A Des Allemands woman said she is finally rid of a demon that has haunted her family for the last four years.
Jessica Picou moved in with her husband in his 50-year-old home in 2006. Generations of her husband’s family have lived in the house, and from the beginning, she said she began to notice strange occurrences.
“It started off slow, with a rumbling of dishes in the kitchen,” Picou said. “My husband would joke around about the noise and say that it was the ghost of his mother because she spent all of her time in the kitchen.
“We joked about it at first, but then things started getting more serious.”
Picou said that flying objects were not out of the question and that her family was relaxing one night when they got a shock.
“We were sitting around when we heard glasses breaking,” she said. “It was a constant sound and at first I thought it was my kids. When I found (my kids), they were all scared and didn’t know what the noise was either.”
After venturing into the kitchen, Picou said she spotted several glass coasters shattered on the floor. She had recently placed them on top of a microwave.
“But the spot where they were shattered was completely across the kitchen,” she said. “I had no idea how they got there.”
While this was going on almost three years ago, Picou’s youngest son experienced something that traumatized him. He was sleeping on an air mattress when he saw someone walk back and forth by his bed.
“I have never seen him so scared,” Picou said. “He told us that he just saw these feet walking on the floor around him, but everyone else was sleeping. He didn’t look up because he was too scared.”
Another time, Picou said a family member visited her home while they were away, but could hear a man’s voice calling out to her inside.
“She thought it was my husband, but when she tried to open the door it was locked,” Picou said.
While all of these occurrences seemed strange to Picou, she didn’t worry about it too much until it started to get physical. Within the last year, she said that she has felt a presence in her house that cools the air when it walks by.
“It was always around,” she said. “I would see shadows and feel a coldness that would send a shiver up my spine.”
Once when Picou was sleeping, she said she woke up and felt that something was holding her down in the bed. She was unable to move her arms and said there was a distinct pressure there.
“I was terrified,” she said. “All of a sudden I felt something real hot on my arm and it actually burned me.”
Picou told her husband about the experience, but he thought that she had somehow hurt her arm while sleeping.
“But a few weeks later, the same thing happened and I woke up with scratches on my arms,” she said.
From that point on, Picou’s husband became concerned, but wasn’t ready to accept that the house had a ghost. A few weeks ago, that changed.
“I was sleeping and I woke up covered in sweat…I never sweat while I sleep because it’s always cool in our house,” Picou said. “Then I felt this cold feeling like ice float over me.”
Trying to prove that a ghost was in her home, Picou had started sleeping with a camera by her bed.
“I took the camera and just started taking pictures in my nightstand mirror,” she said. “I could feel something watching me, but I was too scared to look.”
The next morning, Picou examined her pictures and was shocked by what she saw.
“I could make out this obvious figure in the mirror,” she said. “It was a woman with a long, flowing dress and a jacket.”
Picou showed the picture to her husband, and he immediately fell silent.
“He told me he recognized the person in the picture, but he didn’t want to tell me who it was because it would scare me,” Picou said. “So I took the picture to some of his family members and everyone immediately recognized it as my husband’s mother, Barbara.
“That’s when I got on the phone with a minister from Houma.”
When the minister visited the home, Picou said he looked at the picture and told her family that the figure wasn’t Barbara’s ghost. Instead, he said that demons typically inhabit the figure of a loved one so that they can wreak havoc.
“He said that Barbara was in heaven, but that this demon needed to inhabit her form so that he would be invited into our home,” Picou said.
The minister began blessing every item in the home, including all furniture, windows and doors. Then he began praying with the family.
Picou’s step-mother, Thelezia Folse, works as a freelance photographer for the Herald-Guide. She witnessed the exorcism.
“When he began praying, Jessica (Picou) had this blank stare on her face like she was in shock,” Folse said. “When the minister laid his hand on her head, her whole body just started shaking.
“I was kind of skeptical about everything at first, but after seeing her like that I believe.”
Picou said she doesn’t remember much from the exorcism and said she blacked out. When she came to she was surprised to feel tears running down her face.
“While all this was going on, I’ve been having these sharp pains in my head and I have visited a lot of doctors and none of them could ever find anything wrong with me,” she said. “After the exorcism, my head has cleared.”
Just to be safe, Picou and her family called a local priest to perform a blessing last week. So far, they say that everything is back to normal.
The minister told Picou to destroy the photo of the demon, but Picou said she didn’t want to get rid of the evidence. The picture is now in the possession of the Herald-Guide.
“Just be careful,” Picou said.
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