by Christy
(Lafayette, LA, USA)
I am so surprised by the fact that there are not more haunted entries on any website for this town and parish. It is the oldest permanent settlement in the Louisiana Purchase and the town is filled with hauntings. I graduated from Northwestern State and was originally called Normal College as it was a school to train teachers....the campus is haunted by a ghost named Isabella who has a very tragic story. Front Street is mentioned but I've never heard of people seeing a soldier dressed in Confederate garb walking down the street....but I do know about the slave tunnels that were located below the buildings and they were found a few years ago during remodeling when workers broke through and found boarded up tunnels with skeletons. There are also many old houses that have been converted into apartments that were once used as civil war hospitals....I had a friend that lived in one for about 2 weeks and couldn't take the awful sounds being made at night from something unknown. Also there's the huge American Cemetery that's rumored to be the oldest in Louisiana....try walking through there at night....there's always someone following you. Finally, there's the many plantations located on the outskirts of the city where the slave quarters still stand abandoned behind the grand mansions of the past. The travel channel ghost hunters traveled to one of these such plantations and it was in these slave quarters that they were physically attacked. There are so many other stories and places of hauntings within Natchitoches, but it seems overlooked by other petty locations. There's actual history behind these hauntings that can be verified and it just so happens that this year marks the tricentennial of this town that is the oldest permanent settlement in the Louisiana Purchase.