Guests, visitors report apparitions
When the bells were heard ringing on the front door of Ormond Plantation and no one could be found nearby, it was believed to be the daughter of original owner Pierre Trepagnier.
It’s one of the many ghost stories from the plantation, as well as Destrehan Plantation on River Road in St. Charles Parish. It’s also Halloween and the best time to share stories about apparitions that frequent these old homesteads.
At Ormond, the little girl with curly, blond hair has been seen and supposedly heard numerous times over the years. Some say she’s still waiting for her father to return home in Destrehan. She’s apparently been waiting since 1798, when he left the family meal one evening to meet with a supposed Spanish government official waiting outside and never returned.
No trace of him has reportedly been found to this day, but there are numerous stories about the little playful ghost.
Family, guests and staff have reported seeing her or hearing the bells chiming, but found no sign of a person who could have caused it. A staff member, who asked not to be identified, said he heard what sounded like someone entering the building when he heard the bells, but also saw no one in or outside the plantation at the time.
However, the little spirit apparently doesn’t mind making an appearance.
Photographs taken at a wedding rehearsal dinner on Halloween eve showed two little girls standing on both sides of the bride-to-be, but there was supposed to be only one flower girl standing next to her. The little ghost, with her light colored hair, was apparently the mysterious visitor on the other side described as cute and innocent.
At a birthday party in the courtyard, the father of the child entered the plantation and saw a little girl running up the stairs. When he followed to tell her she shouldn’t be playing in the house, there was no one there.
A visitor produced a photograph of a ghostly image apparently peering into the building, but no one recognized the face.
Several years ago, Chris Bird, a member of the owner’s family, said her daughter, Reagan, six or seven years old at the time, was having a sleepover at the plantation. During the night, after the other girls fell asleep, Reagan told her mother she saw a little girl walk across the room into the bathroom.
“She looked like an actual girl in a white dress,” Bird said of Reagan’s description. “She wasn’t ghostly at all.”
It was after midnight when her daughter saw the specter, but she just sat there for hours awake rather than disturb her cousins about the sighting. Reagan is the great niece of the late Johnny Carmouche, former plantation owner, and the location remains under family ownership.
Another relative, Danny Bird, recounted how a family member told an amazing story about an elderly aunt who visited the plantation and was overheard talking to someone in the middle of the night. The startling twist in the story is the aunt, who had the mentality of a child and rarely communicated with people, was heard saying, “What are you doing?” in a place called the doll’s room there. The aunt told stunned family members that she spoke to a little girl with blond hair who asked her if she wanted to play.
As one of the oldest plantations in Louisiana, the homestead is believed to be one of the oldest French West Indies style Creole plantations on the Mississippi River. Trepagnier built the original plantation and later bought by Richard Butler, who named it “Ormond” after Ormond Castle in Ireland (the home of James Butler, the Earl of Ormond).
Also in the area, Destrehan Plantation also has had reports of mysterious sightings and sounds of talking and doors opening. Some of them have even been photographed – or so it appears.
Evelyn Carbone, who has been a tour guide there for 26 years, said a visitor reported talking to a 6-foot-tall man wearing a scarf around his neck and a long black cape at a Christmas open house a couple of years ago. One minute he was talking and the next he disappeared in front of the woman. He is believed to be Nicholas Noelle, one of the plantation’s owners, of whom the guest identified in detail.
Carbone recounted a private tour she had with the late New Orleans musician Allen Toussaint and members of Fats Domino’s band a few years ago where the drummer announced, “Did you know there’s a woman that’s been following you?” He described her as having long black hair wearing a 1850s hoop skirt dress that was white. When Carbone relayed the story to her executive manager, she replied she’d seen her, too.
Several visitors have reported seeing two children in white playing on the stairs, which Carbone said is possible with 14 children having been born in the house. Staff members also reported seeing two girls, also with blond hair, believed to be twins. In one account, they supposedly looked at this person and then disappeared.
Guests and visitors have made numerous reports of seeing a dark-haired girl in her teens. Believed to be Zelia Destrehan, she prefers to stay in a particular bedroom that was hers in life.
As two men removed the set from shooting scenes for the movie, “The Interview with a Vampire,” at the location, they told Carbone that “They could keep their ghosts.” One of the men told her they were removing a large chandelier that evening placed there for the movie, but the ladder he used shook so hard it near shook him off. They were so spooked by the incident that they left, refusing to work there after dark, and returned the next day to remove the lighting.
In 2006, Australian mystic Victoria Maison, who said she was blessed with the ability to speak to souls or ghosts seeking help, prayed over a ghost she saw on the rear stairway of Destrehan Plantation. Maison described the ghost as a mistress of the manor in her 30’s and her name was “Lucy,” who was bound to the location because of mistreating the slaves. The mystic said she prayed for the woman and the slaves, as well as asked the curse that kept her there be lifted, and then claimed Lucy had been freed.
The plantation had been the site of a slave revolt in 1811 and it was said the head of the rebellion, a Haitian, put a curse on all the plantation’s owners.
“There are people who come to the plantation and want to experience something with a strong imagination, especially around Halloween,” Carbone said. “Everyone has to experience their own experience. They need to make up their own mind if they believe.”
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