commence.

After another 5-10 minutes, the other tour group came out and wandered around the grounds. There were 4 or 5 people, none with children. We were called over and then had the tour. The tour guide walked us through the house, telling the sordid history of the place, including the story about Chloe the slave and how she accidently poisoned the mother and two children who lived there at the time (they later died). Their father and another sibling were elsewhere, so they were safe. Chloe was supposedly hung from a tree on the property and her body weighed down with stones and dumped in the Mississippi.

We were shown the mirror with the strange lines and the face on the right-hand side, and I took some photos of that (this was the only place we were allowed to take photos inside). To my eye the mirror just looked old, and the face could've been caused by fingerprints, but naturally they like to play up the drama factor by saying that every mirror they put up gradually clouds in the same way and legends state that spirits can become trapped in uncovered mirrors after death.

We were led around the rest of the ground floor (but not upstairs) and shown the antique furniture and architecture, with the tour guide being careful to point out all the ornamentation in each room a prior owner had had fitted to 'protect against evil.' I think that was in the late 1800s, early 1900s. The last thing we were shown was a blown-up black and white photo of a supposed apparition of Chloe photographed outside the home around 1995. The tour guide also mentioned how she had only been working there six months or so, and how the china place-settings had been mysteriously rearranged on her first or second day of giving tours. She said she took that to be the spirits welcoming her to the home and acknowledging her presence.

With the tour over, we headed back to the gift shop for a look around. We heard one of the tour guides talking on the phone about the mystery tours that are held on Friday and Saturday nights (all other tours are day tours only), and it sounds like they tell more ghost stories about the property then. The place is also used as a B&B, so no doubt they have plenty of stories to tell. I've also read that there have been other tragedies there over the years, but who knows how much of this stuff is made up for the tourists!

We were less spooked after not having seen or experienced anything unusual, and were looking forward to heading into town to find a place to eat. It was only when I looked through the photos on the camera display on the way to town that I came across something unusual....

The mirror photos were as they were, with the smudged marks and the face-like image, so there was nothing shocking there. We saw a photo with four shadows visible through the front door, but that wasn't too strange, since we knew the previous tour was in there about that time and they would've been standing in front of the mirror in the front hall.

What was unusual was a photo we took around the back of the house while we were waiting for our tour to start. We still can't explain it--there's what appears to be a child's face staring through a rear window. I've included a greatly scaled-down version of the photo below, along with a zoomed-in version of the window to show more detail, a processed version (using histogram equalization on Paint Shop Pro), and a link to the full-size version:

The back of the home:


An apparition of a child?


Processed with histogram equalization:


Link to the Full-size version

Neither of the first two photos or the full-size version has been retouched in any way, although the first has been scaled-down from its full size. There are JPEG compression artifacts in the scaled-down image, hence the 1:1 pixel cropped image showing the window in detail. No flash was used in this photo, no special filters were used, and settings were on automatic. Note that there were no children on the property at the time the photo was taken, and none of our other photos of the back of the house show this 'apparition' in the window, so it probably isn't a reflection of anything in the courtyard. It was an overcast day, so it is unlikely to be a reflection caused by the sun. The processed image should allow the image to be seen more clearly on darker monitors.

We're at a bit of a loss to explain this one. It certainly gives us the chills, whatever the cause. I'm all ears if someone has any rational explanations for this mysterious figure in the window! I'll post the mirror photos and some other shots of the place if there is sufficient interest (I only have limited web space available). Spooky!