Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.life From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: Louisiana plantation haunted by its past Date: Sat, 31 Oct 92 14:00:15 EST Message-ID: \SE B;LIFE \HD Louisiana plantation haunted by its past \BY Rod Dreher \CR THE WASHINGTON TIMES \DT ST. FRANCISVILLE, La. ST. FRANCISVILLE, La. - In the South, William Faulkner said, the past is not yet past. And if you believe tales told about the Myrtles plantation, the dead are not yet dead. In hilly West Feliciana Parish, the farthest outreach of the old West Florida Republic, plantations seem as common as luxury brownstones on New York's Upper West Side. There are many grander houses here than the Myrtles, built by a Whiskey Rebellion fugitive from Gen. Washington's Army and now hidden from travelers on Highway 61 by a discreet veil of moss-draped oaks. But there is none with a more sinister history. "All old houses collect mysteries. The Myrtles has collected more than its share. There have been a number of unsolved murders that have happened there or to people connected with the house," says Elisabeth Kilbourne Dart, a local historian. The most infamous killing was that of poor William Winter, a lawyer shot in cold blood on the front gallery (as old-time Southerners call a porch) as his wife and children watched. He staggered inside, mortally wounded, and mounted the staircase. He drew his last breath on the 17th step as his unknown assassin escaped, cloaked by darkness. Lodgers at the Myrtles sometimes hear heavy footfalls on the stairs at night. Seventeen of them. And then a thud. As a child in the 1930s, Puddin' Bankston would spend nights with her aunt in the house when her uncle was away on business. She remembers a bloodstained board on the porch, said to be the spot where lawyer Winter took the bullet. "They never could ever get that bloodstain out," Mrs. Bankston says. "They could sand it, paint over it - whatever they did, the blood kept reappearing. I think one of the owners finally replaced the board." And then there were the little girls, Sarah and Matilda, who went to sleep after supper one night in the 1820s and never woke up. Legend has it that their father, Judge Clark Woodruff, was having an affair with a plantation slave, which he was forced to abandon once Mrs. Woodruff discovered his treachery. The slave, it is said, poisoned the food of the children and their mother, all of whom expired before sunrise. Guests frequently report sightings of the children, especially on the front gallery. The laughter of little girls sometimes drifts through rooms like the smell of sweet olive blossoms on the breeze. Brenda Young, a Houston resident who has boarded at the house on six occasions (most of them uneventful), says her husband heard a woman moaning in what had been Sarah and Matilda's room. It was empty that night. * * * Mrs. Dart calls the poisoning tale "hogwash," saying it is more likely that Judge Woodruff's wife died during childbirth and the girls passed away in a yellow fever epidemic. The official records are unclear; oral histories are notoriously unreliable. "It's very difficult to be accurate with the Myrtles because nobody else wants to be," she says, alluding to the penchant of the house's recent string of owners to exploit its tragic reputation. Mrs. Dart remains skeptical about the presence of ghosts there. "It's a sad house, there's no doubt about it. I have the old Anglican mistrust of things metaphysical, so I don't know," she says. "You can go through the records and there are so many bizarre happenings and so many killings related to that house that a sense of foreboding is inevitable. It's a short step from there to . . . whatever." It's that "whatever" that keeps curiosity-seekers coming back. They come hoping to see the Green Bandanna Woman, a slave said to have had her ear lopped off as punishment for eavesdropping. Her bandanna hides the wound. Many have claimed to see the woman; young Puddin' Bankston says she awoke one night to find the specter at the foot of her bed. They come to see the Top-Hatted Gentleman, said to visit the newborns of families in the manor. Or the Old Man in Overalls, the ghost of an unfortunate worker slain on the property by a man who would later be the first to die in Louisiana's electric chair for the crime. Tourists have reported being waved away from the house by this inhospitable spirit. Many who stay at the Myrtles see no ghosts but hear inexplicable sounds. Esther Forman of New Orleans was resting in a rocking chair on the back porch one evening, awaiting supper. "All of a sudden I turned to my date and said, 'Isn't that the most incredible music?' " "He said, 'What music?' Now, I'm a classical pianist, but I couldn't identify the concerto. I asked the serving girl what piece were they playing. She said she had no idea what I was talking about. No one else sitting there could hear the music I was hearing clearly," Miss Forman says. "From that moment on, I shut up." * * * Two months ago, Mrs. Young drove over from Houston with four friends. They stayed up until 3 a.m. hoping to hear or see something spooky. When nothing happened, one woman retired to her suite next door. "Then we heard the most god-awful noise. We thought (the friend) was moving furniture in her room, and she thought we were. As it turned out, neither of us were. This noise was coming from within a 4-inch wall," she says. Puddin' Bankston remembers the time she and her Aunt Jessie were roused by a hideous racket coming from one of the downstairs rooms - two connecting parlors that are mirror images of each other. "We heard this great commotion in the far double parlor," she recalls. "We went in there, and everything in the room was a great mess - lamps knocked over and all that." The sheriff was sent for. He could find no explanation for the disturbance. The windows, which were locked from the inside, hadn't been opened. The room normally was kept sealed and Aunt Jessie had the only key. "We didn't sleep well that night," Mrs. Bankston says. * * * In recent years, the Myrtles has been more haunted by the antics of disreputable caretakers than by noisy specters. Mrs. Dart says the house has passed through a succession of "unfortunate" owners, people "who could do nothing more for the house than tell ghost stories." Arlin Dease, a prominent local preservationist, purchased the property days before it was to go on the block at a sheriff's sale recently, and has sunk part of his fortune, which he made buying antebellum homes and restoring them, into nursing the structure back to health. Mr. Dease started his illustrious career at the Myrtles, purchasing and restoring it more than a decade ago before misfit Yankees bought the place and proceeded to spoil it. He says he went into the project a second time intending to persuade others to appreciate the house for its charm and beauty rather than its dark history. "That was the plan. That's not what happened at all," he says. "There were so many strange and unexplained things that happened on a daily basis here that we just couldn't ignore them." Of late, guests in a certain room report the smell of cigar smoke, especially at night. Mr. Dease says it is believed a wounded Confederate soldier died in that room. That kind of tame experience is typical, he says. "This house is not Hollywood. It's not 'The Amityville Horror.' People aren't pushed down the stairs at night. Blood doesn't run down the walls," he says, laughing. Mr. Dease is not disturbed by his elusive lodgers. "The little girls, the old man - there's plenty of room for us all here." This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM