Acadiana ghost stories
Duckie
Spirits inhabiting old homes in Louisiana come in all shapes and
sizes.
By CHER_ COEN
Published in FUN on Oct. 27, 1995
The massive, dark clouds threatened the Acadian horizon ominously as
we drove into Lafayette. While we made our way to T-Frere's Bed and
Breakfast, the sky virtually exploded, making driving nearly
impossible.
Relentless, we maneuvered our way through the flooded streets, vowing
to fight the forces hindering our progress.
It was Friday the 13th, and we were on a ghost hunt.
Amelie Comeaux, a petite Cajun woman with a cleft in her chin and her
hair worn in a bun, haunts T-Frere's House. After losing her husband
and child at 17, Amelie moved in with her brother, T-Frere Comeaux,
and spent the rest of her days at the Verot School Road house teaching
math to local children.
At 32, she developed a fever and mysteriously died at the back-yard
well. Some think she was delirious and fell in; the Catholic Church
labeled her death a suicide.
Regardless of the nature of her death, Amelie has not departed this
world - or so claim Maugie and Pat Pastor, owners of T-Frere's Bed and
Breakfast.
"I was very skeptical," Maugie said, when she first heard the ghost
stories. "But we've had incidents in all the rooms in the house. "
Her first experience with Amelie, the "rebellious" ghost, came soon
after she began moving in. Her belongings were scattered between
T-Frere's House and her former residence, and to keep her sons from
overtaxing the family car, she instructed them to make only one moving
trip per night. Her 16-year-old son, however, forgot his important
math homework at the old house.
"He came running into the kitchen, a white paper in his hand, his lips
as white as a ghost," Maugie recalled. "He tells me that while he was
lying there waiting to come down to tell me (about his math homework
being at the other house) the paper that he needed came floating from
the ceiling."
Amelie also made it known to the Pastors she does not approve of
change.
"When we moved our restaurant equipment into that back room we put in
shelves and a bunch of stainless steel trays on those shelves," said
Maugie, who used to own a restaurant with her husband. "Two days after
that was done, we were in the kitchen drinking coffee, waiting for the
afternoon guests to come in. We heard a God-awful noise in the laundry
room like someone went back there and swept everything off the
shelves. You could hear it, shelf after shelf. It stunned us so much
that we didn't say anything. We looked, but there wasn't a thing out
of place. "
Overnight guests have had experiences as well. Two men, unknown to one
another, spoke of similar encounters within the same week, Maugie
said. During their stay at the house, a "presence" appeared, and they
felt a heavy weight upon their chests.
Another guest was relieved to hear Maugie speak of the ghost over
breakfast.
"She said 'Something or someone was in my room last night and kept
throwing things around,' " Maugie explained.
"She said, 'I think she was trying to get in touch with me. At 16 I
was rebellious, and I am a math teacher. ' That was weird. That was
real weird."
Previous owner Peggy Moseley had so many experiences with Amelie, she
wrote her own chapter in Christine Word's Ghosts Along the Bayou, a
compilation of Acadiana ghost stories. Moseley's mother actually saw
Amelie and described her as "a little lady" who wears her hair parted
down the center and pulled back in a bun. She speaks - or spoke - only
French. During a wedding at the house, Moseley's mother saw her in the
kitchen putting green food dye in the punch. (Moseley's son, Matthew,
dreamed about Amelie, who taught him algebra in his sleep. His
description matched his grandmother's.
"I heard some things that were real suspicious," said Connie Gatlin, a
friend of the Pastors who helps with the bed and breakfast's guided
ghost tours. One night, when "every guest was sitting down and
accounted for," Gatlin heard a door open upstairs with "someone very
obviously going through it and closing it," she said. "The tour guide
looked at me and said, 'There she is. Can you hear it? ' "
Ghostly image
Gatlin may be a reliable source on the matter; she's no stranger to
ghosts. One Halloween, while photographing a group of costumed
kindergartners at Lafayette's Cathedral Carmel School where she works,
a spirit hitched a ride on her camera.
Gatlin took three photos of the children on Ilford professional film.
When she processed the roll, a "huge" figure dressed in black boots, a
clerical collar and a tattered robe was standing behind the children.
Confused over the image, she sent a copy to the Ilford company in
England. "They told me they didn't know what it was," Gatlin
explained. "But the image was made with light," which meant something
- or someone - had to have been there.
The Christian Brothers identified the man as a brother who lived at
the school, specifically in the gym, she said. Stories had long
circulated through Cathedral Carmel about the one-legged brother who
haunted the gymnasium.
"Supposedly he stalked the gym," Gatlin said. "The lights would go on
and off, and they could hear the wooden leg across the floor."
Later the same year the picture was taken, the gymnasium floor was
replaced for the first time. Workers found five nickels underneath,
all facing upward and all with the same date. Gatlin can't remember
the exact date on the coins, but it was in the early 1950s, the same
year the one-legged brother died. And the gymnasium floor was
installed in 1949.
Although Gatlin certainly can't explain the mysterious photo and
events, she's hesitant to draw conclusions.
"Whenever you have something you can't explain, you have to be real
careful because people's imaginations run wild. It may be a ghost who
never got to go trick or treating," she said with a laugh.
˙
Ghosts in the machine
Like their earthly counterparts, ghosts seem drawn to electrical
machinery.
When Father Sean O. Sheehy lived at the rectory of St. John the
Baptist Catholic Church of West Baton Rouge in Brusly, he had a
strange encounter with a television set.
"When I went there the first night, I was there unpacking," Sheehy
explained by phone from Hammond, where he works at the Southeastern
Louisiana University Catholic Student Center. "I was downstairs
unpacking some books when I heard noises upstairs like people
talking."
Sheehy went upstairs and found the TV on. He turned it off. A half
hour later, the TV went on again. Sheehy again turned it off and
returned downstairs. For the third time, the same thing happened.
"When I went up, the TV went off," Sheehy said. "The television just
wouldn't work. The TV never worked again. Had to throw it out."
While on vacation in his native Ireland, a seminary student took
Sheehy's place at the Brusly rectory. The seminarian apparently
couldn't quite stomach the rectory's notorious creaks and noises.
"When I came back, there's no one in the rectory," he said. "He stayed
one night."
Although Sheehy can't explain the occurrences, he won't label them
ghost-related.
"It's an old, two-story rectory - had been there for some time," he
said. "When you look out the top window, your nearest neighbor is the
cemetery. Most of these parishes along the river have had strange
happenings. Who knows what's true or not true?
"I tend to be very skeptical," he continued, connecting the noises he
heard at the rectory with ordinary house settling. "I do think there's
something to the nature of electrical fields that people leave behind.
People can leave their imprint on it. But I don't think any
self-respecting person would want to come back to this world."
Pirates who haunt
Louis Cornay, owner of Chretien Point Plantation in Sunset, believes
ghosts are "an energy source from people who've been here before." The
ghost of one of Lafitte's pirates haunts his plantation home, along
with other spirits, he said.
According to Cornay, the previous owner, Felecite Chretien, killed a
robber on the plantation's staircase, a man believed to be a pirate.
Since then, a spirit has been creating havoc with Cornay's car
whenever he speaks ill of the ghost.
When Cornay made fun of the ghost on a tour of his historic home, his
car horn went off in the middle of the night. Cornay stopped the noise
by brushing his hand along the dashboard as if to brush someone's hand
away, he said.
"It made me realize that you don't make fun of these people," Cornay
said.
Once a visiting tourist made light of the ghost's presence. Later that
evening, the fire alarm in the tourist's motel sounded, but only in
his room.
"The thing that really makes the difference is that if you respect
that they are about, then there's no problem," Cornay explained,
adding that he has heard children playing and women walking throughout
the house. "If you don't acknowledge their existence, then things
happen.
"Our ghosts are not the scariest of ghosts. If you respect them, they
respect you. We have to be good. Give everybody their space."
Good ghost, bad ghost
Larry Montz spent years working as a private eye and a
parapsychologist in Los Angeles, but he returned to South Louisiana
because of the numerous paranormal occurrences.
"I came back here because there's so much more activity," the New
Orleans native and resident said. "This is one of the most haunted
cities in the country."
Montz, who publishes a national newsletter, Hauntings Today, can
rattle off a long list of haunted houses in New Orleans, particularly
in the French Quarter. He's visited almost all of them and is hired to
investigate hauntings on a regular basis. His group of scientists
visit the homes armed with ultrasound, film and electro-magnetic field
equipment. "The only thing we don't have is the nuclear power packs
like on Ghostbusters," he joked.
Montz has picked up on the Myrtles Plantation's notorious spirits.
"I found five - a maid, two little girls, a mom and a male," he said
of the St. Francisville historic home.
He also identified the woman stalking the third floor attic of
Lafitte's Landing, a Donaldsonville restaurant owned and operated by
chef John Folse. Montz dated the female specter to 1849 and believes
she is related to the house, which was moved to its present site. The
theory that the ghost is a daughter-in-law of Jean Lafitte who died by
stumbling down the stairs inebriated doesn't ring true to Montz.
"We didn't pick up on that at all," he said.
Montz did pick up on a child molester still lurking in author Anne
Rice's new home, the former St. Elizabeth orphanage on Napoleon Avenue
in New Orleans. He sensed there was a maintenance man who had molested
some girls while working there. "I saw him in the attic above the
chapel," Montz said.
Workers later found tin cans hidden in the attic walls with girls'
dresses stuffed inside. The dresses were ripped to shreds. "That case
is still open," Montz added.
Even though their deaths may remain cloaked in mystery, Montz, like
the others interviewed for this story, does not believe ghosts are
evil.
"I have yet to run into somebody with a lot of horns," Montz said,
adding that hostile people in life will sometimes be hostile as
spirits. "The nasty entities that we deal with are people. One of them
knocked out one of my investigators."
Montz's work includes "clearing" houses of spirits, but the action
does not resemble a scene from The Exorcist, he said.
"We open an energy vortex - like the white light you hear about," he
explained. "We allow them to cross over to the other side."
Author Christine Word interviewed numerous Acadiana residents for her
popular book, Ghosts Along the Bayou, which is about to be released in
paperback. She, too, found most ghosts amiable and most people
accepting to their spirits.
"Most people accepted the spirits as family," she said. "They like
their ghosts. They didn't want them to leave."
Cornay is a case in point. "It's a pleasant house," he said of
Chretien Point. "I don't think it has to be a scary experience. Ours
are very friendly."
Halloween fact or fiction?
The debate over whether spirits exist outside of the material world
has been raging for centuries. Today, even with science adding
technical research to the discussion, the mystery remains.
"These spirits are earthbound spirits," Word said. "They're people.
They have such a mental attachment or they have unfinished business,
so they're earthbound. All they need is someone to explain to them to
go to the next place. All it takes is a prayer thing to get them to
move on.
"Sometimes I think it's a photographic image or a recording that's an
action that was so traumatic that it's imprinted on the atmosphere,"
Word added. "People may see the same image over and over again."
Sheehy, who grew up among "great storytellers" in Ireland, believes
that people tell ghost tales to address their fears of the dark,
particularly around Halloween when the days are getting shorter and
dark threatens to invade our homes earlier and earlier.
"This is the time (for ghost stories) when nature is dying, getting
ready to renew life again, when the days get shorter and there's more
darkness," he said.
"In Ireland, telling stories was a way of contending with the
darkness. Everyone is a good storyteller."
Still, Sheehy admits the world is filled with unexplained phenomena.
"There is a lot of our world we don't understand."
Helena Handbasket
Ron and I are going to Ohio to visit my sister tomorrow, so I'll be gone for
the next coupla days. Don't miss me too much. :-)
Have a great rest-of-the-weekend, all. *hugs*
--
Michelle
Resident Ear-Scratcher of Trolls, Wolves, and Bunnies
Official Porch HELLOOOOO-NURSE!
Those who live by the sword get shot by those who don't.
http://www.griffinskeep.com
"Duckie" <jmstw...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:9a1j2tcrdrm839j63...@4ax.com...
Grinch
Grinch
--
Vincenzo: "You know, I once thought of entering the priesthood..."
Kolchak: "Then the Inquisition ended, and all of the fun went out of it for
you." (The Devil's Platform)
Peyton Hunter
here!!
Pey, who doesn't even want to go out of the house today...
Helena Handbasket wrote in message ...
>> я
Willow
Will~ will miss ya a little bit... *grin*
Helena Handbasket a écrit dans le message ...
>> ÿ
