American Vampires

by Bob Curran

  Around New Orleans lies the former plantations from which many of these slaves escaped; some of these boast stories of their own. The most accessible of these great houses is Destrehan, only a 10-minute drive from New Orleans International Airport and about 30 minutes from the French Quarter of the city, standing on River Road. It is the oldest documented plantation home, still standing in the Lower Mississippi Valley. This also has the reputation of being one of the most haunted plantation houses in the area, and is supposedly home to a vampire who was a member of the family who lived there in former times.

  The house was built in the French Colonial style between 1787 and 1790 for Robert Antoine Robin de Logny by a mysterious master builder known only as “Charles.” It is thought that this gentleman may have been Charles Paquet, a freed “man of color” who kept slaves of his own. The house boasts hand-carved cypress posts on its upper gallery. However, it is not clear that it actually was him who built Destrehan.

  When de Logny died in 1790, the house passed into the hands of his son-in-law Jean Noel Destrehan, who purchased it for a nominal sum. Jean Noel was a Creole but of an extremely noble family—his sister Jeanne Marguerite was married to Etienne de Bore, the first mayor of New Orleans. Destrehan would become a Louisiana state senator. He and his wife Marie Celeste de Logny would have 14 children necessitating an expansion of the house. He added several wings including two garconnieres (from the French word garcon meaning a “boy”—these were essentially bachelor pads where men of quality entertained their lovers and mistresses or where young men sometimes stayed within sight of their parents).

  In January 1811, New Orleans experienced one of the largest slave uprisings in United States history. It began about 30 miles upriver from the city on the plantation of Michael Andre. Urged on by old witch women and Voodoo men, the slaves rose up, severely wounding Andre and his son. The rebels began marching toward the city and River Road, where they were joined by a number of other slaves; a large group of them—about 200 in total—began to advance on the city and on some of the other plantations. Two days later, the Louisiana militia put down the insurrection by killing a number of the leaders and taking the rest prisoner. They were taken back to Destrehan where a summary court was convened. All were found guilty—most were sent back to their own plantations, but some were given a bloody and painful execution. Following in the traditions of the French Revolution, a number of the rebels were beheaded and their gory heads mounted on wooden poles near the house and along the River Road. Their unquiet spirits are still said to walk there. Among those killed were several old voodoo women and the spirits of these gather around the house in a guise of bats or dark birds, ready to drink the blood of the unwary individuals that pass by. Some of them take the form of flying heads with filed and sharpened teeth, which will spring on the traveler, bearing him or her to the ground, before beginning a gory feast.

  Jean Noel Destrehan died on his plantation on October 4th, 1823. His descendants, who continued to live at the plantation house until 1910, included the enigmatic Nicholas Noel Destrehan, who was Jean Noel and Marie Celeste’s son. Nicholas Noel was a handsome and dashing figure—he went about in a black cape and dark clothes—but he was also rumored to be very wicked. He learned old African magic from some of the slaves on the plantation, and adapted this to keep him young and handsome. However, his life was haunted by catastrophe. He married a 15-year-old girl, Justine Fortier, who died shortly after the marriage; he later lost his right arm when his cape became snagged in some plantation machinery. Although he married again, he did not survive long after and died of Yellow Fever in 1836. However, he was supposedly possessed with the vampiric spirit, which settled on the plantation house following the slave revolt. In fact, it is said that, while living in the garconniere, the vampire spirit had taken hold of him and he was a blood-drinker while still alive. He is still said to travel all through the plantation in the shape of a bat or an owl, seeking out prey for himself.

  Although he acted like a wealthy plantation owner, Nicholas Noel never actually owned Destrehan, and at the time of his death was nearly bankrupt. He did, however, accumulate a mountain of family debt while living there; with creditors closing in, it seemed that Destrehan might have to be sold off to meet some of this. The property was actually in the hands of Jean Noel’s daughter Elinore Zelia Destrehan, a pretty young Catholic girl who, in order to save the plantation, married the much older, curmudgeonly Protestant Stephen Henderson. Indeed, Destrehen had already been put on the market, much against Nicholas’s will, but after Zelia’s marriage in 1816, the “For Sale” notices disappeared.

  However, the family was a haunted one, and during the next several years, Zelia began to look pale and drawn, which some neighbors put down to the callousness and brutality of her husband. Others, however, suggested that it might be because of the vampiric attentions of Nicholas Noel who came and went from the property as he pleased. In 1830, Zelia (around 30 years old) suddenly and inexplicably died while on a trip to New York. The cause of death was left blank on the death certificate and speculation was rife. Stephen Henderson was named as her sole heir. He died in 1838, declaring in his will that he should be buried with his wife and that all his slaves should be freed and allowed to return to Africa if they wished. This was a number of years before the Emancipation Proclamation, and this last proviso was swiftly overturned by the Louisiana legislature.

  Throughout his days in the house, Stephen Henderson had never been well—some people said that it was his age, but others said that it was the attentions of a vampire (possibly Nicholas Noel Destrehan), which lurked somewhere in the environs of the place. His family was, however, extremely anxious to dispose of it and, in 1839, sold the plantation of Judge Pierre Adolph Rost, the husband of Zelia’s younger sister Louise Odelle. The Rosts undertook a series of extensions to the main house, making it even grander, but they were never very happy there. The family later became connected by marriage to the nearby Ormond Plantation when Nicholas’s daughter Adele married Samuel McCutchon of Ormond. During the American Civil War, Rost was appointed as Ambassador to France by the Confederate President Jefferson Davis, and the family left for Europe in 1861, leaving Destrehan abandoned. It was later seized by the federal government. For more than four years, Union soldiers lived in the house and there were stories that some of them vanished, perhaps dragged away by the vampire hidden somewhere in the building. Destrehan acquired something of a sinister reputation during this period.

  The Rost family returned in 1866 and took over their former properties, including the plantation house. Their youngest son Emile was one of the last of the line to live in the house before selling it to a sugar manufacturing corporation in 1910. The house was largely closed up and was given over to its memories and its ghosts, which perhaps included a vampire. And just to emphasise the fact, some of the rooms in Destrehan were used in the film adaptation of the Anne Rice book Interview with a Vampire.

  The neighboring plantation of Ormond, which would later become connected to Destrehan through marriage, also had its legends and mysteries. Slightly “younger” than Destrehan—though not by much—Ormond was built by Pierre d’Trepagnier on land that had been granted by Don Bernardo de Galvez, the Spanish governor of New Orleans, as a reward for services in the American Revolution. The house was built in the same style as some of the great Colonial plantation houses of the West Indies and became a family home. The exact date of its construction is unknown, but it is thought to have been slightly later than the neighboring Destrehan. Not long after it was raised, however, a mystery occurred.

  The family gathered in the great dining room for a meal one evening in 1798 when the master of the house, Pierre d’Trepagnier, thought he saw something moving outside the window. A servant motioned him to look; the master stepped out of the room and out of the house in order to speak to whoever it was, and vanished into thin air. He never returned and no one knows what happened to him.

  Like its neighbor, Ormon
d was not a “lucky house.” It was bought in 1805 by Colonel Richard Butler who named the place “Ormonde Castle” after an ancestral home in Ireland. However, he did not live there, stating that the place had a “sinister air” about it. Like its neighbor, there were tales of ghosts and vampires about the house and the plantation, and these may have unsettled Butler. He sold Ormond to his business partner, Samuel McCutchon.

  During the American Civil War, Ormond suffered as the McCutchon family faced financial setback and parts of it were sold off at public auction. A pall of some kind tended to hang over the place, and once again there were tales of ghostly blood-drinkers living somewhere in the old slave houses on the plantation. In 1898, the place was bought by Senator Basile LaPlace, Jr. He allegedly made enemies with the local Ku Klux Klan and was murdered on October 11th, 1899. Ormond, with its legends of vampires and “hants,” was put up for auction once again and passed into the hands of the Shexnaydres, who moved a large family into it and lived there between 1900 and 1926. After they left, Ormond was pretty much neglected and became the dwelling of a number of tenants, including tramps and hobos, who lit fires and drank in some of the once-great rooms. This continued until 1943 when the house was taken over by Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Brown who began renovations and brought Ormond back into some semblance of its former grandeur. Following the Browns’ death, the place was sold to Betty Le Blanc, a prominent businesswoman in New Orleans. She had great plans for the house, but died of cancer in 1986 before she could complete them. Her son Ken Elliot is currently resuming the renovations and has opened the house to the public for the first time.

  Although these two great houses are perhaps the most famous in the New Orleans area and have provided some of the inspiration for the Anne Rice books, large plantations are scattered all across Louisiana, each with their own particular history and ghostly legends. Some of these also concern vampires. For example, in Carville, 16 miles south of Baton Rouge, stands Indian Camp, which has a history of disease and where half-dead figures were once rumored to come and go. The house was built during the late 1850s, but was leased shortly after by Dr. Isadore Dyer of Tulane University Medical School, and was used as an open treatment center for Hansen’s Disease (leprosy). However, Dr. Dyer had neither the money nor the inclination to develop and refurbish the house, so it became run-down and slid into genteel decay. In the end, conditions had become so bad that 80 patients were compelled to take an 80-mile trip upriver to New Orleans to better facilities and abandon the house altogether. In fact, the state of the place had become so bad that for a number of years they had been cared for in the old slave quarters, which were less than sanitary. Moreover, there were whispers of vampirism among “patients of color” who were held in these appalling conditions. Indian Camp gained a reputation as a “hant house” and nobody would venture near it after dark for fear that something in the shadows would slit their throats and drink their blood.

  The site was purchased in 1896 by the State of Louisiana as the location of the Louisiana State Leprosarium, and, in 1921, the United States government took it over as the national center for the treatment of Hansen’s Disease. Even so, the dark reputation of those former days still lingers on in the shadows of the main building and stories surface from time to time of leprous vampires still haunting the area seeking victims. Some of these have been possessed by dark, blood-lusting spirits, which still lurk on the sites of old slave houses. Vampires, it seems, are not all that far away from the great plantation houses of Louisiana and even some of these have traces of African/slave culture about them.

  And out in the bayous, there are tales of strange spirits lurking among the moss-draped trees. Tucked away in remote corners of the parishes are tiny lakes and waterways, which may be haunted by blood-drinking ghosts. For example, Palquemines Parish is about as far south and about as remote as you can get in Louisiana. It’s where the Mississippi River empties into the Gulf of Mexico and in a quagmire of weed-choked bayous and marshlands. Somewhere in this wasteland is said to lie the legendary Deadman Bayou. Tucked away in a remote corner of the parish is supposedly a hidden bayou from which the top of some kind of mausoleum protrudes above the waterline. The bayou itself is said to be a flooded cemetery. The mausoleum at Deadman Bayou, however, is reputedly the home of something that is Undead and that travels out into the surrounding countryside to feed on the living—taking both their blood and energies and leaving them tired and drained when they wake. No one in the surrounding area knows to whom this monument was raised—although it is certainly an ornate structure with extremely ornate frescoes—or what other graves lie under the bayou waters, but it is thought that it is the resting place of some great family. When the water in the bayou is low, it may be possible to travel out to view the ruin close up, although it is considered inadvisable to do so. There is the tale of a shrimper named Roland (or Ramon) Perlander who traveled out to the place in a pirogue (a flat-bottomed Louisiana boat) to investigate the submerged monument for a bet. He set out late in the evening when a mist was rising on the surface of the bayou. He poled off into the gathering fog and was never seen alive again. What happened out there in the swirling murk is unknown—did he reach the sunken mausoleum, or did something overtake him in the fog? Several weeks later, his body was found in a backwater creek completely drained of blood! Had something vampiric emerged from the mysterious tomb as he approached it and attacked him? And why are there no records of who lies within the monument?

  Similar tales to this emerge in Evangeline Parish further north. More than 15 square miles of the parish is covered by swamps and water and a network of bayous makes up large areas there. Mention has already been made of Cemetery Bayou, which was supposedly covered with water during the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. However, it is not the only such expanse and, although possibly the most important bayous in the region are Bayou Chicot and Bayou Teche, there are small, hidden bayous tucked away in quiet corners of the parish that hold secrets. Bayou John, located somewhere near Big Mamou, for example, supposedly covers a forgotten graveyard and the ruins of a church are said to lie beneath its waters and give the bayou its name. Tradition says that the graveyard contains the bodies of those who died in a Yellow Fever epidemic, but nobody can give the date of the catastrophe. However, some of these bodies may rise and threaten those who live nearby. A bit like the story from Palquemines Parish, tales are told of individuals who have disappeared close to the bayou. These include people such as Arne Guillory who, like Ramon Perlander, mysteriously vanished among the Spanish Moss–draped trees in the vicinity of the eerie bayou, and was later found drained of blood.

  St. Charles Bayou—a tiny bayou that supposedly lies near Reddell—is said to contain a feufollet, which is said to drag passers-by beneath its water. Once they are drowned, it removes the “goodness” from their bodies, leaving them little more than an emaciated and desiccated husk. There have, of course, been a number of stories of disappearing travelers and the discovery of bodies floating in the bayou water. Cajun vampires perhaps? Something else lurking in these remote areas? Something that is maybe older than the bayous themselves?

  As the Louisiana night closes in over bayou country, things stir among the moss-draped trees and in the rotting, abandoned shacks and mouldering plantation houses. Some of them might have originated in the nightmares of a number of cultures—French, German, African—some are a fusion of all of these. And as we travel through the winding waterways and hidden lakes, are we so sure that the shadow moving behind the hanging curtains of Spanish Moss is really something that belongs to this world?

  VERMONT/RHODE ISLAND

  Arguably, and perhaps unsurprisingly, vampirism in America originated in colonial New England. The influx of various immigrants from Europe—British, Dutch, German, Portuguese, Romania, and Poland—brought indigenous traditions, and created a rich melting pot in which many beliefs could flourish and develop. The German and Dutch settlers came to the New World with a supernatural portfolio of nachtzeh
rer, shroudeaters, and bloedzuigers, the unquiet dead called back to life, who might attack the living and drink their blood. Such ghostly traditions blended well with Indian myths of nameless creatures, which were halfway between some sort of monster and a phantom. Both the Wampanoag of Massachusetts and the Narragansett of Rhode Island spoke of a thing that had the form of a man, but hid in the shadows between the forest trees. It would attack hunters and travelers that it chanced to encounter. Its distinguishing feature was its large eyes that enabled it to see in the forest dark. Neither arrow nor tomahawk could kill or injure it, and to speak its name was to call it from the forest depths. Exactly what this creature did with its victims is unknown, but it was unwise to cross its path. It is easy to see how a belief in such a being could readily fuse with some of the mythologies of the incoming settlers. The Cherokees also had tales of old witches and wizards who thrived upon their murdered victims. Such Indian motifs undoubtedly passed into the folklore of the incoming colonists. They, too, had horrors that lay in abandoned cemeteries, ruined tombs, and neglected mausoleums, which lay in remote areas in their own native countries.

  Another element in the colonial mix was religion. A stern Christianity characterized and guided the lives of many settlers and the Devil was everywhere. He was in the forests, remote valleys, and dark caves that were scattered around their settlements, ready to strike at any time. Their only shield against such a being was their faith. And because they came from different backgrounds with varying viewpoints regarding salvation, there were many differing faiths that the new colonists might espouse in order to avoid Satan’s claws.