CHAPTER 32
Hampton called me one day very excited. “Meet me in Baton Rouge tonight,” he urged. “There’s a group of people here that you need to meet.”
No knowing what to expect, that evening, Jim and I drove to Baton Rouge and pulled up to a modest residence near LSU. It was the home of Midge Soderbergh. (Midge’s son, Steven, was just beginning to film Sex, Lies and Videotape at a college hangout on Chimes Street in Baton Rouge.) The group, led by Midge, held regular meetings, delving into spiritual mysteries and techniques including ESP, clairvoyance, astral projection, and communication with the dead.
We arrived a little late. The group of about a dozen people had already assembled in a circle around the small living room. Hamp ushered us in, and we joined the circle. I beamed when I noticed the stunning lady sitting across from me. I had never laid eyes upon her before, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that I knew her, intimately, and I was happy to be seeing her again. I felt a little embarrassed, because during the entire session—Midge’s talk, the energy circle, receiving “messages” from spirits, and the serious discussion afterward—I could not wipe the silly grin off my face. She must have been experiencing a similar feeling, as she kept smiling at me, too.
After the lights were turned on and everyone stood up, feeling refreshed and energized, Hamp introduced us to everyone. The lady sitting across from me, an absolutely striking redhead, was Ozelle Thurston. We started talking as if we were old friends. Amazingly, she had lived in St. Francisville most of her life, right next door to the Myrtles, until her divorce several years before! She had become close friends with another divorcée from St. Francisville, Fran Campbell, and together they attended Midge’s classes. A distinguished, wheat-blond woman walked over and greeted us. It was Fran. I knew the three of us would become fast friends.
As the group was breaking up, Midge pulled me aside.
“Can we talk in private?” she asked. From the sound of her voice, it was urgent.
“Sure,” I replied. She led me down the hall and into one of the back rooms.
“I didn’t know whether to tell you this or not,” she began. “But it’s important that you know. There is something evil at the Myrtles. You are not safe there. You must get out,” she warned, looking directly into my eyes.
“I can’t. I love the place more than anything, and I don’t want to ever leave. Besides, I sold everything I own to buy the place and turn it into a guest inn, and I want to try to make it work. There is no way I would consider leaving now,” I thought, but I didn’t tell her that.
“I can’t leave,” I simply stated.
“Then please, be very, very careful. You are in grave danger. Do not mess around with the spirits. Don’t have séances or try to conjure them up,” she warned.
“Are all the spirits there evil?” I inquired nervously.
“No, most of them are kind, caring spirits. But there is one very evil entity. It is not present all the time, but I have felt it there once. That was when I instructed Mr. Celestine to take measures to protect himself and the house.”
“How can we protect ourselves?” I asked.
“There are lots of little things you can do, like keeping yourself surrounded by white light, or putting bags of salt under each window,” she explained.
“Are we really in that much danger?” I gulped.
“I’m afraid you are. Just don’t focus on ‘them’ or give ‘them’ too much energy, and perhaps they will leave you alone.”
“Will you come up sometime to visit?” I invited, hoping maybe she could help us with our “little problem.” “We’d love to have you,” I added.
“No, I never want to go to that place again,” she quickly replied.
Hamp and Jim were waiting, but all the others had left.
“What did she say?” Hamp asked.
“I’ll tell you later,” I answered, wanting to digest her warning first. I wasn’t even sure I would tell Hamp, as I was worried the he might be too scared to come back.
“Can you talk about it?” Jim asked when we got in the car.
“Yeah. Midge thinks there might be something evil at the Myrtles, and that we should be very careful,” I replied.
“Yeah, right, you buy that?”
I looked at Jim long and hard. “Jim, you’ve seen the ghosts with your own eyes. I can’t believe you’re acting as if you don’t believe.”
“Well, I do, but evil spirits? That’s a bit much.”
“Yeah, maybe. I hope you are right.”
“Why? Do you believe there’s something evil there?”
“I don’t know. Most of the time, I feel so welcome and protected, but then every once in a great while, that feeling changes, and I can sense something else that frightens me. But Midge also told me how we can protect ourselves.”
“How’s that?”
“Well, we already have the bags of salt by every window. And she warned us about Ouija boards and séances.”
“Yeah, we have enough to deal with already,” Jim admitted. “There’s no sense in calling in anything more.”
CHAPTER 33
What did Midge have to say?” Hamp asked the very next day on the phone.
I was reluctant to tell him because I was afraid he might not come back over, but I couldn’t lie to Hamp, so I told him that Midge was concerned about us “messing” with the ghosts.
“Hamp, do you feel as if there is something evil here?” I asked him after I related Midge’s warning.
“I have never felt anything evil,” he replied.
“Do you think we are in danger?”
“No, as long as you use protection, you will be safe,” he kidded.
“You know what I mean,” I said, exasperated.
“No, seriously, as long as we take the necessary precautions, and don’t do anything stupid, like calling ‘them’ in, we will be fine. I always protect myself. Before I ever do anything, I always say the Lord’s Prayer, and I ask for angels all around me.”
Hamp was one of the most honestly good, sincere people I had ever met, and I totally trusted him in all his dealings with spirits. As he had been initiated into the spiritual realm by an old, black Baptist preacher, I figured that God was on his side and that we were, indeed, safe with whatever Hamp was doing. Relieved that Midge’s warning hadn’t hampered his willingness to come up, I invited him for the weekend to try to make contact and learn anything more that we could.
A venerable chef, Hamp cooked a delicious chicken breast stuffed with prosciutto and Swiss cheese in a sherry sour cream sauce, a recipe that he had received in a dream the week before. After devouring our dinner, we adjourned to the gaming room, where Hamp, Charles, Jim, and I sat around the antique Chippendale gaming table. Joanie chose not to participate, so she went to her room. Though she socialized with our friends, when it came to anything to do with the ghosts, Joanie would always excuse herself.
Hampton lowered the lights and asked that we all join hands, instructing us that under no circumstances were we to break contact until he told us to. Otherwise the spirit we connected with could possibly gain control! That made me nervous, but as Hamp began with the Lord’s Prayer, I relaxed, remembering that he had assured me we were protected, no matter what.
Hamp closed his eyes and seemed to go into a deep trance. When he finally opened his eyes and spoke, it was in a higher tone than Hamp’s deep voice, and he spoke in a broken Southern dialect. He said his name was Joseph, and that he was a slave. He had come to the Myrtles with two little girls who were put in his charge after Charleston was ravaged by fire.
We quizzed “Joseph” about his life both in Charleston and at the Myrtles, hoping to get dates and names that we could later verify. I wished that I could take a few notes, but I dared not break contact with the circle. Finally, Joseph faded out, and suddenly Hamp was in control. With Hamp back, we all dropped our hands and took a break.
Around 11:30 p.m. we decided to try again. We went back into the
gaming room and sat in our same positions around the table. We joined hands and waited as Hampton tried to go back into a trance. I noticed that this time he did not recite the Lord’s Prayer, but I figured that we were probably still protected from the first recitation. Hamp mumbled and blinked for quite some time, and it appeared that he was having a hard time contacting the other side.
I looked over at Jim, sitting to my left. His eyes were closed tight, and he was swaying in his chair. I looked back at Hamp, who was on my right, but his eyes were tightly closed, too. Jim started to become more and more agitated, pulling back from the group, straining my left arm as he tried to pull away. I looked over at Charles, who was holding Jim’s left hand. Thank God his eyes were open. Charles looked concerned. I squeezed and tugged at Hamp’s hand, wanting desperately for him to open his eyes and tell us what was happening to Jim. At that moment, Jim started moaning in a strange, muffled, female voice that wasn’t his own. It was trying to speak through him! Looking back at Jim I screamed Hamp’s name. The person sitting in Jim’s chair was not Jim, it was an elderly woman, a woman who in the darkness of the room looked vaguely familiar. Where was my husband!?
Hamp’s head jerked. Thank God. He was back.
“Don’t let go, no matter what,” he shouted. “We could lose him!”
I don’t think I had ever been that petrified in my entire life. I pushed down the pressing urge to vomit. It took all the strength I could muster to keep hold of his hand as he/she struggled to pull away. Charles was fighting the same battle on Jim’s other side. The moaning intensified.
“Let me go, let me go,” she commanded.
“Hold on,” yelled Hampton, nearly frantic.
Charles was screaming Jim’s name over and over. Hamp quickly began to recite a series of prayers. At that moment, the grandfather clock on the wall behind us struck midnight, and began to chime. It was the most frightening moment of my entire life. I chimed in with Charles, “Jim . . . Jim . . . Jim . . .” pleading with him, or with the spirits, to let him come back.
Finally, after what seemed like long torturous hours of physical and emotional struggle, we were able to reach Jim. He slowly stopped pulling away from us, finally opening his eyes and looking around the room.
Was this really Jim, or was this a trick?
“Don’t let go yet,” Hamp shouted, then continued spouting prayers.
Finally Jim spoke; his voice sounded somewhat normal, though confused. “There’s a woman in my head,” was all he could mumble.
“What is your name?” Hamp asked.
“You know my name. It’s Jim,” he replied.
“What are the names of your children?” Hamp persevered.
“Why are you asking me these questions?” Jim asked.
“Listen to me. You need to come back down. You need to be grounded in your own body. Please, bear with me,” Hamp ordered. He asked Jim a series of questions, about his children, our dog, the weather, anything to keep him grounded in reality. Finally, after a long line of questioning, it appeared that Jim was coherent. Hamp offered one more closing prayer, and we cautiously dropped our hands. I kept my eyes fixed on Jim.
When we turned on the lights, we could all see that the man in the portrait, the one who frowns when I enter the room, was crying; tears were streaming down his face and dripping onto the Chippendale table beneath it.
We stood there for a moment unable to move or even speak. I again choked back the urge to vomit, as I needed to stay with Jim until he was clearly all right.
We helped Jim into the parlor and kept talking to him about his life and things that were familiar to him, afraid he might slip back into whatever had taken hold of him. It took a while, but finally his confusion lifted and he was present enough to try to explain what had transpired. I did not want to know anything about what happened. I didn’t want to believe in what happened. This was not happening!
But Jim wanted to talk.
“It was really weird,” he said, shaking his head. “There was a lady there, in my head. She wanted to talk through me, and I wanted to let her, but I was afraid to let go. She was very cynical. She said she had lived at the Myrtles. When I let go and let her in, she was inside my whole body. It was like I was there, but she was there, too.”
I didn’t want to listen to any more. I did not believe in possession. I did not want to believe in possession. My mind couldn’t process what I had just seen.
The three of us sat up with Jim for a little while longer, to insure that he wouldn’t slip back into whatever it was that had taken a hold on him. Not surprisingly, Hamp decided not to spend the night after all, and he nearly tripped trying to get out of the house. Charles stepped into the gaming room to turn out the light.
“The clock,” he gasped.
I could see the clock from where I sat on the sofa in the gentlemen’s parlor. The minute hand was missing!
“What happened to it, do you know?” I asked. Charles had been seated across from the clock, so I wondered if he had seen anything.
“At exactly midnight, I heard the clock chime,” he recounted. I vaguely remembered hearing it, too. “Then the hands just started spinning around like crazy. I was too busy trying to keep a hold on Jim, but apparently the minute hand flew off the clock and landed over here.” Charles reached just inside the door, which was across the room from the clock, and picked up the broken piece.
“Is the clock still running?” I asked.
Charles walked over and listened. “No, it stopped . . . at exactly three o’clock, the same time, to the minute, that people at the Myrtles awaken night after night.”
It was just a little after 2:00 a.m., so the clock, which kept perfect time, hadn’t just stopped, it had jumped ahead. I wondered what must have happened at 3:00 a.m. to create such a lasting impression on the collective subconscious of those inside the house as to wake them up at that hour, and why the clock had broken off at that same time during our séance, but my body and mind were on extreme overload and I was having a difficult time focusing.
I took Jim to bed. It had been a horrendous night. Midge had been right in her warnings. I vowed right then and there that I would never, ever, allow another séance, or any other kind of spirit communication, in the house. Ever.
The next morning Charles came in to see how Jim was.
“Shhh,” I whispered, shaking my head and motioning for him to follow me outside, so Jim couldn’t hear us.
“Is he okay?” Charles asked.
“I hope so,” I replied. “He’s still asleep, and I wanted to let him rest. But I don’t think we should bring up what happened last night.”
“Why?” Charles asked.
“I don’t want to conjure anything up from last evening, especially since Hamp is not here to protect us.” That was partially true, but I was also scared to death to even consider what had happened. I was running from my own thoughts.
Later, when Hamp called to find out about Jim, I told him the same thing—that I just could not bring myself to talk about it. I think Hamp was relieved that I didn’t ask for answers.
I worried about Joanie being asleep upstairs right above us, but she assured me that she had slept soundly through the entire evening.
It was several months before I could even begin to confront the events of that evening in my own mind, let alone speak about them with Jim. I still could not come to terms with what I had witnessed. How can you deal with something you can’t even admit you saw, let alone believe in?
Finally, one night before a dinner party with the security of lots of friends around us, I garnered the nerve to ask the one question I had been dying to know the answer to, the one question I was terrified to ask.
“Jim,” I began hesitantly, away from the guests. “That night when we had the séance. Is what you said really true? Was there really a woman inside your body?”
“Yes,” Jim somberly replied, looking me straight in the eye, as if pleading for some kind of explanation.
CHAPTER 34
Through Hampton and Ozelle, we learned about a gifted psychic that they both thought was very good. Simon Jennings read tarot cards at the Golden Leaves bookstore in New Orleans. Although I was skeptical, and a little bit afraid of what a fortuneteller might foresee, I was also hoping to gain some kind of insight into what was happening, or some reassurance about the future. Jim, of course, pooh-poohed the notion, but we thought that getting away to New Orleans together would do us both some good. I called to make an appointment for both of us to get a reading, using false last names to insure that there would be no way he could look us up in advance of our meeting.
Several days later Jim and I drove down to New Orleans. We spent the night in the French Quarter, and after a leisurely breakfast of beignets and café au lait, watching locals and tourists begin their day from the vantage point of our outdoor cast-iron table at Café du Monde, Jim and I strolled, hand in hand, to the Golden Leaves bookstore, passing scores of makeshift “psychics” seated at cheap portable card tables, some primped in dark black gowns or capes, touting their wares on the perimeter of Jackson Square.
We decided I would go first. Simon led me to a windowless little room in the back, with only a small wooden table, two chairs, and a deck of tarot cards. He shuffled the cards and asked me to cut the deck three times. He laid the cards out face down on the table, shaking his head or making a face with each card he overturned. Finally he took a deep breath and began.
The Myrtles Plantation Page 14