Louisiana

New Orleans

LaLaurie House

The home probably has six or seven ghosts, put even possibly two dozen or more. The Lalaurie House, is one of New Orleans most haunted sites,
which as a tragic and sordid history. The mansion was built in the early 1830's. Delphine Lalaurie was a rich social elite that was rich and showed
it off by her home, and her numerous slaves. The house's gruesome troubles began in 1833, when her slaves began to mysteriously vanish. At the
time no one questioned where the they were going, most just assumed that they either escaped, were freed, or were sold. The disappearances
were realized to be more than that when a slave girl named Lia escaped from her room in the mansion, and fled onto the rooftop, where she
screamed for help. Witnesses watched Lalaurie herself confront the girl, beating her severely with a whip, until the poor girl leaped from the roof to
her death. Lalaurie then quickly collected the body and attempted to hide her in a well. The police were notified of the murder, and they easily
found the girls body, and to punish Delphine they levied a fine against her and demanded that she sell all of her slaves at public auctions.
Unfortunately all of her friends then purchased each of her slaves and secretly returned them to the wicked woman.

The extent of Madame Lalaurie's dementia became evident on April 10, 1834, when a fire brigade responded to a blaze at the mansion. When they
arrived they found an elderly black cook chained to the kitchen floor. She confessed to lighting the fire in the kitchen claiming that she had suffered
unconscionable abuse at the hands of Madame Lalaurie. She then directed the rescuers to a small attic apartment, where she kept other slaves
imprisoned. It was a horrible mind-wrenching site.

The attic was rank with decay and the smell of death, which had been converted into a torture chamber, where Lalaurie kept nude victims shackled
to crude and barbaric devices. A number of the slaves where long since dead, which were covered in flies and maggots, while others were barely
alive weeping or unconscious. Among the atrocities found the attic a woman was gutted and was tied down by her own intestines. Another woman
was found with her mouth sewn shut, and when the rescuers cut the stitches they discovered that her mouth was filled with feces. Most of the
male victims were missing fingernails, eyes, ears, and portions of their buttocks. At least one man had a hole drilled into his head to allow LaLaurie
to "stir" his brains with a stick. Other victims were doused with honey and covered in black ants or had been starved to near-death after their
mouths were painfully pinned shut. Lalaurie's victims were freed immediately, but most died within days.

Her death toll has never been accurately reported. Recently they were fixing up the mansion, and they found two skeletons underneath the floor
boards of the home, which they believe that they were slaves that she killed and she hide their bodies. The number of slaves she killed is believed
to be at least a dozen. When a mob threatened her life, she then fled to Paris. She then died on a hunting expedition a few years later. (She was
gored to death by a wild boar.)

The home had been converted into a barbershop, an antique shop, then into apartments. The first ghostly phenomena were noted in the early
1900's, when a range of phantoms began to manifest the building. They included Madame Lalarurie herself, a tall black man on the staircase, and
strange shrouded forms moving about. Strange and frightening noises are also commonly reported: the sobbing of the slave girl Lia can be detected
outside the house, while tortured screams descend from the attic. The house is still considered quite haunted, as pedestrians passing by the
house still hear the ghosts' agonized shrieks when they pass by the home. Locals still say, "La maison est hauntee." ("The house is haunted.").

St. Francisville, Louisiana

The Myrtles

The Myrtles has been featured in Life magazine, Southern Living, The Wall

Street journal, USA Today, Family Circle, and many other publications. Many

television shows have done features on this house, including the Discovery

channel. The Myrtles, according to the Tourist Bureau, is one of the authenti-

cated haunted house in the US. The home was built by General David Bradford

in 1796, it has lacy, ornamental ironwork, and large rooms with high ceilings.

The owner by the name of Frances Kermeen decided to buy the beautiful

house, but she found out that it was haunted the very first week that she stayed

there. The first week that I was there, I was sleeping in an upstairs bedroom. I

left the lights on, but with the switch set on "dim." After a night or two, I thought

that was silly and that I could sleep with the lights off, so I turned them off. But

sometime after midnight I woke up, and the lights were on bright. Half asleep, I thought that I must have left them on, and I turned the dimmer. The
room was once more in darkness. Two hours passed, and I was awake again. I found all the lights in the room on bright, just as they had been two
hours earlier. I turned with switch 360 degrees and clicked the lights off again. Later I woke up for a third time, and the light were on once more.
That just scared me to death, and I grabbed my robe and blanket to go downstairs and sleep in the sitting room.

All went fine, and I slept peacefully until about five o'clock, when I woke up with a start and had the feeling that someone was looking at me. I
stared up into the face of a large black lady whose head was wrapped in a green turban. She wore something that resembles a long, green
dressing gown. I was so shocked that I just couldn't look at her face again. By the time I had begun screaming, but she still didn't go away.
Involuntarily, I struck out with my arm to push her from me, but as I did so, my hand passed through her, and she faded away.

It was a couple of days before the closing on the house, and the current owner was still there. I told her about it the next day, and she said, "That's
ridiculous!" but even on the firs night, at about one o'clock, I had heard footsteps outside by door and assumed that it was one of the other house
guests. The next day I learned that everyone in the house claimed to have been dead to the world before eleven. After I had brought the house, I
mentioned the lady in green to the mother of the former owner, and to my surprise, she was absolutely thrilled. Can you imagine? She said, "Why,
Frances, you have seen The Myrtle's most famous ghost!"

I turned the house into a bed-and-breakfast place, and at first I tried to keep the ghostly visitors a secret from the real ones. But during the seven
years I have been here, there have been about a hundred reports each year of apparitions for some supernatural occurrences. There were times
when I was truly frightened, and the only thing that kept me from going back to my parents was that it would be too embarrassing to tell them that I
was leaving because I was afraid of ghosts.

The most common sounds are either those of children's voices at play or that of a baby crying. But the eeriest of all is the music of a dance going
on downstairs. Often people think that another guest's television is on too loud, but on inquiring they find there is no television set in the room next
to them. Each room has its own unique ghost. One has a wounded Confederate soldier who appears in May and June. A pair of honeymooners
stayed here. The groom went upstairs alone to lie down and woke to find a black servant standing beside the bed bandaging his foot. The
honeymooners immediately checked out.

The plantation's most famous murders occurred shortly after its sale in 1817 to a philandering judge named Clarke Woodruff, General Bradford's
son-in-law. The judge grew angry with a slave woman named Cleo for eavesdropping, and he cut off one of her ears as a penalty. For revenge, she
mixed poisonous oleander flowers into a birthday cake for the judge's oldest daughter. His two little girls died, as did his wife. Other slaves hanged
Cleo. It is said that she still haunts the house, wearing a green turban to cover her missing ear. Cleo was evidently the ghost who frightened
Frances Kermeen during her first week in the house. Janet Roberts, a psychic who is the treasurer of the Louisiana society for Psychical
Phenomena, believes that The Myrtles has many ghosts. "Walking into the parlor was like walking into a crowded cocktail party. I felt that we were
literally bumping into people, and I wanted to say, 'Excuse me,'" But except for the grumpy ghost who will occasionally hurl a clock or drop a
candlestick, they do no harm. Ms. Kermeen say, "At first I would not stay here alone at night. After I made it into B&B in 1981, that seldom
happened. But there are still a few thing that rile me, and when they do, I have to go spend the night in the new wing."

Asked if she had ever talked with any of the apparitions, Ms. Kermeen shakes her head. "I certainly am not brave enough to try to communicate
with any of them. I got used to the footsteps, the door slamming, and the voices, so now I don't keep my hand on the phone, ready to dial the
police, as I did at first. I know this sounds absurd, but it's funny what you later come to accept when you didn't believe in this sort of things at all
before. "At first the ghost terrified me. Then there was a year or two when the knowledge that they were there was just fun and games. But of late, I
really believe that they had led me to God. They have brought me closer to a sense of his reality and the meaning of life. Once you are confronted
with a ghost, you can't brush off the existence of life after death."

St. Joseph

Mississippi River

A strange phenomenon occurs along the Mississippi River here. On numerous occasions since the mid 1870's, witnesses have reported hearing
the screams of a woman coming from the middle of the river. Sometimes they can hear her say in French, "Aidez-moi au nom de Dieu. Les
hommes me blessent!". (Help me, in the name of God. The men are hurting me!"). The ghostly voice is thought to be connected with the
disappearance of a steamboat nearly 125 year ago. The Iron Mountain was among the largest boats on the Mississippi. It was over 180 feet long
and thirty five feet wide, and was powered by five huge boilers. Besides passengers, the ship usually hauled several barges of freight. In June 1872,
the ship disappeared without a trace. The barges had been cut loose, but none of the fifty four people aboard were seen again. No wreckage or
debris was ever found. The ship had left port at Natchez and was last seen at Vicksburg, Mississippi. People

could only speculate that river pirates hijacked the ship, stripped it bare, and killed all the passengers and crew.

Vacherie

Oak Valley Plantation

The ghost of a lady in black has been seen combing her shoulder-length hair in the master bedroom, pacing the widow's walk, and riding a
phantom horse around the grounds. In 1987, the image of the ghost appeared on a photograph taken in the master bedroom by a tourist. The
mysterious Lady in Black is thought to be the spirit of Louise Roman, daughter of Jacques Roman, who built the mansion in the 1930's. While
fleeing from a drunken suitor, Louise fell and gashed her leg on a wire hoop in her dress. Gangrene set in and her leg had to be amputated. Her
family saved the leg so it could be buried with her later. She entered a Carmelite convent in St. Louis to recover from the traumatic experience but
returned to her southern home in her later years.

Bibliographies: Blackman, W. (1998). The Field Guide to North American Hauntings. New York: Three Rivers Press.

Hauck, Dennis. Haunted Places: Ghost abodes, sacred sites, UFO landings, and other supernatural locations. New York: Penguin Book, 1994.