I made the mistake of reading this forum at 2am. All the accounts of ghost stories have me seeing things in every shadow and reluctant to go to sleep.
I have a psychology degree. I know better than to read such stories so late and I know when I'm needlessly freaking myself out. But I'm also a writer with a huge imagination. Thus the shadows move.
Might as well contribute my stories. They took place at the famous/infamous Myrtle's Plantation in St. Francisville, Louisiana. Google the place. It's one of the most haunted places in America. The place was cursed from the beginning because it was built upon the site of an Indian burial ground (seriously, don't people know that's a bad idea?). There have been many murders on the property. The most infamous story was when two little girls were killed by a slave woman. The slave woman, Chloe, had gotten in trouble with the plantation master who was a judge. Chloe had been caught listening to one of the judge's private conversations and so her ear was cut off. It is said she found an opportunity to redeem herself when called upon to bake the girls a birthday cake. She boiled oleander leaves and put the tea in the cake, supposedly intending only to make the girls sick so that she could nurse them back to health and regain her status. The plan backfired and the girls were poisoned to death. Chloe was hunted down by the other slaves, hanged, and her body thrown into the Mississippi River. The girls and Chloe are often seen in and around the plantation.
Now the first encounter happened when I was having my picture taken in front of the house. My mother looked through the camera two or three times before finally taking the picture. Later she confessed that while looking through the viewfinder (this was back in the days of film), she could see a little girl looking out of an upstairs window. However, when she put the camera down, she could not see the child. Finally, she snapped the picture and put it out of her mind. Until we were on tour and the guide mentioned that no small children are allowed in the upstairs area of the house. When the picture came back, clear as day there was a smiling little girl looking out of an upstairs window.
The second encounter was some years later when I returned with an aunt. We were lucky enough to book a room in the house for Halloween night of 2001. When I laid down, she was already asleep. I had just laid down and not had time to fall asleep when I felt something climbing onto the bed. It felt like the weight of a small child. I woke my aunt, but it stopped. Nothing else happened. It wasn't until years later I discovered that the room we stayed in used to be the nursery for the little girls who were murdered.
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