Lake Providence, Louisiana

Finally the post everyone and their mother have been waiting for, if only because we’ve said we were posting it next at least two times over 20 days ago.

 

Andy has some long lost relatives that he had never met before, nor had his eastern shore family talked to since a long time ago.  They live in Lake Providence, Rhode Island.  Or maybe it’s Louisiana. We rolled into town on September 9th and did some detective work at the Lake Providence welcome center. Somehow, we were the only tourists that day, which meant we got the full attention of the woman working there. Andy threw out some names and she knew exactly where to send us.  It worked out quite nicely.

Andy’s last relative in the area, Flo Genard, lived in an old plantation house named Arlington, which just so happens to be the last antebellum house in the town. Flo was no where to be found when we arrived, so we took a bunch of pictures, left a note in the door, and headed up the road to Arkansas.

As fate would have it, we were delayed in Eudora, Arkansas by fried food and free refills of sweet tea at the aptly-named Eudora Dairy Bar. When we drove out of a dead zone, Andy received a voicemail on his phone. It was Flo! She graciously invited the second-cousin twice-removed she’d only just met over the phone and some girl into her home.

We sat down with Flo as she filled Andy in on her side of family history. We’ve got some footage of that, but suffice to say that Andy got shafted on the good genes. Apparently they’re all pilots/doctors/sports stars. Oh well.

Before dinner, Flo gave us a tour of the house. Those plantation owners sure had it made. Too bad the Union burned most of their houses down. Arlington survived only because some of Grant’s officers had taken up residence there.

We’d read a little about some of the sordid history of Arlington at the welcome center. Back in the days of old, a girl named Narcissa Jane fell in love with the son of the work-overseer (read: slave driver). Her parents were the aristocrats who owned Arlington (no relation to Flo or Andy) and so, of course, it was a forbidden love. Narcissa Jane’s parents decided to lock their sixteen-year old daughter in the attic, without food or drink, until she renounced her love. Three times a day they climbed the attic stairs to offer her a meal in exchange for her renunciation, and three times a day she sent them away. Apparently, she’d never read the ending of Romeo and Juliet, because she ended up starving to death. Or, rather, they starved their daughter to death.

Naturally, when we saw the attic stairs, we asked Flo if Arlington was haunted. She laughed (everyone asks her that) but was adamant that there are no ghosts, and said if there are, they’re not bad ones. The porch light sometimes turns on by itself, and she and her husband used to think that some spirit might be doing it, but it is an old house with old wiring.

 

The only other potential ghostly encounter that has happened in the house occurred in the room pictured above when Flo’s niece was sleeping there. When everyone woke up in the morning, the little girl asked who the lady in the purple dress was. They didn’t know what she was talking about, but she was sure that the lady had stood at the bottom of the bed and watched them, silently.

Upon hearing this tidbit, what choice did we have but to stay in this room for the night? 

 

Whilst Caitlin sat upon the toilet in this very bathroom, she decided to extend her sympathy to Narcissa Jane for the manner in which she died, er, was murdered. She told Narcissa Jane that if she wanted to make her presence known in any way, that it was okay to do so. Immediately, the bathroom light started flickering and then promptly turned off. Had the bulb burned out? She checked the light-switch, which was still in the on position, and when she flicked it off and on again, the light came back on. Old wiring has eery timing.

Later that night, after dinner, Caitlin went out to the car to get a few things. She had a hard time because it was completely dark outside, and as she was telling Andy this as they stood inside looking out, a light directly over the car turned on and then instantly turned off.

 

 

Andy was pretty skeptical of all this until it was his turn to use the bathroom. The walk from the purple dress room to the bathroom was already creepy at night, but it took you past a window overlooking those attic stairs. He thought he might give talking to Narcissa Jane a try and asked her if she felt a bit foolish for dying over a teenage crush. That’s when Andy heard breathing — consistent inhales and exhales — and murmuring all around him.

Thus ensued a stressful night of sleeping with flashlights and taking bathroom trips together. We weren’t visited by a lady in a purple dress or anything exciting like that. There’s always next time.

The next morning, Flo cooked us a hearty breakfast of egg, cantaloupe, and pork roll. We didn’t mention anything to do with ghosts as we were pretty sure that it’s bad guest etiquette to insist that your host’s house is a portal between this world and the afterlife.

 

Andy took a few minutes to spend some quality time with a descendant of the lizards his ancestors had lived alongside.

 

On a side-note, Flo is a prolific whistler. She could out-whistle a flock of canaries. Canaries whistle a lot, right?

 

Andy and Flo on the balcony. Guess which one is imagining he’s a plantation owner wearing a straw hat and drinking mint juleps.

But, here’s the kicker to the ghost saga. When we went to bed, Caitlin — who is notorious for losing the backs to her earrings — made extra sure to place both earrings and both backs into her jewelry bag. In the morning, one of the backs had gone missing and in its place was a tiny, silver, equal-armed cross that neither of us had seen before. Either Narcissa Jane was giving us an object of protection, or we’d been visited by the Knights Templar. Later, we decided to review the video we’d taken at night in our bedroom. We’d taken quite a bit of footage, documenting our giddy, sleep-deprived fear, but the tape had only recorded a few seconds.

 

Hmm.

 

Next time on The All-American Swashbuckling Wanderlust Romp in F Sharp:

BBQ, the Blues, and lots of homeless people. It’s Memphis, Tennessee!