Louisiana

Beyond the façade of stately Louisiana platations are stories of hope and subjugation, tragedy and suffering, shame and perseverance and war and conquest.

After sixteen workers chopped down most of the Houmas House's ancient oak trees, referred to as "the Gentlemen," eight of the surviving trees eerily twisted overnight in grief over the losses wrought by a great Mississippi River flood. An illegal duel to reclaim lost honor left the grounds of Natchez's Cherokee Plantation bloodstained, but the victim's spirit may still wander there today. A mutilated slave girl named Chloe still haunts the halls of the Myrtles Plantation in St. Francisville. Cheryl H. White and W. Ryan Smith reveal the dark history, folklore and lasting human cost of Louisiana plantation life.

New Orleans has a reputation as a home for creatures of the night. Popular books, movies and television shows have cemented the city's connection to vampires in public imagination.

Rumors swirled about the fate of the Casket Girls, a group of mysterious maidens traveling to the New World from France with peculiar casket-shaped boxes. A charismatic man who moved to the French Quarter in the early 1900s eerily resembled a European aristocrat of one hundred years prior bearing the same name. A pair of brothers terrorized the town with their desire to feed on living human blood during the Great Depression. Marita Woywod Crandle investigates the origins of these legends so intricately woven through New Orleans's rich history.

GHOSTLY ESCAPADES AND UNEXPLAINED HAPPENINGS
CONJURE THE SPECTRAL SOUTH IN HAUNTED LOUISIANA!

"Prepare to be engaged and entertained to a degree to which you are certainly unaccustomed."
--Phillip J. Jones, former secretary, Louisiana Department of Culture, Recreation, and Tourism

Spooky stories and behind-the-scene incidents from the award-winning PBS documentary The Haunting of Louisiana, written and produced by skilled raconteur Barbara Sillery, fill the pages of this tantalizing collection. Take a self-guided tour using her extensive list of sites and investigate the unexplained phenomena behind the facades of historic architecture, in the mists of the bayous, and beneath layers of history and intrigue in this glimpse into Louisiana's richly haunted past.

Join longtime journalist and ghost seeker Cheré Dastugue Coen as she visits Lafayette's haunted sites and travels the countryside in search of ghostly legends found only in South Louisiana.

Ghost stories abound in the Cajun and Creole city of Lafayette, Louisiana. The Hub City boasts a multitude of spirits and specters, from those lost in Civil War skirmishes and fever outbreaks to those souls that simply can't say goodbye. Today, they wander the halls of bed-and-breakfasts and restaurants and linger along back roads and cemeteries. Pirates are rumored to guard buried treasure, and ancient French legends hide in the swamps, bayous and woods.

With yellow fever, Civil War battles, murders and tragic accidents staining its history, it is no wonder that Baton Rouge is rife with tales of ghostly visitors. Highland Road has had so many reports of Civil War soldier sightings that the local police department sent out an officer to track one down. Spirits crowd about in the stately grounds of the Magnolia Mound and Old Cottage Plantations, the Old Capitol and the New and even the USS Kidd." Unlikely spots like the Guaranty Income Life and Broadcast Building have plenty of hair-raising stories of their own; the cafeteria used to be a morgue Explore the Red Stick's eerie past with paranormal investigator Bud Steed as he uncovers the city's most chilling tales."

What makes Shreveport's Oakland Cemetery so spooky might be the mass burial of 715 victims of the 1873 yellow fever epidemic. Another bone-chilling locale is the city's historic Municipal Auditorium, which according to local legends may have briefly served as a morgue under the watch of Dr. Willis P. Butler, perhaps the longest-serving Caddo Parish medical examiner and coroner. Years after his passing, Butler is still seen dutifully working in the courthouse and other public spaces. And over at the beautifully restored Logan Mansion, unexplained mischievous pranks are blamed on the spirits of a young girl whose life was tragically cut short. Historians Gary D. Joiner, PhD, and Cheryl H. White, PhD, recount the true stories of these and other notable landmarks framed within the intriguing twist of the paranormal.