ONE TANK TRIPS: The Myrtles Plantation

WBRZ, the ABC station in Baton Rouge, aired this One Tank Trips travel segment in October 2024. Reporter Fallon Brown visits the Myrtles Plantation outside St. Francisville, built in 1796, which now operates as a bed-and-breakfast, tour site and restaurant.

Staff walk through the stories told on the daily tours: the mirror in the foyer, the legend of Chloe – described as a one-eared ghost who takes guests’ earrings and leaves them around the house – and the killing of William Winter, which the segment calls St. Francisville’s oldest cold case and which legend says ended on the 17th step of the staircase. The report claims at least 13 documented deaths on the property, includes a moment when the crew’s camera focused on something they could not see while filming in a guest suite, and ends with the plantation’s architecture, grounds and fine-dining restaurant.

Watch this as an example of the legend in its marketed form, then compare it with the record. Researchers working from local property records found that no enslaved woman named Chloe (or Cleo) appears among the people the Woodruff family held in bondage, and the deaths of Sara Woodruff and her children are recorded as yellow fever – so the poison-cake story at the heart of the legend is a twentieth-century invention. Of the many deaths claimed for the house, only William Winter’s killing, in January 1871, is supported by contemporary records; the segment places it in the 1860s.

What gets lost on the ghost tour is the plantation’s foundation: its wealth was produced by enslaved people whose names are largely missing from the stories told there. A legend that invents a punished, vengeful enslaved woman while overlooking the real ones is worth questioning.