Witnesses to the Paranormal

A law enforcement officer and author; a devoted teacher-turned-bed and breakfast owner; a renowned academic who searched for WMDs in Iraq—all grounded, solid, practical people, the least likely, one would think, to believe wholeheartedly in the unexplained. Nevertheless …

DR. JOHN CLEMENTS

From his earliest memory, John D. Clements, Ph.D., a professor and department chairman at a Louisiana university, has always heard a woman’s voice guiding him, especially in moments of extreme duress. The voice comes from behind his right shoulder. So far, she has not led him astray.  

Over forty years ago, as a Sergeant in the United States Marine Corps in Vietnam, Clements was responsible for security of a sector at the Marine base where he served. The base was hit by enemy rockets and mortar fire on a daily basis.

“The proper procedure when rocket attacks begin is to lie flat and wait until it’s over,” explained Clements.

One day, when the hell of rocket fire began falling from the sky like the devil’s rain, Clements was a quarter-mile away from his sector. Instead of hitting the dirt and lying low, he felt compelled to move to his sector assignment. Faced with two different routes to reach his destination, he set out across the shorter of the two when, over the sound of exploding rockets, he heard the familiar voice now urgently telling him to stop what he was doing and go the other way. Retracing his path, Clements took the alternate, and longer, route to his position. A few minutes later, a 120-millimeter rocket landed on the first path in the exact location he’d still have been had he continued his original course.  

Clement recalled another incident that took place on December 19, 1968: “I was standing behind a bunker with nine other men when another rocket attack began. We were standing there waiting for the all-clear call.”

Suddenly, he heard the voice screaming in his ear: Leave now, now, NOW! The young Marine sergeant took heed—ten steps later and now sheltered by a corner of the bunker, he watched as a rocket landed and exploded in the middle of the colleagues he had just left.  

“All of the people [in that group] were injured or killed,” said Clements, “but I was unharmed.”

Clements, an eminent research scientist who performs cutting-edge research on vaccines, led a panel of experts on chemical and biological warfare during the days following 9/11. He is a former military expert on nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare defense and has trained as a United Nations weapons inspector. He was part of the team searching for WMDs in Iraq in 2003. A member of the Defense Health Board, Clements has dedicated his research career to development of vaccines for children in developing countries. 

Given the rigorous, empirical perspective that his work demands, one could not lightly accuse him of naïveté. And though the veracity or source of the voice can’t be tested—a hallmark of the inexplicable, of course—his experiences with it have convinced him that, explainable or not, “there is something out there to which we must listen.” (He refuses to use the term “ghost,” though, a word he considers “pejorative.”)  

“The dead don’t frighten me; but there is a presence out there, and our courses are steered by a variety of factors and guiding hands. Since Vietnam I have this compelling need to be where and when I’m supposed to be some place … This surprises some people; not me.”

He still hears the voice to this day.

“This gift is in all of us,” said Clements. “We all need to listen.”  

TEETA MOSS

When Teeta Moss was initiated into the realm of the paranormal, she was neither a skeptic nor a believer, merely uninformed.  

“I never had an opinion at all. I was completely uninformed about the paranormal,” she said, driving home to The Myrtles Plantation a couple of days after a fire destroyed the bed and breakfast’s Gift Shop on August 6. That the massive fire, less than eight feet from the main house and connected by a breezeway, did not reach the main house is considered something of a miracle.  

“It was Chloe,” said Moss with certainty, “protecting us.”  

“Chloe” is the name given to the actually unknown specter of a slave girl frequently seen on the property and caught by Moss herself on camera while she was snapping pictures for her insurance company. This now famous photograph was analyzed by both National Geographic and an outside digital agency. Both verified that the photograph, showing a transparent, human-like being at least thirteen feet tall (because she is levitating), was not doctored. Chloe allegedly poisoned the children and wife of her owner by baking a cake containing oleander leaves; she was then reportedly lynched by the plantation’s slaves, who feared reprisals for Chloe’s actions.

Moss and her husband John purchased The Myrtles, said to be America’s most haunted house, over two decades ago. She had been a devoted schoolteacher for many years and also taught children who were housebound or infirm in the hospital. She had heard that the exquisite St. Francisville plantation, wrapped in haint blue wrought iron railing, was haunted; but Moss always suspected that the story was just a publicity ploy to drum up business for the previous owner of the bed and breakfast.  

The first week of her residence at the beautiful old place, the spirits showed they could be excellent mimics. Once, she heard her husband calling her name but couldn’t find him—because he’d already left for work in Baton Rouge. Another time, Moss heard Annie, a friend who was helping to manage the B&B, call her name; but Annie hadn’t spoken. 

Moss began to believe the ghostly stories about The Myrtles, seeing a pattern in the specters’ behavior meant to acclimate her to their presence and establish their right to be there. Moss herself, a religious woman whose sister is a nun, finally stood in the hallway and announced to the spirits, “Okay, it’s your house!”

A one-legged Confederate solider smoking an acrid-smelling cigar has been sighted stomping around the grounds. Moss has also detected a cloying scent that she likens to the old Jungle Gardenia perfume and that she is certain indicates the presence of the spirit of Sarah Winters, widow of William (who was shot at point-blank range and ran to the seventeenth step of the main staircase to die in her arms). When Moss’ son was a toddler, he saw a little blonde girl in a white dress sitting in a bedroom chandelier. Movie crews filming there arrive as skeptics and leave astounded as the ghosts of The Myrtles appear to drain their batteries and fool around with their equipment.  

Countless guests are drawn there because of the high level of paranormal activity, yet Moss does not tolerate disrespect.  

“We don’t allow séances, anything occult, and no Ouija Boards,” she stated firmly. “If someone does not stop occult activity, we will call the police.”  

While some people attributed the fire’s cause to the ghosts, Moss believes otherwise.

The state inspector explained that the fact the big house was untouched was as close to a miracle as he’d ever seen. The gift shop, a raging conflagration, was seven feet and eleven inches away from the house, and an enormous gas water heater caught in the flames near the connecting breezeway did not explode.  

“So many miracles with this fire, “exclaimed Moss, who has gone from oblivious neophyte to paranormal veteran. “All I have to say is, ‘Thank you, Chloe!’”

BRAD DUPLECHIEN 

A sixteen-year law enforcement veteran, Brad Duplechien was born in the tiny Avoyelles Parish town of Mansura in central Louisiana. Once a deputy for the Avoyelles Parish Sheriff’s Office, Duplechien has worked as a correctional officer with the Federal Bureau of Prisons for the last thirteen years. Growing up, he heard the strange Louisiana legends of the loup garou and feu follet (spirit lights) told by his family, proud French Louisianians. Particularly close to his grandmother, Duplechien dismissed all the stories that he heard about shape shifters, spirit lights, and ghosts.

“Although I’ve always had a fascination for all that was strange, I’ve always been skeptical, using a logical and common-sense approach to strange events,” said Duplechien.  

When he was seventeen, his grandmother told him she had been sitting in the kitchen of her home when she saw a black mist materialize over her, envelop her, then vanish. The next day a visit to the doctor disclosed that she had liver cancer; she died two months to the day that she was visited by the black mist. Duplechien’s skepticism about the supernatural began to waver ever so slightly.  

Years later, he was working the graveyard shift at the federal prison. The inmates were locked in their cells for the night. Sitting at his desk, Duplechien heard the sound of approaching footsteps descending the stairs. He got up to see who was coming, but encountered no one. This continued for several weeks. Then while on duty at 2 am, he saw a man wearing a white T-shirt out of the corner of his eye walking across the floor. Thinking an inmate had gotten loose, Duplechien checked the cells and found all of them occupied. His skeptical nature made him dismiss these incidents as the result of fatigue—until he learned other correctional officers had had identical experiences. 

Because of these events, Duplechien pursued a vocation as a paranormal investigator, and in 2005 he formed LaSpirits. LaSpirits boasts five hundred investigations under its belt, most of which, but not all, are debunked for actual paranormal activity.  

“Although we charge no fees for our services,” said Duplechien, “the best payment is knowing that we help a child sleep at night.”

LaSpirits’ cutting-edge equipment—EMF readers, recorders, and video cameras—are more often used to validate Duplechien’s skeptical views; but this same equipment has also regularly caught the unexplained. Growling sounds, harsh breaths, and a ghostly woman’s voice saying “thank you” were caught during an investigation at Muriel’s Restaurant in New Orleans. When Duplechien and his team were investigating the infamous Waverly Hills Tuberculosis Sanatorium in Kentucky, he and a team member left a completely vacant floor of the hospital to go downstairs. Soon after, they were startled to hear the sound of children running and playing above them—on the empty floor they had just left.

Because of their experiences, Clements, Moss, and Duplechien have been persuaded to a perspective on the paranormal perhaps best summarized by Shakespeare in Hamlet: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio / Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” 

Details. Details. Details. 

The Myrtles Plantation 
 Halloween Experience
Every Friday—Sunday in October and on October 31
myrtlesplantation.com • (225) 635-6277

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