History of Fear

“Voodoo Bayou” as it appears today

The thick and tangled swamplands near Blowing Springs, current site of Rock City’s Enchanted Maize has long been considered a “hot spot” for paranormal activity and has a equally tangled and enigmatic history of bizarre occurrences, sightings and disappearances.  Among the most disturbing tales is that of Narcisse Touye. Narcisse was a sharecropper originating from Haiti who lived and worked on a small plot in what is now Blowing Springs in the late 1800’s. Working the land owned by the wealthy Barnabas Specter family in exchange for rent and the right to grow a small garden for he and his wife and daughter, Touye struggled to make ends meet. Having previously been a shaman and healer in his native Haiti and later in the swamp communities of southern Louisiana before settling near Chattanooga, Narcisse was outspokenly against the use of black magic and offered his services to people of the area too poor to afford medical care.

     Envious of Touye’s mystic abilities as a shaman and intrigued with the mystical Dark Arts, landowner Specter decided to get rid of the “Witch Doctor” and steal his powers with a scheme to ruin Touye. He offered to sell a plot to Touye in exchange for an amulet or

Narcisse Touye in front his shack. 1880

talisman that would provide everlasting life and magical powers, which Narcisse claimed he could provide. Narcisse was worried about giving such a powerful totem to a man he didn’t trust, but decided to do so by limiting the power of the amulet to
non-malicious uses.

After receiving the talisman and enranged by its limitations, Specter claimed to authorities that Narcisse had stolen from him and had refused to pay ssums he falsely claimed Touye owed him as well.  Playing upon the locals’ fears and superstitions, Specter incited a mob of angry townspeople to Touye’s shack and burned it to the ground with the Touye family trapped inside. Having regained his land and his talisman, Specter

Clairvia Touye served the Specter Family as a maid before her murder in 1881.

took his amulet to a dark arts bokor in New Orleans. A bokor is a voodoo sorcerer who practices all aspects of voodoo magic including the forbidden arts. The bokor was able to reverse the power of the amulet for Specter, and with his new dark powers, began to take other poor farmer’s land and continued to expand his land holdings and wealth.

     Months after the burning, local people began claiming to see strange things in the forest and swamps around Touye’s burnt shack. “Corpse Lights”, and strange malicious

 

plants that would try to devour anything moving within their reach were reported. The

The Specter Plantation before it burned to the ground in 1881.

entrances to the swamp itself became so unnaturally overgrown that entering was next to impossible. Locals claimed that only powerful magic could have caused such a change in the vegetation. A few who were able to pass into the swampland claimed to have seen Narcisse Touye wandering in this area of the forest.  One individual swore he had a brief conversation with Touye six months after his death. “Narcisse told me he was zombi and was bringin’ hisself back to life for vengeance. It was Narcisse alright,…but he wasn’t the same. He said he was gatherin his strength and would soon be alive again. He said he woke after the fire as nzumbe and had to collect life-force from the swamp to come back to life.” Nzumbe is a Kongo word meaning “spirit of a dead person on earth” and is related to the Haitian concept of zombies. Bodies that have been brought back to life and under the control of a Bokor is a common Haitian belief and in this instance seems to suggest that Narcisse had served as his own Bokor and had supposedly brought himself back from the dead.

Scientific analysis of suspected “zombie” found near former site of Touye farm. 1918

Whether this aspect of the story is true or not, it is well-documented that on October 13th, 1881, a man matching Touye’s description was seen walking through town in the dead of night. Later that same evening, news came that the Specter house had burned to the ground and that no member of the family had been found in the ruins.  Perhaps the strangest aspect of the story are the documents in Specter’s own handwriting found in his safe giving all his holdings with the exception of the former Touye farm back to the previous land owners and dividing his wealth among them. Where Narcisse

 

Touye’s farm was concerned, the letter contained a warning to anyone who attempted to trespass on the land stating that Touye placed a curse on the land. The letter claimed that anyone attempting to enter the Touye’s farm and forest would become suffer eternally as zombi.

 

     Surprisingly, most people took the warning quite seriously for generations. Over the years, tales circulated of spirits inhabiting

The Specter Mausoleum as it appears today. Barnabas Specter and his family were never interred here with their ancestors.

the woods and commanding teams of zombies toiling in the swamps. Some claim to have seen Touye’s shack and even Touye himself. It is said that he strives to bring the nzumbe of his wife and daughter back to life and gathers life force to accomplish his task. Forever enslaved as Touye’s zombies, the Specter family is believed to toil endlessly and to prey upon unwitting travelers who are unlucky enough to come upon them. There was even a scientific expedition to the “Voodoo Bayou” in 1918 in an attempt to understand the strange sightings and claims made by locals. Three
“zombies” were captured by the team and analyzed by baffled doctors who claimed that the animated bodies had no living tissues whatsoever. The expedition was cut short when the team disappeared without a trace shortly after the captures. No evidence was left of the formal inspections other than a few grainy and inconclusive photographs. Although there is little proof the research team vanished in the forests, the reputation of the “Voodoo Bayou” was strengthened by the disappearances and locals continued to avoid the site for decades.

     As time went on however, these superstitions abated and the land was eventually turned into a fall seasonal attraction and most curious of all, a haunted attraction called the “Forest of Fear”.  Despite rumors of bizarre occurrences and disappearances, the Forest of Fear continues to lure visitors into Touye’s woods and swamplands, long considered cursed and haunted.