Haunted Plantations

Ghosts of Slavery and Legends of the Cotton Kingdoms

Geordie Buxton

• Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781439614129
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia de Norteamérica

Chilling stories of the antebellum era, ranging from Savannah, Georgia to the Carolina coast, with photos included. Members of a shackled West African tribe drag themselves off a slave ship while singing, drowning in a Georgia creek to avoid being sold. Mysterious letters from a long-ruined church near Mepkin Abbey solicit a man to join the faith. A French teacher disappears from a school after marking final exams in blood. An Egyptian mummy triggers a heart attack in a city museum. These stories and more are wrenched from the gravest parts of America's past—real lives of people on plantations from Savannah to Charleston and the coast of the Carolinas. Richly illustrated with both historic and contemporary images, most deal with the hub of the East Coast slave trade, Charleston, South Carolina. Sifting through folklore, legends, and emotionally raw history, these stories relate encounters with the supernatural—and reminds us that what actually happened here doesn't always need a ghost to be disquieting.

PART I

Legends of the Cotton Kingdoms

THE MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF WILLIAM HENRY DRAYTON

There is a narrow staircase in the middle of the Drayton Hall plantation house that leads to an empty upstairs room where a ghost is said to reside. The spirit has never been seen, but it lives in the walls of this room in the Drayton family home. Custodians and historians have felt temperature changes upon entering the room and sensed an unseen presence next to them.

According to renowned clairvoyant Elizabeth Baron, it is William Henry Drayton’s soul that lingers there. In his living years, family members locked him in this isolated room when he became rowdy during heated political meetings. Drayton Hall was a hotbed for intrigue during the years before the Revolutionary War, and Drayton was known to become intoxicated with both liquor and a manic patriotic fervor.

William Henry Drayton was born in South Carolina in 1742. He was the son of John Drayton, the builder of the magnificent brick plantation house on the Ashley River, west of Charleston. William was the first Drayton son and was educated in England. He went on to political fame as a congressman and was a major force in the American independence movement. Like his father, he was greatly revered by Whigs on both sides of the Atlantic. He organized much of the planning for separation from the crown in the plantation house, and he considered those who were not part of the rebellion traitorous enemies.

Drayton was reported to have died mysteriously in Philadelphia at the age of 37, in 1779. Given his passion for the revolutionary cause, it is likely that he was killed in a pistol duel. If true, the fact would have been hidden from his family to spare them the shame.

After Drayton’s body was shipped back to Drayton Hall, the family inheritance was passed to his younger brother, John. The next year, the British seized Charlestown and the Drayton family and its patriotic allies were forced to tolerate British occupation for nearly three years. It could be that William Drayton’s violent death in the heat of passion—and the subsequent occupation of his homeland by his hated enemies—somehow caused him to return to the scene of so many of his emotional political battles. If so, he would be one of the most obvious candidates for ghostdom in the Lowcountry.

Walking across the lush green lawns of Drayton Hall, it is easy to drift back to the 1770s, when men gathered there to voice their opinions on unjust taxes and high-handed royalty. This house is the only in Charleston to have survived both the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, and there is a sense there of time suspended, of events from the past being somehow closer.

William Henry Drayton was locked into an upstairs side room in Drayton Hall when his temper flared at family political meetings. The reason for his untimely death at age 37 in Philadelphia during the Revolutionary War remains unknown.

Some historians have claimed that William Drayton died prematurely because of a weakened immune system caused by overwork. The man was known to engage fervently in meeting after meeting to ensure the success of the family plantation and his political career. He traveled extensively to meet with other American revolutionaries. However, the age of 37 is the physical peak of most men’s lives, making it difficult to believe that Drayton’s energetic spirit and body would give way to sudden illness in his prime.

In 2000, Elizabeth Baron was brought to Drayton Hall to determine if the hauntings many at Drayton Hall had experienced were real. The Charleston medium has worked with people from all walks of life around the world for nearly 30 years. She has given hundreds of readings throughout her career and delivered psychic messages to thousands through channeling the spirit of a 13th century nun, Saint Catherine of Siena.

During an episode of Home and Garden Television’s America’s Most Haunted Houses series, Baron described the pain still lingering from the life of William Henry Drayton. She told a haunting story of sensing Drayton’s spirit and said she felt the strongest presence at a small back stairway leading to an upstairs room:

I’ve tuned into a lot of ghosts, but I have never seen a place as haunted as this . . . there are a great many spirits that need to be freed . . . I believe he was a tormented soul. He was too much into the physical, so he started drinking and womanizing . . . there is a lot of suffering. Something lives up there. This William was put up here and wasn’t allowed to go to those big meetings anymore, until he was finally hauled off.

Baron’s report from the other side makes Drayton’s death even more mysterious. Could it be that his hatred of British authority carried over into his personal life with his prominent father at the plantation house meetings? Was William Drayton’s patriotic stance as clear in these meetings as history has written it to be?

Only William Drayton and perhaps his family and closest colleagues knew the true reason for his untimely death. His friends sent word that he had passed away suddenly of illness, but the real cause may have been a much darker secret. Whatever the reason for his death may have been, his spirit lingers in the darkness of the room at the top of the stairs in the old plantation house. According to Baron, William Drayton’s voice calls out from the walls: “I am here because I want to be.”

EDISTO’S BRICK HOUSE BRIDE

The ancient mansion sits like a burned tinderbox in the fields of the old Paul Hamilton Plantation on Edisto Island, South Carolina. The remains of the Brick House, which dates back to 1725, stand as a humble symbol of the Lowcountry’s plantation decadence, ruined by the passage of time.

While the plantation was once vibrant and wealthy from the profits of cotton, the Brick House today is a cold and lonely sanctuary for the ghost of a bride, murdered by her ex-fiancé on the day she was to be wed to another. She is believed to be Amelia Candace Hamilton, a haunting apparition spun from a tragedy of the heart.

Amelia was betrothed to a man from a prominent Charleston family while she was still quite young. The suitor had a ring created for her that was large and dazzling. Amelia soon fell more in love with the ring than the man. Her fiancé took her out to lavish dinners and social gatherings in order to introduce her to Charleston society. At all the functions, Amelia placed her hand out in order that people might see her gorgeous ring.

At a large dinner party at a country house between Edisto Island and Charleston, Amelia met a wealthy young planter. The man commented on how beautiful her ring was and how it reminded him of a miniature version of his grandmother’s wedding ring. The two immediately fell in love.

Over the course of that summer, Amelia gathered the courage to write to her fiancé in Charleston to explain that she no longer loved him and wished to break from their engagement. The Charlestonian refused to accept her rejection of him. Upon receiving her letter, he rode quickly to the Brick House and demanded an explanation. Amelia explained that she desired another man. The Charlestonian began to beg, but his words fell on deaf ears. His pleas turned to rage when Amelia demanded that he give her space with her new man. As he got on his horse to leave, he turned to her and snapped, “I would rather see you dead than marry another man!”

Years later, the day arrived when Amelia was to wed the wealthy planter. Her ex-fiancé’s death threat had long been forgotten. She had neither spoken to him nor heard of him since he left in a rage the day she rejected him. The lush lawn next to the river was decorated with flowers, lanterns, and chairs for Amelia’s nighttime wedding. An altar was arranged in front of the backdrop of the river.

The guests arrived at the Brick House on horse and by boat from all around the area. The plantation was filled with decadent flowers, food, and music. There was a private steamboat waiting by the dock to take the wed couple to Charleston after the ceremony.

Upstairs, Amelia dressed for her wedding. Above the music and laughter of the guests, she recognized a voice from the past calling out her name. The voice came from outside. She opened her window and looked out into the twilight. Next to a lantern, she saw the silhouette of her former fiancé aiming a pistol at her. As she screamed, shots broke out. The music stopped.

The wedding party rushed upstairs to find Amelia. The first to reach her was the bridegroom. He found her face down on her bedroom floor. He tried to help her up, but she was already dead, her white wedding dress heavily stained with blood. On the sill of her open window, there was a red handprint left by Amelia as she fell to the floor. Her bridegroom looked outside to see Amelia’s forgotten fiancé standing with the pistol still in his hand. The bridegroom reached for a pistol himself, but there was no need. The forgotten suitor turned his weapon on himself. One more shot rang out, and the Charlestonian fell to the ground like a brick from the Hamilton mansion.

Today a woman in a wedding dress sometimes appears at the upstairs window of the burned remains of the Brick House. Her dress glows in the moonlight and her appearance is accompanied by the sound of music in the wind blowing off the river. The engines of an invisible steamboat can be heard with the lapping of the waves next to the old Hamilton lawn. All of this, according to local folklorist Virginia Marin, occurs on the anniversary of Amelia’s wedding day, August 13.

The Brick House was once vibrant and wealthy from sea island cotton. It is now the burned sanctuary of a bride who never made it to the altar.

The most tangible evidence of Amelia’s ghost in the Brick House is on the windowsill her bloodstained hand fell upon after she was shot. Many attempts were made since the tragic day of her wedding to cover the print at the window, but it continued to bleed through coat after coat of thick dark paint. The interior of the grande manse was gutted by fire long ago, but to this day, red lines can be seen around the eroded exterior of the window Amelia opened on her wedding night. They are a reminder of the sometimes-tragic consequences of unrequited love and unhealed heartache, and the remains of an eroding past that has refused to fully depart.

THE RAVENEL LIGHTS

Many people have gone to the railroad tracks behind an old Baptist church near Ravenel, South Carolina, for a ghost hunt. Where the railroad turns just before the highway, three eerie lights are said to appear moving silently up the tracks. They disappear, leaving witnesses in a spell of darkness, only to reappear closer. When the Ravenel lights reach the bend, they fade into a dark rush of wind and phantasmal images.

According to local legend, people wishing to see this supernatural phenomenon must knock on the Baptist church door three times in the dead hours of a moonless night. They are to then walk away from the doors on the road towards the town. They must travel parallel to the railroad tracks that are behind the church graveyard, between Martin and Drayton Streets. As they come to the bend in the tracks the Ravenel lights flash slowly, like a signal, while moving ever closer to them.

One group of witnesses claimed that after the lights disappeared at the bend, the side of their car was pelted by moving objects. Later, they discovered the impressions of hands on their doors. These dented doors were the ones that faced the railroad tracks—and the approaching lights.

On another occasion, a group on foot reported a strong wind rushing over them and through the tree limbs overhead as the lights disappeared.

Others in a pickup truck claimed that dark bodies tumbled quickly across their vehicle, wrecking their hood and leaving a crack in the windshield. When they opened their doors and looked around the area with a flashlight, everything looked in place except for the fact that their truck was now dented. They saw no movement from anywhere. The woods and the distant highway were completely mute, yet there was a distinct smell of smoke in the air. This silent aftermath was more alarming to them than even the lights themselves, they reported, so they returned to their damaged truck and drove away.

Three unmarked wooden grave markers sit in the back of the Baptist church graveyard. The Ravenel railroad tracks can be seen over granite rocks directly behind the graves. Although there is little evidence to prove any of the elaborate stories surrounding the Huguenot-founded town of Ravenel, oral tradition dates the three eroded grave markers back to the turn of the 19th century, when the small farming town was constructing its first train depot.

It was New Year’s Eve 1899, and a low orange moon was slowly setting over Ravenel. It had been a night of heavy celebration for three young men. After making brief appearances at every home offering cocktails for the occasion, they tied their horses and walked from one plantation party to the granite hill of the railroad tracks to toast one another at the new train depot construction site.

Ravenel’s first train depot was built near this stretch of track at th...