“Well, Marion, you and Bart are entering the old haunts of your ancestors,” joked Jack as the trio walked up the wooden steps of the porch.
“This part of the city was like the Barbary Coast in Africa,” said Bart, after they had ordered. “It was an area where men were drugged and shanghaied; and when they awoke, they found themselves on a vessel out at sea. Not far from this house, the Savannah River forms a half moon, and yet it’s still fairly deep. Ships that drew twelve feet of water could ride within ten yards of the bank. My grandfather said that pirates who came here were on the lookout for men and boys to kidnap. They would take them out through an underground passage to the river and load them, unconscious, into a small boat to take them to the ships lying in wait a few yards offshore.
“As time goes, it hasn’t been so long since Savannah swarmed with sailors night and day. They were of all nationalities. Many were pirates who swaggered along the streets sporting cutlasses, swords, or a brace of pistols. The LaFitte brothers made Savannah their headquarters for a while, and Jean LaFitte married a local girl named Mary Morton.”
“Tell me more about the underground passage,” said Marion.
“It’s here, just as it’s always been. But let’s eat our meal while it’s hot.”
They were almost through when Marion said to her husband, “Jack, where are all those loud, rough voices coming from?”
“What in the world are you talking about?”
“It sounds as if some coarse, crude fellow is shouting.”
“Do you mean that party at the table over there? They’re just having a good time. Don’t let it upset you.”
“I’m not talking about them,” Marion said impatiently. “Jack, don’t you hear that man’s horrible, loud voice calling out?”
“No, I don’t.”
Bart laid his hand soothingly on Marion’s arm. “I’m not sure I hear what you do, but I do hear an undertone of voices at times.”
“Of course, anyone can hear that.”
“Marion, tell me what words you hear.”
“I’m not sure I can do that, but let’s all be quiet for a few minutes, and I’ll try.” For a little while they were silent, and then Marion’s face clouded. “I hear it again.”
“What do you hear?”
Her face turned white, and she shook her head. “Bart, do you know where the opening is to the underground tunnel?”
“Yes.”
“Jack, do you mind waiting here alone for the check? I want to see that passage.”
“Go ahead.”
Marion followed Bart out of their dining room into another and still another, until they came to a small storage area.
“It’s back here,” he said, pushing some furniture to one side. There, in front of them, was a hole in the floor. It was the mouth of a tunnel.
“I don’t think we should try to go down there. Do you still hear anything?” asked Bart. Marion shook her head, and he turned to go back.
Suddenly, her hand seized his arm. “Now! That’s the voice. Do you hear it?” Bart stepped over to the edge of the tunnel, and his face changed. “Who in the devil . . . that is one of the most evil voices I’ve ever heard, bar none.”
“He’s calling me!”
“Tell me what you hear.”
“He’s calling ‘M’Graw’ over and over. That was my maiden name! I must go down there!”
“He doesn’t mean you,” said Bart, grasping Marion’s arm. “See if you can make out any other words.”
“‘Darby . . . Darby M’Graw’ is what he is saying.” By this time they had been joined by Jack.
“What else do you hear?” persisted Bart.
“This is crazy! Let’s get her out of here,” interrupted Jack, seeing his wife’s terrified face.
“Wait a minute, Jack. Now, listen hard and tell me what else you hear, Marion.”
She stepped closer to the tunnel. “Just the jumble of voices. No. He’s shouting again!”
“And he’s saying . . . ?” prompted Bart.
“‘Fetch aft the rum, M’Graw. Fetch me the rum!’ That’s what he’s saying, but why my name?”
“It’s not you he’s calling. Let’s get her out of here, Jack.”
“What in Hades was all that about, Bart?”
“Yes, what was it about?” echoed Marion weakly.
“Marion, tell me something,” said Bart. “Do you have unusually sensitive hearing? Do noises bother you that don’t bother most people?”
“Yes.”
“I can’t explain what happened back there, but perhaps we can put some of it together.” Bart spoke quietly, his voice subdued. “There are many stories about the Pirate’s House, but probably the best-authenticated one is that the infamous Captain Flint died there and that his ghost still haunts the rooms of the old building. It’s not surprising that his ghost can’t rest, for Robert Louis Stevenson wrote that, in sheer wickedness, ‘Blackbeard was a child compared to Flint!’
“And Stevenson was right,” Bart continued. “Some say that Flint was a fictitious pirate, but I think he was real! On the night he died, he was delirious, and he shouted again and again to his shipmate, ‘Fetch me some rum.’ The name of that shipmate was Darby McGraw!”
“But it seemed to come from the passageway,” said Marion, puzzled.
“You heard it when we were sitting at the table, too, didn’t you?”
“That’s true, I did.”
“Have you had experiences like this before, hearing sounds that other people can’t?” asked Bart.
“Yes.”
“My father was like that, and I share it, but to a much lesser degree. Haven’t you seen a flock of blackbirds covering an entire treetop, the tops of several trees, all singing? Suddenly, at exactly the same moment, there’s a fluttering of wings and they all soar into the air at once. Above the racket, there must have been some signal, and they all heard it.”
“Of course, I’ve seen that.”
“I’m a seaman, and I know that a school of whales playing on the surface of the water, with the curve of the earth between them, will sometimes dive simultaneously. The signal has sounded, but it is too deep for us on deck to hear, although we may feel the vibrations.”
“And that is what you think about the voice in the Pirate’s House?”
“I only know that there are sounds that most human beings can’t hear. The pitch is too high or too low, or, perhaps, too far away in time.” Bart reached for his watch and then rose. “I’ve enjoyed my supper, but now I must go.”
“I wonder if there are things that human beings can’t see, too?” said Marion.
But Bart was gone.
The Pirate’s House, now a famous restaurant, is located at 20 East Broad at Bay Street in Savannah, Georgia. It is surrounded by a ten-acre historic area. The Herb House, said to be the oldest building in Georgia, is part of the complex. For reservations, visit thepirateshouse.com or call (912) 233-5757.
THE HOUSE OF SPIRITS
THE MYRTLES, ST. FRANCISVILLE, LOUISIANA
Each room at The Myrtles has its own resident ghost.
St. Francisville, Louisiana, is a charming old town some seventy miles north of New Orleans. It is built on a narrow ridge and said to be “two miles long and two yards wide.” There are many beautiful plantation homes there, but the only one with eerie happenings that have reverberated throughout America is The Myrtles.
The Myrtles has been featured in Life magazine, Southern Living, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Family Circle, and many other publications. Many television networks have also done features on this house. The Myrtles is also, according to the U.S. Tourist Bureau, one of the authenticated haunted houses of America, and it has sometimes been called America’s most haunted house.
The Myrtles contains some of the most interesting architecture in the South. The outside of the home, built by General David Bradford in 1796, has lacy, ornamental ironwork; inside, the large rooms, with their high ceilings, are gra
ced by outstanding plaster friezes. The Myrtles is surrounded by immense oak trees dripping with Spanish moss, and beneath their shade, the house appears to be in perpetual twilight. “Unlike other houses, to me, The Myrtles is an entity,” said one of its former owners, Frances Kermeen.
How did a vivacious blonde from the West Coast with hazel eyes, an attractive smile, and the voice of an engaging teenager become the owner of a house like this? And what eerie experiences has she encountered? Ms. Kermeen shared her story.
While I was on a cruise to Jamaica and Haiti and then on to Acapulco, I became friendly with a couple who talked me into skipping Acapulco and coming back to Louisiana with them. Because this is such a lovely place and, really, just for fun, I decided to look at real estate. The day I was looking was the day that the listing on The Myrtles came into the office.
I later found out that a couple who lived directly behind my parents’ house in San Jose had gone on the same cruise I had (though twenty years earlier) and had stopped in St. Francisville on their way back to Michigan. The house happened to be for sale at the time, and they bought it under almost identical circumstances.
That first day in the real estate office, as we were going out to look at the house, the realtor kept calling me Sarah, although I corrected her several times. Neither of us were aware of it, but later I found that two Sarahs had lived here in the 1800s.
When I went into the place for the first time, I heard a woman’s voice calling my name. At first I thought it was the realtor, but she was outside trying the back-door key to be sure that it worked. After I left, I knew I would be buying that house, and I cried some that night as I realized that, from now on, I would be far from my family and home.
As I think about everything that happened, I feel that fate—I prefer to call it God—has played an important part in the events of my life. I also think that places exert a strong pull on certain individuals, and I will always believe that this house chose me.
The first week that I was there, I was sleeping in an upstairs bedroom. I left the lights on, but with the switch set on “dim.” After a night or two, I thought that was silly and that I could sleep with the lights off, so I turned them off. But sometime after midnight I woke up, and the lights were on bright. Half asleep, I thought that I must have left them on, and I turned the dimmer. The room was once more in darkness. Two hours passed, and I was awake again. I found all the lights in the room on bright, just as they had been two hours earlier. I turned the switch 360 degrees and clicked the lights off again. Later I woke up for a third time, and the lights were on once more. That just scared me to death, and I grabbed my robe and blanket to go downstairs and sleep in the sitting room.
All went fine, and I slept peacefully until about five o’clock, when I woke up with a start and had the feeling that someone was looking at me. I stared up into the face of a large black lady whose head was wrapped in a green turban. She wore something that resembled a long, green dressing gown. I was so shocked that I just couldn’t look at her face again. By that time I had begun screaming, but she still didn’t go away. Involuntarily, I struck out with my arm to push her from me, but as I did so, my hand passed through her, and she faded away.
It was a couple of days before the closing on the house, and the current owner was still there. I told her about it the next day, and she said, “That’s ridiculous!” But even on the first night, at about one o’clock, I had heard footsteps outside my door and assumed that it was one of the other houseguests. The next day I learned that everyone in the house claimed to have been dead to the world before eleven.
Later I found the whole town knew that the house was haunted, but they weren’t going to tell an out-of-state person who was thinking about buying it. After I had bought the house, I mentioned the lady in green to the mother of the former owner, and to my surprise, she was absolutely thrilled. Can you imagine? She said, “Why, Frances, you have seen The Myrtles’ most famous ghost!”
I turned the house into a bed-and-breakfast place, and at first I tried to keep the ghostly visitors a secret from the real ones. But during the seven years I have been here, there have been about a hundred reports each year of apparitions or some supernatural occurrence. There were times when I was truly frightened, and the only thing that kept me from going back to my parents was that it would be too embarrassing to tell them that I was leaving because I was afraid of ghosts.
The most common sounds are either those of children’s voices at play or that of a baby crying. But the eeriest of all is the music of a dance going on downstairs. Often people think that another guest’s television is on too loud, but on inquiring they find there is no television set in the room next to them.
Each room has its own unique ghost. One has a wounded Confederate soldier who appears in May and June. A pair of honeymooners stayed here. The groom went upstairs alone to lie down and woke to find a black servant standing beside the bed bandaging his foot. The honeymooners immediately checked out.
The plantation’s most famous murders occurred shortly after its sale in 1817 to a philandering judge named Clarke Woodruff, General Bradford’s son-in-law. The judge grew angry with a slave woman named Cleo for eavesdropping, and he cut off one of her ears as a penalty. For revenge, she mixed poisonous oleander flowers into a birthday cake for the judge’s oldest daughter. His two little girls died, as did his wife. Other slaves hanged Cleo. It is said that she still haunts the house, wearing a green turban to cover her missing ear. Cleo was evidently the ghost who frightened Frances Kermeen during her first week in the house.
Janet Roberts, a psychic who is the treasurer of the Louisiana Society for Psychical Phenomena, believes that The Myrtles has many ghosts. “Walking into the parlor was like walking into a crowded cocktail party. I felt that we were literally bumping into people, and I wanted to say, ‘Excuse me.’” But except for the grumpy ghost who will occasionally hurl a clock or drop a candlestick, they do no harm.
Ms. Kermeen says, “At first I would not stay here alone at night. After I made it into a B&B in 1981, that seldom happened. But there are still a few things that rile me, and when they do, I have to go spend the night in the new wing.”
Asked if she had ever talked with any of the apparitions, Ms. Kermeen shook her head. “I certainly am not brave enough to try to communicate with any of them. I got used to the footsteps, the door slamming, and the voices, so now I don’t keep my hand on the phone, ready to dial the police, as I did at first. I know this sounds absurd, but it’s funny what you later come to accept when you didn’t believe in this sort of thing at all before.
“About seventy-five percent of the people who come here do so because they want to hear about our ghosts. The other twenty-five percent just happen upon it. Oddly enough, the ones who get scared and want to check out in the middle of the night are sometimes the big, macho-type men.”
What sort of person is most apt to have a supernatural experience? Ms. Kermeen noted, “It is usually the skeptic or the one who isn’t expecting anything to happen. When people have been so eager to see a ghost and then report it, I wonder if it isn’t their imagination.”
She continued. “There have been ten murders here at The Myrtles, and that’s quite a few, even for a house that is almost two hundred years old. I think some of those poor, tragic victims may have been the ghosts I have seen. I believe that this house sets off intense emotions in the people who live here for any length of time. The overseer of this plantation in 1850 was a white man twenty-four years old, and he committed suicide. I later hired a young man of twenty-four who tried the same thing. Fortunately, he was unsuccessful. He may have been unstable from the beginning, but some people are very impressionable. I don’t hire men that age anymore. I try to hire happy people, and I have always been a healthy, happy person myself. Most visitors who come here seem to leave content and rested. At least I think they do, for a great many return each year.
“At first the ghosts terrified me. Then there was a year or
two when the knowledge that they were there was just fun and games. But of late, I really believe that they have led me to God. They have brought me closer to a sense of His reality and the meaning of life. Once you are confronted with a ghost, you can’t brush off the existence of life after death.”
Now operated as a bed and breakfast, The Myrtles Plantation offers visitors the opportunity to book a room at “one of America’s most haunted homes.” It is also open for regular tours. Visit www.myrtlesplantation.com/ or call (225) 635-6277.
HOUSE OF TRAGEDY
CARNTON PLANTATION, FRANKLIN, TENNESSEE
Carnton House is probably Tennessee’s best-known haunted house.
“There will never be another Carnton House,” his friend had said. “Never a place that’s seen such tragedy and grief.”
Perhaps that was the reason Paul Levitt was determined to go there. Up the curving drive, set far back from the road, the house stood alone in a grove of maple trees, its darkened windows staring out from between tall, white columns. There was something lonely and mysterious about it.
November 30th had been one of those timeless autumn days, but now it was late afternoon, with darkness falling fast. As Paul drove up to the house in his black Ferrari, he realized that he had arrived too late. It was just after five, and the tour guides would already have left. Well, it didn’t matter; he would walk about the grounds. All was quiet. He and this house were alone in another world. The only sound was the faint crunching of his footsteps on the gravel drive. It was a time to think and to absorb the unfathomable atmosphere of this place that his friend John Carter had described.
Underfoot, a profusion of leaves lay like a golden treasure spread out by some profligate Midas. It seemed almost wrong to tread upon such beauty. Bending down, Paul picked up one perfect, five-pointed yellow maple leaf, then another; but on the second leaf were splotches of crimson, bright as blood.
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