01x02 - File: Ghosts of Myrtles Plantation

[bunniefuu]

[eerie music plays]

[woman 1] Everyone knows in our area

about the plantations

and them bein' haunted,

or visited by people

that have lived here before.

But I never opened myself up

to ghosts or anything like that.

We came over here to visit a friend

and we planned to go to dinner.

After the dinner,

my husband wanted to do the tour.

We walked into this room,

and I'm takin' pictures.

No flash, not expecting to see anything.

I ended up, like, ya know,

takin' pictures this way.

And, um, obviously,

havin' to go around the bed.

Takin' pictures and heading out the door.

And I was the last in the room.

So it was, like, during the week,

after work, after dinner,

sittin' on the couch,

and remembering that we had been

to the Myrtles.

Flipping through some of the pictures,

and they were all they were horrible.

They were brown and blurry and smeary.

But then I roll into one of 'em

that was really shocking.

So, this is the picture of

It looks like this pane.

The image is much smaller

than if a person was standing near it.

So, the size doesn't really make sense.

[shutter clicks]

[theme music plays]

[narrator] The Myrtles Plantation

is a place

with a dark and complicated past.

For over 40 years,

visitors have flocked to its grounds,

wanting to experience

the paranormal activity

said to occur here.

[ethereal music plays]

Welcome to the Myrtles.

My name is Hester Eby,

and I'll show you around a little bit.

This is one of my favorite rooms,

the main dining room.

You say the Myrtles Plantation,

you say haunted house.

And But it's so much more to it,

so much more.

And I've learned that through the years.

[man 1] The Myrtles has always

been known and referred to

as one of America's most haunted homes.

[people gasp]

[woman] The flashlight

just turned on on its own.

[man] As we sleep,

the strange noises intensify.

[whistling sound plays]

I legit felt somebody

straight-up whisper in my ear.

The Myrtles, located here

in St. Francisville, Louisiana,

which is about 25 miles north

of Baton Rouge.

It's a small, quaint, ya know,

bed-and-breakfast-type community.

It packs a mighty punch

with a lotta charm,

and there's a lotta character.

[gentle intriguing music plays]

[Hester] This is the French bedroom.

This room holds

all of the original pieces.

Our dolls are just

a bit of our decorations,

but a lot of people have stories.

Especially the dolls that you'll find

in the Fanny Williams room.

A lot of people get a little parano

They say that they, uh, change directions.

[shutter clicks]

People have told me,

"Ya know, it's someone over there."

"Ya know, you may not see them,

but they're over there."

And I believe them.

Or some people may leave and say,

"Do you really believe in this?"

And I'll say, "Yes, I do."

My history of the Myrtles

began with needing a job years ago,

looking through the phone book,

and I dropped it,

and it fell

on "M, Myrtle's Plantation Home."

[macabre classical music plays]

A house was built in 1796.

A man named

General David Bradford built it.

He led the Whiskey Rebellion

in Pennsylvania.

So he came here to Louisiana

running for his life.

This is Will give you an idea

of how General Bradford looked.

And like any father,

he arranged for his daughter's marriage.

And he thought the man suitable for her

was a man named Judge Clark Woodruff.

He married the general's daughter, Sarah.

He took over.

Changed the name

from Laurel Hill to the Myrtles

because of their love

for crepe myrtle trees.

[Morgan] I came to be the owner

of the Myrtles Plantation

because I grew up here.

I suppose I was was born into it.

[suspenseful music plays]

My family purchased the property in '92,

when I was eight months old.

They were really intrigued with the idea

of movin' onto the property

and makin' it home.

They thought it would be cute

to raise an infant

at a sleepy bed and breakfast

in in the country,

and and little did they know.

My parents knew

that the Myrtles had been known

as one of America's most haunted homes

when they purchased the property in '92.

I don't know that they were

necessarily big believers of that.

I've definitely had

a couple of experiences,

mostly related to just, like,

seeing things out of my peripherals,

or just somethin' that's very descriptive

that I was certain that I was seeing,

and that that I could describe

the experience that I was having,

and then it would go away.

[Hester] Some people sense things.

They don't have to see so much

because they can sense it.

And I feel sometimes

if I can turn around fast enough,

it's someone right by my side,

but I can't move fast enough to see them.

Or outta the corner of my eyes,

someone is there.

Sometimes it's a fragrance.

Sometimes it's it's just the feel,

or or, "That rocker rocked."

"Did you see that?"

"Yeah, I saw it." Explain it? I can't.

[eerie music plays]

[rocking chair creaks]

This photo is one that was taken

by my mom in late 1992.

She was takin' photos on the property

for, uh, insurance purposes.

They were just workin' on reinsuring

the property for the followin' year.

And she wasn't to have

any people in her photo,

so she had chosen to do it

on a day that she was there by herself.

She took these photos,

submitted 'em to the insurance,

and then they called her back,

sayin' that there was a person

in one of her photos.

[creepy music plays]

[shutter clicks]

My folks were a bit skeptic

of the whole paranormal activity

of the property

whenever they had purchased it.

And I think this was, like

this was the shift for them.

[suspenseful music plays]

[man 2] I'm a paranormal investigator.

Which, I have a group

that we investigate houses,

uh, belonging to families

that are being bothered

by things that go bump in the night.

My wife and I decided to come here

on our tenth anniversary

to spend the night.

And all of a sudden,

the windows right there in front of us

[mimics rattling]

ya know, started vibrating v violently.

And there's no mechanism around

that that would cause that.

And I went up to touch the window,

and right before I touched it, it stopped.

And then I step outside

and to take a picture.

And I didn't see it at the time,

but when I developed the film later on,

it appears to be a little girl

climbing outta the window.

[shutter clicks]

I mean, you can see her hairline.

You can see the puffy sleeves.

[shutter clicks]

But most of the things that occur here

are very subtle. They're audible.

You might put your glass down on a table,

and you turn to do something,

and that might

glass might be six inches over.

Or you might take off your earrings,

and you put your earrings out

and you find out one is missing.

[tense music plays]

Supposedly one of the spirits here

is very OCD.

If you move things, she'll put it back.

My wife, she's a skeptic,

but except for this place.

But my other ghost investigations,

she's always, "That's nothing.

That's not That didn't happen."

She'll point out things to me that I

I mean, I'm so involved with it.

"Well, did you think about this?

It could've been this,

it could've been that."

But, uh, as for this house,

she's a hundred percent involved.

She, uh I don't think

there's an ounce of skepticism in

when it comes to the Myrtles.

'Cause, you know, we we've lived it.

[ethereal music plays]

[Hester] One time, we were waiting

for a group to go in the house,

and it was a little girl with her mother.

I greeted her.

And she said, "Why are you dirty?"

And so I look down,

ya know, tryin' to make sure.

So, I looked fairly decent.

And she said, "Are you hungry?"

And she was very serious.

It was time for them to go in the house,

and as I walked 'em to the door,

she had turned around

and she was looking back

where we were talking earlier.

And her mother and I realized

she was not talking to me.

She was talkin' to someone else.

She was looking at someone beyond me.

And whoever that person was

may have been a little dirty,

and perhaps they looked

like they were hungry.

There is an opening with kids

that adults don't have.

We learn to question everything.

And children just don't do that.

I don't know who she saw.

I cannot say it was Chloe.

I cannot say

it was not another house servant.

But I do know she was not talking to me.

[narrator] The little girl on tour

is not alone.

Other guests have caught sight

of what they perceive

to be a ghost called Chloe.

It's said that there was

a young sl*ve girl that lived in the house

in the early 1800s.

Her name was Chloe.

[Hester] The story goes,

Judge Woodruff took on a house servant.

From the neck up, she's a Black woman.

Her left ear is not there.

She was wearing a green turban

to cover that area.

[man 3] It was allegedly

not enough that he enslaved her,

but was abusing her too.

And she knew she had to go along with it

because if she didn't,

she'd be out working in the fields,

which was the hardest and worst labor

on the plantation.

[Hester] She was caught listening in,

eavesdropping on some

of their family business.

[Mary] It is said that she had

one of her ears cut off

in punishment for that.

[Troy] And then, the story goes,

she was spending most of her time

plotting what she could do

to make herself important

to the family again.

She decided she would bake a birthday cake

for the judge's oldest daughter.

Used the juices from the popular

but poisonous oleander.

Some people believe

it was just to make them sick

so that she could nurse

the family back to health

and prove how important she was.

Others believe

that it was done out of revenge.

That she had put the poison

in the cake to to k*ll the family.

Sarah, at the time,

was said to have been pregnant

with her third child.

The children and Sarah ate the cake,

and, instead of getting sick,

the poison k*lled them.

After confessing, Chloe was hung.

And they believed if they weighed down

the body in the river,

the spirit could not rise and harm anyone.

Well, something went wrong that night.

Her spirit is certainly here.

A lot of people spend a night,

they have a very quiet night.

Others do not.

Others claim that they see her.

[ominous, droning music plays]

[narrator] The story of Chloe

is one of the Myrtles' most famous,

but the recorded history surrounding it

leaves some unanswered questions.

[dramatic classical music plays]

[woman 2] When I was writing a book

about very famous places

in the United States

that are said to be haunted,

of course I had to come here

to the Myrtles Plantation.

I call myself a skeptic,

but I'm not a cynic.

So I try to keep an open mind.

The first time I came here,

uh, I did a tour during the day,

and then I did one

at nighttime as well. [laughs]

It seems like every tour I go on

there are new stories about new ghosts.

So, it's constantly being added to,

constantly evolving.

[mysterious music plays]

[Troy] The most famous ghost story

connected to the Myrtles, unfortunately,

is the one that doesn't have

much authenticity behind it.

And that's the story of Chloe.

She's been seen many times

as a woman wearing a green wrap

or a green turban around her head.

In the 1950s, when Marjorie Munson

took over this plantation

and she started to hear

some of the ghost stories,

she was told about an experience

with a woman in the house

who wore a green turban,

or a green wrap, around her head.

And this story sorta stuck around,

that there was a ghost

who haunted the house.

She seemed to be the resident spirit here,

a woman in a green turban.

Well, when the story of Chloe

was created out of thin air,

it was using the story

of the ghost with the green turban,

even though the descriptions didn't match.

But we don't wanna let facts

get in the way of a good story.

At least that's what happened.

[suspenseful music plays]

So, initially, she was

a little old French lady

who wore a green dress.

And then, as time has worn on,

she has become

a young French-Canadian nanny

who wears a green bonnet.

Sometimes she's said to be white.

Other times she's said to be Black.

In some stories,

she's said to be young and beautiful.

In other stories,

she's a large, older woman.

There are numerous issues with this story.

Uh, not the least of which

is there's no record

that the, uh, Woodruff family

ever had a sl*ve named Chloe.

There are records of their other sl*ves

written down by name,

but there's no Chloe in the records.

I think there are

so many different versions of Chloe

because Chloe needs

to fit in with our time.

If we go back further in time,

there's more of a connection

to French-Canadian history.

And so, back in the 1920s and the 1940s,

that would've made sense as a ghost.

Whereas today,

what's one of the worst things

we can think about in society?

It's racism. It's enslavement.

So, I think that the ghost is always

really a figment of our imagination,

connected to our times.

[mysterious music plays]

[Troy] I think that's probably

what bothered me more than anything else

about this place when I first came here.

Looking for authentic history

and realized that the history

that was being told,

and is still being told, is impossible.

[Morgan] I think that the stories

of the Myrtles are are definitely

They're folklore stories

that have been passed down.

I've been told these stories

my entire life.

There's parts of the story that we know

have been proven to be inaccurate,

but it's just it's so ingrained,

uh, into those folklore stories,

that the stories continued to be told.

It's stayed the course

with just tryin' to be a property

that's there to entertain.

[Hester] There is room

for different beliefs.

"Are you sure it happened this way?

You sure it happened that way?" Always.

We're not here

to prove anything to anyone.

I I enjoy telling you the stories.

We as tour guides enjoy telling stories,

and that is it.

We like to entertain our guests.

[Karen] I think it's okay

to tell the folklore.

I I think it's

it's a part of this house.

All of these stories

are attached to the house,

and they've been around for a long time,

over 100 years.

That's not to be discounted,

people's experiences and their stories.

We can focus on a story like Chloe

and say, "Oh, hey,

look how awful this is."

And I suppose somebody might say,

"Oh, it's an inclusive story."

"The star of the story

is an African-American woman."

But she's the villain,

and she didn't exist,

and she didn't do anything wrong.

Chloe's just one of the people

who died here and one of the stories.

So, whether she existed or did not exist,

there's been other murders and deaths here

and other family tragedies as well.

[somber music plays]

[narrator] Even though the folklore

and ghost stories told at the Myrtles

may not be entirely true,

one thing is certain.

Countless visitors

have reported experiences

that cannot be explained.

I think the Myrtles definitely has

all the ingredients

of a place that's haunted.

It It certainly has

the history behind it.

I just went into the records

to get to the bottom of the story.

[gentle music plays]

When David Bradford

came down here in the 1700s,

he brought his family down,

started a plantation.

He had been an attorney

and decided to open up in the area

to people who wanted to study law.

And one of his students

was a man named Clark Woodruff

who came here to learn to be a lawyer.

And he also fell in love

with, uh, Judge Bradford's daughter,

Sarah Matilda.

They ended up getting married

and had three children.

After Bradford died,

they took over the house.

In 1823, Sarah died.

But not from poison birthday cake.

It was easy to check the records

and discover that Sarah died

from yellow fever.

It was pretty tragic,

but he remained behind

with his children at the house.

The following summer,

two of his children died,

also from yellow fever.

No one ever died

from poisoned birthday cake.

Also, Sarah was supposed

to have been pregnant

with their third child, which meant

that Octavia would've never existed,

but she very clearly did.

He sent his oldest daughter

away to boarding school

and sold the place

to the Stirling family a few years later.

And then they suffered tragedies here too.

Four of their nine children

only made it to adulthood.

The rest died from natural causes

here at the house, on the property.

After that, the house was sold

and resold many times.

More tragedies happened.

The real history of the Myrtles

does deal with a lot of tragedy,

a lotta trauma.

There have been quite a few deaths

that have occurred inside the house.

[click]

[click]

[click]

The son-in-law of the Stirlings

was m*rder*d.

That m*rder was never solved.

Someone drowned

after chasing some stray cattle.

And the list just kept going on.

So, if we believe

that ghosts remain behind

because of unfinished business,

this is a place that certainly has that.

[ominous music plays]

[David] This house,

for some reason, I dunno what it is,

it it's just the history

of all the the angst

and the anger

and the the sorrow and stuff.

And that if that has been imprinted

in this house, is is a theory.

Boy, based on the people

who don't know each other,

have no connection whatsoever,

and yet have reported

very similar, uh, encounters

and happenings in the house,

I certainly think it can be haunted.

[dramatic music plays]

[shutter clicks]

[Hester] Now we're outside

on the back porch.

And, you know, we've had people

just relaxing on the porchway,

they would say how nice it is

to have the waitresses

or waiters in costume.

We do not have them in costume.

Who they're seeing flowing around

back and forth, we don't know.

[eerie music plays]

[David] These ghosts here,

these spirits here,

maybe they get an attachment with you.

You know, I I I know there's one girl

that likes to have children around.

And, my son, he didn't remember this,

but he when we brought him here

when he was a kid,

and I said, "Where you been?"

He said, "Oh, I was playing with

the little blond girl over there on"

There was no kids

on the property, ya know?

[Troy] There are a lot of children

who were here in the house.

You know, the Stirling family lost

a number of their children at a young age.

So, it's possible that their ghosts

could remain behind as well.

There are stories that you, ya know,

ca might see the children in the mirror,

or that, more commonly,

people hear them laughing and playing.

There have been children seen

on the front porch

in in period clothing.

[children laughing]

[David] Everybody has their, really,

own experiences and stuff, and, uh,

and it sometimes it

People experience something dark.

So I don't know what what sparked that,

but I do know that they have a tendency

to, ya know, show themselves with us.

One time, we were checking out,

and we went back up in the room to see

if there was anything we might've left.

And there in the middle of the room

was a big marble.

Now we would've seen that marble,

ya know, during the night and everything.

And I said, "Wow."

I looked down, I picked it up,

I said, "Where'd this come from?"

And under that same dresser

a marble came rolling out.

I usually walk around

with a recorder with me.

And we were just packin' away stuff,

my wife and I.

And then this woman next to me,

who was not there,

she goes, "I hate you."

And I played it back later, and I said,

"Wow, obviously I must've

pissed off somebody."

- [clicks]

- [static hisses]

[voice] I hate you.

[David] We ask questions. "Are you here?"

Things like that. And if you're lucky,

you'll get a response,

an intelligent response.

[woman] Are you cryin' for me?

[David] Did you hear that?

There's four rooms here

up on the top floor here,

as you well could see.

And they're all named after certain people

that are associated with this house.

In this room, the John Leake Room,

I had my foot sticking outta the bed

and somebody grabbed my ankle

and started playing with my toes.

[ethereal music plays]

One time we were sitting downstairs,

about one o'clock in the morning,

and all of a sudden the chandelier

[mimics whooshing]

started swooping back and forth.

I thought it was gonna fall

right outta the ceiling.

[glass beads tinkling]

And then this young lady

who I met that first time that night,

she goes, "Do you see her?"

And I go, "See who?"

"She's right in front of you."

And my hair's standing on end. I was cold.

And, "She's She's really angry at you."

"She's wagging her finger

in front of you, your face,

and yellin' at you."

And I'm, ya know, like, "Wow."

Like, I'm watching I'm just watching

the chandelier just goin' crazy.

And then it starts

diminishing a little bit.

I go, "Is she here in front of me now?"

"No, she just walked past me."

"She went

into the children's dining room area

where you had your camera set up."

And so I went in there

and [mimics shutter]

started takin' pictures

left and right, both cameras.

And I took the

the roll of film to, uh, a dealership

that I knew was really good

at, uh, processing film quickly.

He comes out, he said,

"Did you just come from the airport?"

And I said, "No, why?"

He said, "All your film is burned."

[director] Why do you keep coming back?

That's a good question.

Many people have asked that.

I guess it's like riding

a Ferris wheel or a roller coaster.

Ya know, you you're petrified

as that that car

is going to the peak

of the roller coaster,

and then that that ride

"Oh, come on. Let's do it again."

But, overall,

I'm just a paranormal enthusiast

who loves the Myrtles Plantation.

[eerie music plays]

[narrator] The paranormal activity

at the Myrtles

ranges from benign sightings

to physical disturbances.

But what is it trying to tell us?

[tense music plays]

[man 4] If you were to put

the 21st-century Myrtles

on a longer historical timeline,

I think it's part of a 200-year-old story

of trying to make a plantation

as profitable as possible.

Before Emancipation,

that meant forcing

enslaved people to grow cotton.

As the cotton industry collapsed

in the early 20th century,

the moneymaker became

a certain brand of racial tourism

that engaged in white Americans' fantasies

of power and supremacy.

That dynamic continues to this day.

But in the 21st century,

there are more and more Americans

who are uncomfortable with that

or who see real problems in it.

[Morgan] We're operating

a plantation property in modern day,

and we're modernizing it,

to the sense that it is here

for for everyone

and of all walks of life.

I'm not tone-deaf to, um

to the idea that that's offensive to some.

And those that it is triggering to

or offensive to,

I wanna know what can we do to it

to better that and to improve that.

[John] The plantation owners

around here left behind,

in many cases, very detailed records.

And we can look

at what day-to-day business

on these plantations was like.

Bennet H. Barrow,

a planter who lived a little under a mile

from the Myrtles Plantation,

he kept a daily diary.

And in that diary, he recorded

the t*rture that he personally inflicted

on the roughly 100 people

that he held as property.

Whippings,

dunking sl*ves' heads underwater

This really barbaric, terrifying mixture

of corporal pain and public humiliation.

[menacing music plays]

[Troy] I think, really, the focus

of this place should change in that

Tell the story of Chloe,

and then tell people that's not real.

[narrator] It's not only the Myrtles

that has avoided

a more historically-minded approach

and instead pivoted to tourism.

Many other plantations have done the same.

And, as seen across social media,

many are opposed to the idea.

And this plantation

was turned into a bed and breakfast.

Like, a place where my ancestors

were k*lled, beaten, r*ped

It's really weird

that people get married at plantations.

God knows how many sl*ves

were lynched or tortured or buried.

And then getting married there and having

the happiest day of your life there.

The history of sl*very in this country

is constantly denied.

And now it's being mocked by being

turned into a luxurious vacation spot.

[John] I want us

to focus our energies on recovering

the stories and perspectives

of enslaved people.

People trying to survive and endure

under situations

of extreme hardship and oppression.

Trying to build families

and communities and transmit culture.

I find those stories

to be much more powerful

and much more meaningful and intriguing

than stories that celebrate

women in hoop skirts,

eating cucumber sandwiches on the veranda.

[narrator] Unfortunately,

most of the stories

of those enslaved at the Myrtles

have been lost,

because at the time,

records of their lives

were not consistently kept.

[Morgan] There's so much to unpack.

It's somethin' that's,

behind the scenes and off-camera,

is is super important to us,

so that we wanna make sure

that that we're getting right.

It's It's challengin' and uncomfortable.

[brooding percussive music plays]

[narrator] However complicated

the history behind the Myrtles

and present-day use of the property is,

one thing is clear.

Ghosts of many kinds reside here.

[Hester] It was believed

whenever anyone died

on the plantation grounds

that all the mirrors

were to be covered with a black cloth.

Durin' the time that Judge Woodruff

lost part of his family,

it was supposed to have been

so much confusion

that it's believed that this mirror

was hanging in the main dining room.

And it was left uncovered.

You see on this side of the mirror,

it looks like handprints or paw prints.

It's believed that the spirits

from those people's souls

still live inside.

A lot of people

take pictures of this mirror.

The faces of two small children

will come out

in that section of their photographs.

[woman] Well, it's spazzing out

by the mirror. Look, right by the stains.

The mirror, I don't believe that.

It's 200 years old.

It's not original to the house.

To look at the supposed face

and the a alleged hand marks

and claw marks,

it looks more like imperfections

in the mirror.

The handprints seem to be there,

and they could be the handprints

of people who made the mirror.

I saw stuff in that mirror.

It was about one or two o'clock

in the morning,

my brother-in-law and I were still up.

I was looking in it and I thought

I saw a light inside the mirror,

and I'm thinkin',

"Okay, it's car traffic outside."

And we got up and looked at it.

Inside the mirror

were these three ba*ls of light.

And they were bouncing around inside

like a pinball.

Then I looked at my brother-in-law,

and he was, like, in an aura.

His His shirt He had a white shirt on,

and it was lit up like he was

in a nightclub with, uh, black lights.

And we were All our hair

was standing on end, and it was just

You felt very a lotta energy,

and then it Poof! It went away.

And the light Everything went out.

[creepy music plays]

[Mary] There's a lot of people

who have seen things in the mirror,

whether it's with their eyes

or, um, in their photos

that they've taken.

And it is the most photographed place

in the plantation.

- [shutter clicks]

- [eerie music plays]

[shutter clicks]

[shutter clicks]

[Karen] A lotta people come here

and take photographs

and later on will discover

that there are pictures of ghosts.

There are little girls or,

um, they see Chloe.

But usually after

they have taken the photograph.

So, I've examined

a number of these photographs

and recognize some of these ghosts.

Sometimes they come from ghost apps.

[shutter clicks]

So, they're used a lot in photographs

of other famous places too.

There are dozens of ghost apps out there,

and you can easily create

these ghosts yourself.

You take a picture of something.

There's nothing there, and then you insert

a picture of a creepy little girl,

and you've got a ghost.

[pulsing music plays]

If we take a look

at the legendary ghost photograph,

it's not very good quality.

So it's very blurry.

- [shutter click echoes]

- It's difficult to to see detail.

And there are lots of natural explanations

for what the photograph is of.

It could be a photograph of a a shadow.

- [shutter clicks]

- It could also be tools or equipment

or other things

that were stored there at the time.

I think it fits in with the the beliefs

of a lot of people that this is Chloe.

This is what people want to see

in that photograph.

[narrator] But not every photo

captured at the Myrtles

has a logical explanation behind it.

[menacing music plays]

[David] One time it poured down rain.

It really came down hard.

And there was a

really, a cool, foggy mist

on the pond out there.

I said, "I'm gonna go out there

and take some pictures."

So I set up the tripod,

I used that, ya know, 1600 speed film.

[mimics shutter clicking]

So, I processed the film,

and I wish I'd taken more photos.

There was a little red light

in the gazebo,

and then it got bigger

and it looked like a woman with a hat on.

That's my interpretation of it.

It could be a lot of things,

but you could see it,

you know, so something.

I wish I had taken more shots,

because seems like something

was progressing

into something a little bit more.

[shutter clicks]

[gentle classical music plays]

[Karen] I would say

absolutely come to the Myrtles Plantation

and enjoy the folklore, enjoy the stories.

Enjoy that experience as entertainment.

But that it's very important

to also honor the history.

History's incredibly important,

and we want to, uh

to not not erase that with fiction.

[David] I tell everybody,

"Come in with an open mind,

pay attention to everything."

"Just respect the house,"

more than anything else.

"Respect the history."

[Morgan] I hope

that people continue to get excited

over the paranormal side of the property

and just play with the haunts

and folklore that that all is.

But I also hope

to move the property in a direction

that is a place that continues to broaden

why people are comin' onto the property,

and ultimately just continues

to be a venue,

a a place to entertain

and to host people of all walks of life.

[sweeping classical music plays]

[Hester] I've known Morgan

ever since he was 18 months old.

Now he's running the Myrtles

and he's doing such a good job.

And he will tell you,

if he's not already told you,

it's not that he runs the Myrtles.

The Myrtles runs him.

A lot of people ask me, before I came

to the Myrtles, did I believe in ghosts?

Yes, I've always believed in ghosts.

But there's something about being here

and believing in ghosts,

and then just opening myself

to what is here.

It's so much that we do not know.

There's an old spiritual song

that says that,

"I'll know about it better

in the by and by."

It's so much you don't know about,

but am I ready for it yet?

You know, I can wait.

But when I take those pictures,

and it's something there

that I can't see with the naked eye,

it makes you wonder,

you know, what is really going on?

Who's watching you?

[narrator] The real history of the Myrtles

may always be unclear,

but one thing is certain.

[Hester] We are the visitors.

They are not.

[mysterious music plays]