Experience #22 The Myrtles

Though I refuse to watch horror movies, I love a good ghost story. How’s that for contradictions. I’ve wanted to go to the Myrtles Plantation ever since a student brought in a picture of him and his sister with ghosts standing near them in the background. Unlike most people, I wanted to see a ghost.

So this experience wasn’t difficult to add to my list, but it is one of those things that you always say you want to do, but it’s easy to put off. Unless you have this handy list you’re making your way through.

I arrived at the Myrtles in time to check in and have dinner at The Carriage House. The Carriage House is a restaurant located on the grounds of the Myrtles. It’ a very nice place, and I’d recommend the Feliciana Eggplant Stacker. It was two breaded and fried slices of eggplant with stuffed crab between them and shrimp etouffee sauce poured over the top. It was delicious.

After dinner, we visited the gift shop before our mystery tour began. The mystery tour runs only on Friday and Saturday night, and our 8:30 tour was packed with 47 people. The mystery tour involves a little history mixed in with the tales of the hauntings that tour guides and guests have experienced.

During this tour, I learned that William Winters, whose room we would be occupying that night, had been shot outside the house and had managed to make it to the seventeenth step before dying in his wife’s arms. On the positive side, no one has really reported any haunting incidents in our room. By this time in the tour, I wasn’t so sure I wanted to wake up to a ghost in my room. See one, yes, but not one staring at me while I slept.

After our tour, we explored the grounds in the dark. Contrary to when we drove up and the grounds were warmed by the sun and appeared serene and majestic, the dark created shadows and eeriness. It was easier to believe at night that ghosts haunted the house and grounds.

We spoke to several other guests sitting out in rockers. They’d stayed once before and had rented the entire house. Two men had showed up in the middle of the night with ghost hunting equipment, and they’d let them in to test their rooms. The stairs where William Winters had died had registered as well as the bed in a room that has been nicknamed the doll’s room after a doll that makes her way around the house, on her own.

I didn’t wake up to the party sounds at three in the morning that we were told to listen for. I was so tired from working all week that I ended up sleeping straight through the night. I didn’t even wake up for the normal creaks and noises of a house over two hundred years old.

So I still didn’t get to see a ghost. I do think that some people tend to scare themselves more than any ghosts can do. I’m content with not being scared with the whole experience.

The next morning we did the historical tour which runs during the day. I’d definitely recommend that tour. We also walked around the grounds in the daylight where things didn’t feel creepy. It was definitely an experience I’ll remember.

The William Winter's room where we stayed.