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(Revisit) Season 2 - Louisiana Urban Myths, Lore, and Legends
127 Plays6 months ago
While we covered Louisiana last season in our Small Town Getaways journey, we didn’t quite look at the state through the type of lens we do today. For this Local Lore & Legends episode, we dig into the best Louisiana urban legends to ever be told. Louisiana already has a level of mystery to it, whether it’s the voodoo culture or the swamplands. And with both the culture and land type, certain stories have swirled for years, creating a spectacular set of Louisiana folklore that must be heard.
Louisiana Urban Legends We’ll Cover
- Where Did The Grunch Come From?
- What Exactly Is A Rougarou?
- Is The Honey Island Swamp Monster Real?
- Should You Follow A Louisiana Ghost Light?
Timestamps:
(06:30:00) Louisiana Ghost Light
(18:55:00) The Grunch
(22:45:00) The Honey Island Swamp Monster
(24:27:00) The Most Haunted Places In Louisiana
Thanks for taking this Local Lore & Legends journey with us! As mentioned, here are a few of our OnlyInYourState articles for you to keep reading!
The Best Folktales & Legends In Louisiana
The Greatest Urban Legends To Come From Louisiana
Not Your Average Bucket List Podcast
Get In Touch!
If you have personal experiences with any of the local lore and legends mentioned above, call or text 805-298-1420! We’d love to hear your thoughts on these creepy, potentially haunted places and maybe even share your clip on the show! You can also reach out to us via email at [email protected].
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Hidden Gems
00:00:06
Speaker
This is Not Your Average Bucket List by Only In Your State, a podcast about exploring the hidden gems right in your own backyard. Hey, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Not Your Average Bucket List by Only In Your State. If you've been following along with us, you already know we are in the middle of our local lore and legend season.
Louisiana's Legends and Lore
00:00:28
Speaker
Today, we are tackling the great state of Louisiana. I'm here with Sarah, the co-host of the show. Hello, Sarah.
00:00:35
Speaker
Hey, Marissa, you ready for Louisiana? I am. Actually, we covered Louisiana last season with small town getaways. We talked about Covington. Yes, this adorable small town that was outside of New Orleans. That was a great episode. I love talking about that. This is going to be a little bit of a different direction in terms of Louisiana's urban legends. But to me, Louisiana has just this underlying level of mystery to it.
00:01:05
Speaker
all around. It's fascinating. It really is. I feel like it's a combination of all of these very passionate cultures and then some history that can air on the side of bloody. And then I think there's just a lot of, I don't know, it's this very intense melting pot down there, which is amazing. And I think it lends itself to a lot of great stories that come from that state.
Dark Tales of New Orleans
00:01:34
Speaker
Yeah, and I know personally I've been to New Orleans a couple of times. I've driven through Louisiana. There's something about just being there that like you kind of want to dive into the more, you know, local folklore, legends.
00:01:49
Speaker
You want to become a part of it while you're there. There's something just very like attractive about these stories and the culture there. And I remember we took a walking tour last year for my sister's 40th birthday and it was just like a very dark.
00:02:07
Speaker
walking tour of some of the most horrible things that have happened in New Orleans. I was not expecting it to be that dark, but there are some stories that were very, very unnerving about just like murders and cannibalism and yowza. It was intense.
00:02:26
Speaker
I mean, I feel like if you're going to visit one of the bigger cities in Louisiana, you have to set yourself up for some sort of walking tour or ghost tour because, like you said, there's a lot of really dark history. And it's not just New Orleans either. A lot of very, very haunted places in Louisiana are outside of the city, which might come to a surprise to some people just because you always hear about, I don't know, New Orleans and all the St. Louis Cemetery and things like that, it being so haunted.
00:02:53
Speaker
Which is true. But also, I think around the state, you can find some really cool stuff.
Cryptids and Swamp Monsters
00:03:00
Speaker
Yeah. For me, I think what was most surprising about this episode was there were a lot more
00:03:11
Speaker
cryptids, I guess, than I was expecting. Because I guess I was more expecting a lot of ghost stories and actual haunted places, which there are. But there were some... This one to me, there were a lot of things that I found that I guess I wasn't expecting in terms of swamp monsters and stuff like that, which was really cool.
00:03:35
Speaker
That is kind of where I focus as well because I thought the cryptids and creatures in the state, it's something I never really dug into before because I'm very, very aware of the various hauntings and hospitals and old plantation houses and things like that just due to the nature of being in the South during certain times of history. But then I found some very fun articles about these weird things that lived down there I've never heard of and they have their own names and it's just fantastic.
00:04:04
Speaker
It really is, yeah. So one thing I just wanted to, we have an article on OnlyInYourState.com and it talks about Louisiana folklore, which one of them I just wanted to share because I love superstitions. And this one was, if someone passes a mop over your foot, you will never get married. Okay, one, who attacking me with mops?
00:04:29
Speaker
Stop it. And also, what? You never heard of that. So someone's sweeping, and they sweep over your foot. You're done. That's it. You call it a day.
00:04:43
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I mean, at least it's like solved the whole dating issue. If you don't, if you're just done with that, find a mop, you'll be set. Some people buy a mop and just like drag it over their feet. Please, no, my God. What not to do to your exes, attack them with a mop. So, okay, what other stories because I have, I have two like creaturey stories.
00:05:09
Speaker
Was there any other folklore in general that you came across that you thought was very much like the mop story that you thought was interesting? There was another one that was about itchy hands, that if your right hand itches, and some of these are just so wild, like how do they even document this? And anyway, it means an old friend is about to make an appearance in your life.
00:05:36
Speaker
if you're left hand itches, you're about to come into some money. So that's opposite end of the spectrum. I thought it'd be like, Oh, someone cursed you or walked over your grave. That's great. Yeah, I mean, it's nothing. Never happened to me. That's all right. Yeah. Well, I mean, my hands like I don't really notice I guess if my hands are itchy. They don't really it. I don't know. Is that like a thing? But
00:06:01
Speaker
Yeah, I wouldn't. And sometimes if I go out, you probably have never experienced this just knowing who you are, but going out in very, very cold weather without any protection, you can kind of get those like chill planes when you come in and it's like itchy Bernie. Yeah. Yeah. You'll experience it one day, I'm sure. Not here in Florida. All right. So that's my weird stuff. So I'd love to hear, I'd love to dive into some of your Louisiana monsters.
Ghost Lights and Folklore
00:06:27
Speaker
Okay, so I have two and if you also researched one of them, please jump in. They're both fun. So the first one I wanted to talk about is a ghost light. And are you familiar with what a ghost light is? No. Okay, so a ghost light, or a spirit light. Now this is a piece of lore urban legend that is, you know, found across the globe.
00:06:54
Speaker
And what it is is that you will find these floating lights in, you know, swamps, bogs, marshes, wetlands, things like that. And if you, more often than not, if you follow the floating light, you're going to die.
00:07:09
Speaker
So if you think of like a will of the wisp, a corpse candle, a hinky punk, a hitadama, fairy lights, these are all very, very common lore about how these spirits will lure travelers to their deaths. However, Louisiana is a little bit different.
00:07:27
Speaker
So there are swamps throughout Louisiana, and I mean, they're full of both beautiful scenes and countless creatures that will probably end you in seconds. There's also a Cajun fairy, which is known as Le Fous Follet. So it appears as a hovering ball of light.
00:07:47
Speaker
And it's Cajun and origin, and which is why a lot of these terms you find are like a version of a French word, obviously since Cajuns like French and English so the Fufole will be will appear in swamps and it'll just be a hovering ball of light.
00:08:06
Speaker
they view it as something positive like their grandparents or ancestors are coming to visit them and you know it's just a sign that they passed on but more often than not a spirit light is something that is going to lure you to the horrible doom.
00:08:22
Speaker
So if you follow a will of the whisper, a hinky punk into a swamp, it's going to confuse you, turn you around, and drown you eventually. But so this marsh fire or crazy fire, if you take the words literally in French, it can also have that devilish version where it's trying to capture and trap travelers and lure them into the waters. But it's also, hey, could be a friendly spirit of someone who passed on and just wanted to say hi.
00:08:51
Speaker
is very, it's not malevolent. It's just almost like a tidying of good luck. That's a big gamble. You're following something and you're like, is this my relative or am I about to die? Wow. Absolutely. What I think is fascinating about Spirit Lights is because they're found all over the globe and every culture has a version of a Spirit Light. It is
00:09:18
Speaker
all having the very similar lore of, yeah, they're going to lure you to your death, which just makes me think that a lot of people have drowned themselves in swamps trying to travel them. They've just done an oopsie and maybe didn't make it back. But also, I think over time, people were realizing that unique weather phenomenon might be the cause for these as well. So swamp gases emitting light,
00:09:43
Speaker
or other kind of bioluminescence. But be that as it may, like you said, it's a big gamble. I would just not follow a light if you're near a swamp marsh wetland pond. Don't do it. Avoid it. What's crazy to me is just like swamps and jet swamps at night.
00:10:02
Speaker
It's already a no. It's a hard no. You don't know what's out there. You shouldn't be there. Right. Alligators, crocodiles, whatever, giant anacondas, now just floating lights. Just do that. That's a hard no for me. Oh God, what is that? Stand by me?
00:10:24
Speaker
way too young where they go into the water and they're covered with leeches. I've learned my lesson from that movie and I'm never going into standing water. It's not a thing I want to do. No. Okay, so swamps, that's like a running theme, I feel like with Louisiana and folklore and urban legends. Because from what I'm seeing, a lot of it involves swampland. Yeah.
00:10:47
Speaker
Is that interesting too? Just there's something about the swamp. I don't know. Is it because it's just so isolated? I do think those biomes are interesting because similar to maybe the plains or grasslands of the United States, there's just a lot of space for you to be lost in and isolated. But you get that extra layer of your F because it's swamp. So you have alligators and very deadly things.
00:11:13
Speaker
Maybe it's just a part of the culture I don't get because we don't have a lot of swamps here. We don't have much of anything. I don't know. I mean, is it kind of the same feeling of what you would get in the Everglades of just, it's massive. Things are in there that can kill you. So we start to tell stories about these massive swaths of land that are very deadly. Yeah, I feel like the Everglades to me is a little bit different. They're not as dark. There's something...
00:11:39
Speaker
I don't know if it's just like a weird, a different energy. Because yeah, people have died in the Everglades. They're, they're anaconda. People let their pet snakes go when they're too big for their houses and then they just live in the Everglades.
00:11:51
Speaker
which is crazy to me, but I don't know. There's nothing that from my research about the Everglades that has like an urban legend quality to it. It's just more like a natural phenomenon and a huge attraction.
00:12:12
Speaker
Yeah. I know, it's weird. I find something oddly like, and I sort of romanticize Southern swamps. I don't know why, like what period of history where I'm like, yeah, that just seems really cool and romantic and like these huge trees. I don't know what it is, but it has a very different appeal in a very unique way. Okay. So your second
00:12:35
Speaker
Monster.
The Rougarou Legend
00:12:36
Speaker
Yes. That wasn't even a monster, though, right? So not quite a crypt. Yeah, it's like these fairy lights or ghost lights, I just think is a really interesting local lore and belief. But the creature actually is a cryptid. Do you want me to jump in or would you like to? Yeah. So have you heard of the Ruguru?
00:12:59
Speaker
I did come across that, yes. In Cajun folklore, the Rougarou is probably one of the most popular, but to be honest, I didn't even know it was a thing literally until I went to Cedar Point, which is an amusement park in Ohio. They renamed one of their older rides the Rougarou. I'm like, okay, I'm just going to have to Google what that is.
00:13:20
Speaker
By the way, if you ever find yourself at Cedar Point and you are considering riding the Mantis, which is now the Rougarou, if you're prone to headaches or do not enjoy a very, very hard bike seat in your crotch, the entire ride, don't do it. Just don't rave and Maverick steel vengeance. All better. That was just a quick aside. Just say for those out there, love Cedar Point, but my God, the head. Okay. Anyway, I made the mistake of getting piercings and then going on that ride and just like.
00:13:51
Speaker
It was a bad time. Oh my gosh. Anyway, so the Rougarou is a creepy creature that said to live in the swamps and fields of Southern Louisiana. And it's often described as having the body of a human in the head of a wolf. I think this sounds very familiar to us. So it is the Cajun version of a werewolf.
00:14:10
Speaker
And the rugeru, that name, is either inspired by or an alternate spelling of lugaru, which is essentially the French term for a werewolf. So back in the 16th century, centuries ago, people were just very similar to witches. If things were going bad for them, or maybe their cattle died or their baby passed away, it was the lugaru that did it. That wolf just came up in and stole our babies.
00:14:40
Speaker
So, you know, very much a escape guru. So these, that's where the influence I think started was that there is a French werewolf legend that the Cajun population have since embraced in Louisiana.
00:14:58
Speaker
And one of my favorite backstories for this werewolf is that the Rougarou hunts down Catholics who do not obey the rules of Lent. Eat anything but fish on a Friday, go and get you. Yeah, right?
00:15:18
Speaker
Wow, who knew that very specific? Yeah, maybe it's like part of the clergy, you know Father Roo guru gonna go out make sure people are a bane. Yeah, the rules of life is wild
00:15:31
Speaker
What if he just puts on a werewolf mask and then is just like, look, this is the Lord's work. I was raised in a Catholic school and household, and I might still be in that sort of school and household if they came out dressed as werewolves. That would have done a different. I'd be way better as a person if they're like, hey, I'm a werewolf and we're going to eat you.
00:15:55
Speaker
Well, that's pretty cut and dry, I guess. Oh my gosh. That reminds me of that. What was that movie? The Village? M. Night Shyamalan and Joaquin Phoenix. And they were trying to wrangle their villagers and keep them there. But it was just them. Spoiler alert. I mean, it's been over 10 years probably, so what are you going to do?
00:16:20
Speaker
I remember I was very... At first I was disappointed, but upon re-watching it, I liked it a lot. I just wanted there to be monsters, you know? Anyway, there's also something similar to the boohag legend that we covered in South Carolina. So, if you want to deter Rougarou from coming into your home,
00:16:46
Speaker
All you need to do is put 13 objects by a door and because whenever they transform into a ruguru, they lose the ability to count past 12. So you'll just confuse them. Maybe get a colander or a broom. Just put it outside of your door. They're going to be so fixated on counting that they're not going to come in harmony. So that's always the trick. Wow. Interesting.
00:17:09
Speaker
Yes. I do love this thread of similarity through some of these cryptids, creatures, stories that I wonder if somebody just kind of took one thing from the other and vice versa. What is with the counting?
00:17:29
Speaker
Why is that a solid plan for keeping yourself safe? As long as I just put 13 pieces of gum outside, I'll be okay. But also, what is it about these monsters and arithmetic? Isn't that something we should be questioning? I don't know. First of all, where's their elementary school that they can't count past 12? Why are they so fixated on counting?
00:17:55
Speaker
That is interesting. Maybe there is just a time in history where people were just very suspicious of all maths and they're like, no, there's counting involved. It's evil. Can't do it.
00:18:07
Speaker
How crazy. Well, interesting. Yeah, so I did come across the Rougarou in my research because it's really hard not to. It's everywhere. It is everywhere. In every sort of like... I'm sorry if we covered it and everyone listening is like, oh God, we already knew about that. I didn't. It was for me. This was for me. No, yeah, I didn't either. Okay, great. I just love the fact it has a wolf head and a human body because that I think is interesting.
00:18:33
Speaker
But I mean, I assume that it was like a wolfish body, like a bipedal wolf like those werewolves. Maybe not. It could just be a dude with a wolf head. That'd be that'd be a little anticlimactic if you hear howling in those swamps or running and you look behind you. It's just some guy with a wolf head. Not really particularly scary. Yeah.
Grunch and Other Creatures
00:18:55
Speaker
Well, in that same vein, there's another Louisiana urban legend that involves
00:19:02
Speaker
kind of half-human, half-monsters in the Louisiana bayous called The Grunch. Did you come across those? I did, and I love the name so much. Great, yes. I don't know if it's because it's like a scrunkly Grinch or what. I just want that.
00:19:19
Speaker
I just feel like that'd be a great nickname. Sup Grunch? Yeah. So it's named after Grunch Road, which was this old dirt road that led deep into the woods. It was eventually a dead end road. Teenagers would go there, you know, do whatever teenagers do. And then apparently things started happening. And the Grunch are rumored to be a group of deformed half-human half-monsters that resulted from years of isolation in the bayous.
00:19:49
Speaker
So basically, there are a lot of different stories about how the Grudge came to be. One of them was that it was just a group of people that were isolated, ostracized from their community.
00:20:08
Speaker
Basically they went to live in the woods. They have razor sharp teeth, legs of a goat, but also the size of a normal man.
00:20:21
Speaker
They lurk in tall grass. They wait for people to park their cars on Grunch Road. But unfortunately, Grunch Road doesn't exist anymore. It's been repaved and renamed because I'm sure a lot of people were trying to go out there and see what the heck's going on. But some stories, they say the Grunch, this group of people, it was a result of a curse that was put on this group by Louisiana voodoo queen Marie Laveau.
00:20:49
Speaker
And, uh, but other people have said that it's just this like group of disgruntled people that, you know, they've been living in the swamp lands in the woods for so long and, and eating animals and, um,
00:21:04
Speaker
Basically, some people have said that the Grunge use goats instead of being goats, half goat. They use goats to lure people out of their car on the road. That would work on me. If I'm driving down a road and I see a goat, I'm stopping.
00:21:20
Speaker
Right. Perfect. Yeah. I think that. 10 out of 10. That works. And then, yeah, so they lure people out, they eat them, they drain their blood, bada bing bada boom, done. That's the grudge right there. What is it with also, I mean, if you're familiar with like The Hills Have Eyes and like all these stories across the United States about like these isolated peoples who are just going to like
00:21:46
Speaker
Ah, they're mutants or they're murderous. And I mean, maybe it's just like a version of like xenophobic beliefs of like, oh, well, if they're other, they must be monsters. It was crazy. Wow. I do love the grunge. I like that name. I thought it was a person like Grinch. I thought it was just a specific thing, but wow. Okay.
00:22:09
Speaker
Yeah, I thought that was fascinating. I remember you and I were talking about, I don't remember which episode it was, but we were talking about, I think monsters or cryptids, and we were saying something like it could have been a train, a traveling circus or something. I think maybe it was the last episode. Or was it the Goatman? We were talking about, I don't remember. Yeah, I forget.
00:22:37
Speaker
We were just talking about like, it was just, it could be like the result of a traveling circus. And then I came across this Louisiana urban legend about the honey Island swamp monster, which honey Island swamp people used to be like a very popular swamp that people would visit. It's like a river swamp, beautiful. But for decades, people were saying that there was a monster living in the swamp floating around.
00:23:05
Speaker
somebody this man said he saw it with his own eyes and as the legend goes in the 20th early 20th century a train that was carrying a traveling circus crashed and chimpanzees escaped
00:23:18
Speaker
They said that the chimpanzees bred with the alligators and resulted in a creature, a hybrid creature that is believed to be seven feet tall with webbed feet, piercing yellow eyes, matted gray hair, and just seamlessly blends in with the swampland.
00:23:38
Speaker
And yeah, so that is the result of a traveling circus train crash. You had me until you said made it with alligators. So I'm like, oh yeah, that could be me. There's like a troop of like chimpanzees that have just gone like real feral and no. OK, makes sense. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, I think I came across that. I scrolled past that one.
00:23:58
Speaker
Because I was focused on the Rougarou and LeFou Follet. I saw the Honey Island, maybe also the Grunge. It could have been on the Only in Your State article that might have went through these. Because they definitely sound familiar.
Haunted Places in Louisiana
00:24:11
Speaker
But I did want to mention, since you brought up Marie Laveau, so if you did want to, in addition to having the Grunge and the Spirit Lights and the Rougarou and all this stuff, all the cryptids and cool things, there are still a lot of really haunted places.
00:24:27
Speaker
in Louisiana, including Marie Laveau's grave in New Orleans, but it's one of those things where there were so many haunted POIs, I couldn't list them all. There's some like the, like I said, various plantations, but the Myrtles Plantations in St. Francisville, the old EA Conway Memorial Hospital in Monroe, the Hotel Bentley in Alexandria,
00:24:52
Speaker
the St. Louis Cemetery number one in New Orleans. Alice Penny Taylor's grave site in Baton Rouge. And then the LaLaurie Mansion in New Orleans, Sarah, I can't speak. And then also Ellerby Road School in Shreveport. Those were just some of the top line things that I came across that I wish we had enough time to cover. There's so many. There's so many we could talk about.
00:25:20
Speaker
I am glad that we discussed the cryptids today because I haven't heard of either of yours. And I just think that's really fascinating. Yeah, we can drop in the show notes a couple of these links to these places so people can physically visit. And if anybody does visit these places and they want to share in our show notes, we have a phone number.
00:25:44
Speaker
Call, text, leave a voicemail. We'd love to hear from you because I would love to hear from a Louisiana native who can maybe shed some light on these cryptids and these stories and maybe just provide some more context.
00:26:00
Speaker
I remember, so for a linear state, there's a writer named Jackie who wrote for New Orleans and also Louisiana. And she told us a story, I don't know how long ago it was, just about haunted graves and haunted trees and just overflowing with knowledge. So maybe we can get her on and have her chat to us at some point about various Louisiana
00:26:25
Speaker
lore because yeah, I would love to hear if not from a listener from someone who lives in Louisiana because there's just so much going on down there. So please call in, email, whatever. If you even have a story that was just like passed down through your family and you just want to share it, I think that would be really fascinating to hear. I'm trying to remember the story that she told us, but something to do with the tree. I'm not going to do it justice.
00:26:49
Speaker
Well, yeah, we should definitely have her on. Maybe we do a bonus episode because I think she's still the Louisiana writer.
00:26:55
Speaker
Yeah, I think so. She's like one of the original Only In Your State writers and she's still crushing it.
Listener Stories and Future Episodes
00:27:02
Speaker
I will say that we should have a time here on our show where we go through and interview some of our colleagues because all of us just do the nature of Only In Your State. We love travel. We love travel in the US. I think we've all collected our own little list of stories and cool things to do. I want to hear from more of us and introduce
00:27:22
Speaker
Our listeners to even more of the people who make only in your state what it is. It'd be really cool. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, definitely. All right. Well, that is Louisiana urban legends cryptids in a nutshell. Um, I think, uh, I think we're supposed to be covering Utah sometime soon. Yeah. So that should be up next. And then also for anybody that's listening, we recently launched a new series.
00:27:52
Speaker
top 10 things to do in Ohio and Florida. We want to hear from you what states do you want to see featured on a monthly basis, top 10 things to do. You have email, call, text, let us know if you want your state featured, and stay tuned for that new series as well. Just remember, if you are in a swamp or near a body of water and see a light, do not follow.
00:28:18
Speaker
Get in your car. Go chase the lights. Don't chase the lights. Don't go chasing lights. If you're up for an audio adventure, we will be exploring local lores and legends in the US on season two of Not Your Average Bucket List, available on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. So make sure to like, subscribe, and join us.
00:28:56
Speaker
Only In Your State is an award-winning travel publisher that uncovers hidden gems and local favorites across the U.S. We have a presence in all 50 states with a passionate following of fellow travelers looking to get out and explore. Head on over to onlyinyourstate.com to find the best attractions in your backyard and beyond.