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Permalink Reply by Max on April 18, 2009 at 9:05

If you happened to live in rural North Louisiana from the time after the war between the states was fought up until now, you knew that there was gold buried on every piece of ground from Monroe to Shreveport. This is a story my Granddaddy use to tell us about buried gold:
My grandfather bought his farm back in 1924 and it was located near the ‘Old Wire Road’, the stage road from Georgia to Texas before automobiles came along. After he had gotten settled in and was going about the business of farming, one of the old timers of the area passed by one day and thought that he should share the fact that there was gold buried in granddaddy’s new hog pasture. Now everybody who was anybody knew the gold was there, said the old man, and some people claimed to be able to walk within five feet of where the gold was buried. The only reason nobody had ever dug it up was because it was ‘blood gold’ taken by murder... Plus the smallpox was buried along with it, and nobody was brave enough to test how long smallpox could stay buried in the ground.
The old man told granddaddy that he was just a boy when the gold was buried, so it ought to be safe to dig it up. He would show him where to dig, but first, granddaddy had to agree to keep quiet about the digging, and could only dig at night. If word got out about digging up the gold, everybody and his brother would be out there trying to get a share of it, and the old man didn’t want to split the gold no more than necessary. Well, digging for gold wasn’t on granddaddy’s list of chores for that particular day, and he didn’t have time to go see where the gold was buried, but he did want to know how the gold got there. So the old man set out about telling his story... leaving out any details that would give the gold’s hiding place away.
“A long time ago, before people quit using the old stage road, the manager of the stage depot lived right here on your place. He was a bachelor named ‘Mr. Brown’, long past his prime who kept a Negro housekeeper in his employ, despite the fact that most folk of the area didn’t approve of such things. Now a depot manager is just somebody who is able to feed horses at least once a day and be at the depot when the stage is due. Any other time he can go about his own business and that’s why he lived down here on your place away from the depot. He had a two room dogtrot with a fireplace built out of iron core rocks from that hill where the big white oak fell down last year, just this side of the church. The field out in front of his house, your hog pasture, is where he grew feed corn to sell to the stage depot’s owner, a John Smith in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Now, Mr. Brown was about as honest as anybody else that had money in those days, and it was said that he could sell a bushel of feed corn that would turn into a wagon load by the time it got to Vicksburg, Mississippi. The horses at Mr. Brown’s depot were reported to be the best fed in the business, because they got to eat a lot of feed corn from that corn field. Mr. Brown was doing, ‘prurty good business’, and the corn field got bigger each time he let a stage driver know that the horses in his lot was dropped off from the last stage, and he was going to fatten them up with all the corn he had.
One day the stage didn’t come along on time, and Mr. Brown, not being the kind of person that had “time” to be giving away for free, headed back home so he could watch his corn grow in that corn field. Later that day, the stage got to the depot and the driver sent a young boy to fetch Mr. Brown up to the depot. On the stage was a man from Alabama, who was traveling to Marshall, Texas, that fell ill, and he was too sick to ride the stage. The driver said the man would have to stay at the depot until he could get well enough to sit up in the seat of a stage. So the man, along with his baggage was unloaded and laid out in the front room of the stage depot on some horse blankets.
After the horses were swapped and watered, Mr. Brown figured out that he was going to have to feed this sick man and look after him. Well, he knew the stage driver didn’t have any money, and that the owner, Mr. John Smith from Vicksburg, Mississippi, would not be interested enough to invest funds into the welfare of just one customer... this problem would have to be solved between him and the sick man. After the stage left, Mr. Brown went in to look over the situation for any possibilities that had arrived that day, but by now, the man had sweated enough to soak the horse blankets and all he would say is, “I’m cold”, and “need a drink”. That’s when Mr. Brown noticed the fine clothes the man was traveling in, so he moved closer to get a better look. The coat was special made, he had once seen a coat like this before, worn by a man on a river boat north of Shreveport on Caddo Lake. The man had been accused of card cheating and the Captain had the coat taken off him and cut up into pieces. They found several silver and gold pieces sewn into the coat along with a couple of extra cards. The man was quickly thrown overboard with the cut-up coat and that was the last of him and the coat.
Mr. Brown, being the type of business man who knew when good fortune crossed his path, decided to take the coat and inspect the fine material it was made of. After ripping up the coat and not finding anything but a stage pass, he became angry and told the sick man he would have to leave the depot. The sick man said he couldn’t walk and he would, ‘pay’ Mr. Brown to take care of him. Well now, that information changed the outlook of things for Mr. Brown... and he went and found another horse blanket along with the water ladle. Early the next morning, Mr. Brown went to the depot and found the sick man sitting up searching through one of his bags. The man had improved somewhat and thought he could ride the stage coming through later that day. He was looking for his stage pass and his coat, but he couldn’t find them anywhere in his bags. Mr. Brown informed the man that he must have left the coat on the last stage and he now owed him two dollars, ‘for providing the elements for him to gain back his health’. The man agreed and unbuttoned his lower shirt and searched around his mid section until his hand came out holding two silver dollars. That’s when the man’s health took a turn for the worse.
Mr. Brown, when asked by the Sheriff, said the man just up and died. The family of the man had reported him missing, and that he had a large amount of gold coin traveling with him. The Sheriff was there to locate the missing man and money, being directed by the stage line to Mr. Brown’s depot. Mr. Brown provided the baggage and a view of the grave, and he did ‘mention’ that the sick man had left his coat on the first stage that dropped him off. There was also two dollars in the small bag that belonged to the man. The Sheriff left with the baggage and didn’t dig up the grave, he was smart enough to know there wasn’t any money buried with the man.
Six days after the Sheriff had gone, Mr. Brown came down with a fever and died four days later. His Negro woman took the body and stitched a blanket completely around it, then placed the body in the hallway of the dogtrot. She then started singing the death wail that was sung so often when she was a little girl in the slave quarters. Several menfolk of the area heard the singing and recognized the tune. They knew to get there soon, before any spirts were able to come up from the bottoms. They came and got the body, loaded it into a wagon, and set out for the church and graveyard on the other side of the iron core hill. On the way up the hill the wagon broke a wheel, so the men stopped and unloaded the body. By the time one of them had gone and gotten a new wheel, the others had decided to bury Mr. Brown there on the side of the hill. I can show you where he is buried, because the grave sunk in after it rained and me and my daddy hauled dirt to fill it in because folks was scared of the fever coming back. It’s right up there a little past your driveway just inside your fence.
Two days later, the Sheriff came back with an old fat man and a young Negro. The old fat man was a doctor from Marshall, Texas, a Dr. B. Nelson, and they had to dig up the grave of the missing man. When they arrived at the stage depot and couldn’t find Mr. Brown, they set out for his place back southeast of the depot. After getting there, no one would answer the door, so they went in the big room and found the Negro woman in bed, dead. The doctor examined her and said, it looks like smallpox, while he was hurrying out the door. The Sheriff then came up to our place and made daddy go with him to the depot. I was able to go along because my brother John, had to ride the mule to town to borrow a wagon, ours had a broke wheel. The Sheriff had the Negro man dig up the grave of the sick man, and they found the empty money belt still on the body. They knew then that Mr. Brown had taken the gold, but now he was dead and buried, who had the gold? My daddy took them to the grave of Mr. Brown, and after the Negro had dug up the body and cut open the sewn blanket, the doctor said Brown had the pox too, but no gold. They quickly re-buried the graves and the pox.
By this time, everyone in the area knew about the pox and wanted it gone. News with death attached to it in any way, was bad news. The Sheriff decided to bury the Negro woman, bed , blankets, and all. Then burn down the house. After knocking out part of the door, two men went in and got the whole bed and carried it outside next to the fireplace. They then dug a big, deep hole and buried bed, woman, and all. Fire was set to the dogtrot house and after it burned down, all that was left was the iron core rock fireplace.
The next day, the young Negro caught fever and died two days later. People said he caught the fever pox from digging up the graves, so they didn’t want to go around them in any way. The Sheriff burned down the stage depot and went back to Texas. After that, people said the gold had to be in the bed with the Negro woman buried by the iron core rock fireplace. They reasoned that Mr. Brown had taken the gold and put it in his bed when he got sick. After he died, the Negro woman probably knew the gold was there, and it was as safe there, more so than any bank in Louisiana, because her lips didn’t pass on the whereabouts of the gold. People just kind of forgot about the gold, because it was too dangerous to even talk about it.
Forty years or so after all this took place, the parish came in and built a new roadway. The old iron core rock fireplace was pushed down and the rock was pushed into a low place, right there in front of your gate to your hog pasture. The work crews didn’t know about the grave there, and one of the big graters got stuck when it fell into a caved-in hole. The crew got the grater unstuck and hauled sand in to fill up the hole and that’s the last time anyone saw the fireplace marking the buried gold.”
The old man finished his story about gold to my grandfather, and insisted on going down there that night and dig up the gold, because he needed money to buy a horse. Granddaddy told the old man that he was out of coal oil, and he needed a light to dig by, so the old man would have to go buy some coal oil. Every time after that when the old man passed by granddaddy’s place, he seemed to be in a hurry to get somewhere and didn’t have time to talk. Granddaddy didn’t think much of this story until years later, after the depression had tighten it’s grip on even poor people. In nineteen hundred and thirty three, he went and dug some holes in his hog pasture after finding some iron core rocks next to the road, but he only dug at night, and he never found anything.
The summer before World War two started, some people came to the place and offered Granddaddy ten cents a day if he would let them dig in his hog pasture. Ten cents was hard cash in those days and Granddaddy let them set up by the water spring. They pitched a couple of tents and stayed for about two months, only digging at night and sleeping during the day. Granddaddy kept check on their progress, and each night he would see the coal oil lantern burning in a different part of the pasture. Each morning when he went to collect his dime, he would have to rouse the people awake by banging on their black kettle pot. They were always sleeping or digging. One morning Granddaddy went to collect his dime and the whole bunch had moved out. He didn’t know if they found the gold, but he did know that they left a bunch of deep holes that he had to cover up.
Fifty years later my sister bought this place and one day she was digging a hole in the back yard to plant some flowering bushes that she had dug up from the side of the parish road down below McDuffy hill. She found a iron box about two feet down. Everybody was summoned to witness the finding of this box, it had to be the gold, and she didn’t want any mistakes of where it was found and by who. Daddy stopped by to see why all the cars and people were there in her yard, and he verified that she had found where the old out house had stood many years before. The iron box was full of something other than gold.

Permalink Reply by Two Dogs, Pirate on April 18, 2009 at 9:30

Good one Max.

Permalink Reply by Bobi Carr ("parker") on April 18, 2009 at 10:32

Sounds like a great story to be telling around a camp fire and have an accompise waiting to jump out when you get to the point of something other than the gold being in the box. Gotta love ghost stories aroung a camp fire.

Permalink Reply by HS on April 19, 2009 at 5:21

I HAVE BEEN TO THIS AREA SEVERAL TIMES TO SEE THIS, I CAN TELL YOU ITS A UNEXPLAINABLE THING , ITS WORTH YOUR TIME TO GO DOWN THERE JUST FOR FUN , YOU WILL BE SHAKING YOUR HEAD WHEN YOU SEE IT.
NATIONAL GEO DID A STUDY ON IT YEARS AGO , THEIR BEST GUESS THAT IT WAS SOME KIND OF SWAMP GAS.
YOU WONT CATCH THE LIGHT

Permalink Reply by Two Dogs, Pirate on April 19, 2009 at 10:23

Bigfoot: real or hoax?
By Andrew Griffin

August 30, 2000
Web posted at: 3:40 PM EDT (1940 GMT)

COTTON ISLAND, Louisiana (The Town Talk) -- People are still visiting the area where two loggers claim to have seen a Bigfoot creature, but a wildlife agent now says he thinks the reported sightings are a hoax.

"Right now we're treating it as a hoax," said Kevin Hill of the state Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.

Despite the likelihood of a hoax, Hill said, the matter is still under investigation by the DWF and Rapides Parish Sheriff's Office.

Meanwhile, the two loggers -- log foreman Earl Whitstine and saw-cutter Carl Michael Dubois, both of Grant Parish -- are sticking tight to their story that they saw a Bigfoot creature in the Cotton Island area of northeast Rapides Parish last week.

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Their boss, Joe Delrie, owner of Delrie Wood Products of Colfax, says he believes their tale wholeheartedly, despite others' skepticism about the authenticity of the alleged Bigfoot sightings and tracks found in Boggy Bayou.

Mary Ward, the owner of the land where the reported sightings took place, said around 200 people have come out to her property to view the plaster cast taken from a "Bigfoot" footprint and the Boggy Bayou site.

"They all go away pretty well convinced," Ward said.

A sign put up over the weekend at the entrance to Ward's property reads "Big Foot Protection Area." She said a Bigfoot supporter asked for her permission to place it in that prominent position.

She said visitors are welcome as long as they only shoot with cameras. No guns or dogs allowed.

Whitstine said he saw the unusual creature once on Tuesday morning and again on Thursday while working with Dubois.

Whitstine and Dubois flatly deny they concocted a hoax, saying they had nothing to gain from such a ruse.

"Me and that man (Whitstine) seen what we seen. It was big, hairy and had big feet," Dubois said.

The two men were working in the Cotton Island area removing hardwood logs, they said, when the creature made his two appearances.

Whitstine's father, R.C. Whitstine, admitted this week that he was involved in a Bigfoot hoax more than 25 years ago.

Earl Whitstine said that he did not remember the incident well, but did say he didn't believe his father was involved in the hoax where "Bigfoot" tracks were discovered near Willianna.

"At the time, they said, 'Somebody like R.C. would do something like that, but he didn't do it," Earl Whitstine said.

Earl Whitstine said his family trapped animals for extra holiday money and was in the woods of Grant Parish often.

He believes it was this fact that his father was unfairly pegged as a Bigfoot hoaxer.

But R.C. Whitstine, 76, has admitted sawing a footprint out of plywood to make some tracks.

"We were just having some fun with a new saw," he told The Town Talk.

As for the current rash of sightings, Earl Whitstine and Dubois say the creature they saw in the forest was about seven feet tall, covered in black hair and had big feet.

Neither claimed they smelled a foul odor, but a fisherman who also was said to have seen the creature reported it smelled bad.

Whitstine claimed he saw the "booger" once on Tuesday morning while operating a tree cutter. He said the sound of the machine's bucket startled the creature, and it ran across a nearby creek and off into the woods.

"After it jumped into the water, it looked back at me," Whitstine said.

That would not be the last of Bigfoot, he said.

Two days later, the two loggers were walking along a property line when they came across the strange creature once again, they said. This time it ran away when Whitstine called to it, they said.

It was after that sighting that the tracks were discovered in the dry bayou.

"They can say it was a camel riding an elephant, but I saw what I saw," Whitstine said.

Jackie Dubois, Carl Michael's father, was also on the crew that day, and he said he has no doubt that his son saw a strange creature.

"I didn't get to see it, but I wished I could've, but I didn't," Jackie Dubois said.

His son has not changed or embellished his story, although he knows people will question their sighting.

"I ain't got nothing to hide," Dubois said.

Delrie, owner of the logging company, said Whitstine and Dubois are very trustworthy and honest men who do their job in a professional manner and have been with his company for a number of years.

Delrie said that when Whitstine told him about the Tuesday sighting he believed him but had to have proof.

It was after the sighting on Thursday that the reality of the situation sank in.

"Earl called me up and said, 'I need for you to come down here now,'" Delrie said.

"I noticed a change in (Whitstine's) voice." When he came to the scene and saw the tracks, Delrie said, he totally believed that his men had seen a strange creature in those woods.

"I looked around the site to see if it was a prank.

And that six-and-a-half foot stride ... no man could have done that," Delrie said.

Delrie said he trusts Whitstine with his expensive logging equipment and that he is lucky to have a solid logging crew working for him.

"The Lord blessed me with them tremendously. You don't know what a (relief) it is knowing they're out there doing their job and doing it well, and I'm not babysitting them," Delrie said.

Delrie said his company has a contract with International Paper and that IP officials are strict about who works for them.

"IP said Earl has the No. 1 crew. They love Earl's crew," Delrie said.

Ward said at first she wasn't scared living there even after hearing about the sightings of the creature.

But now that the initial excitement has begun to wear off, she said she won't be going into the woods alone anytime soon.

"I'm a little uneasy," she said. "I don't think it'd hurt me, but I know it's there now."

Permalink Reply by Max on April 19, 2009 at 12:23

Yea, those big foots are everwhere, my uncle, Mac Ford (deceased), lived in Ashdown, Ark. when the movie, 'The Legend of Boggie Creek', was made. His brother claimed to have seen the big foot up around Faulk, Ark. and he became a special consultant when the movie was made. He also did his consulting for free, just as long as his appearance in the movie was longer than three seconds. He didn't appear in the movie, but the scene where the big foot reaches through the bathroom window was soposed to have happened to him. He and my uncle both was stuffed fuller than a christmas goose, but they did have a good time while they were here on this earth.

Permalink Reply by Max on April 20, 2009 at 13:31

Buck,
It's a good thing you didn't have a gun. Did your wife have a flashlight with her after you went to get the boat?

Permalink Reply by Two Dogs, Pirate on April 19, 2009 at 13:58

This was written in 1936.

This story was told me by an elderly Negro woman from the south. I should say, the two following stories were told me by her. She was interested in ghostly yarns. She was not an educated woman but she was far less superstitious than many people who have more advantages. We cannot too strongly insist that superstition is a cultural and not a racial phenomenon. In fact, with such people as the Negroes or the Irish, who have a rich tradition of supernaturalism, the reaction is apt to be violent and pronounced in the reverse, when they find that their beliefs are myths. The sensationalism of Mr. Paul Maurand {Begin handwritten}[?]{End handwritten} about atavisms of the Negro blood calling them back to the dark ancestoral jungle worship is misleading and {Begin deleted text}[?]{End deleted text} Pernicious.

My narrator said, "There are a lot of old tales down in the south where I came from. I don't know whether there's any truth in them or not. I remember one story that the old folk used to tell us. It was about a miller that married a woman and after he was married a while, he began to hear strange stories about his wife. Some folks said she was a witch. One evening when he came home late, he came into the house and called his wife but there was no answer.

Then, a cat ran into the house and past him and into the room where he and his wife slept. Just then, his wife came out of the room and said, "Here I am dear. Did you call me?" He was sure she was'nt there before and the cat was'nt anywhere arround but he he just never let on he noticed anything. After a while, his wife said to him, "When you came in, a cat ran in here and he ran right through the house and right into the bedroom and jumped right out of the window. Did you see him?" The husband just put her off and {Begin page no. 9}let on like it was nothin to him.

The next night, he pretended like he was real tired and wanted to go to bed early. He pretended to go to sleep right away but all the time, watched his wife to see what she would do.

As soon as she thought it was all safe, she slid out of her skin and changed herself to a cat and was out of the window and away. And she just left her skin layin there on the bed. The miller knew then that his wife was a witch.

He got up then and got some pepper and spilled it all over his wife's skin and the skin shrunk all up. Pretty soon, she came back and changed back to a woman again and tried to get into her skin but no matter how she tried, it would'nt fit her.

She cried out, "skinny, skinny, don't you know me?" But that did'nt do any good either and finally, she just ran off without any skin and nobody ever [?] saw her or heard of her again."

Permalink Reply by herefordsnshale on April 19, 2009 at 14:17

I think I have heard this story or one similar to it years ago. I didn't realize it was that old though, over 70 years.

You're right about superstitions being a cultural thing, probably the most superstitious culture was the old Native American culture as belief in spirits was a heavy part of it. The famous bigfoot story of Teddy Roosevelt's memoirs supposedly took place in a canyon that the Indians avoided like the plague because of "bad spirits". That's the reason the two trappers went there, they thought if the Indians had avoided it there was probably a lot of game still there.

I remember the rash of bigfoot sightings in Louisiana in 2000. I think the first one was in Sabine Parish, I was working down there at the time. Along about that same time lightening struck a cedar tree in a cemetary down there and locals claimed to see an image of the Virgin Mary in it the next day, that story got a lot of attention too. I gave my co-workers a lot of grief about all their "sightings"!

Permalink Reply by Two Dogs, Pirate on April 19, 2009 at 15:00

To the Cherokee moving to the western side of the Mississippi River was travelling to the Dark Lands or those of Evil Sprits. Jackson made sure that the most of them were relocated by 1840. I kind of felt in what I have learned that Jackson may have felt threatened by the Cherokee for being smarter than he was.

I have no dog in the hunt when it comes to superstitions, this piece was written in 1936 or so, well before my time.

Permalink Reply by Earth Mama on April 20, 2009 at 14:58

I have a very creepy one that happened up on Swan Lake road in Bossier Parish. The ghost of ".Ju Ju" There was a story of a young black man that had been hung from one of the oak trees in the front yard of an old abandon frame house not to far from the ess curve on Swan Lake rd . Myself, 2 girls and 3 boys, all about 16 went there one Friday night around 10pm. You are supposed to "cuss" Ju Ju to anger him, so we did. Nothing happened at first and we were all cocky you know. We turned up the music and were all talking about somthing else when all of the sudden we heard stomping around and glass breaking coming from the house which was about 20 feet away. Needless to say we jumped into the old push button dodge to leave and the head lights would not come on. We made it out of the driveway. and drove for about a mile or so, almost hit a bridge, and then the headlights came on. I know those boys did not set this up beacuse they were freaking out and crying as bad as we were. That was in 1977, Im curious if anyone else in this area know about or has had an experience on Swan Lake rd? My best friend and I are paranormal investigators and are going to the Waverly Hills sanitarium, Louisville, KY, in June with our group Everyday Paranormal out of San Antonio. Ill let yall know if anything happens.

Permalink Reply by Two Dogs, Pirate on April 20, 2009 at 16:01

When we pull everything together, we will be one.

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