The ghost stopped the dance

The story about the ghost in the dance hall was first reported in the Chicago Blade, the newspaper that billed itself as “the champion of’ truth of the United States,” so how can there be any doubt about it?
The St. Landry Clarion reprinted on the front page of its paper of Sept. 18, 1915, the tale of how a Chicago reporter ran across the woman ghost in a honky-tonk near Opelousas.
“Near here is a dance hall that has a large patronage every Saturday night,” the story began. “Last Saturday night, while the festivities were at their gayest, the figure of a woman, dressed all in white, is declared to have appeared on the floor and commanded the dancers and music to cease, and then addressed the assemblage in a strange and thrilling voice.”
“Warning to all,” she said, “Remember this, ‘broad is the road that leads to death.’ Warning! Warning!”
The proprietor thought the woman was drunk and he and several other men tried to grab her and escort her from the floor.
But, according to the news account, “she was instantly released because, the men declare, her arms and body were hard as marble and as cold. The apparition then changed into a misty cloud, ascended to the ceiling and vanished, like smoke.”
That pretty much ended the party: “The dancers did not linger to see anything further, but stampeded for their homes.”
Now, St. Landry Parish — all of south Louisiana, in fact — is full of ghost stories, and I have no reason not to believe most of them.
In my hometown of Washington for example, a house once used as a Civil War hospital is supposed to be haunted by a one-legged ghost. I’ve also heard tales of a spirit whose mortal remains were buried near the back steps of a house near here who gets mad when someone steps on him. He reportedly throws pecans at people — even though there are no pecans or pecan trees nearby.
I’ve never seen the one-legged ghost or been hit by a paranormal pecan, but who’s to say there’s not something to the stories?
Also there is the famous, mostly peaceable ghost that lives in a closet at Chretien Point plantation near Sunset. In life he was said to be member of Jean Lafitte’s gang whom the widow Chretien shot dead when he came to rob her. That story rings true to me.
The spirits of long dead actors are said to still tread the stage of the Grand Opera House of the South in Crowley, there have been mysterious goings-on in the old high school gym in Basile, and folks swear that a young girl still appears at Mary Jane’s Bridge near New Iberia each prom night.
Sober-headed people say an old priest can sometimes be seen roaming the halls of the Jesuit college at Grand Coteau; others say they’ve seen a headless horseman in a Roberts Cove graveyard; furniture gets moved around mysteriously at the Broussard City Hall.
None of these stories are beyond belief.
But the reason I have trouble believing the story of the dance hall ghost is because of the last line of the Clarion report: “There will be no dance next Saturday.”
Are you kidding? A dance canceled just because a ghost shows up? When there’s cold beer to be drunk and a Cajun band to crank out a two-step? And pretty girls to dance with? Maybe even a chance to show off in a good fist fight? Cancel all of that? On a Saturday night? In south Louisiana?
Never happened.
You can contact Jim Bradshaw at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.