Southern Superstitions

            I’ve had friends who have tackled me rather than let me sweep dirt over my threshold after twilight. One former coworker of mine refused to drink from a cup that she had left on the table, convinced that bad mojo could be placed in a drink when a person is not looking.

            Superstitions? Or do they know something we don't?

            Here’s a few Southern "superstitions" gleaned from newspapers and one I related in my ghost book, "Haunted Lafayette, Louisiana."

            Happy Halloween!

            The 1893 Logansport Pharos-Tribune: “At Washington, Ky., there is an old bridge reported to be haunted at nightfall by a decapitated duelist, and a branch of the old Marshall family of Virginia, settled there, owns a plantation, which, like the White Lady of the Hohenzollerns, never fails to make its appearance just before a death.”

            The 1902 Charlotte News: “No person who touches a dead body will be haunted by its spirit. To kill a ghost it must be shot with a bullet made of a silver quarter dollar. To see the new moon through clouds of tree tops means trouble; if the disk is clear, good luck; if seen over the right shoulder, joy; if over the left, anger and disappointment.”

            The 1967 Monroe News-Star: “Amusing superstitions have leapt out of the flickering of a candle light. If a flame burns blue, there is a ghost in the house. A spark signifies that a letter is coming to the person sitting nearest the candle.”

            The 1965 Lake Charles American Press: “A piece of wood taken from a gallows will keep away ghosts. A baby must fall out of bed three times before its first birthday or it will grow up stupid. To get rid of a wart, rub it with a piece of pork stolen from a neighbor.”

Madame Long Fingers and Tai Tais

Excerpted from “Haunted Lafayette, Louisiana” by Cheré Dastugue Coen, published by The History Press

            Karlos Knott of Arnaudville makes excellent beer through his company, Bayou Teche Brewing. One day after a tour of his new facility, we got to talking about ghosts and legends. He was told as a child that if he didn’t behave, Madame Grand Doigt would get him, arriving at night to eat his toes!

            In English, Madame Grand Doigt means Mrs. Long Fingers but Knott envisioned the woman with incredibly long fingernails and capable of sliding said nails into door locks so she would have easy access to bad little children.

            Mrs. Long Fingers has to be related to the tataille or Tai Tai, part of the larger boogie man family. Blanche M. Lewis wrote in the Acadiana Gazette that the Tai Tai were giant bugs, “usually a roach,” that came after bad children at night, which would definitely be enough to scare my roach-fearing sister after any wrongdoings. Roaches grow quite large in the South Louisiana swamps — and they fly!

            The Dictionary of Louisiana French defines tataille as a “threatening beast or monster.” The reference book further states that “ta-taille is said to be a giant creature that resembles a cockroach. It comes after dark and cuts off the toes of mean children.”

            “All my life, we heard that the Tai Tai (or however you spell it) was going to get us if we weren’t good,” said Lafayette resident Judy Bastien. “Also, when someone was looking really bad, like unkempt, you might say they look like un Tai-Tai.”

            “Tai Tai's were only supposed to scare little ones into not digging or wandering off,” said Alice Guillotte of Lafayette. “ ‘Stop or Tai Tai will get you.’ Later, Tai Tai would be used as sort of joking about what might be out in dark like a boggie man. A little bit serious.”

Cheré Coen is an award-winning travel writer specializing in the Deep South. She is the author of "Forest Hill, Louisiana: A Bloom Town History," "Exploring Cajun Country: A Historic Guide to Acadiana" and "Haunted Lafayette, Louisiana" and co-author of "Magic's in the Bag: Creating Spellbinding Gris Gris Bags and Sachets." She also writes Louisiana romances under Cherie Claire, including "A Cajun Dream" and "The Letter." Write her at cherecoen@gmail.com.

Learn tales of 'Haunted Lafayette' Thursday at Vermilionville

            It’s that time of year, when the sun’s descent toward the horizon produces shadows long and sinewy. And if you follow the old Celtic calendar, and the origins of Halloween, the veil between living and dead grows thin.

            Or maybe we just need an excuse to be scared.
            I’ll be telling ghost stories from my book Haunted Lafayette, Louisiana at 6:30 p.m. Thursday at Vermilionville for the presentation “Ghosts Along the Bayou.” And if that’s not enticing enough, Donner-Peltier Distillery of Thibodaux will be handing out samples — to adults — of their Rougarou rum. Come out and hear about Lafayette’s haunted spots.
                         Looking for some more haunted suggestions to keep you up at night?

             Sarah Bartlett travels the world for ghost tales, vampire myths, UFO sightings, sacred spots and more in National Geographic’s “Guide to the World’s Supernatural Places.” There’s well-known sites such as Machu Picchu, Stonehenge and Area 51 but lesser-known odd places to pique your interest, such as the astronomical Ocmulgee in Macon, Georgia, the more than 30 labyrinths of Zayatsky Island or the Manchester, Vermont, church where a dead woman’s organs were burned in the hopes of releasing her husband’s current ill wife from a vampire’s grip. Naturally, the Deep South is well represented. Spotlighting 250 sites, the book offers a great trip around the world for lovers of the mysterious and the unexplained.
            Grab your EMF readers and go. Travel writer Kathleen Walls, a native of New Orleans, takes readers on a Southern road trip with “Hosts With Ghosts: Haunted Historic Hotels in the Southeast.” In addition to well-researched ghost tales at numerous inns and hotels of the Southeast, Walls offers a travel guide to the areas mentioned, plus a handy resource list. It’s the perfect addition to a southeastern road trip ghost tour.

Cheré Coen is an award-winning travel writer specializing in the Deep South. She is the author of "Forest Hill, Louisiana: A Bloom Town History," "Exploring Cajun Country: A Historic Guide to Acadiana" and "Haunted Lafayette, Louisiana" and co-author of "Magic's in the Bag: Creating Spellbinding Gris Gris Bags and Sachets." She also writes Louisiana romances under Cherie Claire, including "A Cajun Dream" and "The Letter." Write her at cherecoen@gmail.com.

Shreveport's Logan Mansion and other haunted sites

            I’ve been to some of the most haunted properties in Shreveport and had some interesting experiences during Shreveport’s inaugural Paranormal Festival in 2013. For instance, I joined paranormal investigators at the Spring Street Museum, the oldest building in Shreveport and once the site of the precursor to First National Bank. The bank’s founder Edward Jacobs, originally Ephraim Jacobi, arrived in Shreveport with his brother Benjamin from Pomerania in 1844. Both were of Jewish heritage but changed their names and married non-Jewish women.

Spring Street Museum basement

            We used a “ghost box” on the top floor, a device that captures white noise and radio frequencies. After nothing but static for several minutes, we asked for a name and immediately received “Edward.” Other comments on the box were the number “six” when we asked how many we were (we were six). In the basement, we saw shadow movement, heard a boy’s voice on the ghost box and a flashlight turned on by itself.

Logan Mansion

            Then five loud knocks happened on the cellar door. We opened the door, located at the top of a set of stairs, and asked why those on the first floor had knocked. Those on the first floor replied, “We heard it too, were wondering why you were knocking.”

            We also visited the Logan Mansion, located at 725 Austin Place not far from historic Oakland Cemetery and the Municipal Auditorium, once home to the radio show, Louisiana Hayride, of which one of its performers, a Mississippi native named Elvis, became famous.

            The Victorian-style Logan house was built in 1897 and has been lovingly restored by current owner Vicki Lebrun, who has been living there for years. The story as to who is haunting the Logan Mansion may be a young girl who fell out of the third-story window.

Logan Mansion

            When I visited the Logan during the paranormal tour — Lebrun had been gracious and was allowing people to tour in small groups during the day — there was only three of us following Lebrun through the mansion. As we paused in the kitchen for her to explain odd happenings within its wall someone spoke loudly behind us, “Hey!” We all turned around — it was that loud — but no one was there. Lebrun said it may have been her cell phone but we weren’t convinced; the voice had been loud enough, right behind where we stood, that all three of us jerked around.

            But don’t take our word for it. Visit the Logan Mansion and see for yourself. The Logan Mansion will host haunted candlelight tours on Halloween night, which is Friday, Oct. 31, 2014. Guided tours exploring the house will begin every 20 minutes from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Admission is $10 and tours last approximately one hour; reservations not required.

            At the Halloween tour, guests will see all 17 rooms of the mansion as well as the 2,000-square-foot attic, hearing ghost stories along the way.

Logan's third floor

            “This isn’t a staged tour, there aren’t people jumping out at you or anything like that,” said Lebrun in the tour’s press release. “Guests will get a tour of the entire house, and they’ll hear stories about the haunting that we have here.”
          

            Of related interest, the house across the street was used in the opening credits of HBO's "True Blood."                                    

            Historic Haunts of Shreveport, a “historic and haunted” trolley tour of historic sites in Shreveport that are reputed to be haunted, will be rolling on Saturday, Nov. 1. Tickets are $55 per person, and may be purchased at www.historichauntsofshreveport.com. Net proceeds from the Historic Haunts of Shreveport tours benefit historic preservation efforts.  

            Want more? Oakland Cemetery has some wonderful stories, including young Cora Lee Wilson whose grave constantly falls apart, the bricks routinely pushed out — from the inside!  The cemetery also contains an eerie mound of hundreds of yellow fever victims buried hastily without markers. Across the street is the Municipal Auditorium, rumored to be haunted, according to those who work there. Many people swear it’s the ghost of Elvis, but we think Elvis would have made it home to Graceland and not the site of his early career.

            Who’s haunting the auditorium? You’ll have to visit and find out. Or watch the GhostHunters episode when they recently visited looking for the King.

Cheré Coen is an award-winning travel writer specializing in the Deep South. She is the author of "Forest Hill, Louisiana: A Bloom Town History," "Exploring Cajun Country: A Historic Guide to Acadiana" and "Haunted Lafayette, Louisiana" and co-author of "Magic's in the Bag: Creating Spellbinding Gris Gris Bags and Sachets." She also writes Louisiana romances under Cherie Claire, including "A Cajun Dream" and "The Letter." Write her at cherecoen@gmail.com.

The Monteleone Hotel, New Orleans

            The historic Monteleone Hotel in New Orleans remains an elegant landmark, home to the Carousel Bar and its literary heritage and fine dining at Criollo restaurant.

            And then there are the ghosts.

            There are many spirits refusing to check out of the Monteleone, including former employees, jilted lovers and children.

            Maurice Begere was on vacation to New Orleans with his parents, Josephine and Jacques, and an au pair, staying in Room 1462 in the late 19th century. The family wanted to take in the show at the French Opera House on Bourbon Street but young Maurice stayed behind to nurse a head cold. On the way back to the hotel, the horse bolted and Jacques Begeres was killed after being thrown from the carriage. Josephine died a year later.

            I’ve heard two tales, that both parents died leaving the boy an orphan and that Josephine lived only to die from grief a year later. The first story maintains that Maurice’s sickness developed into scarlet fever with the young boy dying at the Monteleone, forever haunting Room 1462. The later has him searching the hotel for his parents.

Carousel Bar

            Remember how your parents told you not to jump on the bed? A young boy in the 1960s ignored his parents’ warning while staying on the 14th floor. He fell off the side of the bed and went through the window, being killed instantly on Royal Street below. There are people who swear the young boy still resides on the 14th floor, heard playing in the hallway with other children. Perhaps he and Maurice enjoy taunting guests together.

            Andrea Thornton was in charge of the hotel’s sales and marketing when I talked to her for a story on the hotel in 2009 for the Lafayette Advertiser newspaper. She recounted comments left behind by guests. “We got a few comment cards that ‘Everything was great, including the ghosts,’” Thornton told me.

            Room 1467 attracts the brave since it’s said to house five spirits. Several psychics have visited the room and one of them passed out on the bed, Thornton said. The psychics also felt strong energy on the roof, where one of the guests in Room 1467 allegedly jumped to her death. A psychic claimed to have seen a woman dressed in a formal black and white gown, like a cotillion ball gown, and believed she had been engaged to be married.

            Thornton also related that the visiting psychics felt strong energy in the café, which is now the Criollo restaurant, and in the part of the hotel that was once a neighboring building called the Hotel Victor. Psychics picked up soldiers and nurses in the former Hotel Victor once used as a Civil War hospital for Union soldiers.

            The International Society of Paranormal Research visited the Monteleone and found several spirits lingering — and we’re not talking the excellent cocktails in the Carousel Bar. Two men remain, including “Red,” a former hotel engineer who worked in the boiler room below the restaurant, and William Wilderner, a former guest of the hotel.

            All spirits at the Hotel Monteleone are friendly, claim owners, more mischievous than scary.

            “As far as seeing things, it’s the little children,” Thornton had told me in 2009. “Not so much people as things moved around, misplaced.”

            Click here for an account of a guest’s haunted experience at The Monteleone.

            If you want to get in the spirit of things, pun intended, Criollo Restaurant is offering a “The Legend Of The Rou-Ga-Roux” spirited dinner this month. Want to know who the Rou-Ga-Roux is (and that's not the correct spelling)? Check back here next week.

Cheré Coen is an award-winning travel writer specializing in the Deep South. She is the author of "Forest Hill, Louisiana: A Bloom Town History," "Exploring Cajun Country: A Historic Guide to Acadiana" and "Haunted Lafayette, Louisiana" and co-author of "Magic's in the Bag: Creating Spellbinding Gris Gris Bags and Sachets." She also writes Louisiana romances under Cherie Claire, including "A Cajun Dream" and "The Letter." Write her at cherecoen@gmail.com.