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Historical Horror: Chloe, Cleo, and the Myrtles Plantation
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Welcome to America's Most Haunted House... or is it? Tonight, we’re partying at the Myrtles Plantation, where the famous ghost of an enslaved girl named Chloe is said to roam the halls.
But as we unpack this classic Southern ghost story, we'll discover something far more unsettling than any supernatural presence – the way America uses ghost tourism to process (or avoid processing) its history of slavery.
From gift shop dolls of murdered enslaved people to invented haunted histories, we'll explore how plantation tourism often makes real historical trauma more “palatable” for visitors – and why that's exactly what we shouldn't be doing. Plus: Why is it okay to run ghost tours at plantations, but not at other sites of historical tragedy?
Get ready for a thought-provoking episode about ghost stories, historical memory, and America's complicated relationship with its past.
Key moments:
- 1:17 - An encounter with Chloe at the Myrtles Plantation
- 6:34 - The Myrtles Plantation's early history
- 8:59 - America's Most Haunted House
- 13:23 - Slavery in the Mississippi-Delta
- 21:11 - The problematic truth about Chloe and Cleo
- 24:08 - How America deals with its dark history
If you’re enjoying the show, don’t forget to subscribe, rate and review Paranormal Pajama Party to help others discover it!
View all my sources for each episode and read the episode transcript here.
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Chapters
1. Content warning (00:00:00)
2. An encounter with Chloe at the Myrtles Plantation (00:01:17)
3. Welcome to the Paranormal Pajama Party! (00:05:50)
4. The Myrtles Plantation's early history (00:06:34)
5. America's Most Haunted House? (00:08:59)
6. Cleo the Voodoo Priestess (00:11:30)
7. "Tales from the Haunted South" by Tiya Miles (00:12:30)
8. Slavery in the Mississippi-Delta (00:13:23)
9. Antebellum life for enslaved women (00:14:36)
10. Chloe, Cleo, and racist stereotypes (00:16:52)
11. The problematic truth about Chloe and Cleo (00:21:11)
12. How the Myrtles Plantation became a dark tourism hotspot (00:22:27)
13. How America deals with its dark history (00:24:08)
14. We need ghost stories, but we need them to be better (00:26:36)
15. Outro (00:28:38)
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