The fall season brings cooler temperatures along with the excitement that comes with the Halloween season.
In Louisiana, fall also marks the beginning of the sugar cane harvest season. This change especially impacts the Generations Teaching Generation Preschool located in the back of the Family and Consumer Sciences Building. For a few years, the staff members at this preschool have noticed that certain paranormal occurrences are more prevalent during this time.
It all started when a daycare student began talking to what the staff thought was an imaginary friend. He would talk to this invisible friend and play with him frequently. Soon, other students began to interact with this unseen person. Even students in other age groups who never interacted with the original student reported seeing this mysterious entity.
The original student then mentioned that his unseen friend’s name was “Mr. Duggin.” Soon, other students began referring to him by this name, regularly talking to him and even playing tag with him.
As time progressed, the staff began hearing certain details from the students regarding Mr. Duggin. According to some students, Mr. Duggin was a “black man, who wore a top hat.” Students also mentioned that he was on fire and that he cut grass with a curved knife.
These clues led some people to believe that Mr. Duggin passed away during the Thibodaux Massacre. The Thibodaux Massacre occurred in November 1887 and is known as the second bloodiest labor dispute in the United States. This massacre started over wages, but disputes between plantation owners and recently freed slaves uncovered underlying racial tensions. These freed men were violently murdered and it is estimated that anywhere from 35 to 300 African American workers were killed.
The students had most of the encounters with Mr. Duggin, but staff members also recalled a few times when paranormal activity would pick up.
“We never had encounters. It was just the kids, but being around the kids is how we found out stuff,” said Sarah Zeringue, a former student worker at the daycare who is a senior history major from Schriever.
One staff member recalls an incident when she was alone with a student and he said, “Who’s that?” pointing to a corner in the room. She turned around and saw that there was no one there. The student continued, “Never- mind. He left.”
Megan Alfred, Interim Director of the GTG Preschool recalls one incident.
“We were all sitting on the carpet in our infant room, and one of the baby bottles that I had just put into a child’s cubby, I snapped the cap on the bottle and pushed it all the way into the cubby,” Alfred said. “We were eating lunch while the children were napping and we were talking about Mr. Duggin because he was very active during this time. One of the girls said, ‘I do not believe that,’ and the bottle flew out of the cubby and landed on the carpet. It was insane.”
There are also incidents in which the toilet would flush with no explanation, or the room would suddenly get cold.
Zeringue also recalls an incident in which the staff faced paranormal activity.
“We were joking around, and someone said, ‘It’s okay. You can go to your happy place if you are ready,’ and a Sesame Street oven turned on and said ‘not ready.’ We pulled the batteries out and left it outside.”
There was also an encounter with a student worker and a teacher who were in a room when a book bag flew upward, then back into place even though there was no breeze in the room.
Perhaps one of the most tangible encounters was when a staff member’s phone accidentally started recording. Later on, when she listened to the recording there was a noticeable unidentified voice that said, “Howdy.”
The staff did make it clear that Mr. Duggin is always friendly and although things did feel eerie at times, they were never afraid of him.
After the original child who encountered Mr. Duggin left the preschool, students still reported seeing this mysterious ghost. It seems that Mr. Duggin plans to stick around for a long time, no matter if he is a ghost or an imaginary friend.