It is a place where the stars are seldom seen, and then only in great splashes through tangled woodland arms. A place where every wind smells of spicy resin, whispering in the voices of bare branches and dead leaves. And in places deep within, where even the moonlight gets lost, it can be a lonely, haunting place.

To the traveler alone, or in twos and threes, the Piney Woods may not be a place to be caught alone when the sun has set and the night creatures are stirring. But to the virtual traveler, there is nothing to fear. Or, is there?

 

THE TOP 10 MOST HAUNTED
PLACES IN THE PINEY WOODS OF
ST. TAMMANY PARISH

No. 1: Deserted Benedictine Monastery, Covington, near St. Benedict.

Since the earliest settlers arrived in the wild woodlands that later became St. Tammany Parish there were among them men and women of faith charged with keeping the righteous right and evangelizing the natives to increase the ranks of the church. One such frontier ministry was instituted by the Benedictine brothers north of what is today Covington. Though the Benedictines now have a strong presence at St. Joseph’s Abbey and Seminary, the long ago monastery was a shadow of that modern edifice. Built precariously on the edge of the wild and left to fend for itself for long stretches of times between supply wagons, it is said that the brothers and laymen of the first Benedictine monastery were killed by Native Americans who attacked the holy place and burned all remnants of it to the ground. Legend has it that the Natives even dug up the dead from the consecrated cemetery that stood not far from the monastery walls.

Since that horrific event, which most likely took place in the early 1700’s, a strange apparition has been spotted in the piney woods outside of Covington: the apparition of the monastery itself is seen to appear and disappear at unexpected times in the shadowy woods.
Witnesses who claim to have seen the monastery say it is like seeing a grey, shadowy “photo negative” of a building – almost, but not completely transparent. Others claim to have discovered the desecrated graveyard where they say a feeling of such malevolence overwhelms them that it is impossible to linger there long. Invariably, they are never able to relocate the graveyard, despite any number of attempts. Still others have heard the sound of ghostly Gregorian chant and claim to have seen the shapes of hooded monks walking through the shadows of the trees.

The mysterious disappearing monastery is said to lie somewhere off the River Road, not far from St. Benedict and the present day St. Joseph’s. Where it was originally is anyone’s guess, but if you travel the old River Road, you just might see this number one most chilling place.

No. 2: Artesia Restaurant and Inn, Hwy. 59, Abita Springs.

The sleepy little town of Abita Springs grew to prominence because of the luck of its location – in the heart of the ozone belt at the confluence of several healthy artesian wellsprings. People came from miles around to “take the waters” at Abita Springs and in an effort to provide accommodations to them more convenient than hotels in Mandeville or Covington, Abita Springs businessmen responded with style and pizzazz. One of the first hotels to be built in Abita Springs was located in what is now the Artesia Restaurant on Highway 59 just north of town. It is said that the hotel had all the accoutrements expected of such a place in its heyday and that the builder, a man not only of means but of high expectations, made certain that every part of the building and grounds met his demands.

It can be surmised that a man such as this might accumulate enemies as well as friends, as he accumulated money. Whatever the cause, the story goes that one summer day in the early 1930’s, the man left the hotel walking toward town: he was never seen or heard from again. Since that time, a restless spirit has haunted the old hotel and grounds. Workers in the restaurant have encountered the apparition of a man standing in the entranceway or in remote parts of the dining room. Guests arriving early have seen the ghostly spectre peering down at them from the second storey of the old building. Visitors who stay over at the quaint Bed & Breakfast cottages at Artesia have reported being awakened in the middle of the night by the voice of a man calling out a name they can’t discern; there have also been reports of heavy footsteps around the cottage area; and at least one motorist has reported striking what he thought was a man standing in the middle of the highway in front of the hotel. When the rattled motorist came to a stop and ran back to help his victim he found himself alone on a darkened highway. (It doesn’t help that Highway 59 is known throughout the parish as the “Highway of Death,” but that’s part of another story…) Police have also been called by concerned residents who have seen a man wandering aimlessly along the road, perhaps concerned he is a criminal and up to no good; patrols have repeatedly failed to turn up anything, or anyone.

Employees and even the owners of Artesia Restaurant confess that they do not like to be the last to lock up at night. There is a presence, they say, that broods in the old building, constantly watching everything that is done.

Artesia Restaurant and Inn is open limited hours since Hurricane Katrina, so call ahead and prepare for a ghostly encounter!

No. 3: Guste Island Road and the Famous White Lady, Near Port Louis, Madisonville.

Madisonville is a beautiful little town that nestles on the banks of the Tchefuncte River near where it empties into Lake Pontchartrain. One of the oldest settlements in what is now St. Tammany Parish, the town still sits amid wild woods and encroaching swamplands. Even in a heavy downpour there is threat of flooding from the nearby Lake, not to mention the surge and deluge recently experienced in Hurricane Katrina.

Highway 22 runs through the heart of Madisonville, crossing the Tchefuncte at Main Street and continuing on into the rural areas to the west. Guste Island Road intersects the highway approximately three miles outside of town and is the only access to the waterfront community of Port Louis. The road is a long, winding affair, like something out of a Cajun dream, alternately lined with frowning woodlands and empty, marshy swamps. Gators often crawl up out of the swamps and sit in the road or alongside of it, providing a scare or two, but the most frightening thing about Guste Island road isn’t the twists and turns or the local fauna: it’s the ghostly white spectre of a long-dead woman.

She appears out of nowhere, say most who have seen her; often she is just walking alongside the road, but as a car approaches she will suddenly turn and – hopefully – vanish. On the occasions when she has not vanished, witnesses have been aghast at the sight of her skeletal face and empty eye sockets. Many have been petrified out of their wits: some have backed up practically all the way to Port Louis, others have hit the accelerator and blown right by her, but not before she reaches out with a scratchy, skeleton hand against the car windows. One couple, who shall remain nameless, actually drove off the road and both nearly died: the driver swore that he had seen a deer, but his passenger was all too certain that the figure was that of a woman in white who rushed across the road and into the path of their car. The car was totaled and both ended up in the hospital, but they report that the most frightening thing was having to wait for the tow truck and ambulance in the dead of a dark and cloudy night with the ghost of Guste Island Road on the prowl.

Who she was and how she came to haunt this desolate stretch of swampy road, no one knows, but all agree that she is there and it is no pleasure to encounter her, making Guste Island Road number three on the list of most haunted places in “New Orleans North.”

No. 4: Northstar Theatre, Mandeville.

The Northstar Theatre is an old building with a history, one of the most colorful histories of all the buildings in Mandeville. When the recreation retreats and hotels along Lakeshore Drive would fill to capacity with the rich and idle of New Orleans, the working class vacationers found themselves in need of a place to call their own. A man named Allen stepped up to fill that need and he constructed the straightforward Allen Hotel at the corner of Gerard and Madison Streets. Granted, there was no view of the Lake from the Allen Hotel windows, but it was close and it was nearer to the electric trolley train that continuous brought people to and fro throughout the parish.

The Allen Hotel enjoyed a heyday during the 1920’s and 30’s offering affordable lodging to the middle and working class of New Orleans who wanted to rub elbows (and fannies) with the rich in the languid lake waters or at the casino tables.

The Allens, husband and wife, ran the hotel in good times and in bad. Those good times began to taper off quickly in the 1940’s as the nation entered WWII, with only the occasional GI booking rooms at the old hotel. In the 1950’s the hotel was full again with workers from the nearby pre-stress concrete plant who were building the wonder that became the Causeway Bridge. It is around this time, too, that Mr. Allen passed away, leaving his wife to run the place on her own.

Soon, however, she became ill as well, and management of the Allen Hotel passed for the first time to strangers. Around this time (late 50’s) the hotel gained the dubious distinction of becoming Mandeville’s first (and last) brothel, a house of ill repute.

Mrs. Allen, confined to a wheelchair in a ground floor room at the rear of the building eventually died and the building was left derelict until purchased by current owner, theatre director Lori Bennett, in the 1970’s. Bennett set about renovations to the old building, redesigning it into an arts complex and finally into the theatre it is today.

Mrs. Allen’s old rooms became part of the theatre backstage area and it is this part of the old building where the most paranormal activity is said to occur. Staff working in the building alone late at night or early in the morning on production days have reported hearing sighs and a soft voice, like that of an elderly woman; they have also heard the distinct sound of a wheelchair rolling along the old floorboards from the back of the building to the front. Most of the time, the wheels stop at the front door, where there is always a cold spot. Workers say they are convinced it is the ghost of Mrs. Allen, but instead of inspiring fear, they insist she is mostly a benevolent presence, probably casting an approving eye on the activity in what used to be “her” hotel.

Mrs. Allen’s ghost is not the only one said to haunt the old building, but she is by far and away the only “nice” spirit present. Several people have reported hearing disturbing sounds from the upper floors of the building, which is where the prostitutes used to service their customers in the brothel days. One volunteer was shocked to overhear what she thought was a fight between a man and a woman; it sounded as if the man was striking the woman. Alarmed, the volunteer ran up the stairs to confront the attacker, only to find the second floor completely empty of anyone living.

The Northstar Theatre sustained damage in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, but Bennett has vowed that the theatre will return. We assume she means ghosts and all …

No. 5: Madisonville Light, Madisonville.

The Madisonville Lighthouse sits on a little peninsula at the mouth of the Tchefuncte River, three miles south of Madisonville on the banks of Lake Pontchartrain. Built in 1838, the lighthouse tower rises 38 feet above the shore and has been an icon to this small, shore side community for generations. Inside the building, a winding staircase of 45 steps leads to the top with its commanding view of Lake Pontchartrain and its environs.

Though the lighthouse has withstood harsh weather, an 1888 storm swept away all the nearby buildings except for the keeper’s cottage and the lighthouse itself. Today the keeper’s cottage is part of the exhibits of the nearby Lake Pontchartrain Basin Maritime Museum, but the lighthouse remains, in excellent condition.

Over the years there was a succession of keepers at the Madisonville Light but it is most associated with its first keeper, Benjamin Thurston, who also planted the nearby Thurston Oak during his tenure. Today the oak is listed in the National Tree Registry.

In the daylight hours, the view from the lighthouse can be stunning. But when the sun sets, the coming of night brings a brooding silence with it and a tangible feeling of loneliness prevails.

Security guards have summoned police patrols to the lighthouse after reporting the sight of strange lights bobbing inside, as if someone were making their way up the stairs. Since there hasn’t been a keeper at the light since 1935 and no one is allowed access after dark, the lights remain unexplained. Lights are often seen around the exterior, bobbing in the brush and along the shore. Daylight visitors have seen the shadow of a strange man standing in the windows of the lighthouse towers; tour guides say that the descriptions given match the surviving information they have about Benjamin Thurston.

Boaters have also seen strange sights near the lighthouse, like a red light that appears in the light window, glowing brightly before disappearing. Others, docked nearby on still, summer nights, claim to have heard the sound of children’s laughter coming from the shore near the feet of the lighthouse.

Thurston may have been the first keeper, but he wasn’t the last, and the dark, forbidding ghost of what is believed to be a later keeper also keeps vigil in the darkness around Madisonville Light. It is not a place to venture alone in the dark, as some who have met the fearsome spectre have reported. One brave soul who conducted a vigil in the lighthouse claims to have recorded EVP of the malevolent spirit growling indistinguishable words in a harsh voice. The spooked investigator admits to fleeing the location immediately.

No. 6: Old Creole Cemetery, Hwy. 90, Lacombe.

The old Creole Cemetery faces the busy scenic route Highway 90 in the middle of the little hamlet of Lacombe, Louisiana. It is one of the few cemeteries on the Northshore where Day of the Dead celebrations are held regularly and on the night of November 1st every year the cemetery is alight with candles and festivities in memory of the souls who have passed on.

But for the other 364 days of the year, give or take a couple, the cemetery sits in silence and darkness. Few dare to enter it who do not have family already buried there, and no one, it seems will venture there after dark except on that one holy All Saints’ Day.

There are very old graves in the little cemetery. Many date from the earliest days of settlement in Lacombe and the surrounding areas. Most of the dead are Creoles who came across the Lake from New Orleans to found a new community in the piney woods of the Northshore. Once settled they mixed and ultimately intermarried with the Native Americans already living here, and as most were raised in the prevailing Catholic faith, most ended up buried in the little cemetery.

But many people say there is something else in the cemetery. Some don’t feel fearful of it, but most, especially those with no connection at all to the place, say there is an evil presence lurking among the old Creole tombs. One night of lights and prayers, they say, isn’t nearly enough to keep it still all year.

Late night drivers or those unlucky enough to be walking past the cemetery at night have reported seeing shadowy forms moving among the graves, hunched over, like someone looking at each tombstone for a familiar name. One driver reported that he witnessed a ghostly visitant literally rise from the ground of the cemetery and walk across the road, narrowly missing the moving car. Not far along is the Rumours bar and its not surprising that they get their share of spooked motorists in there on any given night.

But perhaps the weirdest thing about the Old Creole Cemetery is the traveling tombstone.

The story goes that late one night a motorist slowed and swerved to avoid something laying in the middle of the highway. Pulling over to the side, the motorist got out of his car to inspect the object and was appalled to see that it was a tombstone, laying flat in the middle of the road. Seeing no one in sight to offer any assistance, the motorist moved the stone himself and stopped at the next Sheriff’s annex to report what had happened. A sheriff deputy dispatched to the location was unable to locate the stone, however, another deputy on patrol eight miles in the opposite direction came upon the errant tombstone, once again in the middle of the highway. This deputy picked the stone up and, placing it gingerly in his trunk, went into the station to make a report. The stone was removed at the station and placed against a side wall. To his dismay, when the deputy returned, he found the tombstone missing yet again. Assuming a prank or some petty theft, the sheriff filed his report and went off shift for the night.

Two days later another deputy on patrol found the stone laying in the road across the street from the cemetery and called in a report. This time the deputy did not leave his vehicle, but, with lights flashing and headlights fixed on the stone, he proceeded to start his report about the finding.

When he looked up from his report some minutes later he was alarmed to see that the tombstone had moved and was laying at the gates of the Old Creole Cemetery!

Boldly, the deputy got out of the car and looked around. It was nearly 3 a.m. and there was no one around, nor had any vehicle driven by in the time since he had stopped. There was no plausible explanation for the movement of the stone and, not inclined to interfere with what he deemed “higher powers,” the deputy left the stone where it lay. Yet another deputy, however, on an early morning patrol, saw the tombstone at the cemetery gate and stopped to place it in his trunk. When he reached the station he was surprised to hear a chorus of “Not THAT thing!” from his cohorts. On hearing their wild stories about the moving tombstone, the deputy figured he’d put an end to it and locked the stone in a nearby maintenance shed while he attempted to track down family members from the name on the stone.

A call to the cemetery started the wheels in motion and a the deputy was told that a keeper would meet him at the gates within a half hour. The deputy decided to leave the stone in place and go out to meet the keeper, but before he even reached the cemetery he received a radio call that the keeper was on a pay phone near the cemetery reporting a TOMBSTONE laying out at the cemetery gate!

Shocked and confused, the deputy asked a fellow officer to check on the status of the stone locked away in the maintenance shed. He was shaken to hear that there was no tombstone to be found in the shed. Somehow, it had moved of its own volition, and had returned to the cemetery gates.

There was no living family to be found who could claim the stone as their own, but the with the help of the keeper the proper location of the stone was determined: it had somehow been moved, or had moved, from a spot under a shady oak tree at the rear of the cemetery. A sheltered spot, it was only when the keeper said aloud, “That the old Indian oak, you know the one where they found those Indian skulls buried inside it?”

Soon it became clear: the name on the tomb was that of a prominent Catholic Creole who had, in his lifetime, hated and mistreated Native Americans. It never was clear whether the spirits of dead Indians were responsible for evicting the old Creole, but it was obvious, in a weird way, that the Creole was trying to get his stone back in.

The traveling tombstone was finally completely buried in a separate plot not far from the remains of the old Creole man and the haunted tree. So far, it hasn’t resurfaced … well, not yet anyway.

No. 7: Chateau Bleu Caterers, West Hall Street, Slidell.

The building that now houses Chateau Bleu Caterers was once a tavern that hosted a decidedly rough clientele. Grizzled railroad men, tar-coated workers from the nearby creosote plant, and salty old sea dogs fresh from plying their boats in the waters of Lake Pontchartrain all converged at this popular late 19th century watering hole.

As so often happens in places where men gather and drink – just like roosters fighting in a barnyard – brutal fights often broke out. Sometimes the police would be required to break them up, sometimes a doctor was required to sew someone up, but usually the disagreement passed with the intoxication and men who had beaten each other to pulp the night before would return the best of friends to drink another night.
One particular incident, however, is not remembered lightly, and this is probably because it was a continuing feud brought into the little tavern. A fisherman and a man from the nearby icehouse, located across the railroad tracks from the tavern, were involved in a continuing battle that centered around the latter’s wife and the attentions she showed to the fisherman. Eventually, the anger between the men boiled over and one night after a particularly brutal exchange of words the ice man disappeared across the tracks only to return with a huge pair of iron ice tongs. The story goes that he waited for the fisherman to leave the tavern and then accosted him, first beating him with the tongs and then using them to gouge the eyes and tear off the ears of his victim. The fisherman managed to run to the railroad tracks nearby, but blind and bleeding he was unable to avoid the oncoming train and was killed instantly at the West Hall Street crossing. The ice man, it is said, went home and beat his wayward wife unconscious, then committed suicide with a bullet through his brain.

As time passed, the tavern eventually closed and the small building went through a number of incarnations until it was opened as a catering business in the early 1990’s. Popular with businesses and residents, Chateau Bleu gained a reputation for fine food throughout the area. But it was the story of the haunting that really put it on the map for some people.

It seems that the murdered fisherman died but never really left the old tavern: his ghost is often seen standing in the shadowy building late at night or early in the morning when the staff is about to start their day. They say that they often smell his pipe, a very distinctive tobacco, and sometimes there is the smell of whiskey. Footsteps are heard when the building is supposed to be empty, and several workers have claimed to have been pushed or tapped on the head by the ghost. Most disturbing is the reenactment, in the early morning hours and mostly in the fall, of the fisherman’s death: several witnesses have claimed to have seen a man running from Chateau Bleu to the railroad tracks, clutching his face. When he reaches the tracks he vanishes into thin air. Some people speculate it is the recreation of a tragedy that has caused the little catering business to be among the most haunted places in St. Tammany Parish.

No. 8: Lewisburg Village Indian Mounds, Mandeville.

The little lakeside hamlet of Lewisburg was a village that came into existence around the time Mandeville was being founded. Located further west along the lake where the shoreline was less friendly to resort traffic, a cottage community took root in the area and became the retreat of many artists, writers and recluses of the era. Even today, Lewisburg is a wilder part of the quickly urbanizing Mandeville, and is the location of many beautiful ancient trees and live oaks, among them the famous Seven Sisters oak.

Prior to the coming of the white man, Native Americans lived all along the shore of the lake and it is said that they once used the area near Lewisburg as burial grounds. In fact, mounds containing remains and artifacts were found there as early as the late 1700’s, but excavation really did not go forward until the more inquisitive era of the middle nineteenth century. During that time, several artifacts, relics and bones were found in Lewisburg and were removed to university collections in New Orleans and elsewhere for study.

Around this time, villagers began to be troubled by shady, whitish apparitions and by the appearance of a large, black dog that plagued the area incessantly for several years following the desecration of the grave mounds.

People reported hearing strange voices in the night woods and peacekeepers were often dispatched to investigate, finding nothing and being frightened away by the howling of the monstrous dog.

At the time of the Civil War, Union troops camped in the woods surrounding Lewisburg, as they did all along the lake. But it was from Lewisburg that they asked to be moved, reporting to their superiors in the chain of command that the woods were full of “lurking Indians” and that their supplies had been looted by a “large, black canine” that came into their camps while they were sleeping and prowled among them. Soldiers on guard had even gotten off shots at the dog, but never felled it, and in fact it seemed to challenge them by stopping and staring at them before it disappeared into the trees.

Today Lewisburg retains its quaint, colony atmosphere, but visitors are forewarned: the mounds are still there, the woods are still as dark as nature intended, and the black dog of Lewisburg has never been captured or killed.

No. 9: Old Marigny Sugar Plantation, Fontainebleau State Park, Mandeville.

The Marigny family was a vastly wealthy New Orleans clan that owned a huge, sprawling plantation along the river to the east of the old City. When Bernard Marigny de Mandeville inherited all the land and money that went with his titles he began to divide the huge plantation into parcels of land that today make up the area known as the Faubourg Marigny.

Bernard Marigny de Mandeville himself began to spend more and more time north of New Orleans in the piney woods of St. Tammany Parish where he maintained a lovely home overlooking the water and an even larger plantation home in the wooded sanctuary near Bayou Castine in what is now Fontainebleau State Park.

Here Marigny undertook to create a sugar processing mill adjacent to his plantation home to provide work for his slaves as well as for freedmen whom he hired from the surrounding area. The sugar mill thrived for many years in its secluded location, while the Marigny plantation home became a social beacon to the denizens of New Orleans society. In his time, Marigny was visited by French and Spanish royalty, the notorious – Madame LaLaurie is said to have been there – and the famous – pianist Louis Moreau Gottschalk performed for Marigny and his family at the Fontainebleau home.

But time passed and fortunes changed. Succeeding Marigny heirs relocated to New Orleans and even to the mother country of France, and the sugar mill on the North Shore was abandoned, ultimately falling into dereliction.

Some brick walls and several old cistern wells are all that remain of the old home and mill, but if the reports of hikers and campers in the park can be believed, the place is anything but abandoned.

Several witnesses claim that they have seen lights amid the ruins and have heard the sound of machinery running in the dark night. Others claim to have felt a menacing presence around the old ruin – this is fueled by rumors that followers of Marie Laveau often returned to the place and used it for their voodoo rituals. There have been reports of misty apparitions and one report of a ghostly child who is seen playing hide and seek among the trees.

The ruins are still accessible and the state park guards can be helpful in locating them, but exploration there at night cannot be advised.

No. 10: Donz Bar, Lakeshore Drive, Mandeville.

Donz Bar is a popular watering hole with Mandeville locals and is slowly coming back from the floods of Hurricane Katrina. It has a reputation as a “party hard” pool hall and bar as is proven by the fact that most of its patrons returned to it after the hurricane when nothing remained but a shell of the former building: patrons brought lawn chairs and their own beer and partied on inside the devastated building.

Donz, however, is more than a legend in its own mind: the building has a history that reaches back into the darkest days of the Civil War.
Union soldiers fought hard to gain a foothold along the shores of the lake, and once there they were encamped all along what is now the manicured recreation area for this part of the parish. In the war years, the building that now houses Donz was a field hospital for injured and dying Federal troops and some say that legacy lives on.

Long before Katrina added her own ghosts to the mix there were reports of misty apparitions and unexplainable noises such as footsteps, moaning and the clinking of what sounds like surgical knives. Several customers, long before tying on their own drunk, have sworn to seeing the sad figure of a young soldier, clad in Union blue with his left arm in a sling, sitting in the shadows beyond the pool tables, staring empty-eyed at the modern melee. The figure of a ghostly nun, possibly a hospital nurse, has also been seen walking behind the bar and disappearing through the side wall of the building. Late at night, when the most die hard customers have toddled off for home, the feeling of being watched is most intense, and most employees like to get out of the building quickly. Those who linger have often experienced bar stools moving on their own or pool balls hitting together with a loud “clack” when no one else is around.

Donz is definitely rising from the ashes of the hurricane, but many are curious to see how the horrific storm will have effected the hauntings, if at all. Only time will tell, but the bloody history of Donz makes it number ten on our most haunted list!

 

Since the mid-nineteenth century generations of well-heeled and middle-class New Orleanians have escaped to the North Shore of Lake Pontchartrain, to the deep, piney woods of St. Tammany Parish for rest and respite from the toil of urban life.

Quaint little towns like Mandeville with its view of Lake Pontchartrain, its popular bath houses and hotels, Madisonville with its pirate history and lighthouse to explore, Abita Springs with healing natural springs that provided Nature’s tonic to all kinds of ailments, Covington with its commerce, Lacombe with its Creole roots, and the burgeoning railroad town of Slidell – all were the vacation destinations of the urbanites. The quiet streets and slow pace of the little towns, along with their distance from the clutter and noise of New Orleans, were the perfect place for recreation and often for escape from the numerous deadly epidemics that plagued the city population.

St. Tammany Parish was by no means a discovery of the genteel classes: it had figured prominently in the history and events of Southeast Louisiana since the lands were opened by explorers in the late 1600’s. British troops had held the area until their final defeat and expulsion in the War of 1812; prior to this, sea battles on the gray waters of Lake Pontchartrain were not uncommon and pirate Jean Lafitte even participated in such a battle near Mandeville in the late 1700’s. In the 1800’s the very rich and very popular family of Bernard Marigny de Mandeville settled in the place that came to bear his name – Mandeville – making the piney woodlands on the shores of the lake their home for half of every year. Marigny also built a large sugar plantation in the densely forested area that is now Fountainebleu State Park. Remains of the plantation home can still be found there today. Fleeing New Orleans in 1834, the notorious Madame LaLaurie took refuge at the lakefront home of the Coquille family, who assisted her in her later escape to Paris. Some suggest that Madame LaLaurie never left the North Shore, that she took up residence first in Covington and finally settling in the deep woods of Lacombe. Those who adhere to this version of the LaLaurie legend say that another infamous woman, the Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau, often visited Madame. Though the veracity of this account is still debated, it is a fact that the famous traiteur or Creole healer, Josephine Mosebury settled in the Lacombe area in a derelict cottage that had once housed her notorious grandmother, Marie Laveau’s protégé Fanny Mosebury.

With the coming of commerce to the sleepy villages along the Lake and a growing popularity among the middle classes, St. Tammany Parish became a popular weekend and vacation destination for a large cross-section of the New Orleans population. Several hotels and casinos were opened catering to this less well-to-do element and many believe this was the beginning of the end of the North Shore’s glory days as a getaway destination.

Ferries from New Orleans still plied the waters of Lake Pontchartrain as late as the early 1940’s, but with the coming of the famous Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, the “Longest Bridge in the World,” the old ferries were put out of service.

With such a wealth of history and an assortment of residents and visitors, some more infamous than others, it is no surprise that St. Tammany Parish is one of the most haunted areas in Louisiana outside of the City of New Orleans. It is easily visited in a day – or night – trip, and certainly should not be missed by anyone who is interested in the paranormal.

 

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