Many of the alleged ghostly occurrences at the Myrtles are attributed to one of the plantations slaves, Chloe (also spelled Cloey [Rule 2001]). According to a doubtful, garbled tale, she was Judge Woodruff's concubine. Either because she was eventually rejected for another and feared being "sent to the working fields," or because she was instead "seeking to increase her influence and power," Chloe began eavesdropping on Woodruff's private conversations. Caught at this, she was punished by having one of her ears cut off (her left ear, one source purported to know). As a consequence she wore a turban to conceal the defect (a green turban, divined one writer).
In retaliation, Chloe poisoned the birthday cake of Woodruff's nine-year-old daughter by adulterating the batter with juice from oleander leaves. Some accounts claim this was for vengeance, while others have stated that Chloe only planned to make everyone sick; she would then either nurse them until they recovered so as to win the Judge's gratitude, and/or administer a magic cure that would cause the family to regard her "as a powerful voodoo priestess" and thus return her to her former status. However, the poisoning resulted in the deaths of Mrs. Woodruff and two of her daughters.
As a consequence, Chloe was hanged--supposedly by fellow slaves, either as retribution or out of fear of the Judge's wrath. At least one source has somehow learned that after the hanging "Chloe's body was weighted with rocks and dropped in the nearby Mississippi River."
In reality, none of the sources I have come across offers any evidence for the truth of the Chloe tale, merely attributing it--if at all--to "legend." Some sources quote the present owner of the Myrtles, Teeta Moss, or her apparent source, Hester Eby, who has rehearsed the story over many years. Eby has outlasted three owners, each of whom no doubt appreciated her ability to enthrall tourists with the colorful account and other spine-tingling assertions.
Court archives in St. Francisville fail to substantiate the existence of "Chloe" (Frank 2001; Williams 2003). Although there are variants (as folklorists say) of the Chloe tale, most do not seem to be evidence of any longstanding tradition. Instead, they appear to result from the mere garbling of details by careless writers. For instance Hauck (1996), apparently following Roberts (1995), gives Chloe's name as "Cleo." (I suspect Chloe was spelled by someone as Cloe, then "corrected" by another to "Cleo.")
And Frances Kermeen, who owned the Myrtles for eight and a half years and wrote her own version of the story, either did not know the name Chloe or did not think it worth mentioning, simply referring to her as "a beautiful mulatto housemaid."
This version by the earlier owner is different in more significant respects. The slave girl is not caught eavesdropping but rather discovered engaging in a sexual rendezvous with Judge Woodruff although the motif of the door being flung open, this time by the wronged wife, remains. There is no mention of a severed ear, or a green turban, or revenge, although the poisoning episode is retained, along with the denouement: "the pathetic slave was hung in the morning" (Kermeen 2002, 7-8).
Kermeen cites "a book published in 1882" that says of ghosts at the Myrtles: "The lights are never extinguished at the plantation. When the lights are all out, something always happens." Kermeen does not further identify this book (another source says it was published "in 1900"), but the salient point here is that it apparently did not mention the Chloe tale. That suggests it was probably unknown until relatively recently. In brief, the story seems not the product of folklore but of fakelore.
Most significantly, historians insist that Sarah Woodruff and her daughters actually died in an epidemic of yellow fever (Hamilton 1990). ==============================
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