History Sleeping Waters

July 15,2009 New Website Layout

History as told by Jeb Witherspoon.  "Crowley was founded by Oliver Crowley in 1886.  The land in which it resides is known as the Acadia Parish and holds a deeper history to it.  It was during a time of the French and Indian War when this land would be wrought out of the hands of the Native American Indians.  The French, after seven long years, had finally driven out the Native American tribe known as the Bayou Goula.

"But the story goes that the Bayou Goula triber were not driven out but they died out shortly after loosing this land.  The land, now under the control of the French, but I'll say the aristocrats so you can get some distinction here, had come to learn as well, that some things just do not come for free."

"The story goes that shortly after acquiring these lands, that strange things began to happen.  Men who were seen heading into the heart of the woods, those very woods over yonder."  A point off towards the mist filled wooden trees.  "It goes that men would go in and never come back out.  Many of the French thought the Bayou Goula were in those woods hunting them down one-by-one.  But then, these same men wanted to move on and get away from these here parts.  They wanted to put as much distance between them and those there woods.  So, days and nights go by and the French army would start to pour out of these lands.  But they didn't want to just leave it sitting'.  So one man of leadership, who's name I have forgotten, decided that it was time to speak to the English."

"Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too.  They live inside us, and sometimes, they win." Stephen King

"And that's where Oliver Crowley comes in.  You see, he had come to understand the plight of the Acadians, for many years, centuries to be forced or uprooted from one spot to the next.  So you know, our ancestors agreed, a new land that the French aristocrats didn't wanna touch was left open.  They traveled across the seas to this here area and Crowley was brought to stand out.  Then Rayne and Iota.  And with so many towns coming to be, the area had desserved a name."  A nod of his head.  "That's right, they called the entire area Acadia Parish.  Now that dark secret you wonder that drove the aristocrats out from settlin' here."

Dark secret as told by Robert Witherspoon, great- great- grandson of Jeb Witherspoon.  "My grandpa use to tell this story, you know it as well.  The Cajun legend of the creature that is said to prowl those woods around Acadiana.  It's about the rougarou, that creature with the human body and the head of a wolf or dog.  Others would call it the loup-garou.  But we know as well how our older folks love to tell a different version of the rougarou where a witch was responsible for making the rougarou either by turning themselves into wolves or cursing others with what is known as lycanthropy.

"But that story goes even further back to a tribe of indians known as the Bayou Goula.  The story goes that before the French come here, the Bayou Goula held all this land and that every generation a great and powerful ritual was held to hold back a great evil that, after many years, built up to where finally, one of their own would be taken by a creature.  A creature they call a rugaru.  To description of these cretures vary from mild bigfoot creatures to cannibal-like wendigos.  And when one looked upon this creature, you in turn would become just like it and lost forever.  But there was a different story as well.

"That this great evil was so strong that it was just an essence from those woods, that if you got to close a man would become drowned in this essence and this malevolent force would take them over, transforming them into these cannibalistic creatures.  But not every man would become such beasts, it was said that this essence created other sorts of monsters that haunts the night.  These monsters were numerous from spirits to ghosts, to the dead rising up to vampyres.  And all of this came from the evil that seeped from the woods.  And it is believed when the French showed up here, they stopped a great and powerful ritual that the Bayou Goula were performing to hold that evil back at bay.

"But is this just a legend, folklore, truth?  Does such monsters exist you say?  This is all hogwash you chuckle.  Ahh child, that's something you should ask our older residents and see what they think.  Maybe you would be surprised of the things you learn from our older people."