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People have been telling ghost stories for as long as there have been campfires and slumber parties, and even further back than that.
These stories raise a question that is not always easy to answer: Do you believe in ghosts?
Take a walk on the eerie side of Morehouse Parish, and you just might become a believer.
Rumor has it that The Antique Market on the Square, housed in the old Snyder store in downtown Bastrop, is home to the spirit of a former employee named Gertrude.
Clara Patrick ran the store for 12 years and said things happened there that defied easy explanation.
“There were just little things that happened,” she said. “Just things we couldn’t explain.”
One day, Patrick said she had been cleaning and had sat down to rest. She looked over at some coat hangers and saw them swinging back and forth on a rack.
“I guess it could have been caused by vibrations from a truck going by or something, but I really don’t have any way to explain it. They were swinging back and forth by themselves.”
Another time, Patrick said her son was going through old receipts in the attic, where Sampson Snyder’s hat and shoes were stored.
“He came down and said, ‘Who threw Mr. Sampson’s hat at me?’ The hat just went flying over and landed right next to him.”
Patrick said now that the store has changed hands, she still works there and sometimes the bell rings for no reason.
“One time it seemed to be dinging every 15 minutes, and I would go to greet the customer -- and there would be nobody there.
“I’ve never really been afraid. We would just tell Miss Gertrude we knew it was her, and to behave herself.”
Martha McLean also works at the store and said she hears “the strangest noises” in the attic at night.
“I’ve never actually seen any ghosts, but I’ve had a few things happen to me,” said Mclean.
In the 1970s, she and her daughter were living in her late grandmother’s home on McCreight Street. Her grandmother had been blind and had never seen her grandchild.
“She used to feel her features and say, ‘That’s not your daughter,’” said McLean.
One night, her five-year-old daughter said that her great grandmother had come to her bedroom.
“She wasn’t blind anymore,” said McLean. “She looked at my daughter and said, ‘You are Martha’s kid. My daughter is 37 now and to this day, she swears that great old grandmother visited her that night.”
People have been telling ghost stories for as long as there have been campfires and slumber parties, and even further back than that.
These stories raise a question that is not always easy to answer: Do you believe in ghosts?
Take a walk on the eerie side of Morehouse Parish, and you just might become a believer.
Rumor has it that The Antique Market on the Square, housed in the old Snyder store in downtown Bastrop, is home to the spirit of a former employee named Gertrude.
Clara Patrick ran the store for 12 years and said things happened there that defied easy explanation.
“There were just little things that happened,” she said. “Just things we couldn’t explain.”
One day, Patrick said she had been cleaning and had sat down to rest. She looked over at some coat hangers and saw them swinging back and forth on a rack.
“I guess it could have been caused by vibrations from a truck going by or something, but I really don’t have any way to explain it. They were swinging back and forth by themselves.”
Another time, Patrick said her son was going through old receipts in the attic, where Sampson Snyder’s hat and shoes were stored.
“He came down and said, ‘Who threw Mr. Sampson’s hat at me?’ The hat just went flying over and landed right next to him.”
Patrick said now that the store has changed hands, she still works there and sometimes the bell rings for no reason.
“One time it seemed to be dinging every 15 minutes, and I would go to greet the customer -- and there would be nobody there.
“I’ve never really been afraid. We would just tell Miss Gertrude we knew it was her, and to behave herself.”
Martha McLean also works at the store and said she hears “the strangest noises” in the attic at night.
“I’ve never actually seen any ghosts, but I’ve had a few things happen to me,” said Mclean.
In the 1970s, she and her daughter were living in her late grandmother’s home on McCreight Street. Her grandmother had been blind and had never seen her grandchild.
“She used to feel her features and say, ‘That’s not your daughter,’” said McLean.
One night, her five-year-old daughter said that her great grandmother had come to her bedroom.
“She wasn’t blind anymore,” said McLean. “She looked at my daughter and said, ‘You are Martha’s kid. My daughter is 37 now and to this day, she swears that great old grandmother visited her that night.”
McLean later moved to a home in Lightwood, where she heard stories of an apparition of two old-time trappers leading a white horse that hovered above the ground.
She owned a white horse at the time and when neighborhood children saw it, they would run away screaming, “There’s that ghost horse!”
McLean said she used to keep a curio cabinet full of antique toys. When she and her husband would leave town, they would return to find the toys on the floor as if someone had been playing with them.
One toy in particular -- an antique dice game called a Chuck-a-Luck -- seemed to wind up out of the cabinet more often than the other toys.
“This went on and on for years,” she said. “But it started when we bought that one toy.”
Local legend has it Kalorama Nature Preserve on the Collinston Road is haunted by coffee magnate William B. Reily, who built a summer home there in 1929.
When Reily died in 1942, he was briefly laid to rest in an above-ground crypt on the grounds. Nothing remains of the crypt except for a mysterious stone slab, uncovered during this year’s drought.
Kalorama curator Beth Erwin said she is familiar with the stories of a haunting, but she has never had a ghostly encounter there.
A Bastrop man who wishes to remain anonymous said he has heard stories about a ghostly wagon pulled by mules on Knox Ferry Road.
“The story is, you’ll think it’s real until you see light underneath it, like it’s floating,” he said. “I was told about this thing, and I’ve often been tempted to go out and try to see it.”
Walter Bonner said many years ago, he was looking out the window of his grandfather’s house at Point Pleasant and saw three ghostly figures in old-fashioned clothing.
“I looked a couple of times and shook my head to be sure I was actually seeing this,” he said, “before turning away from the window.”
Then there are the ghost lights.
Readers may recall the author’s investigation into the famous Crossett Light in 2007. The light -- rumored to be the lantern of a headless railroad brakeman -- appeared as a white orb hovering over the ground.
Similar ghost lights have been reported on the Kilbourne Highway in Jones, and in the small community of Vaughn north of Beekman.
A former employee of the Enterprise used to report seeing eerie flashes of light on La. 133 as he drove through Oak Ridge at night. He said the lights always seemed to flash near a roadside cemetery.
Sometimes there is a logical explanation for what seem like paranormal encounters.
Eldred Scoggins said he has lived on Cooper Lake Road since 1935. He recalls when he was about 15, some pranksters pumped up the old organ at Bartholomew Methodist Church so it began playing by itself.
“So it came down the line that it was haunted,” said Scoggins with a chuckle.
Another spooky tale about Bartholomew Methodist Church is recounted by Rebecca DeArmond-Huskey in “Bartholomew’s Song: A Bayou History”:
Around 1917, two men were traveling to Bastrop and stopped at the church to escape a storm. Here they encountered an “apparition” of a woman in a white dress, with long, dark hair and blood on her hands. The men fled in terror.
This “ghost” later turned out to be a disturbed woman who had scratched her hands on briars while wandering through the woods.
Some stories are eerie without being supernatural. While time and space do not permit all of the stories that people have to share, we close with one that is related in “Bartholomew’s Song” and also recalled by several long-time residents of Morehouse Parish.
Sometime about 1906 -- or further back, depending on the source -- a Dr. Jones died in the community of Jones. His widow could not bear to part with him, so she built a wooden crypt behind her house and placed her husband’s body inside, in a glass-topped casket so she could sit and talk with him as though he was still alive.
The man in the glass casket was later buried in the Jones-Hadley Cemetery on the Jones Cutoff Road, according to most sources.
Bastrop Daily Enterprise/WES HELBLING
Is it possible this antique dice game is haunted? Martha McLean of Lightwood said when she added this device to her collection of antique toys, strange things began to happen.
