{"id":3441,"slug":"oakland-plantation-bermuda-louisiana","story":[{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["Oakland Plantation stayed in the same family for two hundred years — which means the record is unbroken. Jean Pierre Emanuel Prud'homme founded it on a Spanish land grant in 1785, planted cotton after the gin made it profitable, and by 1859 his enslaved workforce of a hundred forty-five people produced 698 bales of cotton and 7,000 bushels of corn. The Prud'hommes lived in the big house until 1998 — the longest continuous family occupation of any plantation in the National Park Service.","The enslaved community at Oakland is unusually well documented — not because the enslavers cared about their lives, but because the records survived: Pierre Phanor Prud'homme's journals, the overseer Seneca Pace's accounts, the baptismal registers that tracked births and deaths. The iron work the enslaved blacksmiths made is still on the plantation — the hinges on the doors, the crosses on the graves, the well-drilling tools found in the quarters. Dominique Toussaint and Solomon Wilson framed the big house in cypress in 1821; their names survived because the family wrote them down.","After emancipation the same families stayed as sharecroppers and tenant farmers — the cabins that held the enslaved held their descendants for another century. Oakland is a National Historical Park unit now, preserved not as a showplace but as a document: the big house, the quarters, the store, the gin, the whole working landscape of a cotton plantation from the Spanish grant to the tractor."]},{"heading":"Why this file matters","paragraphs":["Oakland is the archive's two-hundred-year file — a plantation that kept its records, its buildings, and its enslaved community's names for two centuries, preserved by the Park Service as the most complete Creole plantation landscape left.","A plantation that kept its ledgers keeps its truth — the file's suggestion being that Oakland matters because nothing was lost: the house, the quarters, and the people who worked both are all still in the record."]}],"name":"Oakland Plantation","aliases":[],"type":"HOUSE","type_label":"House","cats":["LOCAL_FOLKLORE","HAUNTED_PLACE","PLANTATION"],"groups":["hauntings","historic-sites","legends"],"desc":"The 1821 plantation—the Creole \"Bermuda\" estate.","full_desc":"A house in Bermuda, Louisiana, Oakland Plantation is filed here for what the record attaches to it. The 1821 plantation—the Creole \"Bermuda\" estate. The file’s recurring figure goes by a name, not a description: the prud’hommes. The dossier holds 2 reported claims, 1 legend and 1 documented fact, with the verified spine filed separately from the lore. The site is open to visitors.","address":null,"city":"Bermuda","county":null,"state":"Louisiana","postal":null,"region":"South","lat":null,"lon":null,"coord_kind":null,"status":"ACTIVE","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":"LA2 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":3688,"type":"NAMED_GHOST_LEGEND","description":"The Prud’hommes are reportedly seen. Oakland Plantation wears the claim the way old houses do: visibly, and without comment. It's a documented legend: the telling is real, the contents remain folklore. The account appears in 'Oakland Plantation'. The name travels further than the proof; the sightings keep renewing the lease.","evidence":"DOCUMENTED_LEGEND","evidence_label":"Documented legend","entity":"The Prud’hommes","where":null,"first_report":null,"approx_date":null,"confidence":0.8,"conflict_notes":null,"source":{"name":"Oakland Plantation","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oakland_Plantation_(Natchitoches,_Louisiana)","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4},"conflicting_source":null,"variants":[]},{"id":3689,"type":"APPARITION","description":"Reported figures in the plantation. The house's rooms are where the accounts concentrate — old houses keep their stories in the walls they were built around. The reports are anecdotal — consistent enough to record, thin enough to stay unproven. Sources including 'Oakland Plantation' keep the claim in circulation. It is the sighting the place is known for, and it hasn't stopped.","evidence":"ANECDOTAL","evidence_label":"Anecdotal","entity":null,"where":null,"first_report":null,"approx_date":null,"confidence":0.8,"conflict_notes":null,"source":{"name":"Oakland Plantation","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oakland_Plantation_(Natchitoches,_Louisiana)","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4},"conflicting_source":null,"variants":[]}],"history":[{"description":"The 1821 plantation is documented. A house in Bermuda, Louisiana with this much documented history gives the dossier substance underneath the lore. This belongs to the verified spine of the entry, the layer everything else is measured against. Sources including 'Oakland Plantation' carry the record. The date is part of the site's documented spine.","evidence":"HISTORICALLY_VERIFIED","date_start":"1821","date_end":null,"confidence":null,"source":{"name":"Oakland Plantation","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oakland_Plantation_(Natchitoches,_Louisiana)","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}}],"legends":[{"name":null,"summary":"The Prud’hommes are reportedly seen. Oakland Plantation wears the claim the way old houses do: visibly, and without comment. 'Oakland Plantation' preserves the telling; the record keeps it filed where it belongs, as lore. 'Oakland Plantation' carries the account. It's the version the place will be remembered by, whether or not it's the true one.","earliest":null,"evidence":"DOCUMENTED_LEGEND","source":{"name":"Oakland Plantation","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oakland_Plantation_(Natchitoches,_Louisiana)","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}}],"entities":[{"name":"The Prud’hommes","claimed_identity":"The Prud’hommes","verified":null,"summary":"The Prud’hommes are reportedly seen. Oakland Plantation in Bermuda, Louisiana is the kind of old house where every sound eventually gets a name. Sources including 'Oakland Plantation' keep the claim in circulation. A named spirit outlasts an anonymous one; the file's name is The Prud’hommes. The lore keeps its witness.","behavior":"The Prud’hommes are reportedly seen.","area":null,"first_ref":null,"source":{"name":"Oakland Plantation","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oakland_Plantation_(Natchitoches,_Louisiana)","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}}],"events":[],"investigations":[],"encounters":[],"media":[],"persons":[],"visitor":{"tour_availability":"Verify before visiting","notes":"Historic house; many are private residences—verify public access 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":"Oakland Plantation","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oakland_Plantation_(Natchitoches,_Louisiana)","publisher":"Wikipedia","type":"ENCYCLOPEDIA","authority":4}],"conflicts":[],"wiki":{"title":"Oakland Plantation","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oakland_Plantation","desc":"Topics referred to by the same term","extract":"Oakland Plantation may refer to the following American plantations:\n\nOakland Plantation (Bossier Parish, Louisiana)\nOakland Plantation House (Gurley, Louisiana), listed on the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) in East Feliciana Parish, Louisiana\nOakland Plantation (Natchitoches, Louisiana), a U.S. National Historic Landmark in Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana\nOakland Plantation (Carvers, North Carolina), listed on the NRHP in Bladen County, North Carolina\nOakland Plantation (Tarboro, North Carolina), listed on the NRHP in Edgecombe County, North Carolina\nOakland Plantation (Beech Island, South Carolina), listed on the NRHP in Aiken County, South Carolina\nOakland Plantation (Fort Mott","img":null,"score":74},"counts":{"claims":2,"history":1,"legends":1,"entities":1,"sources":1}}