Catalpa
A house in St. Francisville, Louisiana, Catalpa is filed here for what the record attaches to it. The 1850 cottage—where the family stayed five generations. The presences in its file go unnamed: the catalpa dead, the record says. The dossier holds 2 reported claims, 2 legends and 1 documented fact, with the verified spine filed separately from the lore. The site is open to visitors.
· in your passport — stamped · open it
Is Catalpa haunted?
The record holds 2 claims, 2 legends, 1 named entity — filed as reported, not verified. The heaviest filing is classed local folklore. The archive documents the claim; it takes no position on the ghost.
The record — long form
Catalpa is the rebuilt plantation — the Fort family house in St. Francisville that the Civil War burned and the widow rebuilt. William J. Fort came from the Carolinas with the skilled enslaved people who built it; the cotton and sugar made the parties the neighborhood remembered — 'there is always such a good time to be had at the Fort's.' The Union foraging destroyed the original; Sally Fort rebuilt it in 1885 on the same site.
The oak alley is the survival — the fifteen-hundred-foot elliptical corridor of live oaks, the antebellum dependency they call the slave cabin, the pond from the original gardens. The false-marbled mantels are the Victorian detail — the factory-painted slate that's rare now. The family kept it — the same Fort descendants until the end, the furnishings saved from the fire and bought back from Rosedown. The rebuilt house on the old alley is the plantation that continuity made.
The file keeps Catalpa: the Fort founding, the Civil War destruction, the 1885 rebuild, and the elliptical oaks.
Catalpa is the archive's St-Francisville file — the plantation the widow rebuilt.
Why this file matters
Catalpa is the archive's St-Francisville file — the burned plantation that rose again.
A plantation keeps its alley — the file's suggestion being that Catalpa's hold is the rebuilding: the house Sally Fort remade, the oaks that predate it, and the family that kept it for a century and a half.
The record of claims
Reported figures in the house. The house's rooms are where the accounts concentrate — old houses keep their stories in the walls they were built around. The claim is neighborhood knowledge — retold locally, verified nowhere. The account appears in 'Catalpa'. The apparition is the file's anchor — every other report orbits it.
The dead are reportedly seen. The accounts name only a collective — the Catalpa dead. The house's rooms are where the accounts concentrate — old houses keep their stories in the walls they were built around. The account has a collector's pedigree — written down as legend, which is the most honest status it can hold. 'Catalpa' carries the account. Named ghosts are the ones that last — this one has lasted.
Reported figures in the house. Catalpa in St. Francisville, Louisiana is the kind of old house where every sound eventually gets a name. It survives as local folklore, which is to say it survives because people keep telling it. The report is preserved in sources like 'Catalpa'. The legend does what legends do — it explains the place in a way the records can't.
The dead are reportedly seen. The house's rooms are where the accounts concentrate — old houses keep their stories in the walls they were built around. The account has a collector's pedigree — written down as legend, which is the most honest status it can hold. The story outranks the documentation, which is how you know it's folklore.
Alleged entities
The dead are reportedly seen. The lore files them collectively as the Catalpa dead. A house with St. Francisville's history behind it gives the reports a setting that needs no exaggeration. A named spirit outlasts an anonymous one; the file's name is The Catalpa dead. It remains the site's standing claim.
Documented history
The 1850 house is documented. Catalpa's history is documented rather than told — this entry is part of that spine. It's verified history: the dossier's load-bearing detail. The record appears in 'Catalpa'. It anchors the timeline the rest of the file hangs from. The report keeps its place in the record.
Sources on file
- 01CatalpaWikipedia · encyclopedia · A4
Field notes & open questions
LA2 batch; VERIFY task auto-queued.