Avoyelles Police Jury President Charles Jones stands where the executioner would watch the condemned take his final steps up the stairs to the parish jail's gallows on the 4th floor of the courthouse. A rope was placed through the metal ring and a noose put around the inmate’s neck. The long lever was then pulled, the metal doors opened, and there was “a short drop and a sudden stop.”
Ghost hunters believe that inmates who met their end on earth on the 4th Floor could still be walking the halls of their former prison. {Photo by Raymond L. Daye}
Mansura native is state’s top ‘ghost hunter’
Sat, 10/24/2015 - 05:00
Raymond Daye
Haunted Avoyelles
By RAYMOND L. DAYE
(This is the second of a three part Halloween series of ghost stories realted to Avoyelles Parish)
There’s an unexplained noise in the attic. For no reason, you are suddenly chilled as you stand in the hall. You see something out of the corner of your eye, and then it just seems to vanish into the wall.
I’m going to ask a question now -- and most of you have probably guessed what it is.
“Who ya gonna call?”
Well, the state’s top ghost hunter -- in our humble opinion, at least -- has roots right here in Avoyelles.
Brad Duplechien is the founder of Louisiana Spirits Paranormal Investigations, a non-profit organization whose mission is to find legitimate evidence of the supernatural and logical explanations for the occurrences when the paranormal is not involved.
Duplechien, 35, was born and raised in Mansura. He is a 1998 graduate of Avoyelles High School. His parents, Glen and Bernadette Duplechien, still live in Mansura.
He worked for the Avoyelles Parish Sheriff’s Office for a few years and has been at the federal prison in Pollock for 14 years.
“I have been in law enforcement for 17 years, so it takes a lot to convince me that something can’t be explained logically,” Duplechien said. “We don’t think every little bump or noise is a ghost -- like some of those on TV do. We’re not like ‘Ghostbusters.’
“I guess that makes us a little boring, but I’d rather be credible,” he continued. “Ghost hunting is a lot like deer hunting, I guess. It takes a lot of patience, can be very boring, and you need a good bit of luck to have a successful hunt.”
Duplechien grew up hearing about fee fo lais -- balls of light floating in the woods and fields. He also would hear other spooky tales. He developed an interest that led to establishing Louisiana Spirits in 2005.
Statewide non-profit
Louisiana Spirits is a statewide organization with six chapters. Shreveport and Lafayette seem to be more “hotbeds of supernatural activity” than the central area, he noted.
“Statewide, we probably have at least one investigation per week,” he said. “It is purely non-profit,” he said. “We do not charge anything for our investigations. If I had to pay the bills with ghost hunting, I would be living under a bridge, for sure.”
Duplechien and his investigators use terms not familiar to most of us.
One of those is EMF -- electro-magnetic field.
“Everything emits energy,” he said. “It takes energy for a spirit to manifest. When that happens, it will draw the energy from that area, resulting in a sudden chill.”
When investigators’ equipment detects a “spike in the EMF,” he said that is an indication that a spirit has entered the area.
An “EVP” is an “electronic voice phenomenon” -- a disembodied voice.
Recording equipment is set up at the site and runs continuously while the investigators carry on normal conversation and periodically ask the ghost questions.
“Later we listen to the background noises on the recording to determine if there was any interaction that we might have missed,” Duplechien said.
They may also talk about ectoplasm, but that “is more of a Hollywood term. It appears as a streak of smoke. We do not encounter that often.”
The team also uses infrared cameras that allow them to see at levels of the color spectrum the unaided eye cannot see. Thermal imaging equipment is also in their arsenal.
Duplechien said many people think paranormal investigators “are a bunch of kooks. Now, there are some wackies out there going around saying they can talk to the dead and things like that, but that’s not us.”
Duplechien said he is skeptical by nature, and he enters every investigation expecting to be able to relieve the homeowner’s fears by pointing out the noise is caused by old plumbing or just an overactive imagination.
“Sometimes we find that the people just made the whole thing up for attention,” he added.
However, he admitted, “I have had some ‘pucker moments’ during an investigation.”
Growing up in Mansura, he was always told the Desfosse House -- Avoyelles' oldest home -- was haunted. He has never conducted an investigation at the house.
“DeRussy is my favorite place in Avoyelles,” Duplechien continued. “We were able to camp out on the actual battlefield, but did not get any activity. We have been to the cemetery several times and have had some weird encounters there.
Following are a few other “weird encounters” in Avoyelles.
Bailey’s Theater/Bar-Marksville
The building was constructed in 1916 as the Palace Theater -- a place where moviegoers of that era could go to see silent movies and then the “talkies.” It stopped being a cinema around 1975. It is now a popular night spot.
Duplechien said Louisiana Spirits received reports of “spot lights and strobe lights turning on by themselves.”
Duplechien said Bailey’s owner Catherine Bordelon gave the group a tour of the building.
The investigative team includes a “sensitive,” who is more attuned to the "other-world" than the others.
Duplechien said the “sensitive” member of the team “picked up on a very strong ‘presence’ coming from the area near the dance floor.
According to him, the large mirrors -- which were facing each other -- were causing a portal-like effect. The energy was so strong that the member refused to return to the building for several hours.
“This, immediately, grew my interest, feeling this would cause us to get some activity during the night.”
Three team members stayed there that night, During the night, they heard the door open and close. Upon inspection, there was nobody there.
“Unfortunately, this was going to be the only substantial experience any of us had that night,” he said. “After going over all the video and audio, no significant evidence was collected.”
Voinche Building-Marksville
Nearby, and also owned by Ms. Bordelon, is the Old Voinche Building. The building has been misidentified as August Voinche’s store during the Civil War. It actually was built in the 1890s on the same site -- and over the same basement -- as the original store. It still is the only building in the city with an underground basement.
Even though it is not the original store, and had no connection other than the basement to the Civil War-era building, there is a school of thought that spirits occupy the same “astral plane” of their troubled past, and are not necessarily bound to physical structures.
As Louisiana Spirits walked through the building, the “sensitive” “picked up on a ‘presence’ on the second floor,” Duplechien said. “Our member had no prior knowledge that the second floor was used as a Civil War hospital, yet that is where he felt something.”
Duplechien said the audio and video recording equipment was set up that night, but no unusual activity was recorded except a “possible orb photograph.”
“Ghost hunting is a ‘hit or miss’ type thing that requires a lot of luck,” he said
Despite the “miss” on that occasion, Duplechien said the Voinche Building intrigues him and “we hope to make a return trip to this historic building -- and hopefully next time we can experience something.”
House in belledeau
Duplechien said one of his most memorable investigations was of a residence in Belledeau.
A young boy refused to sleep in his room because he said he saw a spectral figure of an old man in there. This went on for some time, and the parents could not convince the child that it was just his imagination.
Finally, in desperation, they called Louisiana Spirits to investigate.
Duplechien said the team’s “sensitive” was not told anything about the boy’s experience.
“When he walked into the boy’s room, he recounted the exact thing the boy had seen,” Duplechien said.
The sensitive indicated the figure wanted certain things moved in the room. Those changes were made and the elderly male figure never came back.
“The boy began sleeping in his room again,” Duplechien said. “The parents said the difference after our visit was like night and day.”
Courthouse 4th Floor-Marksville
One final possible haunted place in Avoyelles is the fourth floor of the parish courthouse.
The courthouse was built in 1927, and the parish jail once occupied the top floor. Numerous inmates walked their final steps and took their last breath on the Fourth Floor.
There are those who contend that several of the malefactors refused to leave their “final home” on this earth and continue to roam the now-vacant area.
“We have received reports of unexplained noises there,” Duplechien said. “People tell us the elevator has started by itself, and other unusual incidents.”
So far, Louisiana Spirits has not been called in to conduct a paranormal investigation there, but it is on Duplechien’s list of home parish haunts he’d like to either prove or explain.