The Myrtles Plantation mirror

A mirror at the Myrtles Plantation said to trap Sara Woodruff and two children, part of a poisoning story that Wikipedia and Troy Taylor say the records don't support.

Wikipedia's page on the plantation's legends describes a mirror in the house said to trap Sara Woodruff and a pair of her children. Mirrors were customarily covered after a death. The tale holds that this one was missed after the Woodruffs were poisoned, and that Sara and the children now show up in it or leave handprints on the glass.

Wikipedia reports that yellow fever killed Sara, James and Cornelia Woodruff, and that Mary Octavia, whom the legend counts among the poisoned daughters, lived well into adulthood. The poisoner in the story is an enslaved woman called Chloe. Troy Taylor of American Hauntings says searches of the Woodruff property records, which sit in the public records at St. Francisville, turned up no sign of her. Wikipedia adds that census returns list 5 people enslaved by the family in 1820 and 32 in 1830, with no record of anyone named Chloe or Cloe.

The historian Tiya Miles visited the plantation for her book Tales from the Haunted South, and a University of Texas review describes her chapter on Chloe and Cleo, the plantation's best-known ghosts. The Paranormal Pajama Party podcast argued in 2024 that the story was made up to thrill tourists, and that it lets them look past the real violence of slavery.