http://www.dailyworld.com/article/20101010/NEWS01/10100307

Ghost hunters investigate local eatery 

By William Johnson • wjohnson@dailyworld.com • October 10, 2010 

Washington, one of the oldest towns in Louisiana, teems with tales of ghosts and goblins And now there is one more, thanks to some real-life "ghostbusters."

"Some of the stuff they found really freaks me out," said Jason Huguet with the Steamboat Warehouse Restaurant, which was recently visited by members of Louisiana Spirits, a group of investigators that probes the paranormal.

Huguet has owned the restaurant, which is located in an old warehouse that dates from 1819, for the past 17 years.

He said over the years he has heard many stories of strange occurrences from his employees, but always chalked them up to superstition.

But after the visit by Louisiana Spirits investigators, he's not so sure any more.

For those who want to learn what the ghost hunters found, Huguet will host a party at the restaurant Monday evening and the public is invited.

"We will have a social at 6 p.m. and a viewing of their video at 7 p.m. Several members of the Louisiana Spirits team will be here to introduce the 90-minute video and tell us how they got it," Huguet said.

The group spent all of one day and a night at the restaurant armed with electromagnetic field detectors, digital recorders, thermal imaging cameras and more.

"We go in as skeptics," said Spirits Director Jennifer Broussard, who will be at the viewing party. "We try and find a logical reason for things that seem to be happening before going to a paranormal reason."

She said hauntings can often be explained by just the normal sounds of older buildings — but sometimes they can't.

"While we are skeptics, we do believe," Broussard said.

Broussard said she has personally taken part in about 50 to 60 investigations and this one ranks at the top.

"The activity was off the chart," Broussard said. "At one point were heard two people fighting and we thought it was someone outside, but we checked and there was no one there."

Later in the evening the investigators heard things being knocked around and crashing to the floor.

"We thought maybe we had forgotten to lock the door and someone was in there with us, but we went room to room and found nobody," Broussard said. "It was kind of scary."

Huguet said the group also recorded numerous unexplained voices, included several recordings of a little girl's voice that kept saying, "I'm so pretty."

"The investigators found a lot of things," Huguet said. "There where sounds of a man whistling, another sounded like the voice of the man I bought this building from. Some of the things they found really make my hair stand on edge."

He said the building has a rich history, serving as a warehouse for the town's busy steamboat trade that lasted until the coming of the railroads in about 1900.

Since then it has gone through many owners and been put to numerous uses.

For more information on the viewing party, call the restaurant at 826-5584. For more information on Louisiana Spirits, visit them online at www.laspirits.com.