GARDEN CITY — Addie Harris is said to have died while giving birth at the tender age of 22. Another tale is that she was murdered and yet another claims she jumped to her death from one of the grand galleries that adorn the Susie Plantation.

Her life ended in 1872, but people who have since lived in the antebellum home near Franklin say they believe the young woman remains at the plantation in the form of a ghost. Susie was a working plantation when it was built in 1848, primarily raising sugar cane and rice. A striking feature of its expansive grounds is the tomb of Addie Harris, which is near the home and just 4 feet out of the ground.

Raywood and Gale Bourque had been living in Morgan City when their search began for a piece of bayou-front property. Gale Bourque said she did not have her heart set on an older home, but the couple ended up buying the property in 2002 because when they first visited there, they felt at peace.

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The real estate agency that sold the property to the Bourques did disclose that it was believed to be haunted.

“We bought it anyway,” Gale Bourque said.

Unexplainable things

They soon began a massive restoration of the property. After being left vacant for many years, it needed much care, Gale Bourque said. Unexplainable things started happening almost immediately.

“I serve a great God,” she said, “so I didn’t pay much attention to the haunts.”

The Bourques said they have seen scaffolding, erected on the front gallery dismantled and flung 50 feet from the house and left laying on the grounds in pieces. The only access anyone would have had to the scaffolding was through the house, which the Bourques had locked up when leaving for the day.

“Nobody said anything when we came back to the house that morning,” Gale Bourque said.

There are mysterious smells that often permeate the house, she said. A woman’s perfume and sometimes cooking smells, well before the home’s kitchen was reassembled allowing for any such activity.

Raywood Bourque said he has seen an apparition standing at the top of the stairs. He said a visiting cousin claims to have seen a man standing in the backyard as her husband sat on the back gallery and assured her no other man was there. Others have claimed that figures have been spotted standing in the windows when no one was in the house, as well as the image of a woman seen standing on the front gallery.

Gale Bourque’s sister Iris, who visits often from her home in Tennessee, said when working on the house one day, she felt as if she was pushed off of another set of scaffolding.

“It was a strange feeling, but I definitely felt some kind of force pushed me backwards,” she said. “It was a very evil feeling. I was extremely cold and I left immediately. Did I see something, no, did I feel something, yes.”

Raywood Bourque reported a similar feeling of being pushed off of a ladder with a chainsaw in hand. He broke both wrists that day and severely damaged his right hand.

There is a theory that Addie Harris did not much care for men; she never wanted to see her beloved Susie Plantation owned by one. She said there would be problems if it ever happened, Gale Bourque said.

Within a month of purchasing the property, Raywood Bourque suffered a heart attack and several other mishaps, including the chainsaw incident giving a bit of credence, the couple said, to Addie Harris’ desires from the grave.

Roommates

Then, there is the tinkling of bells in the hallway closet, the soft, incessant whispers in the night, the sound of footsteps on the stairs and invisible visitors in the parlor. There are the heavy dreams that plague Mila Bourque, the couple’s daughter-in-law, when she sleeps in Addie Harris’ old bedroom. Items also have a way of moving from the spot where they were put, Gale Bourque said.

Many of the Bourques’ family members will not spend the night in the house, Gale Bourque said, and one sister-in-law will not even get out of her car in the driveway.

Gale Bourque said the house was actually exorcised many years ago with claims that six spirits of Confederate soldiers, Addie Harris and a young child crying under the stairs were identified.

The Bourques did not say they ever feel scared though, despite having more roommates than they intended to with the plantation’s resident ghost or ghosts.

“We get people from all over the country just stopping by to check out the ‘haunted house,’ ” Gail Bourque said. “I enjoy having them come and talking to them about all the things that happen here.”

After officially moving in only two years ago, it has not taken the Bourque family long to become believers in the epitaph that graces Addis Harris’ tomb — “Weep not she is not dead but sleepith.”