Archive for July, 2010

>The Haunting at Oak Alley Plantation

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Most people probably recognize Oak Alley Plantation in Vacherie, Louisiana, as the macabre home of Louis du Pointe du Lac in the film Interview with the Vampire. When I was younger, I remember seeing that film for the first time and thinking it was too beautiful to be real. It had to have been a creation of the set designers to fulfill the image that Anne Rice created of Louis and Lestat’s time together on that old eighteenth century plantation. Let’s all take a moment to appreciate Brad Pitt before he got saddled with fourteen kids and Vampiria for a life partner (tongue firmly planted in cheek!).

Still with me? Don’t forget to breathe. There you go. In, out, in, out. Good. On with my story…. Many years later, I found out that the “Pointe du Lac” plantation was not just a place created for a vampire movie. The plantation was real and it had a few ghost stories of its own worthy of Hollywood.

In the earliest days of Louisiana, a man planted two rows of oak trees that led to the Mississippi River. The land changed hands several times over the years until the Roman family purchased it and began building the plantation house in 1837. The Romans came to Louisiana from old French nobility and became very prominent people in the Creole community. Creoles were people born in Louisiana to European parents and they generally looked down on Americans, thinking they had no manners or decorum, and these Creoles tended to stick to each other. They were rather strict with their society rules.

It is said the main source of the ghostly activity at Oak Alley came from these strict Creole society rules. A girl by the name of Louise Roman grew up on the plantation and she was every bit the proper Creole girl who wanted a good Creole husband. One night, a suitor came to call on her but he’d enjoyed too much alcohol before he got there and his drunken condition deeply offended her. There are a couple of versions of this story but she either ordered him out of the house and turned to run back upstairs, or the drunken suitor attempted to kiss her and she turned to run back upstairs. A terrible accident happened. Louise tripped on her long dress on the way up the stairs and either suffered a compound leg fracture or the iron hoops under her skirt left a huge laceration on her leg (that part of the story varies too). She was taken to bed and eventually gangrene set in on her leg and it had to be amputated. After that, she considered herself damaged goods and was so scarred by the accident that she left Oak Alley to become a nun in St. Louis.

Many people over the years have reported seeing a lady in black wander the house. Many believe this is Louise. Other people have reported feeling anxiety and the sensation of falling on the staircase as well. Here are several stories reported by the Oak Alley staff:

Upon closing the house one evening following a private function, Denise Becnel, assistant house manger, her daughter, Kaysha and tour guides Connie Donadieu and Billie Jo Bourgeois, were surprised to notice that the lamp in what is referred to as the lavender room was still on. The four ladies each remembered clearly that all but security system illumination had been turned off prior to their leaving the house and heading toward the parking lot. As they stood looking up in bewilderment at the light shining from the lavender room windows, they saw the shadowy figure of a lady closely resembling photos they had often seen of Mrs. Stewart, last resident owner of Oak Alley, gazing down at them from her pleasant bedroom lookout. Denise had no more asked, “What’s that?”, when the upstairs gallery lamps blinked once. That was enough! All four took off toward their cars and lost no time in exiting the plantation grounds. Not until they were passing by the alley on River Road did they look at the house and saw to their amazement that all windows were dark and everything was as it should be.

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Juliette Temple, tour guide, saw a figure seated on one of the beds in the lavender room and, on another occasion, had an encounter in the kitchen area with a ghostly man in gray wearing boots.

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Helen Dumas and Theresa Harrison, tour guides and family retainers for many years, claimed they often felt and heard “things,” not the least of which was the sight of billowing dust and the clear sound of a horse drawn carriage driving up one of the plantation gravel roads, but nothing ever materialized.

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Louise Borne, office worker, claimed to have seen empty chairs rocking in unison, things moved from table and desk tops, and both she and Peggy Rodrigue, tour guide and restaurant assistant, attest to the phenomena of the clip-clop of an invisible horse drawn carriage, and the sound of crying from somewhere in the mansion.

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Then there was the time that a candlestick flew across the room during a tour conducted by guide, “Petesy” Dugas. This baffling occurrence was witnessed by some 35 Gray Line bus passengers who were visiting Oak Alley.

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This is a video someone put together of the tour the plantation gives. You can see the staircase where Louise Roman fell when the people are all going upstairs and then again where the tour guide talks about the meaning of pineapples to nineteenth century planter etiquette. Please ignore the awful costumes the tour guides are wearing. They are not at all accurate for the nineteenth century period! The tour guide also sounds a little robotic to me too but Oak Alley has so much tourist traffic that the guides must work very hard.

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>The Demise of Claude

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Since I have to teach people methods of self-hypnosis and meditation, I decided to go through a refresher session with myself last night before I went to bed. That’s the only time when the house is quiet enough for me to do that sort of thing. I’m a big believer in practice what you preach and I wanted to be sure I was getting the steps right before I taught more people since I haven’t done self-hypnosis in quite a while. I really didn’t expect anything substantial out of it just because I’m so out of practice. At most, I expected to experience some relaxation and the sensation of being re-energized. That’s the main reason why I engage in self-hypnosis and meditation, not for more past life memories. I have enough of those and I’ve made peace with most of it. These days my work with helping other people make peace with their past troubles keeps me occupied and it actually helped me in making peace with most of the past things that were haunting me. I certainly didn’t expect to go through a new memory from my past through my experimental self-hypnosis last night but I did.

In the eighteenth century, I lived in France. Paris and the surrounding area, to be exact. I have pieced together several events and identified members of my soul group over the years from that life, although my nineteenth century past life has always taken precedence because it’s well-documented. I can’t prove the eighteenth century past life without learning French again and digging through scattered historical French records. A lot of it was lost in the Revolution too. Frankly, I don’t feel the need to go to great lengths to prove a life existed when I already endured that grueling process with Fanny Chamberlain for the last twelve years. I know myself well enough now to recognize when I’m experiencing legitimate past life recall and when I’m not. Proof is for other people. The experiences are for me and the growth of my own soul.

Very rarely do I talk about my life in France because parts of it were so traumatic that they caused phobias in this life; namely, loud crowds, the dark, things around my neck, and most weaponry. Most people only know the basic bare bones story, which is that I was the youngest daughter in a low-ranking noble family and we were all executed among thousands of others in the Reign of Terror. I was executed a few weeks after the Queen, I think, but I’m not sure the time is correct. That’s the thing about past life puzzles. They just don’t come with a time stamp. You can see why I don’t enjoy talking about it openly though. The people who know the details are trusted enough that I know they’re not going to talk about it.

I had a father who worked in what I believe was in the financial department of the French government. I had a mother and an uncle as well, me being closer to my uncle than both of my parents. I had an older sister (waving to said sister who knows who she is!) who spent most of her time that I remember lobbying for her marriage to a man by the name of Claude. I don’t know a lot about him other than the fact that he wore a uniform for something like being a guard or some kind of military associated with the royal residences. They were crazy in love with each other but for whatever reason, our father stalled the engagement for years. Maybe he was hoping she would marry above herself instead. I don’t know. I do know that there was a lot of resentment toward him from her.

So last night when I set myself up for the self-hypnosis, I wasn’t thinking about that lifetime at all. I was actually thinking about trying to relieve some pain I’ve been feeling in my right hip. It was supposed to be just a simple trip in and out of the meditation state and then I was going to send the lesson out to the people who needed it.

Deep into the session, I felt very relaxed and pleased with myself that I managed to talk myself out of feeling so much pain (mind over matter does work). A hazy image started to take shape of a doorway with heavily detailed white molding at the top, and as I looked through the doorway, the images got clearer of a man speaking seriously to my sister and my mother standing off to the side behind her. My sister wore a sort of dark sage green dress. I remember that clearly because I really liked the color. She had a full face and a body like the women you see in Botticelli paintings, meaning she wasn’t a skinny girl like I was but she would have been considered a beauty in those days. I remember her cheeks and lips were plump. Maybe I noticed it because I wanted to look more like her. I don’t know.

I came into the room and I thought her color looked bad like she was sick. The man handed her a document and she started to cry while she read it. She saw me at that point and shouted (in French), “They murdered my Claude!” She fell on her knees and let out this horrifying, guttural scream. I approached her and put my arms around her. I distinctly remember feeling the fabric of her dress in my hand and the way her skin felt when I kissed the side of her face. She was completely rigid and I had to pull her to me because the sound of her crying was difficult to take without trying to pacify her.

The thing that tells me that this was a real past life memory is quite simple: in this present life, I can’t use my hands. I don’t know what the texture of embroidered silk feels like in my hand, nor do I know what curly hair feels like, or another person’s face, or anything like that, yet I experienced those things in the self-hypnosis session as if it was an everyday occurrence. Had it been a flight of fancy or a random dream, I would not have experienced the physical sensations associated with hands because I don’t use my hands at all now. This classifies as evidence of knowledge previously unknown to the person experiencing the past life memory. It is a legitimate form of evidence.

As far as I can surmise, Claude met his end sometime in what’s known as the September Massacres. A lot of other little things pieced together tell me that memory took place close to the end of my life. In September of 1792, I only had about a year left to live. I can’t say it with certainty but I believe Claude was working in or around either Versailles or the Tuileries at the time of his death. I believe hundreds of people were massacred at Versailles on September 9, so that is a contender for the point at which he was killed. My sister spent the last year of her life, as far as I can tell, living like a zombie. I think she wanted to die when her time came, although only she could tell me what was in her mind and heart for certain. I don’t think I knew Claude that well but nobody should have died that way.

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>Dressgasm of the Day: 1860s or 1870s cotton

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Today’s dressgasm is an interesting choice because I feel that it was originally a late 1850s or early 1860s dress that was altered in the 1870s to continue being worn in that decade’s fashion guidelines. I would classify this dress as a visiting dress, walking dress, etc. That sort of thing. By that, I mean the lady probably wore this dress in the daytime when she intended to be seen by her friends, strangers on the street, and yes, her enemies. Women of the nineteenth century were no different than the women of today with having the desire to dress to impress when they were out and about visiting people, shopping and so forth.

I believe this dress is made if lightweight cotton or possibly cotton blended with wool. The bodice may be lightly boned, given the firm shape and long point at the waist. There is a delicate design printed on the fabric and around the sleeve caps are black lace accents with black around the cuffs with ivory lace accents.

The reason why I feel this dress may be a blend of several different decades is the fact that the skirt is the classic bell shape of the 1850s and 1860s, while the bodice shape and sleeves don’t exactly fit the standards of those decades. The sleeves are quite tight without an exaggerated elbow and the shoulder seams are higher than what was fashionable before and during the Civil War. Another clue that the bodice was altered later is the lace draped over the shoulders and over the bosom, which became the fashion in the 1870s. All of these aspects give me a good impression that the dress was altered. Women who were not so wealthy often used and reused clothes as long as they could to make the most of the money they spent on the fabric and trim to make the dress. Since this dress was not silk and the design was not terribly complicated, I do not believe this lady was of any great wealth. This was probably her best dress.

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