MISTWOOD ESTATE
Location:
Description Of Place:
Ghostly Manifestations:
Located north of New Orleans beyond the shore of Lake Ponchartrain, the plantation is situated in the middle of nowhere, Mistwood Plantation is surrounded by woodland surrounding grounds that once grew acres of cotton, sage, thyme and other crops. Sections of apple and peach trees still prosper on the grounds, forgotten wagon trails off the grounds lead to a forgotten village in the trees that seems deserted until one finds themselves there after dark and starts noticing figures moving through town and shadows beyond the trees.
"I don't go in the woods after dark." Andrew Mistwood confesses. A former college quarterback turned chef, he runs a restaurant behind the Old Mistwood Hotel on the grounds for tourists and amateur ghost-hunters who come looking for ghosts. In his youth, though, he managed to learn the grounds intimately.
"As a kid, it was not unusual for my brothers, cousins and myself to explore the buildings and structures," He adds. "But my father who was executor of the estate at the time often kept the buildings locked up tight. Nevertheless, we were often searching for relics in the grounds or peeking in the windows of the old cabins and cottages. I stopped following them out when after looking into the old tailor shop on the main street I saw a man inside sitting at the table. Back then, I'm sure it looked real, and to this day, it still seems real, but at the time, it scared the hell out of me. I learned to channel myself into sports afterward."
Today, the old Mistwood Hotel is abandoned but preserved back to it's original condition with running water, electricity and other amenities. Although its not very common, guests are randomly offered a chance to stay in the hotel if but to have a chance to experience activity. Andrew knows a few stories from guests who have been here who have heard sounds of footsteps coming up the stairs up at night, noises of a party from downstairs and apparitions mistaken as other guests passing into other rooms.
"Last October, we had a team of amateur ghost-hunters here who were adamant to stay here and try to see a ghost." Andrew adds. "But since it was the off-season, we gave them a cut-rate and let them fill the upstairs with cameras, proximity sensors and other things. They pretty much had free-range of the place for the night trying to get something. However, sometime after 3AM, something came up that really stirred them up. I'm not sure of what happened myself, but the version of the story I had heard was that after hours of not getting anything happening in the place, they decided to retire for the night. Sometime after midnight, one of the guys rolled over half-asleep in bed and came face to face with a figure laying next to him. Not sure if it was a man-ghost or a lady-ghost... their arguing and bickering and sniping at each other kind of made it hard to understand what had occurred, but their unprofessional attitude kind of ruined their welcome, and they were asked to leave the grounds."
Over the years, several things have been reported on the estate and in the ghost town. Owners, staff and guests have seen strange people in the woods who seemingly vanished or heard their names called by people they couldn't see. A girl scout troop camping on the grounds in 1984 said they saw the phantom of a woman in a long white bridal dress traveling along a tree line in the middle of the day, and an ATV rider enjoying the maze-like network of trails once spun out of control after a figure jumped out from behind a tree. After picking himself up and getting his bearings, he looked around for his attacker but discovered he was quite alone.
Walking the paths of Mistwood, Andrew showed Larry Wedekind of the CGS the numerous structures on the property and the tree line where strange shadows have been seen walking between the trees and then vanishing into no where. No one knows who these beings are, but they are just the tip of a larger phenomenon that is occurring. The walk takes Larry and Andrew to a large barn and workhouse where one of Andrew's relatives used to work on and restores cars through the Seventies to the Late Eighties.
"My Uncle Wald used to race cars in the Forties." Andrew continues. "I guess you might call him him a bootlegger as he was often running whiskey into Missouri and Mississippi. After he died in 1989, we locked up the garage just left it just as he had left it... old cars, tools and all, but we still come out here from time to time.
"Now, I don't have any direct knowledge of this, but we had some guys here about a year wanting to buy one or two of the old cars here, and I heard they had an incident that had them running of of the workshop at high speed. Apparently, they had heard voices and laughter here as if they weren't alone. Uncle Wald used to have late night poker games here and some of us on the property believe he and his old friends return here to relive old times."
Pointing past an old VW van and a partially stripped Rolls Royce among several stock cars, Andrew points to an old Seventies hearse partially covered by an old tarp. Apparently, the spirit of someone who once rode in it is still sitting in the front seat for a ride to the cemetery. Eleven people have seen a person peeking out impatiently for a driver who never shows.
While activity and figures are common all over the estate, they are much more common and active in the main house. Among the shadows of the oaks and the house's massive colonnade, numerous spirits have been reported looking down from the second floor windows of the massive antebellum mansion. At least two female spirits have been seen in and around the house including one that appeared in a photograph in 1987. These spirits are believed to be the apparitions of Nathaniel Mistwood and his bride, Elizabeth Masterson, the daughter of a local politician, who fell ill shortly after they married. Nathaniel stayed by her bed side for weeks until she died of tuberculosis, later taking his life from the beams of the attic. The two of them are now rejoined in death, walking down the staircase arm and arm in love and then vanishing into the garden area. Numerous EVPs as well as the sounds of sobbing have been recorded in their bedroom as well as the sight of a tall man in period attire pacing in distress in the hall outside her door.
"Eventually, the sights and sounds got so bad that I moved into a room above the kitchen on the property." Andrew confesses. "But then, Monica is most patient with the activity which seems to occur sporadically. We'll have about a week of nothing happening and then a phantom butler will in the kitchen or moaning sounds come from the servants quarts or something will glide from one bedroom to another."
While Andrew knows most about the stories of the estate, his cousin Monica, who oversees the day to day duties, knows about the legends of the former town and grounds. One legend involves treasure buried on the property by Confederate Soldiers in the Civil War. Spectral soldiers lurk through the apple trees on the east rim of the property where it was said to be buried. In 1982, a treasure hunter scanning the grounds claimed his metal detector was wretched from his hands near the area and flung through the air by invisible hands. Another legend concerns a distant relative, Marcus Mistwood, a local firefighter in 1893, who haunts the town firehouse waiting for an alarm that never comes.
"The most popular legends concern Great Aunt Virginia Mistwood who died childless and unmarried, but rumors are she had a relationship with a local Creole voodoo priest named Ronaldo Duequesne." Monica Mistwood-Demarest is a beautiful middle-aged hostess with intimate knowledge of her family's history. "Back in those days, she had quite a few séances on the property which might be why there's so many hauntings here. She reportedly saw and talked to Virginia's ghost in the house several times as well as Mr. Dempsey, a former groundskeeper, who allegedly still haunts the ruins of the old greenhouse in the grounds."
Monica has heard the downstairs piano in the parlor area playing. Her great aunt played it during long periods of loneliness when she was alone, and since she's been gone, she and several other witnesses have heard the faint melodic strains of the piano playing through the house.
"We'll start hearing it from even outside the house." She describes. "We cater a lot of weddings here because of the antebellum setting and huge oak trees, and on this day, I was outside with the bride's mother and the caterer taking notes on how to have the outside veranda prepared when we all heard the piano playing. The mother had asked if that was the piano player for the ceremony, and I just commented, "Oh, it just must be another guest..."and departed to investigate. I get to just the doors of the parlor, the music playing almost uninterrupted till then and then... the room is just empty. It was a little cold, but no one was in there.
"On another occasion," Monica continues. "I recall a few guests in the house who were milling around in the downstairs parlor. They were ladies from the historical society in New Orleans looking for stories to publish in their paper, and as I approached them, they claimed that they had been granted a tour by a woman in a long flowing dress who had parted from them to bring them tea. Unfortunately, I have no idea who this person was. My housekeeper doesn't give tours, and I'm adamant about knowing of all visitors to the house. I checked the kitchen, dining room and study, but no one was here, so I don't know who received them and showed them to the parlor."
Among other activity, spirits also lock doors. Monica has been barred entry into some bedrooms and even the attic and the back door, and yet, when she goes to get the key, the door is suddenly unlocked and the door is slightly ajar.
"Lights flicker on and off, but then we do have our own powerhouse on the property." Monica continues. "At night as the house is getting silent, I've heard a light gasp from the hall as if someone is catching their breath. That's not particularly often, but we do often hear voices and distant conversations from empty rooms. The back patio is open for sitting in the breeze, but the backyard is illuminated by lights, and sometimes a shadow passes before the windows. I've experienced that myself, thinking someone was coming in, but no one ever does nor do you hear any footsteps."
The upstairs creaks when it should be empty. Figures peek from the windows. Ed Landers, one of the property managers, lives in a bungalow on the property that was built in 1998. Although the structure isn't haunted, he has looked out the window and seen figures crisscrossing the property. Sometimes, a guest knocks at his door during the day, but when he answers it, no one is there.
Deep into the east boundary of the property and almost obscured by wild tree branches and vines growing through it, the Harvard House on the property is one of the few houses not used as a residence or guest cottage or shown on tours. Described as so spooky no one goes in it, it has been locked up since 1857, and even back then, it had a reputation because of an alleged murder-suicide that once occurred there.
"Legend claims that the homeowner took a voodoo priestess as a lover and together, they concocted a spell that would take his wife's life and make it look like an accident." Monica recites the details from an old 1870s newspaper article. "But the wife lived on, and the husband finally lost his patience and shot her then turned it on himself. Since then, everyone who sees the house has had an inexplicable sense of dread near it or sensation of being watched. Strange accidents occur near it too. In 1982, a hunter aiming at deer near fatally killed his hunting partner, and most recently, a motorcyclist coming wild up over a hill slammed head first into another cyclist."
"And then there was the young kid who tried breaking into the house last summer..." David comments. "Only to get spooked by a noise, go running from the house and fall into rusted debris in the weeds. He survived, but he broke his arm and had to have stitches up the side of his head."
Monica's husband, David Demarest, is the founder of the Mistwood Ghost Seekers Society, specifically devoted to researching the ghosts and stories on the property. Their group has eight members, including local resident Estella Parson, a friend of the family. They have over three hours of EVPs from across the estate and photos of both orbs and vaguely humanoid figures, including wispy skeletal figures on the property.
"A very old family legend is that the area was once Indian burial grounds or something like that." Monica adds. "Its not unusual to find Indian relics here. Campers sometimes describe a feeling of being watched or seeing figures in Native American garb peering from the trees, particularly near the swamp."
The Mistwood swamp and lake are actually part of a large creek than once ran easterly along the south border of the property toward the Bogue Chitto River. Excessive rural developments and the dam near Covington eventually dried most of it up leaving behind a series of small land-locked lakes, one of which is on the south east corner of the estate. Roy Mistwood, Andrew's father, a retired airboat captain, spends a lot of time in the lake fishing and catching opossum and nutria, a local rodent known for destroying local crops. At night, he has seen numerous strange lights or orbs floating over the lake. Sometimes apparitions float over the water which covers another much older cemetery on the grounds.
"We don't let campers near the swamp unless they're experienced." Roy emphasizes. "There's a lot of soft ground and areas where it's easy to get stuck, but I've got three guides, Sarah, Chris and Jen, who are trained to lead nature tours through the grounds. Sometime back, we had some girl scouts on property who were camping out, mostly during the summer, and their troop leaders wanted Sarah to guide through the area to view the area. Anyway, midway through the tour, we had rain rolling in and they had to cut it short because the lake, despite being landlocked, does swell and overtake parts of the area. As they were being taken back to the camp ground, several of the girls noticed and pointed out a lady in white moving along the far side of the trees across the lake. They weren't spooked or anything, they just wanted to know who it was and I claimed it was a neighbor lady which is the bunk because we have no neighbors out here. Nearly everyone who works on the grounds lives on the grounds, but the weird part is, I know the area they were talking about and there's no ground over there so whoever was out there had to be floating three feet over the surface of the water where the land had been washed away."
"One of the most unusual aspects about the property is that the grounds seem to be changing." Andrew continues. "We get a lot of storms through here, and we're always scrambling to keep the grounds clear so ATV riders don't speed around a corner then ram head first into broken branches on the ground, but every so often, after thinking we've cleared a trail, we'll re-check the next day and there's a whole new branch in the path. Now, this isn't a fresh break... and there's no tree there for it to fall from. It's almost as if something dragged it there to keep us from going further."
"My theory is that the ghosts here are distracting us as things happen elsewhere unseen," David suggests. "But sometimes we think we see new paths that pop up and aren't there the next or we see new structures or structures where nothing should be. I'm wondering if these are echoes in time from long lost structures that once existed or if the space and constraints of the property are always folding and changing because sometimes it's a thirty minute walk back to the main house and sometimes it's only ten minutes."
"But then that doesn't really explain why no matter where we are on the property, we always seem to be somewhere in view of the Harvard House."
History:
The plantation as well as the custody of the former town structures, now re-added to the plantation grounds, has passed through the custody of several Mistwoods ever since. Monica Mistwood and her cousin David are the current owners, having acquired it after the death of their Aunt Virginia in 1998. They are assisted by Ed and Eva Landers, the property managers, and a number of locally hired groundskeepers. The grounds are open to campers and hikers, as well as fishermen and hunters.
Identity of Ghosts:
"I'm not sure where his name comes from, but my parents claim to have heard it when they were kids." Monica reveals. "He was reportedly a young gypsy who was caught stealing and hanged or who was chased off with a warning from dating a relative. He's completely harmless, just mischievous often appearing on the grounds as a young man in exotic blue clothing..."
"There is no factual basis for the legend of Harvard House." David continues. "It was built as a residence for the local physician in 1801, and was taken over by a mortician then a lawyer from Harvard University, hence the name, but we still don't know why it sends so many uncontrolled trepidations through all who see it."
Investigations: David Demarest and the Mistwood Ghost Seekers Society have catalogued almost three hundred stories of hauntings from over eleven years of reported activity on the property. Their team includes Anthony Wyrick, the current groundskeeper, Ryan Russo, a camera technician, Loretta LaFleur, a local Creole genealogist, Estella Parson, a self-professed mystery writer and Shayna Hobbs, a psychic medium of Gypsy descent. Over time, they have recorded numerous EVPs as well as several videos of inexplicable forms floating over the grounds.
"The given theory is that the lights are headlights are from distant cars on the highway from beyond the property, but they also occur on the south end where there is no highway but constant farmland. However, logic tells you that there should be a limit for how far car lights shine." David mentions.
Amidst the numerous campers, hikers and guests to the property, David has frequently played host to ghost hunters and paranormal groups camping out or around the old town structures. Voices and sounds of footsteps are quite common in the old hotel, and a figure in black has been reported lurking around what used to be the old schoolhouse. In 1997, a group from Mississippi strung up the area in the alley near the hardware store to catch this figure. The strings would catch any figure in a net if anything passed through it, but after watching what seemed to be a shadow turning the corner, the strings remained contact as if nothing was in the area.
Over the years, investigators have detected strange EMF readings in areas along the trails, such as near the water tower, chapel and an old dilapidated barn that dates back to the mid-Nineteenth Century. Representatives from New Orleans Paranormal and Shreveport Ghost Patrol have used Mistwood to train and test potential would-be researchers, but in August 2000, one of their potential recruits came charging after the hotel after claiming he came face to face with a female presence on the second floor. Described as a woman in period attire with no legs beneath her waist, she was bathed in what was called "a silvery light blue glow from head to floor." No one knows who she was, but David believes there are as many as thirty spirits or "surviving consciousnesses" and possibly twice as many place memories of figures recorded in the area, replaying events that they created several years ago.
Source/Comments: The Ghosts Of Mistwood (Video Game) (2010) - Activity based on Allaire Village near Farmingdale, New Jersery, Fox Hollow Farm in Westfield, Indiana, the Oak Alley Plantation in Vacherie, Louisiana, the Destrehan Plantation in Destrehan, Louisiana, the Nottaway Plantation in White Castle, Louisiana, the San Francisco Plantation in Garyville, Louisiana and the Welliver House located somewhere in Central Maine..