The state sponsored this excursion so I had no problem taking there money. They only had a few stipulations. I couldn’t show the town of Laveau in a bad light. Two, I couldn’t turn this into a documentary purely about Laveau’s sordid history, and lastly I had to hire 50 percent of my crew locally.
I started with the the day to day, the people, the landmarks, but it was quite obvious to anyone that knew anything about this town what this documentary was going to be, the only thing it could be truly be about, and the true reason I wanted to do the film at all.
I’m a ghost hunter if you want to know what I do, and I tell you that so you can snap your fingers and instantly get it, but I’m a bit more then just that, or I like to tell myself. I’m a seeker of truth. Some men look upwards to the stars, me, I’ve always wanted to look inside more then out.
This towns claim to fame, and the only reason anyone would even give shit one about this place, was the asylum that stood on the hill. It’s dark shadow loomed over Laveau metaphorically just as much as physically. I came to get into that asylum, it had lived many lives since it’s inception and that’s who I wanted to interview, the asylum itself.
When I drove up to Laveau I got stuck in the mud more then a few times. I was told it wasn’t uncommon. It wasn’t until 2019 did the town even get a proper road, so in the wet season you’d have better luck with a row boat then a car.
The asylum loomed over the quiet swamp settlement like a stern father, their was no structure it’s shadow didn’t touch from the heights of it’s lonesome hill. Fun fact, the town was made for the asylum not the other way around. It had roots back to slavery, and before, hiding those unfortunate people who couldn’t make it north. The difficulty to get here was the deterrent to recapturing those they lost.
Later it was used for more nefarious purposes as a hide out for criminals, becoming a haven for those looking to avoid the laws reach. Once civilization and industry became too big it had to pivot again and find a way to become respectable. So it became host to those that had lost there minds. Any patient that was too violent, or too insane was pawned off into the middle of nowhere to never be heard from again.
From there it’s history became cloaked in mystery and the stories have become that of myth and legend. But that is always how it is with people when left to our own devices, without the eyes of the law or god we always turn towards the dark, maybe it’s just a flaw in our design.
I brought along Marc and Petra. I made it through film school with Marc and Petra and I met Ghost hunting. We linked up with our state required crew, and they were, Bill, Mazy, and Ray. They seemed nice enough.
Ray and Mazy’s only qualification was they had a pod-cast once, and Bill I picked because he said he used to work at the asylum, and if it was as haunted as they claimed it was we may as well have someone who knew the history to talk us through.
We met at the small town’s one diner and had a meeting of the minds to merge our two teams. I introduced myself as Zak Valentino. I wouldn’t say they were rude, but they were a bit suspicious of our motive, so we got very little conversation out of them at first.
By the third day we had exhausted all there was about the little town and all that was left was the elephant in the room. I recall my first meaningful conversation with Bill the day before we were going to go to the asylum at the old diner. “Why you wanna go up there?”, Bill asked honestly as if he himself were having reservations about going back. “For the sake of the documentary”, I said.
Bill took time to think before he answered. “Did you clear it with the administrator?”. “Who’s that?”. “They run the asylum”. “You mean to tell me that facility is still active?”. “Why wouldn’t it be”. “Looking at the state of it, I just didn’t think anyone tended it”. “Oh they tend it from time to time, just nobody likes to be anywhere around there”. “You used to work there Bill what can you tell me”. “Don’t befriend any of the inmates, and don’t get lost, things that get lost in there tend to stay lost. It’s not a place where sane people should go… probably not a good place for the insane either. Something is gonna reach out for you, you best not to listen”.
My crew and me flinched. Bill’s account had us shaken, rattled, and even punked us, but not enough.
We were excited to get up the hill. We circled the perimeter for usable shots. It was wild and unkempt with overgrowth. It was so neglected it was easy to think no one was there, and if it weren’t for Bill I would have just assumed as much.
On the back side of the Asylum was a lagoon which was clearly the last vestiges of the swamp before it was pushed back. Reptilian eyes glared at us, a congregation of prehistoric beast stalked us hungrily making no attempt to disguise their presence. They looked on as if waiting for something.
“Why are they looking at us like that?”, Petra asked shyly. Bill answered without hesitation, “Gator don’t forget, they lookin’ to be fed. Somewhere along the line people took to feeding them. We have a truce with’em anything that touches that water is theres”, said Bill. I had quite a few more questions to ask, but I saved them for later, like how recently was this ‘truce’ made, and how frequently were they fed. I didn’t ask, purely because I didn’t want to have Bill incriminating himself, confessing to something he may have needed to never be said.
We had gotten enough outside shots and I was looking to move inside. I wasn’t sure if any of this was cleared by the Louisiana board of tourism but if it wasn’t, and the administrator said no, I didn’t know what the fuck this movie was gonna look like. If I didn’t get the go ahead to film at the asylum we were going to go as guerrilla as we had to and take the shots we needed. I needed to know what percentage of these outrageous stories were true, because if even 10 percent of what we heard was true we were in for it, and quite frankly as a paranormal investigator, those are the claims we live for.
From the perch atop the hill the view encompassed the entire town. It was clear how this place was first and all the rest built around it.
Their were black iron gates that seemed as if they were put up with no ryme or reason. They had been there so long ago they were rusted, most were overgrown and hard to see. Their was movement in the windows, but dark and formless, more like suggestions of activity then true life.
I looked to Marc and Petra and both of them were just as eager as me. I asked Bill on the walk to the front door why he left in the first place, and he told me it was because he had the rest of his life to live and if he stayed he’d be just as likely to be thrown in their with the patients. He spoke very eloquently on his reasons why, as if he had very clear motivations. He even had a metaphor about each persons sanity being a rock and outside events eroded it down, then he claimed if regular life were a gentle drizzle Laveau Asylum was an ocean in a Typhoon. I didn’t ask him why he came back, though I was curious.
Mazy and Ray were there because they had always been curious to see what was inside of the Asylum themselves. I had been curious about the mysteries of this place ever since I had chose to ghost hunt, while they had been born with the stories since as long as they could remember.
The door knocker had a huge depiction of a metallic skull. “This place is obvious, it has to be a hoax”, Marc said to me. Bill cut in, “It’s had so many different people own it, each of them put their spin on it. That knocker there was put in about 1875 when Curtis Fontonot and his band of Voodoo priest and priestess used it for their rituals. They got pushed out about like 1912, 1913, or something like”. “So when someone new takes over they leave the last peoples stuff”, I asked. Bill nodded. “Everyone’s still in there really nobody wants you to fuck with there shit”, Bill said.
It took me quite a bit attempting to decipher what Bill said, and I don’t think I fully understood it. I slammed the skull knocker and looked around. The hungry eyes of reptilians gazed at us from the distance, waiting. It took a few minutes of banging on the heavy metal door before we thought to seek other means of entry.
I asked Bill if it was common to wait like this. He said that it was, and then informed me most people that wanted entry would call first. I dropped my head feeling like an idiot, then took out my phone and easily found a number for Laveau asylum. Bill told us that their were times when staff were few and far between because of turnover and that sometimes their wouldn’t be more then 5 people working at a place that was as big as a half a block hotel. He said that most people either fizzled out in a few days, or had a breakdown, and he was one of the few that had worked their for some measure of time that managed to not walk away a different person. I got someone on the phone that identified them self as Administrator Robert LeBlanc. He was pleased to have us and said he would send someone down.
Moments later the heavy steel door unlocked and eked open. Their was an orderly that took us in. He nodded to Bill as if he knew him but they didn’t engage in conversation. Their were quiet wales that wafted on the walls of this place that come from nowhere in particular and slipped away. It was an odd patchwork of construction. The floors were white polished stone, with the occasional dark spot, some so ingrained into it’s collective memory it was spray painted over in parts. The walls where a solid stone, and the halls were cold and drafty even though I found it hard to understand the breeze’s origins.
After the first 2 or 3 turns down identical hallways I was lost. I didn’t see any patients just closed doors and shadows. I asked a bit about the history of the place with the orderly, but he only smiled and tactically claimed not to know such things. Their was an old lift that looked as if it were put in at the early 1900’s I didn’t even ask why we didn’t use it, because I didn’t want to anyways.
As we reached stairs leading up their was a figure that was wearing all white at the end of the hallway staring at us. I couldn’t tell if they were male or female, they stood at the brink of the darkness under a half flickering florescent light. “Is it time?”, the mysterious inmate asked in a distant whisper. The orderly looked to us and said, “Up to level 3, 1 right, then a left”, then he ran down the hallway towards the person that made a show of their presence.
“What the fuck was that?”, said Petra. Bill answered as he unconsciously took the lead. “Some of the inmates that haven’t had episodes lately are allowed to walk the grounds. We don’t always have enough people to watch them all so they tend to wander where they aren’t supposed to go, which is also the reason the building is locked down so tight, so they don’t get out”.
Bill fortunately knew the way to go. We were amazed with the sheer size of this place and the emptiness. How could anyone manage an asylum this big. It felt as if the entire town would have to work here to make this place fully operational.
The office of Robert LeBlanc was sterile, with nothing much of interest in it other then his diploma, a desk, and an old land line phone that only offices possessed. His back was turned and he was engaged in a call. He briskly ended the conversation and addressed us.
He was pale and thin as if he didn’t leave these halls very often. His suit barely fit as if he had lost a lot of weight and never bothered to reassess his wardrobe. “Hello friends, you said you were shooting a documentary?”, said the very thin man. “Yes we are. We were hoping you could show us around and perhaps speak on the history of the place, maybe clear up some of the myths about it”. “Well, the good news is only half the mysteries are true, the bad news is usually it’s the worst ones”, said LeBlanc who struggled to hold his smile.
Their was something familiar about Mr. LeBlanc but I couldn’t put my finger on it. All I knew for certain was his jokes were horrible. “Come with me”, he said making haste towards the hall. He just started walking and talking, and rather fast and incoherently. Marc gave me the thumbs up, indicating he was getting all this. He spoke a little bit about the founding which was lore I never heard before, about not just the pilgrim’s but the native American’s of the Choctaw tribe.
We walked aimlessly, up and down stairs, only ever seeing people locked away like they were in a prison. I couldn’t remember where we were. By the time he got to the story of the Cult of Fontanot he was leading us down to the lower levels and explaining that the tunnels under the asylum spider-webbed throughout the entire town, and the passages were created by slaves.
The stone and concrete began to give way to less civilized building materials, some passages were cobblestones and dirt, some crudely poured cement, while others had the care of man made structures. It was as if everywhere you moved in this place was it’s own nation with it’s own customs.
We stopped at a stone room lit by candle light, 50 feet wide, what the true purpose of this room was, was lost to time, but what it was now was horrible and bleak. Written on the concrete walls in what seemed to be blood and feces were little reminder notes. Stay in your room, stay in your room, stay in your room, not yet, wait until it’s time, written over an over and over an over, looping with the frenetic insanity of a madman.
The crew and I were instantly on guard, we were prepared to see chairs move, and our emf’s going off, but not evidence of actual true human insanity as stupid as that was to say. The room smelled, so it was a recent event.
“He’s out again”, said LeBlanc to Bill. “Yeah it seems like, but I don’t work here anymore remember, that’s on you”, said Bill. LeBlanc sighed heavily and he reached into his pocket and grabbed his cell phone. “Excuse me a moment”, said the Administrator. He all but ran out of the room making a call. “What’s happening who is this?”, I asked Bill. “It’s Kentarro… he’s one of the worst Christian extremist”. “What did he do?”, Petra asked. “I don’t know, never did, but the administrator deemed him extremely dangerous”. “Ahhh guys, where’s the administrator”, Marc said with one foot outside. The administrator had disappeared and we were in the lower levels of a maze inhabited by free roaming crazies.
Bill didn’t quite know where we were exactly, but he had an idea, or so that’s what he told us. We ventured through the tunnels of this forgotten place hearing the wails of the unwell ever so often. Marc began jumping at shadows, but I couldn’t blame him I was getting more a more terrified with each wrong turn.
We found a trail of blood as if someone were dragged, and that’s when I had to make an executive decision, “We have to get the fuck out of here”. The regulars of Leveau seemed concerned but not nearly as scared as we were becoming, maybe it was just they were so attuned to this weird shit they had a greater tolerance for it. I told Bill we had to double back even if we were going to get a little turned around, their was no way we could keep going the same way we were if we were going to run afoul of an honest to god manic. Bill suggested against attempting to find our own way because he wasn’t sure if he’d be able to retrace his steps. I had to think about all of us now, and I don’t think any of us were ready to deal with violence on this scale.
After what felt like an hour of backtracking, we found ourselves full circle to the bloody drag marks on the ground. Ray finally began to crack, and he was silently whispering to himself, telling himself to keep calm, it wasn’t the time, but we all were freaking out so we didn’t hold it against him. Marc had to switch out batteries, because the lights were draining the camera very quickly.
Bill showed signs of breaking himself, and he said, that he was going forward pass the blood, and he was going to get out, and if we wanted to fuck around down here we could do it alone. I checked my phone and it was still somewhat getting reception, but what did that mean, where we were, it only meant that whoever came to get us would be lost too. I called the administrator’s office but the phone just rang and rang. Each ring more taunting then the next, as if it were laughing in our faces.
I looked to Marc and Petra to see if they wanted to risk going the same way that potential danger lay and they were so ready to get out of this cluster fuck they were looking for the quickest way out. Me and Bill took to the front with Marc over my shoulder and Petra, Ray, and Mazy in the rear.
We moved as quickly and quietly as we could down corridors that seemed to have no reason for being, looping in different directions, letting out into random spots. I heard a choking sound as if someone from the back were going to cough but held back. When I turned I nearly fell out. Marc stutter stepped and let out a sharp “Jesus Christ”, when he saw a crimson arc of blood spill out of Mazy and a unkempt wild man cloaked in shadow dragging an improvised shiv into her neck.
Petra screamed and stumbled back into Marc. Bill was the only one who wasn’t rattled so hard he couldn’t move. Mazy screamed out with words that came out muted. The man dragged her into the darkness while Bill charged. He backed into a bigger room half dragging Mazy who was in her last moments of life. As Bill moved to rush the wily inmate, he pointed the shiv at him, using Mazy as a shield.
“The lord is my shepherd, I shall fear no man but god”, the bloody man mumbled incoherently. “I can hold them, you may yet save yourselves”, the psychopath babbled. I got on the opposite side of Bill and Marc shone the light on the inmate. He was so covered in hair and blood he was unidentifiable. He could have been a man I’d known my entire life and I wouldn’t have been able to recognize him.
He looked to me and Marc and said, “You can still survive this if you go now. I wouldn’t listen to them, I never listen to them”, the crazy blurted. Bill ran in to grab the shiv, and I ran in from the opposite side. He went to stab Bill leaving me open to get a hook in under his arm. “Save yourself you blind fool, they mean to trap you here, until the time is right”, he spouted.
Bill managed to wrestle the knife away with two hands. I listened. In his rambling their was an urgency that made me want to understand. Mazy lay there unmoving. “They plan on taking your soul you fool”, said the lunatic. The initial shock of the violent attack began to fade so I began to actually listen. Bill jammed the shiv into the man. We yelped in shock. “What the fuck?!”, Marc and I yelled in unison.
Bill shrugged, “Couldn’t bind him, it was the only way”. “What was he talking about, who plans on taking our souls”, I said. “You didn’t have to do that”, said Petra, appalled by the violence. “You can’t listen to anything a psychopath says”, Bill preached, but this time he was not as sure as he was usually. It was as if he didn’t have an answer for any of this. He stared into our souls as if to see what if any of this we believed.
I was as of now undecided, but Bill had made up his mind on what he intended to do. He nodded to Ray and said, “The time is right”. Ray instantly produced a blade and stabbed Petra in her side. She screamed and ran off into the corridor like a wounded animal. Marc and I ran over to help. Suddenly Marc dropped. Bill jabbed Marc in the neck with the shiv. That was all I saw before Marc fell over and the light smashed.
I ran aimlessly smacking into the wall several times. The darkness was thick and the light fleeting. I heard footsteps behind. I tripped several times. I heard wails. I think I heard Petra screaming, but I couldn’t be sure and I couldn’t find her in this maze even if she was. This was where my story ended, in the dark, in a madhouse. I was destined to become one of the same lingering apparitions that we chased. I could no longer hear anything in the halls, only my own beating heart.
In the dark when I had all but given up hope I heard a voice call out to me. “Follow me”, it said in a whisper. “Who are you?”, I asked. “Someone that wants to help”. “I followed because I didn’t know what else to do. Any time I began to veer from the path I heard it whisper, “Follow me”. I found the light and ascended to the upper levels, and when I looked back I saw nothing, and nobody.
Inmates were now walking about in the hall as if now they didn’t need to hide. I managed to find the door we came out of but there were 2 patients sitting right next to it. They had vacant eyes and pale skin. One held a scapel and cut stripes into his skin, the other sat with a fire axe. I couldn’t tell if it were genuine coordination or chance, but all I knew is I wasn’t getting out that way.
“Hey over here”, whispered a voice from the darkness of one of the cells. I backed into the cell and it was a small dimly lit room. “How bad you wanna leave dis’ place”, said the voice that I couldn’t see. “Where are you?”. “I’m where I need to be”. It’s deep Cajun accent was strong.
There was light coming from under the floor, a passage big enough to slip through. “Come join me down here”. I couldn’t figure how someone could have tunneled through the concrete and made a crack under the floor and even if they did it more then likely would just lead back to the tunnels. I got on all 4’s and looked down into the crack. I may had been able to squeeze through if I tried. “That’s it, we’d love to have you down here”. I looked through the sliver of light and could make out a wispy figure with bright eyes. It had a face, but there was a tattoo of a skull on it that made identifying him difficult.
“I think I’ll go my own way, it’s too tight down there”. “Don’t you worry just keep on keeping on”. “No, thanks, I’ll find another way”. “Well, don’t make no never mind no how, we gon’ see you real soon”, said the voice. The sliver of light disappeared and it appeared as if the crack did as well. I shuddered at the occurrence, I didn’t know if it was a trick of the dark, but I by no means intended to touch that portion of brick and find out.
At this point I wasn’t exactly sure who to trust, but maybe if I could find the administrator I could see if we could get some sort of order going. Though in all honesty I wasn’t sure if I could trust him either so my thought was to observe before I approached, and if that didn’t work… well, I was going to have to try to find another way out.
I remembered the path to the 3rd floor. By sheer luck I heard voices before I was seen so I managed to duck into a half opened cell while they pasted. Bill carried Petra in his arms, and Ray drug Marc like luggage, making no attempt to be delicate or gentle. He left a bright blood trail. The sound of him sliding by grated like sand paper.
The 2 entered the administrators office with their cargo, hostages or bodies, I wasn’t sure. I slipped into the hall after they closed the door and listened in. Administrator LeBlanc was finishing up a call. “I’m with the Louisiana board of tourism, and I heard you were an indie filmmaker, would you by chance have any interest in shooting a film about Laveau Louisiana”, I heard LeBlanc say.
That sonofabitch, I knew where I knew him from. I was so jazzed to do this documentary that I only half checked my sources. In my defense, all the names were correct and it felt very legit. “Who’s turn is it”, asked LeBlanc to Bill. “Ole Sister Pat”, said Ray. “She goes to her I guess”, said LeBlanc. “Who get’s him?”, asked LeBlanc. “The gators, he’s dead”. “I’m getting bored of being LeBlanc, can I please be Bill”, said the Administrator. Bill got really heated really quickly, “Everybody wants to be Bill, it’s my fuckin’ turn to be Bill”.
“I’ll leave this one here, if the woman doesn’t work out I don’t want to make two trips”, said Ray. “Whatever”, said LeBlanc who picked up the phone and began dialing a number after looking at a sheet of paper. I saw Ray drop Marc’s body like he was nothing, and Bill walked with Petra towards the door.
I ran back to the nearest open cell I could. As I looked behind me I saw a rail thin man painting the walls with his own shit. He looked at me with curiosity over hatred. “This is my house, they told me to stay in here until it was time, is it time?”, he asked loudly. I saw Bill moving towards me. He wasn’t in ear shot yet. I merely put my finger over my lips to quiet the man.
He was frail as a skeleton. He didn’t stop talking. “Is it time yet… who are you? This is my house they told me it was my house”, the man pleaded fanatically. I… I, I didn’t know what to do. I ran over to the little shell of a human being and put my hand over his mouth. He was too weak to resist, but he bit me. I reacted, I had to, I had to do it. I took that little man’s head with two hands and cracked it up against the wall. He moved his lips as if to speak. I cracked his head against the wall. I cracked his head against the wall. He stopped moving, I… had to. I had only a second to think what else could I have done.
I looked at the man’s glassy eyes and scooted back from the pooling blood that felt as if it were chasing me through the room. I turned back to the door and saw that Bill was down the hall, and I had lost track of Ray. “This is my house”, I heard the little man say. I turned around quickly, scared to death, but the man was still dead, he hadn’t moved. Now I had a ghost that was going to live in my head rent free.
Bill waited outside of the door he left Petra for quite a while, and in that time I saw curious denizens of this madhouse ambling about as if they had no other purpose then to be adversaries to me. It took what felt like forever for Bill to grow uninterested, and the hallway to clear, but at the first opportunity to leave I absolutely did, but I knew that a piece of me was never going to leave that cell.
I snuck up to the door Bill left Petra, and she was sitting in a white room bathed in light, her back was turned to me, but I only saw her there sitting in a wooden chair. The door was open so I walked in. “Is their anything else that is sinful”, Petra whispered to nothing that I could see. “Are you sure, if you believe it will cleanse me then I will do as you ask”.
I walked over to Petra, and she had a scalpel in her hand. Her face was a mask of blood. One eye lay on the floor. One socket empty and unseeing. I ran over to Petra and pulled the bloody scalpel away from her.
“What the fuck are you doing”. “What?!”, she said as if I had awoken her from a dream. She opened her mouth to scream, but I covered it with 2 hands. I had a quick flash of what last happened, and I prayed I didn’t have to ever consider doing anything like that to her. “What are we doing? Where am I?”. “We’re still in the asylum, we have to find a way out come on”, I said while draping her arm around my neck to help her stand.
The stab wound she had in her side was deep, but not as bad as it had initially looked when it happened. We crept down the hall and as we approached the stairs I suddenly felt myself falling. In-between sporadic tumbles I saw Petra standing next to a wispy spectral figure vaguely dressed as a nun.
I cracked my head on a step and I was going in and out of consciousness, jolted awake by impacts then back to sleep. Before I slipped into darkness. I saw Petra standing eerily still as the apparition whispered into her ear. “He is sin…”, was the last thing I heard.
When I woke I was being drug outside of the Asylum towards the lagoon. Bill, Ray, and Petra were wearing white orderly coats. It was dark and if it weren’t for the full moon I would have seen nothing. I played dead, I tried my hardest not to breath. I was being drug by Ray, I think it was Ray. I heard a body splash into the water.
I half opened my eyes and saw Petra tossing Marc into the water. I didn’t fight it when Ray picked me up like a rag doll and unceremoniously dropped me into the swamp. I saw their images distort under the rippling current. As I thought to just drift away and wait for them to pass on. I saw movement.
Hungry reptilian eyes barreled towards me. In the darkness I couldn’t tell how many. Teeth shot in my direction. I had to react, I had to risk it. As the uncaring monsters were seconds from striking I pulled Marc’s body closer to me and pushed him. I presented my best friends body as a sacrifice. I can only hope that he’d understand, and know that I’d want him to do the same to save himself. Teeth clamped on Marc. They shook violently, but could only eat so much meat at one time. The body of Mazy and Marc were devoured in a feeding frenzy, and I used the hazy cloud of blood in the water to swim away.
I pushed as fast and as far as I could, and when my head emerged. I could see the ever present shadow of the asylum staring back at me.
I trudged through the nighttime swamp and managed to get to civilization. I’ve tried everything in my power to get the law to go up to Laveau and sort it out, but I’ve only been met with fear and apathy. As unlikely as it is, it is still listed as an asylum for the criminally insane, and they do still somehow receive actual state funding. Little does anyone know that the inmates do in fact run that asylum.
I lost a piece of myself in that place and I know I will never get it back. I no longer have to hunt for ghost because they all live in my head… it’s there house and they won’t get out.