Forlorn on the Bayou
By: Kai Crouse
Category: Uncategorized
| Aperture: | f/7.1 |
|---|---|
| Focal Length: | 53mm |
| ISO: | 100 |
| Shutter: | 1/0 sec |
| Camera: | Canon EOS 7D |
The Louisiana bayou is a wild place! I got to experience alligators in the wild, ghost roads, REAL cajun cooking and being really scared for the first time on my trip.
I snapped this picture while crossing a bridge right on the edge of land in Southern Louisiana. I had decided to get off the highway and check out a long remote road called Bayou Salle that is said to be haunted by ghost hitchhikers as night. After getting stuck in a roadside ditch for 45 minutes (a friendly local drove back to his house to pick up a rope and hauled me out) I continued on around the marshes as the sun set. I drove for nearly and hour down a small road so far off the path that my GPS system couldn’t track me and my cell phone no longer has a signal. I didn’t worry because the road was supposed to circle the swamp and lead back to the main highway.
The sun was nearly down when I rounded a corner and discovered the only bridge leading back to the highway was out!
My only option was to backtrack from whence I came but I began to panic wondering what I would do if the car got stuck again or some ghost hitchhiker ran me off the road or if I was in some sort of twilight zone ghost maze. How the mind wanders.
Needless to say I was overjoyed to get back to route 90, an hour later, and I never plan on returning to that particular district in the bayou.
Opaque Ghosts 
sooo siiiick man!
The sounds of the bayou were one of the best parts
I enjoy your photos. America is so vast and filled with many unexpected findings!
I am so glad you enjoy the photos! I hope to capture as much of these unexpected findings as I can!
I actually live about 20 minutes away from Bayou Salle road. A few times a month for a couple years now my friends and I like to drive the length of the road back and forth a few times and a handful of times we have even walked it. At one point we went everyday for three weeks. One time we actually camped out on a small area right off of the middle of the road where the ground was hard enough to set up a tent and not worry about the mud too much. Talk about the experience of a life time! Absolutely terrifying. All together we’ve probably been on the road somewhere between a hundred-fifty to two hundred times.
We have seen so many things that cannot be explained that it almost makes me question my religion. We have seen floating balls of blue light, the iconic hitchhiker that the legend states (although we have never talked to him for we would never sacrifice one of our own for treasure), sounds of chanting and voices that appear to be coming from nowhere, one time we saw a pickup truck driving underwater in the bayou next to the Dulac side of the road, and once a glowing red cloud resembling a skull with lightning happening only inside the skull (it was frightening how much this cloud resembled a human skull) which formed right after we turned onto the road and dissipated immediately after exiting the road. One time we even found a body halfway in some bushes on the right side of one of the curves of the road. I’m kind of ashamed that we didn’t report it, but we were just so frightened by it that we didn’t even talk about it with each other or go back to the road for about two months. I’m actually very surprised this road isn’t more well known than it is.
Although I have numerous stories to tell about my experiences and friend’s experiences of the road, the only reason why we experienced so many was probably due to the shear amount of times that we visited the road. Out of all the times we went to the road, something abnormal only actually happened about one out seven or eight times. But whether something abnormal happens or not, the road itself is eerily creepy and overall unsettling. I’d recommend it to anyone looking for a good scare to drive it back and forth between 3am to 4am, also known as the “Devil’s hour.”