Haunted Villa, Biloxi MSStory of Haunted Villa of Biloxi.
Interestingly Told By John L. Tait
Saturday, April 6, 1912
Home For a Long Time Supposed to be Haunted Has Been Repaired and Is Now Occupied
and is Considered One of Handsomest Homes On the Coast.
Biloxi, April 3.
The story of the haunted villa of Biloxi is one that holds the interest
of the most casual reader, whether he believes in haunted houses of not. The
villa is situated a few miles west of Biloxi and has in recent years been
purchased and remodeled and extensively repaired and is today one of the
handsomest residences on the Coast. It is occupied and needless to say, no
one loses much sleep these days about the haunts. However, in the old days
the story was quite generally credited and there was a genuine fear among the
less educated contingent of the occupants of the house.
John Leisk Tait, writing in the San Francisco Chronicle in February,
1907, tells the story of the haunted villa in the following picturesque
language, which reminds one somewhat of the style of Poe's "Fall of the
House of Usher."
Weird in its Southern beauty, the little town of Biloxi lies sleeping
upon the edge of the great gulf at the southmost reach of the State of
Mississippi.
Biloxi is an aristocratic old place, whose ancestral mansions, placed in
wide gardens along narrow, shadelined trees, have each a history in itself.
It was settled first of all the Gulf towns, so long ago that the date he
blended into the personality of the old, cuirassed and helmeted cavalier of
Spain and France who were led thither under Sauville, a kinsman of Bienville
and Iberville, and who were impelled by the quaint and quiet beauty of the
spot to found there a settlement. And it has ever since been a favored
abiding place, for its waters teem with wild fowl and fish, and its shores
luxuriate in subtropic fruits and vegetables. Moreover, it has always been
the delight of mankind to dwell beside the sea, and in all lands, soon or
late, the wealthier classes have utilized the power which their wealth
conferred upon them to appropriate the more comely sea views for residence
sites and this was true of the wealthier families of South Mississippi. They
flocked to Biloxi first as a winter resort and then as a place of perpetual
residence and the streets of the quaint old town are lined with substantial
mansions the architecture of a century ago. It was here at Beauvoir, that
Jefferson Davis retired after the close of the Civil War.
Less than three miles distant from Beauvoir, about seven miles from
Biloxi, lies the haunted villa known in olden days as the Brownwell place.
It must have been a stately building. Ruined and desolated as it stands
today, its long, low galleries and extensive wings bear mute witness to its
first estate. It lies deep within a thick wood well back from the road and
not visible until one has penetrated a hundred yards within the encircling
forest of gloomy live oaks which shroud it day and night. No bird sings
within those trees; no rabbit darts from the hedge and frisks across your
pathway as you approach; and however noisy the sea birds' clamor not even the
untamed courier of the deep dare hover over its gloomy recesses. Noises are
there indeed, but they are noises from which the living shrink and in which
no living creature has a lot or part.
The Brownwell place was built before the revolution by a family of that
name. It was in its day the handsomest villa for miles along the Coast. It
was the home of hospitality and the scene of unbounded gayety. The
Brownwells were a cultured people, with a fortune adequate to the
gratification of their tastes and their friendship was irrefutable evidence
of social worth.
So they lived for years and then, as so often happens this proud house
founds its numbers reduced almost to the point of extinction. There remained
only two, father and daughter. The last of the Brownwells in the male line
was Bienville Brownwell. he had married when quite young, and his wife died
almost immediately after the birth of their only child, whom the sorrowing
father christened Dolores. With this child he took up his permanent abode at
the Brownwell place and there devoted himself to her with an utter
abandonment of all other interests in life.
Dolores, as she grew up, developed wonderful musical talent. Her skill as
a pianist became the marvel and delight of all who knew her, but it was for
her father that she played her best--on the moonlight evenings when the two
sat alone in their beautiful home the motherless girl poured out in music the
fullness of her heart to the saddened man hwo had been both father and mother
to her and passers by paused to li sten and to wonder at the sweetness of the
music and the indefinable thing of the eerie that pervaded it.
Bienville Brownville raised a regiment and let it to the field, its first
colonel. One of his captains was a young fellow who the night before they
marched, stood with the tremulous Dolores within the piano room and told her
father of their plighted love; and he fell, pierced through the heart, with a
bullet in their first engagement. Less than a month later a fragment of a shell
carried away Colonel Brownwell's right arm, and he returned wan and maimed to
spend the remainder of his days comforting his stricken child.
The two were inseparable. If they had been devoted to each other before,
they were doubly so now. The girl devoted herself to her father with an
attachment which was redoubled because of her grief for the gallant lover who
had fallen at his side; and the father, grieving for her grief, lost all
interest in life, saving that which clung about his motherless daughter.
I said they were inseparable. But there was one thing which sometimes
drove the father fairly panting with pain out of her sight to wrestle alone
with his God for hours. There were spells, nights when the moon was fitfully
veiled and revealed though flying clouds and when the wind made mournful
music in the pines, when she flew to her piano and poured out the anguish of
her heart in such strains as mortal scarcely ever hearts in this world. All
her heartbreak, all her loneliness, all her grief and bitter anguish wailed
trough its measures and sobbed out upon the night and he who loved her would
arise and flee to the beach, where the beauty, and not the pain, came to him;
and there he would wander for hours, until the music ceased and he returned
to the house to find her weeping in the wild abandonment of sometimes lying
in a dead faint beside her silent instrument. All the next day she would go
about silently, with great dark eyes staring straight ahead of her and her
face white and deathlike. Gradually she would yield to her father's
tenderness, and once more take up, with a wan smile, the burden of her
duties toward him.
One night there came an electrical storm of unusual violence, lashing
trees and whipping the surf until the coast was strewn with destruction. In
the midst of it there came upon the girl the spirit of longing for the dead
lover, and she flew to her piano for consolation.
Never before had she played as she played that night. Forgotten was the
war of the elements in the mad frenzy of the music as the woman's soul poured
its anguish out on the wings of the wind, over the raging sea and up into the
face of the black sky. Her father stood transfixed at her matchless, pallid
beauty and the unspeakable pathos of her playing. Then, wrapping his coat
about him, he left the house and sought the beach, unable to endure the sight
of her suffering.
For an hour she played. Then the spell passed and she arose and went out
upon the verandah, looking with unseeing eyes to seaward, her white robe
fluttering in the storm, waiting longing for her father's return. There was
a crash, the heavens were blinded with an intense flash of living fire and
blackness and rolling thunders filled the earth and the heavens. But above
it all she had seen her fathers form and for one instant had heard his voice.
She saw his one arm flung wildly aloft and heard him calling her name.
She plunged out into the night, calling him as she ran. She made her way
through the storm to the beach calling incessantly. He was not to be found.
She returned to the house and ran wildly from room to room calling his name
and imploring him to return to her. The crash of the thunder was her only
answer.
Next morning they found him. The sea had washed him ashore at the foot
of the little pier which they used as a boat landing. There was no mark of
violence upon him. The manner of his death remained a mystery. Probably he
stepped too near the beach in the darkness and slipped into the angry waters
and was unable, because of the loss of his arm, to regain the shore, and so
perished.
The daughter's grief was indescribable. They buried him under the big
magnolia in the family cemetery, and her waking hours were spent beside his
grave. She continued to dwell alone in the desolated villa, the old Negro
servants her only guardians.
Five days after the funeral her old nurse ran wildly down the shell road
one night to the nearest neighbor, imploring him to come at once. He found
her mistress dead upon the floor beside her piano, lying in a pool of blood.
She had been stabbed in the back as she sat playing. Death had been
instantaneous. Her murderer escaped, leaving no clue to his identity.
After her burial the property passed to a distant branchy of the family,
to people who had other interests binding them to a distant section. The
villa was at once advertised for rent.
Tenants Left Quickly
It was eagerly taken by one of the leading merchants of Jacksonville,
Florida, who was spending a season with his family in the neighborhood of
Biloxi. The remained three days and nights before moving out and offering
the place for rent once more. Another tenant jumped at he bargain, and
relinquished it as quickly. Repeated efforts were made to find a permanent
tenant, but without success. Some left without explanation or excuse.
Others assigned various and elaborate reasons for their sudden departure. A
few boldly declared that the house was haunted and that they could not live
there on that account.
Gradually these stories assumed definite form. A sound of piano playing,
infinitely sad and infinitely sweet was heard during the nights emanating
from the piano room. The voice of a woman weeping rang through the house and
occasionally the words, "Father Oh, Father!" were heard by the horrorstricken
tenants. On stormy nights even when there was no electrical disturbances
outside, the house would be filled with the glare of lightning and the
crashing of thunder, and through the unlighted rooms the form of a frantic
woman, clad in white, rushed with wild calls. Anon came the sound of a blow
as if against a human form, the crash of a player's hands upon the keys of
the piano, a heavy fall and silence.
Meanwhile the beautiful villa and its grounds were suffering decay. The
fences were out of repair; the shrubbery was no longer trimmed; the marks of
age and weathering upon the house were no longer removed, and the place
passed rapidly into a stage of dilapidation, which made it shunner on that
account, no less than because of its gruesome reputation.
About this time there came a tenant who, to the surprise of everybody
about the place, not only took up residence in the haunted villa, but
remained there. This was a widow with two children, a boy of 12 and a girl
of a year or two younger. She was attended by two Negro servants an old man
of all work and his wife. They lived quite alone, entertained no one and
made no calls.
Mrs. Hitchcock, for that was the name of which the widow gave to the
agent from whom she rented the place, devoted herself to her children. The
boy was manifestly an invalid. At first he was seen about the place by
casual passers, his great, dark eyes and wistful bearing seeming to yearn for
the companionship which he fled if it were offered. Later he was observed in
an invalid's chair, wheeled about the walks by the old Negro man. One day
there was a quiet funeral and the boy's emaciated body was borne out from the
desolate villa to its last resting place beneath the magnolias.
UGLY RUMORS AFLOAT
Meanwhile there had been rumors subdued at first but ugly and increasing in
volume, about Mrs. Hitchcock and her household. There are some words in the
English language at which the hearer starts to back against, and one of these
had been mentioned in connection with them. It was the word "leprosy."
The morning following the burial of the boy the mother received a call
from authorities. She met them at the door. She had observed their approach
through the live oak bordered avenue. Had she not watched for them through
weary months with eyes that grew dim with watching?
"We come to search your place for a case of leprosy" said the leader of
the posse.
The woman went white to the lips, but she answered evenly.
"Let me see your warrant."
The officers fell back discomfited.
"By George! We never looked after that. We didn't think you'd object,"
answered the leader.
"Nor will I, if you are properly authorized to make such a search,"
answered the widow.
"We'll have to come again," said the officer, and led his posse back to
town.
Next morning they did come again, but there was no one about the villa to
object to their search. It's late inmates had disappeared completely.
Nothing remained to prove that they have ever been there, except a smoldering
heap of ashes in the yard, where some papers and refuse had been burned, and
a newly made grave under the magnolias. Yes, there was another bit of
evidence--a note was found upon the piano in the front room. It was from
the widow, and contained her pathetic story, and confirmation, if
confirmation were needed, of the tales that clustered about the haunted
villa. It was brief, but it was convincing. It read:
"You need make no search for me or mine, for before you see this we will
be beyond reach and no effort will enable you to trace us. My two children
contracted the leprosy, presumably from a Chinese servant. It manifested
itself in them two years after their father died. I have fled and hidden wit
them from one place to another, fighting to prevent their being taken from me
and sent to the leper colony. We have remained quiet here longer than
elsewhere, owing to the fearful character which has been attributed to this
house; and, believe me, it is all and worse than popular belief has painted
it. I am convinced that the terror they inspired in my son hastened his
death."
It is needless to state that the most determined search was instituted
for the fugitives, but they were never traced. Were they went will probably
never be known. But from that day a new and more terrible fear infused
itself into the popular villa, which remains today utterly neglected and
shunner of all man |
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