WHITE COLUMNS, DARK SECRETS: THE BUCKNER MANSION

(From the #WeirdDarkness episode “Extraterrestrials In The Abyss”. Hear the episode:https://weirddarkness.com/extraterrestrialsintheabyss/)

The Garden District in New Orleans, Louisiana is simply stunning with oak-lined streets and some of the most beautiful homes you will ever see, ranging from narrow shotgun houses to opulent Italianate manors. But there are few as distinctive as Buckner Mansion.

Built in 1856, across from Forsyth Park on the northern end of Bull Street, this is one of Savannah’s most easily recognized mansions. The house is so forbidding that the producers of Ryan Murphy’s horror anthology American Horror Story used it as a primary location during its third season.

Yet Buckner Mansion carries a dark and haunted past of its own, plagued by rumors of ghosts and other supernatural apparitions as well. It is only natural that over 150 years since its construction, this historical site maintains an ambiance of abstraction which fails to fade in the eyes of all those who visit it.

Henry Sullivan Buckner was a well-known person in New Orleans of the 19th century. Buckner was born around the year 1800 and became rich as a slaver and cotton overlord, largely responsible for central Memphis’s original Fortune 500 list of landowners. By the time he decided to commission Buckner Mansion, he had already owned multiple impressive houses.

According to Visit New Orleans, when Buckner decided to construct the mansion, he was determined—it needed to be larger and more grand than Stanton Hall in Mississippi, that of his former business partner Frederick Stanton.

It was a big job; Stanton Hall, built two stories high and spanning an entire city block, is so grand that it became the model for Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion ride.

Nonetheless, by 1856 Buckner cast the vision for what would become both his family home and one of New Orleans’ great architectural treasures—Buckner Mansion.

That last thing Mr. Buckner definitely accomplished, making an impossible-to-ignore spectacle even more so in order to show up his former business partner!

Buckner hired prominent architect Lewis E. Reynolds to draw the plans for him. The contract for the building described it as a “two-story brick house with observatory and four pediments”, says SAH Archipedia. The result is an opulent palatial manor in the Greek Revival style, completely painted stark white and gray with seemingly endless verandas.

The mansion has 48 fluted Ionic and Corinthian columns, galleries on three sides of the house—it’s partially surrounded by water—and an enormous (three-story!) service wing! The interior of the house is equally magnificent, with 16-foot ceilings soaring up from what feels like a floor-to-ceiling wall of windows and three very grand ballrooms. The entire property is surrounded by an elaborate stone and cast-iron fence.

The surrounding sea of oak trees, lush greenery, and grand estates in New Orleans’ famous Garden District only enhance the mansion’s glamour. To this day, Buckner Mansion is still considered one of the most desirable pieces of real estate across neighborhood lines and remains a grand testament to mid-19th century Greek Revival architecture.

Once the construction of Buckner Mansion had finished, Henry Sullivan Buckner and his wife Catherine moved into the house. Laura, and her husband Cartwright Eustis assumed ownership until Laura died in 1895. The mansion stayed in the Buckner family for more than 60 years before being sold around 1920.

The mansion was utilized as the new home for the prestigious Soulé Business College in 1923. A two-story brick building was built during the late 1920s to accommodate classrooms—it was installed next to the house in back of the lot, Gambit reports, so it could be turned into a school by its founder George Soulé.

At the bottom of an intricate pair of front gates that welcome visitors to a sidewalk leading up to the mansion’s entrance is scrawled in tiny mosaic: “The public character its color from education as the parent draws.” Soulé had apparently taken these tiles from the old school to Buckner Mansion when he relocated here.

It was a respected institution, the oldest business school in the South at that time. It closed in 1983 and would soon usher in a new chapter of life within the walls of Buckner Mansion.

When the Soulé Business School shuttered, Buckner Mansion reverted to a single-family private residence. Per Redfin, it is now valued at more than $3.1 million.

Buckner Mansion was leased by FX in 2013 as the primary location for American Horror Story: Coven. It was used in the show as Miss Robichaux’s Academy for Exceptional Young Ladies, a boarding school for young witches. Nowadays, hundreds of fans of the series leave their city to go and see this prominent filming spot at the house’s iron gates.

According to Roadtrippers, the last time it was listed on VRBO, a booking for the mansion would run nearly $4,700 per night.

The availability of Buckner Mansion as a rental today is uncertain, but prospective tenants can get further details from the property’s old listing on Villa Vacations.

However, should you be lucky enough to sneak a peek inside the Buckner Mansion? Be sure to know about its tragic history before your tour.

Buckner Mansion is an Antebellum home with all the ghost stories you can wish for. Although the manor’s appearance in American Horror Story likely bolstered its reputation for being haunted, it has a much older and darker history than that.

It was constructed in the South before The American Civil War and also when the Garden District itself had been a huge area of plantations. The Buckners themselves built their fortune on cotton and were supposedly slaveholders. Therefore, the history of deeds connected to slavery is intertwined throughout this house.

Extended to the present, as legend goes, a ghostly African American woman referred to only by the affectionate moniker Miss Josephine haunts the house and stayed with descendants of the Buckner family post-Civil War. Others believe she stayed in the house after her death, and still haunts the Buckner Mansion grounds to this day.

Over time, inhabitants of the home have reported spotting what they believe to be the ghostly silhouette of Josephine on the stairs, sounds identical to those that came from someone sweeping, and even a smell thought to resemble lemon peel—one of Josephine’s favorite scents as quoted by American Ghost Walks.

Flickering lights, doors that open and close on their own, and chandeliers swinging for hours despite no breeze are just some of the paranormal experiences house visitors have reported.

Naturally, none of these legends have ever been confirmed.

Whether true or not, the fact remains that Buckner Mansion still attracts some to its gates over a century later with equally unshakable determination.

(“White Columns, Dark Secrets: The Buckner Mansion” source: Donna Sarkar, AllThatsInteresting.com:https://weirddarkness.tiny.us/yc43br4r)
(Cover photo: Jennifer Zdon, NOLA.com)