It seems like anyone who's been to an old plantation
has had some sort of tale to tell. I'd been going to the
particular plantation in my story for years and didn't
know until recently that some of my earlier experiences
were a bit out of the ordinary.
This plantation was the kind of historical place that
all school kids in my area were forced through for field
trips when they're learning about the Civil War. As far
as history goes, it wasn't a very bad place. Slaves were
supposedly treated well (as well as can be when enslaved,
I guess) and the plantation and surrounding land was quite
lovely.
The first time I went, I was about 11 years old
and didn't know any of the history of the place. They had
tour guides of course, but after a long bus ride, I wasn't
keen on listening to someone who had the monotone sound of
a person that's been telling the same spiel over and
over.
The tour guide took us around the whole ground,
letting us see the land and slave quarters. For some
reason a good portion of the kids didn't like being near
some of the slave homes. We went in and out of a few
houses and some just had a good feel about them and some
did not. Probably just overactive imaginations, but
enough of us were disturbed that it got our teacher's
attention.
We moved on to the main house, but we were
only allowed to look in the windows. Children weren't
allowed inside without parents because of all the
valuables that were on display. We were led around the
house to try and see inside as much as possible through
the windows and doors. A lot us felt like we had gotten
the short end of the stick tourwise because we just knew
someone was in there. We heard footsteps near the kitchen
and there was the definite smell of baking, like someone
was cooking gingerbread. The tour guide tried to assure us
that no one was inside, but we insisted we smelled food.
Through the rest of my school years I was able to
visit the plantation a few more times, but nothing really
scary happened until years after I graduated.
A group of friends decided they wanted to go to the plantation at
night because someone said they heard the place was
haunted. It was pretty much an even mix of girls and
guys, the girls just wanting to try something scary, the
guys being total non-believers.
We took along a video
camera my best friend had just bought to film everything.
It was pretty late at night when we drove out there, and
since it's far from the city, everything was pitch black
except for what our car headlights lit up. We'd been
joking around a lot on the drive, but as we turned down
the entrance road, the mood became unusually heavy.
The
entrance itself cuts through a dense mass of trees that
have been undisturbed probably since the plantation was in
use. Eventually we ended up at the front gate, with a
long road leading down to where the caretakers stay.
The front gate was locked for the night, but my friends were
persistent. Everyone but myself and two other friends
decided to jump the fence. My friends both had injuries
earlier that year that would have made climbing the tall
fence a painful experience, and me, well, I was just
creeped out.
When the others started climbing over the
fence, I was overwhelmed by the feeling that we were being
watched and that we shouldn't be there. I voiced my
feelings and naturally I got laughed at. It was usually a
very nice place to be during the day so no one else saw why
it should be any different at night.
My friends and I returned to one of the trucks we'd
driven in and decided to just sit and chat quietly. We
didn't want to chance turning the truck on to listen to
the radio in case one of the caretakers decided to take a
walk down the road. Our chat didn't get very far.
That
heavy feeling had never dissipated and I felt like someone
was in the trees watching us. Suddenly one of my friends,
Maggie, asked "Why did you turn the car on?" The other
friend, Kristin, and I looked at her like she was nuts.
Maggie pointed at the radio where the clock part is and
sure enough, the time was glowing at us in that annoying
neon green car light way. The troubling part is, with
Kristin's truck it has to be on for the time to light up.
Her keys weren't even in the ignition. We all became even
more quiet, if that was possible, huddling together and
hoping our friends would come back soon.
After what seemed like an eternity, the others finally
returned. They looked to be in about the same shape as
us, most of them barely talking. We decided to wait till
we got back to the house we were staying at before talking
about what had happened. The drive back felt even worse.
The entrance road is a long one and the whole way out I
felt as if something was in the trees following us. I
didn't even want to look out the windows I felt so
scared. The feeling didn't lift until we hit the paved
road and got back on the interstate.
When we got back to the house, everyone started
talking at once. John, one of the former non-believers,
swore he had seen something in one of the slave
homes. "Something" was about all we could get out of
them, he was so freaked out. "I thought there were people
there, but then they were gone," he said. Everyone else
had similar experiences...shadowy figures in the slave
quarters, weird lights that shouldn't have been there,
noises like hushed conversation. They hadn't even made it
to the main house they were so scared.
Kristin put the
video tape they had used in the VCR to see if maybe we
could rationalize some things. It only made things more
strange. While we didn't see any shadowy figures, there
were some odd-colored lights that kept showing up where
there shouldn't have been any. The only light they really
used to see was that of the camera, which is only a dim
white light. There was a portion where the person holding
the camera was viewing the slave quarters from the outside
and there seemed to be a green light glowing from within.
There were also strange howling noises that none of them
remembered hearing. I could say it was an elaborate hoax
on their part, but the idea of going out there was spur of
the moment and all of them were so scared afterwards that
no one wanted to go anywhere alone for quite a long time
after.
I did some research on the plantation after all this
happened. The ghost rumors that had spurred us on this
little adventure was about a slave that had been hanged on
the plantation. He killed another slave and was hanged
for it. He supposedly haunts the area where he was
hung...the trees at the front entrance where we had felt
so uncomfortable. I also found that some of the
tour guides had ghostly experiences. Only a few are on the
grounds at one time so things won't be disturbed too much,
which makes it hard to blame things on the presence of
other people. And one of their most repeated
experiences? The sound of puttering around in the main
house and the smell of gingerbread baking.
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