Haunted Plantations: Ghosts of Slavery and Legends of the Cotton Kingdoms

Haunted Plantations: Ghosts of Slavery and Legends of the Cotton Kingdoms

by Geordie Buxton
Haunted Plantations: Ghosts of Slavery and Legends of the Cotton Kingdoms

Haunted Plantations: Ghosts of Slavery and Legends of the Cotton Kingdoms

by Geordie Buxton

eBook

$13.49  $17.99 Save 25% Current price is $13.49, Original price is $17.99. You Save 25%.

Available on Compatible NOOK Devices and the free NOOK Apps.
WANT A NOOK?  Explore Now

Related collections and offers

LEND ME® See Details

Overview

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.
 

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781439614129
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing SC
Publication date: 10/20/2018
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 128
File size: 10 MB

About the Author

Local writer Geordie Buxton conducts ghost tours by boat in Charleston Harbor and on foot in the historic district. The coauthor of two previous books of local ghost stories, this is his first single collection.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

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.

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."

CHAPTER 2

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 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.

CHAPTER 3

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.

When they got to the tracks, they headed up the rock embankment. Suddenly, half of the enormous orange moon appeared glowing above the woods like a great mythical bridge. The Ravenel men stood solemnly. They gazed at the moon as if looking to a great altar, a cathedral of light built in their names. The unfinished depot stood nearby.

The Ravenel men's fascination with trains was enhanced by their thrill-seeking nature. Each of them worked at a depot within an hour's horse ride. The locomotive was the fastest, most powerful thing ever seen at the time, and these men were thoroughly mesmerized.

Without radio or any kind of electronic communication, the only way to signal a train conductor was by Morse code, with lights. The three men performed this function, acting as vital messengers from their respective depots, controlling the movement of locomotives along the South Carolina railroad system.

Since the arrival of the first American railroads, most Ravenel families had left plantation work to be on or near the tracks. Nearly every section of the track that ran from Charleston west to Hamburg was soon populated with small towns similar in size to Ravenel, creating communities where transportation was accessible. Soon tracks were laid going east towards Charleston, South Carolina and on to Wilmington, North Carolina. Inland South Carolina towns near the rivers around Columbia, such as Camden, the oldest inland town in the Carolinas, thrived. The railroads freed the plantation system from its dependence on navigable water and horses.

The Ravenel men, whose families were involved in the new commerce, had a vested interest in the depot. A train stop would diminish the cost of transportation to get their crops to the markets of Charleston, Beaufort, and Savannah.

Although the depot was not yet completed, the Ravenel men's feverish energy, combined with the rush of their earlier celebrations, led them to believe they could do anything. The appearance of the enormous orange moon seemed to lend them some validation.

A small coal engine and box car was kept outside the depot. As if it were just another horse, the men hopped on and quickly got the coals lit, giving power to the train. They soon felt the need for a joy ride. Unfortunately, none of the men were aware that work cut off early for the laborers that day, and none of the tracks leading out from the depot were completely nailed down.

As the engine roared in fire, the dark steel machine picked up speed. The men whooped and hollered in glee. The woods lit up from the glare of the engine coals as they passed by. The youngest of the Ravenel men was even moved to blow the steam whistle to let all the outlying plantation parties know which men were changing the face of this Southern land through their work on the railroad. The men leaned out the side of the train to glance behind them at the candlelit houses. They turned back to see what lay ahead on their joyful journey. They never looked at the plantation houses again.

As they approached the bend behind the Baptist church, they were moving at top speed. With 20 yards of rail missing on the left side of the bend, the train sailed directly off the embankment in silence. Then the ripping of the loose metal rails made a high-pitched, grating screech and fiery sparks shot into the air. The train landed on its side, exploding immediately into a ball of flames.

From the balconies of homes in the distance, the people of Ravenel saw the setting of the orange moon replaced by a closer, brighter glow between the depot and the church. The townspeople rushed down to search for survivors, but when they reached the scene of the incinerating fire, they were unable to locate any remains of the three Ravenel men.

(Continues…)


Excerpted from "Haunted Plantations"
by .
Copyright © 2007 Geordie Buxton.
Excerpted by permission of Arcadia Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Table of Contents

Escaping Ghosts,
Title Page,
Copyright Page,
Dedication,
FOREWORD,
PART I - Legends of the Cotton Kingdoms,
THE MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF WILLIAM HENRY DRAYTON,
EDISTO'S BRICK HOUSE BRIDE,
THE RAVENEL LIGHTS,
DUNCAN'S STORM,
WAMPEE HOUSE,
THE CHURCH ON BIGGIN HILL,
LITTLE MISTRESS CHICKEN AT STRAWBERRY CHAPEL,
BLOOD IN THE WATER,
PART II - Ghosts of Slavery,
THE IGBO TRIBE LANDING,
STONO RIVER SLAVE REBELLION,
THE LIGHTWOOD COWBOYS,
VOODOO IN THE HOLY CITY,
THE SAVANNAH SLAVE SHIP,
SUNSET AT BOONE HALL BRICKYARD,
RETURN FROM THE BARRACOON,
THE EXODUS OF MASTER LESESNE,
SLAVE CABINS,
THE MUMMY AND THE LOST TRIBE,

From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews