The shell of the house stood abject and battered for a number of years, its broken windows telling its ugly story to all who came that way. On a moonlight night an impressionable girl passing the house could readily have seen the ghost of a woman’s form leaning imploringly from the belvedere—one girl did see it, and not even her later confession that the ghost was a fabric of moonbeams has been sufficient to rid the building of its name—The Haunted House. Nor, when inside the stout old walls a new and finer residence was built in cheerful defiance of the ghost, could the spirit of tragedy be easily banished. We shall hear one more story—a brief one—and then we may judge.
The war came and passed and left New Orleans dominated politically by those who had been their slaves. The pendulum swung so far to the extreme that a public school for both white and black children was ordained and, by coincidence or cunning design, was established in the Haunted House. It was of course an unfortunate move, and served no purpose except to whet racial antagonism. There came, finally, the breaking point. A white political organization which had been recuperating in strength sent a delegation one afternoon to call at the school. They were met by the teachers, to whom they issued a command to muster the school for roll-call. One of the pupils, a girl of exceptional beauty, heard the commotion from the upper hall, and peering over the banisters realized the significance of the roll-call—that the white pupils were to be segregated from the black. She leaned far over, to catch every word, when a shell comb fell from her hair and shattered on the marble floor below. She burst into tears and fled to an upper room.
The roll-call ended. All pupils who had negro blood were ordered from the house. When the slight flurry had subsided, and the delegation had left, the principal and one of the teachers found Marguerite upstairs in a paroxysm of grief. “The comb was my mother’s,” she sobbed, and when the teacher tried to comfort her, became hysterical. The principal drew the teacher outside. “It is not on account of the comb,” she said. “Marguerite’s mother was an octoroon; she married a white sea-captain. He loved her so much that in order to marry her he opened his wrist and let a few drops of her blood into his own, so that he might swear that he had African blood in his veins and get a marriage license. Only Marguerite and I and one or two others knew her story—and no one would have suspected, for she is so beautiful. She is engaged to be married, and her fiancé didn’t know. But the roll-call—now she will leave school, and he must learn of it.”
Which was the greater tragedy—the brutality of slave torture, or the death of the exquisite school-girl’s romance? It may be you will find the answer from the ghost, if ten years of children’s lessons, and the arpeggios and trills of a conservatory of music, and subsequent vapors of lodging-house cooking have not frightened the ghost herself away. Go and see. Far and down in the old quarter of New Orleans, where Hospital Street meets Royal, you will scarcely hear the drone of the modern city at work. In the vieux carré one may converse easily with ghosts. You will find no answer here.
Doughoregan Manor
© D.McK
DOUGHOREGAN MANOR
There are three ghosts at Doughoregan Manor. One is the shade of an ancient housekeeper, whose quiet tread may be heard in the corridors, and whose keys tinkle faintly when the house is still. Another is the spectral coach—its wheels grind on the driveway when death rides to claim a member of the household.... The third is no gruesome phantom, but the warm lively pervading spirit of the Signer himself, Charles Carroll “of Carrollton.”