{"id":2353,"slug":"nottoway-plantation-white-castle-louisiana","story":[{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["Nottoway was the biggest — the 1859 mansion John Hampden Randolph built on the River Road, 53,000 square feet and 64 rooms, the largest antebellum plantation house left in the South. Randolph destroyed the architect's plans when it was done so nobody could copy it; the 155 enslaved people who made the sugar fortune are the other half of the file.","The mansion was the boast — Henry Howard's Greek Revival-Italianate design, the rotunda overlooking the oak lawns, the columns that made it the River Road's monument to what sugar could buy. The house survived the war, the century, and the resort conversion — until May 15, 2025, when the fire took it.","The fire is the file's end — the 166-year-old mansion burned to the ground, leaving the dependencies and the grounds and the question of whether to rebuild. The file keeps what was lost: the biggest house, the enslaved people who built it and worked it, and the fire that made the largest antebellum mansion in the South a memory.","Nottoway is the archive's burned file — the 1859 mansion that was the biggest in the South, the 155 enslaved who made it, and the 2025 fire that took the house."]},{"heading":"Why this file matters","paragraphs":["Nottoway is the archive's fire file — the largest antebellum mansion, the enslaved labor that built it, and the 2025 fire that ended 166 years of survival.","A house that burned keeps its grounds — the file's suggestion being that Nottoway's hold is the loss: the mansion that's gone, the dependencies that remain, and the biggest house in the South that exists now only in the record."]}],"name":"Nottoway Plantation","aliases":[],"type":"PLANTATION","type_label":"Plantation","cats":["LOCAL_FOLKLORE","HAUNTED_PLACE","HISTORIC_ESTATE"],"groups":["dark-history","hauntings","legends"],"desc":"The largest antebellum mansion in the South—53 rooms on the river.","full_desc":"A plantation in White Castle, Louisiana, Nottoway Plantation is filed here for what the record attaches to it. The largest antebellum mansion in the South—53 rooms on the river. It sits in the archive under local folklore and haunted places. The dossier holds 1 reported claim, 1 legend and 1 documented fact, with the verified spine filed separately from the lore. The site is open to visitors.","address":null,"city":"White Castle","county":null,"state":"Louisiana","postal":null,"region":"South","lat":30.161694,"lon":-91.148535,"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":null,"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":1788,"type":"APPARITION","description":"Reported a woman’s figure and a presence in the halls. Nottoway Plantation in White Castle, Louisiana is the kind of old house where every sound eventually gets a name. It circulates as local folklore — the kind communities keep rather than verify. 'Nottoway Plantation' carries the account. The apparition is the file's anchor — every other report orbits it.","evidence":"LOCAL_FOLKLORE","evidence_label":"Local folklore","entity":null,"where":null,"first_report":null,"approx_date":null,"confidence":0.8,"conflict_notes":null,"source":{"name":"Nottoway Plantation","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nottoway_Plantation","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4},"conflicting_source":null,"variants":[]}],"history":[{"description":"Built 1859; a Union gunboat shell struck the house during the war. Nottoway Plantation's documented history is the record the rest of the file stands on. It's verified history: the dossier's load-bearing detail. The detail is preserved in 'Nottoway Plantation'. The detail belongs to the verified spine of the entry.","evidence":"HISTORICALLY_VERIFIED","date_start":"1859","date_end":null,"confidence":null,"source":{"name":"Nottoway Plantation","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nottoway_Plantation","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}}],"legends":[{"name":null,"summary":"Reported a woman’s figure and a presence in the halls. Nottoway Plantation wears the claim the way old houses do: visibly, and without comment. It circulates as local folklore — the kind communities keep rather than verify. The account appears in 'Nottoway Plantation'. Every community keeps one story like this; this is theirs.","earliest":null,"evidence":"LOCAL_FOLKLORE","source":{"name":"Nottoway Plantation","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nottoway_Plantation","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}}],"entities":[],"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":"Nottoway Plantation","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nottoway_Plantation","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}],"conflicts":[],"wiki":{"title":"Nottoway Plantation","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nottoway_Plantation","desc":"Historic plantation in Louisiana, United States","extract":"Nottoway Plantation, also known as Nottoway Resort, and Nottoway Plantation House, is a historic plantation complex located near White Castle, Louisiana, United States. The plantation house, which was destroyed by fire in 2025, was a Greek Revival and Italianate-styled mansion built for John Hampden Randolph in 1859. With 53,000 square feet (4,900 m2) of floor space, it was the second largest antebellum plantation house ever constructed in the Southern United States, sitting just behind neighboring Belle Grove Plantation in Iberville Parish. Several dependencies and historic structures remain intact on site despite the loss of the main house.","img":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b7/Nottoway_Plantation.JPG/960px-Nottoway_Plantation.JPG?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=api&utm_content=thumbnail","score":104,"lat":30.18629,"lon":-91.16691},"counts":{"claims":1,"history":1,"legends":1,"entities":0,"sources":1}}