Files of the Unexplained (2024) s01e02 Episode Script

[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 slave 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 kill 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 killed 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 slave named Chloe.
There are records of their other slaves
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 murdered.
That murder 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 torture that he personally inflicted
on the roughly 100 people
that he held as property.
Whippings,
dunking slaves' 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 killed, beaten, raped
It's really weird
that people get married at plantations.
God knows how many slaves
were lynched or tortured or buried.
And then getting married there and having
the happiest day of your life there.
The history of slavery 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 balls 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]