I have always been intrigued by and attracted to the antebellum South, the Civil War, the Reconstruction Era, and the lifestyles that were representative of each of those very different times. In recent years, I became even more interested in those time periods after tracing my genealogy to distant family members directly involved in the Civil War and the Reconstruction.
Unlike my previous book, Haunted Route 66: Ghosts of America’s Legendary Highway, this project was a bit more challenging. With Haunted Route 66, many of the ghost stories I wrote about were found on a 2,448-mile highway that has been in existence since 1926. While conducting research for Haunted Plantations of the South, I soon realized that I was dealing with plantation histories, ghost stories, and legends that in some cases went back three hundred years or more. Also, there were nearly a thousand plantations throughout the eastern and southern states. With such a large number of plantations to choose from, it was difficult to determine which of these plantations to include while writing Haunted Plantations of the South.
I decided to limit the number of ghost stories in this book to give the reader a better idea of individual plantations. Rather than simply writing down descriptions of hauntings, I wanted to focus on the brief history of each plantation. I think this may offer a better understanding of why a place became haunted.
As I conducted research for Haunted Plantations of the South, I came across statistics for casualties of a particular battle, or the number of slaves that a certain planter had on his property. I thought that the statistics, although necessary to show the scale of a particular event, depersonalize the individual. These statistics include men who were somebody’s husband, son, father, and sibling. As such, each person has a story to tell, and to simply offer a statistic of an event prevents their stories from being heard. If a casualty list has ten thousand names on it, then there are ten thousand stories that can be told. This is one of the main reasons I wrote Haunted Plantations of the South—I wanted to give a voice to some of these people.
The stories of the slaves, planters, and soldiers often converge on the plantation. Slaves often spent several years working on the plantations with very little recognition for their hard work. Planters spent a great deal of time and money making certain that their plantations were successful. During the Civil War, Union and Confederate soldiers often took over the mansions and used them as field hospitals to tend to and sometimes bury their wounded comrades. For all people involved, the plantation was a very emotionally charged location.
Many of the legends and ghost stories in Haunted Plantations of the South may vary somewhat from versions you have heard, especially if you live near a particular plantation. This is to be expected. As people share a particular story about a location, additional details are added or removed, which can lead to the emergence of several different versions of the same story.
Chapter 1 describes the different types of plantation architectural styles and reasons why a plantation may be haunted. Each of the subsequent chapters contains several entries that offer a brief history, ghost stories, and legends associated with plantations that have a reputation for being haunted.
I certainly hope that you enjoy Haunted Plantations of the South. Whether you are reading this book from a historical perspective or as a paranormal enthusiast, I would like to dedicate this book to you, the reader. By reading the stories in the pages that follow, you are helping keep the memories alive of the people I have written about. I would like to also dedicate Haunted Plantations of the South to the memories of the planters, soldiers, and slaves who have made this book possible.