LEONARD GRAY / L’Observateur / October 28, 2000

LAPLACE – Spooky sights will be everywhere this Halloween, but some places have a jump-start on chills and creepy sounds. Take St. JohnTheatre in Reserve, for example.

Three adult women and the 12-year-old son of one of them were in the building on the night of Oct. 19. It was 9:30 p.m.Suddenly, the four spotted two little girls at the back of the auditorium, just inside the lobby area, watching their own feet as they danced. Theywere perhaps 6 or 7 years old, with wavy, long brown hair.

One of the women, standing on the stage, called out, “Who are you? Where are your parents?” The girls glanced up, surprised, then scurried away. The four people gavechase but could not find them throughout the ground floor of the theater.

At that moment they heard giggling coming from the balcony.

“It didn’t sound right,” one witness later said. “It wasn’t evil or anything,but I had the creeps.”As the people were preparing to lock up for the night they didn’t want to accidently lock children in the theatre, so they called 9-1-1 and asked for a deputy to search the building.

“He didn’t laugh at us,” the witness later said, and the deputy searched throughout, upstairs and down, without finding anyone.

The following day an electrician doing work in the building alone told people later he heard “furniture being moved” upstairs. He didn’t check itout.

Is the St. John Theatre haunted? No one knows for sure.This is hardly the only place for strange sights and sounds, apparently from the other side.

Destrehan Plantation has long been known for its assortment of spirits, young and old. Several children have been spotted on the rear gallerystairs and in the nursery area. At least two former owners havesometimes joined tour groups.

One woman has a photo in her possession of herself posing in a mirror, while preparing for her wedding there. Behind her, reflected in the glass,is a semi-transparent outline of a woman. There’s no face.Ghost-hunters have also visited San Francisco Plantation, following up on reports, and the new owner of Whitney Plantation said he spotted a woman holding an infant on the rear upstairs gallery where no one was known to be.

A man who was leaving a West St. John football game several years agowas on Louisiana Highway 3127 nearing the St. Charles Parish line whensomething crossed his path, running right to left.

All he could describe was an upright form, apparently naked but also covered in fur. The rear legs were dog-legs. The legendary loup-garou?Who knows? All that is known is that sometimes people see or hear things they cannot easily explain away, and the instances keep happening.

Happy Halloween!

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