Ghostly business
By Jeff Moore THE DAILY IBERIAN


Lafayette has T-Frere's House and Sunset has Chretien Point Plantation,
but New Iberia may have a haunted house of its own.

The LeBourgeois building, which houses Lagniappe Too, is where Robert
Jordan, 23, claims he recently saw a ghost.
The sighting is the latest in a long line of strange occurrences at the
building during the past century.

Jordan's father, Chris Jordan, recently purchased the downtown building
with plans to renovate it. Jordan said he went to sweep out the top of
the building July 31.
"I felt something was wrong as soon as I closed the door behind me to go
upstairs," Jordan said. "The best way I can describe it is a real heavy
feeling, like somebody put a 200 pound jacket on you."
Jordan said he was searching for a light switch when he saw something
walk across a room near the top of the stairs. He described the figure
as a dark shape about the height of a man.
"It was definitely the most startling thing I've ever experienced in my
life," he said.
"That's when I decided I should not be there anymore."

The experience turned even more bizarre for Jordan when he learned the
building had a reputation for being haunted.
It was the setting for a chapter of "Ghosts Along the Bayou" by
Christine Word.
The book states that most of the activity in the building happens in a
back corner office that had been closed off and neglected for many
years, the same room where Jordan encountered the shadowy figure.

In the book, Word described her experience in the building, which was
then home to photographer Kent Hustlar's studio.
"I am surrounded by blackness as I wind my way amid the partitions ...
set up to keep out the light," Word wrote.
"Presently I am standing in the exact spot where Kent encountered 'the
entity' that night in the doorway. While Kent is telling me about that
incident, I sense the strangeness he must have felt, and absent-mindedly
rub at the chill in my left arm."

Elaine Landry, the owner of Lagniappe Too, said she felt a similar chill
in the kitchen of the restaurant more than a decade ago.
"I was standing in front of the stove cooking, and I felt this ice cold
thing just walk right by me," she said. "It was like a wind of ice that
enveloped my back, and then it disappeared."
Landry said that was the only time she ever encountered the ghost. But
she is confident it is still there.
"There's always been a ghost up there," she said. "We knew the former
owners very well, and we knew about the ghost when we came."
Tales of ghosts in the building have persisted for decades, according to
Glenn Conrad's book, "New Iberia."

According to the book, legend states that a skeleton was found buried
under the wood floor of the building when Kyle Motor Company moved there
in the 1920s.
The presumption was that the skeleton had been there since before the
turn of the century when the building was a saloon.
Karen Alvarez, who will be a tenant in the building, said she wanted to
see the ghost for herself after hearing Jordan's tale. She said she and
Chris Jordan visited the building two days after Robert Jordan's
experience. They didn't see any ghosts, but did have a strange
experience.

Alvarez said she and Chris Jordan were talking in a hallway when, for
unknown reasons, her ears popped. When she told Chris Jordan about it,
he told her his ears had popped at the exact same moment.
"I've never had my ears pop on the second floor of a building," she
said. "There was some kind of pressure change up there."

Robert Jordan said he still gets goosebumps when recalling his
experience. He said he has no plans of reliving it in the future.
"It was bad enough that I'll never set foot in there again," Jordan
said. "Even if I had never saw anything, just that feeling it gave me,
I'd have never gone back again."