The Beauregard-Keyes House

In a house as old as the Beauregard-Keyes House, you'd figure there'd be a ghost or two drifting about. After all, the sprawling yellow mansion has been sitting in New Orleans' ghost-rich French Quarter since 1826.

But aside from a few run-of-the-mill vaporous presences, the Beauregard-Keyes House, at 1113 Chartres St., claims one of the city's more spectacular hauntings. The supposed supernatural sightings revolve around the mansion's most auspicious resident, Confederate Gen. Pierre G.T. Beauregard. Beauregard occupied the house from 1865-66.

On certain nights, folks say the boxy old Creole mansion comes alive in pitched and gory warfare, when a supernatural version of the Battle of Shiloh rages in the main hall.

"Men with mangled limbs and blown-away faces swirl in a confused dance of death," writes Victor C. Klein in his 1996 book New Orleans Ghosts. "Horses and mules appear and are slaughtered by grapeshot and cannon. The pungent smell of blood and decay permeates the restless atmosphere."

Which now a museum. An employee concedes, weird goings-on have chased her from the venerable estate.

"It gets kind of spooky in here sometimes," she says, bustling under the ballroom's corniced archway. "The windows will rattle and you'll hear the floor creak. It feels like someone is with you. But you look around and no one's there. Your imagination runs wild."

"I get out quick," she says.

Curious, Chambon invited a psychic to check for supernatural residents in the Beauregard-Keyes House. The psychic found no haunted spirits of the sinister variety, says Chambon. But the house does shelter a few "spiritual entities," Chambon says the psychic learned.

One entity, Chambon says, is a cat.

"I was standing there one time and the door blew open and my dress moved," she says, gesturing toward the doors to the dining room porch. "The people said, 'What's that?' I said, 'It's just our cat - our little ghost cat. We call it Caroline.' "

To keep Caroline on her toes, the Beauregard-Keyes House also claims a ghost dog. The dog, says Chambon, is the restless spirit of "Lucky," a cocker-spaniel owned by the house's other auspicious resident, novelist Frances Parkinson Keyes.

A few days after Keyes died in 1970, Lucky, pining for her master, passed away as well. But some aspect of the dog's spirit remains in Keyes' apartment to this day, Chambon says. A blind woman with a seeing-eye dog recently visited Keyes' bedroom. Upon entering the room, the dog stiffened, raised its hackles and began to quake nervously, says Chambon.

"Oh, you must have another dog in here," the blind lady said.

Chambon told the woman the dog must have a very keen sense of smell, because there hadn't been another canine in the room since Lucky died in 1970.

"No," the woman told Chambon. "He only acts like that when he actually sees a dog."

A few years ago, Chambon says, a woman caretaker moved into a small apartment underneath the main house. One morning the woman asked whether there'd been a party in the main house the previous night.

"She heard music and furniture being moved upstairs," says Chambon, raising her eyebrows just a touch. "But the house was empty. It was locked up for the night."

This one of many ghost stories you will find on the web sight. since I live so close to all of this I may have to go and check it out. New Orleans is only about 2 hours away. here is the web sight for any who are interested.
http://www.nola.com/haunted/ghosts/bkhouse.html

Daisy....if you decide to go. take Kelley...with you two together if there is any remote chance of something being there, it will surely make its presense known...you two seem to drawn these things to you...MO