I love shooting cemeteries so I am always looking for interesting ones to explore. There is just something about them that are hauntingly beautiful and peaceful to me. They also all have some sort of fascinating story to tell.
The Istre Cemetery, in Morse, La, is of no exception. It is very unique and I was anxious to shoot it.
What makes it special is their historic Grave Houses. It is thought that there were up to 50 at one time. However, there are only 3 of those originals left. These 3 are the only known surviving examples of traditional Acadiana Grave Houses. In recent years, some new ones have been built and it is very easy to distinguish these new ones from the historic ones.
The Istre family, from Mermentau Cove, set aside the land for the cemetery in the 1800’s. The original 3 Grave Houses were built in 1925 (Istre house), 1935 (Henry house) and circa 1900 (Leblanc house). They were placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2008. You can read more about them in the following articles that I referenced. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Istre_Cemetery_Grave_Houses and here: https://www.onlyinyourstate.com/louisiana/istre-cemetery-la/
My hope was to get information from someone local. Unfortunately, I was unable to do so. The first person that I went to was my mom, the Director of Archives for our local Diocese. However, she was not able to provide anything because the cemetery is public (not Catholic). I also went to a few more individuals that I thought may have info but I was not able to get the kind of stories that I was looking for.
The only type of responses that I got from those that I approached was, “I heard it was haunted”. Aren’t they all supposed to be haunted, though? 🙂
I have certainly had my fair share of unusual experiences shooting in cemeteries. This one was uneventful, for the most part.
There are Ghost chasers that may say differently when they notice my images. It was a beautiful sunny day and I shot into the sun for the majority of them. That means, I got a lot of sun flares. I intentionally wanted the flares for artistic purposes and even edited my images to enhance them. On others, I used a shallow depth of field so I could get bokeh (blurred background with the small circles of light). For those shots, those looks were done on purpose so they have logic and scientific evidence behind them. Sorry to disappoint in regards to that.
However, there was something that was a bit odd.
I noticed this cat huddled next to a very old grave. It stared at me intently the entire time and did not move. It was black and white with strange colored eyes. It sort of creeped me out a little bit but I continued on with my shooting and forgot all about it.
Until….
On my arrival back home, I drove up under my carport and noticed a cat sitting by my front door. It appeared as if it was waiting for me and it looked EXACTLY like the one at the cemetery. It was even staring at me with the same intense glare. It ran away shortly after I arrived and I have not seen it around since.
That I can not explain…
So, I will just leave ya’ll with that and let ya ll discuss that amongst yourselves 😉