{"id":2352,"slug":"houmas-house-darrow-louisiana","story":[{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["In 2003, during the restoration that brought Houmas House back from decline, a construction worker on the crew watched a little girl in a blue dress come down the main staircase — dark hair, dark eyes, somewhere between seven and ten. He assumed a child had wandered onto an active worksite and followed her into an empty house. Two more crewmen reported the same girl on other days, and a check of everyone on the job produced no child to match.","The staff call her La Petite Fille. No one has ever identified which dead child she is supposed to be — and on a property whose ledger runs to 753 enslaved people in the 1860 census alone, the candidates were never going to be scarce."]},{"heading":"The documented record","paragraphs":["The River Road land passed to Europeans in 1774, when Alexander Latil and Maurice Conway bought the tract from the Houma tribe — reportedly for $150 in goods — and kept the tribe's name on the property. A French colonial cottage went up around 1775 and still stands behind the mansion; Daniel Clark began real development, and General Wade Hampton acquired it in 1811 and built the Greek Revival front whose colonnade survives.","In 1857 the estate passed to Belfast-born sugar planter John Burnside, and by 1860 it held 753 enslaved people in 192 cabins — among the largest slaveholdings in Louisiana. The 'Sugar Palace' declined through the twentieth century until Kevin Kelly bought it and ran the 2003 restoration that produced the file's founding sighting."]},{"heading":"What witnesses file","paragraphs":["La Petite Fille remains the most-reported figure: staircase sightings in early morning and late afternoon, a small shape that follows tour groups and, per the staff account, seems curious about the visitors — and gone when approached. Guests file orbs in photographs taken near the dining room.","Two male spirits round out the inventory, both chronicled in local tellings. Historian Jim Blanchard recounts watching a tall Black man cross the rear cottage and pass through a paneled wall — where Blanchard later uncovered a doorway that had been sealed generations earlier. A second figure, described as a uniformed riverboat captain, is reported walking the widow's walk above the Mississippi view. Kelly's own standing joke — three drinks poured nightly, one for him and two for the ghosts, all three drunk by morning — is the file's best line."]},{"heading":"Two houses, one ledger","paragraphs":["The property is, structurally, two houses: the French colonial cottage of roughly 1775 tucked behind the mansion, and the columned Greek Revival front Hampton raised for his wife Mary Cantey. The reported figures honor that split — the little girl keeps the staircase and morning light of the big house, while the tall walker keeps to the old paths behind it, crossing ground where the cabins stood and passing, per Blanchard's account, through a doorway the house had long since forgotten it had. It is the file's best-evidenced detail: a reported route that matched a sealed door the restoration later reopened."]},{"heading":"What remains","paragraphs":["Houmas House operates as a showplace plantation and gardens, and the reports are now part of the product. The file splits the way plantation files should but rarely do: a documented ledger of barons, purchases and 753 names the census reduced to numbers, and a report layer that keeps asking the staircase the same question — whose child, out of all the children this house held, is the one still coming down it."]}],"name":"Houmas House","aliases":[],"type":"PLANTATION","type_label":"Plantation","cats":["LOCAL_FOLKLORE","HAUNTED_PLACE","PLANTATION","HISTORIC_ESTATE"],"groups":["dark-history","hauntings","legends"],"desc":"The \"Sugar Palace\"—and the 16-year-old girl said to have died there.","full_desc":"Houmas House is a plantation in Darrow, Louisiana. The \"Sugar Palace\"—and the 16-year-old girl said to have died there. Its accounts name only a collective — the girl. The dossier holds 2 reported claims, 2 legends, 2 documented facts and 2 named or described presences — documented record and retelling kept side by side. The site is open to visitors.","address":null,"city":"Darrow","county":null,"state":"Louisiana","postal":null,"region":"South","lat":30.121219,"lon":-90.984343,"coord_kind":"CITY","status":"HISTORIC_SITE","access":"PUBLIC","access_notes":null,"ownership":null,"website":null,"phone":null,"year_built":null,"year_opened":null,"year_closed":null,"year_demolished":null,"designation":null,"current_use":"Historic site","research_notes":"Southern Gothic batch; VERIFY task auto-queued.","stage":"SOURCE_RESEARCH","quality":{"level":"MEDIUM","score":59.4,"dims":{"location_confidence":0.75,"identity_confidence":0.65,"historical_confidence":0.8,"source_quality":0.3999999999999999,"paranormal_claim_provenance":0.8,"coordinate_confidence":0,"current_access_confidence":0.7,"freshness":0.65}},"claims":[{"id":1787,"type":"NAMED_GHOST_LEGEND","description":"Houmas House lore reports a young girl in the house — the named presence attached to the River Road plantation's 'Sugar Palace. ' The girl is the distinctive claim: the mansion's lore keeps its youngest ghost separate from the standard plantation file. The Sugar Palace keeps its youngest. The house keeps its girl.","evidence":"LOCAL_FOLKLORE","evidence_label":"Local folklore","entity":"The girl","where":null,"first_report":null,"approx_date":null,"confidence":0.8,"conflict_notes":null,"source":{"name":"Houmas House","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houmas_House","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4},"conflicting_source":null,"variants":[]},{"id":3638,"type":"NAMED_GHOST_LEGEND","description":"Houmas House lore reports the plantation's dead still seen in the mansion — the ambient claim attached to the 'Sugar Palace' and its centuries of River Road history. The girl on the grounds is the named presence; the rest of the dead keep the standard company of a great house. The great house keeps its company.","evidence":"DOCUMENTED_LEGEND","evidence_label":"Documented legend","entity":"The Houmas dead","where":null,"first_report":null,"approx_date":null,"confidence":0.8,"conflict_notes":null,"source":{"name":"Houmas House","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houmas_House","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4},"conflicting_source":null,"variants":[]}],"history":[{"description":"The main house dates to the 1840s; the plantation was among the largest in the South. Houmas House's documented history is the record the rest of the file stands on. The record holds it as fact — documented, not retold. 'Houmas House' documents the entry. The entry's timeline holds it; the lore holds the rest.","evidence":"HISTORICALLY_VERIFIED","date_start":null,"date_end":"1840","confidence":null,"source":{"name":"Houmas House","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houmas_House","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}},{"description":"The 1840 mansion is documented. The house's past is on record — this entry belongs to the verified layer of the site's file. The record holds it as fact — documented, not retold. The record appears in 'Houmas House'. The record keeps it — history, not lore. The telling survives; the proof stays folklore.","evidence":"HISTORICALLY_VERIFIED","date_start":"1840","date_end":null,"confidence":null,"source":{"name":"Houmas House","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houmas_House","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}}],"legends":[{"name":null,"summary":"A young girl is reported in the house. Houmas House in Darrow, Louisiana is the kind of old house where every sound eventually gets a name. Local lore carries the account; no documentation has ever caught up with it. The account appears in 'Houmas House'. Every community keeps one story like this; this is theirs.","earliest":null,"evidence":"LOCAL_FOLKLORE","source":{"name":"Houmas House","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houmas_House","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}},{"name":null,"summary":"The dead are reportedly seen. Houmas House in Darrow, Louisiana is the kind of old house where every sound eventually gets a name. 'Houmas House' preserves the telling; the record keeps it filed where it belongs, as lore. Every community keeps one story like this; this is theirs. The file stays open on it.","earliest":null,"evidence":"DOCUMENTED_LEGEND","source":{"name":"Houmas House","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houmas_House","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}}],"entities":[{"name":"The girl","claimed_identity":"The girl","verified":null,"summary":"A young girl is reported in the house. The file calls it The girl. Houmas House in Darrow, Louisiana is the kind of old house where every sound eventually gets a name. The lore has a face now: The girl. It remains the site's standing claim. The claim holds its place in the ledger. The report keeps its place in the record.","behavior":"A young girl is reported in the house.","area":null,"first_ref":null,"source":{"name":"Houmas House","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houmas_House","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}},{"name":"The Houmas dead","claimed_identity":"The Houmas dead","verified":null,"summary":"The dead are reportedly seen. The presences go by the Houmas dead in the file. A house with Darrow's history behind it gives the reports a setting that needs no exaggeration. The report is preserved in sources like 'Houmas House'. A named spirit outlasts an anonymous one; the file's name is The Houmas dead.","behavior":"The dead are reportedly seen.","area":null,"first_ref":null,"source":{"name":"Houmas House","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houmas_House","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}}],"events":[],"investigations":[],"encounters":[],"media":[],"persons":[],"visitor":{"tour_availability":"Verify before visiting","notes":"Site access varies; verify before visiting.","last_verified_at":"2026-09-18 11:32:55","source":{"name":"HauntHunt generic access guidance","url":"https://haunthunt.com/about#access-guidance","publisher":"HauntHunt editorial","type":"DIRECTORY","authority":2}},"sources":[{"name":"Houmas House","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houmas_House","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}],"conflicts":[{"field_name":"place_type","existing_value":"PLANTATION","incoming_value":"HOUSE","notes":"Preserve both source-backed variants; no automatic overwrite."},{"field_name":"short_description","existing_value":"The \"Sugar Palace\"—and the 16-year-old girl said to have died there.","incoming_value":"The Sugar Palace—where Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte filmed.","notes":"Preserve both source-backed variants; no automatic overwrite."},{"field_name":"full_description","existing_value":"Houmas House is a 1840s River Road mansion on a plantation that once covered 300,000 acres—the \"Sugar Palace.\" A museum and restaurant; its lore includes a 16-year-old girl reportedly seen in the house and the plantation’s dense history.","incoming_value":"Houmas is the 1840 Ascension Parish mansion—the \"Sugar Palace\" where the documented history and the reported ghosts are preserved.","notes":"Preserve both source-backed variants; no automatic overwrite."},{"field_name":"current_status","existing_value":"HISTORIC_SITE","incoming_value":"ACTIVE","notes":"Preserve both source-backed variants; no automatic overwrite."},{"field_name":"research_notes","existing_value":"Southern Gothic batch; VERIFY task auto-queued.","incoming_value":"LA2 batch; VERIFY task auto-queued.","notes":"Preserve both source-backed variants; no automatic overwrite."}],"wiki":null,"counts":{"claims":2,"history":2,"legends":2,"entities":2,"sources":1}}