The Myrtles Plantation

by Ghostly Enconter

  “You love your work very much. It’s your life. I see that your home is your business, and your business is your home. You get much satisfaction from your work, and you will be very successful.”

  That much was certainly true.

  He continued, revealing that I loved my husband very much, but that I had a hole in my heart because I had no children. Okay, another lucky guess? I had to admit this guy was pretty right on.

  Simon stopped in midsentence, and deep frown lines burrowed into his forehead. I looked down at the cards. The devil card lay there right in front of me.

  “What? Tell me,” I uttered, my heart now racing. The last two people on earth you want to see frown are your doctor and the person reading your future.

  “There is a young girl living with you,” he started slowly. “She is like a daughter to you, but she is evil. You must get her out of your home, now!”

  How could he possibly guess that I had a young girl living with me? My skepticism quickly turned to apprehension.

  “Why? What will she do to me?” I asked.

  “She will destroy everything you love,” he stated.

  The remainder of my reading was pretty much generic information, for which I was thankful. Maybe he “picked up” that I could not wait to get out of there. While I waited in the front of the bookstore for Jim, I perused the shelves of books, looking for information about hauntings and ghosts. I thumbed a copy of Amityville Horror, wondering how that family dealt with their ordeal. Finally Simon and Jim reemerged from the tiny room in the back. He asked us how we heard about him, so I finally fessed up and told him we were friends of Hamp, and the new owners of the Myrtles.

  “Oh, well that certainly puts your readings into perspective,” he said, nodding.

  Jim and I walked around the Quarter discussing our readings, stopping at Central Grocery on Decatur Street to grab a big, spicy, world-famous muffuletta to share and a big jar of olive salad to carry home before heading back to St. Francisville.

  As soon as we got into the car, I popped the tape of Jim’s tarot session into the stereo. Simon had picked up on some amazing facts about Jim as well, though there was no dramatic warning in his reading. After Jim listened to my reading, we both agreed that there was no way he could have known that we had a young girl living in our home, but to say Joanie was evil or threatening was a little far-fetched.

  Or was it? I remembered what Jimmy Lorio had told me: “At the Myrtles, people confront their deepest fears, and one’s issues, whatever they may be, become magnified, manifesting one’s worst intentions.” I had sensed subtle changes in Joanie but I attributed them to familiarity. As a member of our household, she was more at ease, more able to let her true self show through. She had seemed a little rebellious at times. But evil? Was Simon to be believed? Was Joanie capable of destroying me?

  CHAPTER 35

  Mommy! Mooommmy!”

  The urgency of the childlike voice lured my consciousness from a deep sleep, as it had so many times before. My eyes darted around the room, searching for . . . a speaker hidden somewhere in the room, Joanie throwing her voice, any rational explanation for the heart-wrenching pleas.

  “Mommy!”

  I nuzzled closer to Jim. I was sure he could feel my heartbeat pounding through my back as he reached out and spooned me in his sleep. As I sensed him stir, I took the opportunity to quiz him.

  “Did you hear that?” I whispered.

  “What?”

  “That voice. The child again, calling ‘mommy.’ Listen.”

  We waited, silently, for the voice to start again, but like a talkative child who suddenly freezes when she realizes people are listening, the ghosts do not perform on cue.

  Jim finally broke the wait. “I don’t hear anything.”

  The child’s voice deeply disturbed me on a gut, maternal level. I wanted to, needed to, help this forlorn child. The distressing plea chilled me to the soul. I wondered who this child was, or if it had lived, or died, at the Myrtles.

  “Sweetheart, there’s nothing you can do,” Jim offered, sensing my despair.

  “I know. It’s just . . .” my voice trailed off. I reached for Jim’s strong arm and pulled it around my waist, as if he might protect me from anything. Wrapped in his arms, I finally drifted off.

  The wraithlike wailings were not reserved for the dead of night. More than one big, tall, strapping repairman or painter working upstairs walked off the job, swearing he had heard a baby crying in the next room. When he went to quiet the baby, he made the eerie discovery that there was no baby, and he had been all alone upstairs the entire time. All alone, except for the spirit of a tiny child.

  CHAPTER 36

  So, what are you going to be for Halloween?” Charles teased me, walking past the rows and rows of Halloween candies prematurely on display at the Piggly Wiggly in early August.

  “We have enough ghosts and goblins already.” I laughed.

  Halloween was one of my favorite holidays, after Christmas and Thanksgiving. Although I hated slasher movies, I used to love the good old-fashioned all-night scary movie marathons, the cornier the better. That was before I was living in my own real-life scary movie.

  “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if somehow the ghosts at the Myrtles could really help people?” I wondered out loud.

  At Halloween, when I was a girl, my Campfire Girl troop went door to door collecting coins for Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF. At the Summer Conservatory of Theater, I arranged for a group of us to entertain at the Easter Seals Camp. In college I tutored a young boy and volunteered at the Children’s Shelter once a week. With a place like the Myrtles, it would be great to do some kind of benefit.

  “What do you mean?” Charles asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe we could have a special Halloween tour and donate all the money to charity,” I offered.

  “I thought you didn’t want to us to talk about the ghosts,” Charles reminded me. He was right. I had instructed the tour guides not to mention our ghosts during the tours. But this was different.

  “If, by telling their stories, we could raise money to really help people, the ghosts would probably be pleased,” I replied.

  “I think that’s a great idea. After all, they’ve done ghost tours in England for years!” Charles exclaimed.

  “I know!” I blurted. “Not only can we reenact the ghosts’ actions, but we can set up the parlors to look like an authentic historic funeral—you know, the body laid out in the parlor for the wake, and all the mirrors covered so the dead person’s soul couldn’t become trapped. They had some pretty strange customs back then that would be interesting to tell.”

  “If it’s good enough for the English, it’s good enough for me.” I laughed.

  So right there in the Piggly Wiggly our first annual Historic Halloween tour was born. Charles and I put our heads together and came up with some great material, and I was touched when my friends and staff stepped up and offered to participate in the tour for free to support such a worthy cause. (We chose to donate all the tour money that year to the Special Olympics.) Jim, Joanie, Hamp, Ozelle, Martha Mary, who worked as my housekeeper, Elaine, and many others all volunteered to participate. I hired a Hollywood-style special effects company to create scary lighting and images for the tour.

  As Halloween approached I secretly became a little nervous about the ghosts. Halloween was just another day, but with all the energy given to the spirit world on that day I had to wonder how it would affect the Myrtles. I kept my fears a secret and focused on the benefit.

  A few days before Halloween we held our dress rehearsal. No sooner did everyone assemble inside the house than it seemed to go crazy. The lights in every room started blinking on and off in random patterns, and a deafening noise roared through the house. The mood went from excitement to fear. Thank God Hamp was there. He always seemed to know what to do at times like these.

  “They aren’t happy,” Hamp told us, referring to the ghosts. “They don’t understand w
hat’s going on. I need everyone to go outside so I can talk to them,” he ordered solemnly. Gladly, we all adjourned to the carriage house, leaving Hamp alone inside to deal with the spirits. A little while later he came out to get us.

  “It’s okay now,” he explained. “They are placated.”

  I pulled Hamp aside as we all traipsed back into the house. “What happened in there?” I asked him.

  “They thought we were mocking them, and naturally they didn’t like that. That’s why they tried to scare us off. I explained to them that we were doing a special tour, to tell their stories as we understood them, and that by doing so, we would be able to help people in need. When they understood that, they were happy about it, so they backed off. You won’t have any more problems with them about the tour.”

  That was a relief. But as Halloween approached, and we’d spent so much time and energy preparing for the tour, I began wondering if anyone would even show up. Because we were donating all the money from the tour to charity, I was able to place a few press releases and public service announcements, sending them to television stations and newspapers in Baton Rouge and neighboring towns, but I had no idea how many people, if any, would actually show up.

  It turned out I needn’t have worried. By five o’clock on Halloween night several hundred people were lined up outside the plantation waiting to take the tour! I was thrilled. Everyone participating in the show was decked out in ghostly attire, from the actors to the ticket takers. Costumed guides would start outside working the crowds, leading groups of about forty people at a time up the walkway and to the front door, telling spooky historic tales along the way.

  Joanie brought up the first group and rang the doorbell. After they had waited in anticipation for a short time, the doors were flung open. After the last tour member entered the dark hallway, the doors were shut tight with a dramatic, crashing bang: First the double doors slammed behind them, and then the huge shutters on either side of the door banged closed, locking tourists inside the haunted house.

  A light suddenly shone at the back of the hall, revealing a tall, lumbering man dressed in a butler’s tux. “Good evening!” Hamp spoke in a deep, startling voice. “And welcome to the Myrtles. Ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!”

  The light on Hamp went out, and from the top of the stairs, you could barely make out a slight woman’s figure in a long antebellum day gown. The woman was crying softly. A fog floated around her as she descended to the seventeenth step, telling her tale of woe. Sarah.

  From the north gallery, a voice called out: “A gentleman to see the lawyer,” followed by shots ringing out. William Winter, wounded and bloodied, crashed through the doors and started toward the crowd. People on the tour gasped and stepped back as he made his way through the crowd to the staircase.

  “Sarah!” he called, as he stumbled up the stair.

  “William. Oh, William,” she sobbed. As they reached each other and William collapsed in Sarah’s arms, the lights illuminating the couple went out.

  Next the group made their way, in the dark, into the French bedroom, where Martha Mary was hiding behind the French dressing screen, dressed in a long, dark green robe with a green turban wrapped around her head. She was carrying an old-fashioned tin with a candle in it, just like the ghost. I loved Martha Mary. I knew she was afraid to be in that room alone in the dark, but she acted like a trouper.

  After everyone was assembled in the room, she stepped out from behind the screen and began her monologue. Everything went along as planned. When she finished, she stepped back behind the screen, where she was supposed to blow out her candle. As the flame went out, Martha let out a blood-curdling scream, followed by a loud crash.

  Hamp quickly led the group out of the French bedroom and into the dining room, where the two little girls would appear. The tour would continue to the double parlors, which had been set up for a Victorian wake. All the mirrors were covered with dark cloth, and a black casket sat ominously in the center of the parlors. In this room, Hamp would explain the superstitions and beliefs about the dead. From there, more stories were told in the gaming room, under the watchful eye of the notorious portrait. As the guests exited to the back gallery, a spotlight was cast on the island, revealing the naked Indian maiden sitting under the weeping willow tree.

  Charles had been standing at the back of the tour. When he heard Martha Mary’s scream, he ran around to the back entrance to the room to find her crumpled on the floor behind the screen.

  “Martha, Martha, are you okay?” he asked, cradling her head.

  “Huh?” she mumbled.

  Hearing Martha’s scream, Elaine ran in right behind Charles. “Quick, go get Frances,” Charles ordered.

  I was outside by the carriage house when Elaine came running up. “You gotta come in the house, quick. Something happened to Martha Mary,” she ranted breathlessly.

  We ran for the house and bolted through my private quarters to the French bedroom, finding Martha Mary, pale and shaken, laid out on the Louis XV day bed.

  “What happened?” I asked, sitting beside her and taking her hand. “Are you okay?”

  “No, not really,” she whispered. Her dark hand felt cold and clammy. “I seens the ghost!”

  “What ghost?”

  “The ghost in the green turban. I was just finishin’ my speech, and I stepped back behind the screen, when there she was, right there in front of me. She leaned down and blew out the candle. I just screamed. That’s the last I remember . . . I fainted dead away.”

  “Oh, Martha, I’m so sorry. You weren’t hurt, were you?” I asked, alarmed.

  “No, I’m not hurt, but I ain’t going back up behind that screen,” she replied. “And I ain’t never goin’ up into this house by myself.”

  “That’s okay, Martha Mary, you don’t have to,” I assured. “You’ve done enough for tonight, and I appreciate you so much.”

  When she felt able to stand I led her outside to the tavern, sat her down, and popped open a Budweiser. “Here, this should help,” I said, handing her the beer. “And there’s more where that came from. You just take it easy.”

  I asked Joanie to sit with her. Somehow I had to find a replacement for the ghost in the green turban . . . and quickly. I grabbed my friend Martial La Fluer, and we quickly made him up in drag to resemble the Aunt Jemima-looking ghost.

  The people on the tour never suspected that Martha Mary’s scream and the crash were not part of the tour. Martha Mary eventually recovered from seeing the ghost, but true to her word, she never ever went inside the house alone again.

  CHAPTER 37

  Our first Thanksgiving at the Myrtles had been everything I had dreamed of. Miss Maimie invited us to share in a traditional celebration at Catalpa with family and friends! Charles joined Jim and me, but in spite of our protests, Joanie opted to stay home. At Catalpa there was such a feast laid out on the Chippendale buffet—cream cheese with hot pepper jelly, pecan-crusted baked Brie, hot crab dip, artichoke dip, and even pimento cheese dip (what would a Southern party be without pimento cheese dip?).

  Later we feasted on roasted turkey with cornbread and oyster dressing, candied yams with bourbon, and all the trimmings, and sipped champagne from hundred-year-old crystal goblets. It was incredible that we were eating off the same fine china and silver that had been retrieved from the pond after the War.

  Bill Caldwell (our own Pilgrimage Audubon) and I played Christmas duets on our violins while Charles played the 150-year-old piano, and everyone gathered round. After the caroling, Libby Dart, president of the Historical Society, came toward me. It was the first time she had ever even acknowledged my existence, and I wasn’t sure if I should back up and get lost among the others or hear her out.

  “I will never accept you,” she began. “But I admire you for your musical abilities.”

  With that she turned abruptly and walked away, taking time for neither a greeting nor a response. What could I say, anyway? Tourists and even tour organizers frequently reported
that the ladies at the Historical Society had told them right out not to visit the Myrtles. Some of them even went so far as to handle inquiries about the Myrtles by saying we were closed. I felt I was fighting a losing battle. If she wasn’t so hell-bent on destroying our business and running us out of town, I might have found her comment amusing, but as it was, I just felt sad.

  On our way back to the Myrtles I had promised Lillie May that we would stop by her house, so we turned into the all-black Hardwood subdivision across the street from the Myrtles. Jim, Charles, and I were warmly welcomed by her entire throng: her nine children, their husbands and wives, and all the grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Lillie May took us into the kitchen and insisted that she prepare us each a plate to take home, and one for Joanie, too. She piled our plates high with turkey, cornbread dressing, potato salad, smothered collard greens, and of course sweet potato pie. When we finally had to leave, it took nearly an hour just to hug everyone goodbye.

  Back at the Myrtles I was elated because I could finally officially begin decorating the plantation for the Christmas season! I carefully picked up each piece of my grape pattern silver from the dining-room table, which matched the grape pattern in the ironwork on the gallery and in the plaster frieze work in the double parlors, and replaced it with my “Christmas Holly” silver, to be displayed for the entire holiday season.

  The four of us, all dressed up, gathered in the formal dining room while Joanie enjoyed the Thanksgiving supper Lillie May had prepared for her. I was amazed as Jim gulped down his second full-course feast. It astounded me that he could keep his perfect six-pack intact. I had to practically starve just to maintain my weight. It just wasn’t fair!

  After dinner, we retired to the tavern, out in the original carriage house, and sang Christmas carols as Charles accompanied us on the piano. It was a wonderful day.

  Jim and I felt like continuing the holiday cheer, so we retired to the new “green room.” Sleeping in one of the guestrooms always felt as if we were getting away from home.