“One day I’m gonna die, and I’m gonna take all of you with me,” Julia Brown sang in the days leading up to her death. Then a hurricane hit, taking the lives of over 350, killing all but 2 residents of Fenrir, Louisiana.
Born in 1845, Julia Brown was a voodoo priestess, who lived and worked in New Orleans in the 1860’s before picking up and moving to the village of Frenier, in the midst of the Manchac Swamp. The village had no doctors, and rather than traveling the great distance to New Orleans to find a doctor, the locals sought after Julia, to be their local healer.
Julia was glad to be their healer and midwife, even seeking new knowledge and materials to help her care for the people. She would travel the village, performing rituals to help with childbirth, to fight infections, and cure illnesses. The afflicted always recovered quickly, and the locals knew that whatever magic or power Julia was harnessing, not only worked, but was a powerful force.
As with most things that are readily available, the people began to take Julia for granted. It wasn’t that they didn’t respect her, in fact they loved her, it was just that she was always there for them. They began demanding or expecting her help without ever asking. They began to assume Julia would always be there and take care of them. Which she was, that is until she felt she wasn’t getting the respect she deserved.
Julia began to scare the locals, predicting when something bad was about to happen to them. The townspeople were terrified, not knowing whether she was foretelling future events, or placing a curse. Regardless of what it was, Julia always knew when something bad was coming to Frenier.
It was on September 28, 1915, that Julia made her final, and most terrifying prediction to date. She began singing, “One day I’m gonna die, and I’m gonna take all of you with me,” over and over again. There is an oral history account from a long-time area resident Helen Schlosser Burg, that says,”Aunt Julia Brown … always sat on her front porch and played her guitar and sang songs that she would make up. The words to one of the songs she sang said that one day, she would die and everything would die with her.”
And then she died.
Knowing every other prediction Julia made had come true, the townspeople were desperate. They all gathered at her funeral, hoping that the show of attention and respect would put her soul to rest. Unfortunately, however, their plan did not work. As the nails were being hammered into her coffin, a sudden, and unusually devastating hurricane ripped through the village.
The following was taken from the New Orleans Times-Picayune – October 2, 1915:
Many pranks were played by wind and tide. Negroes had gathered for miles around to attend the funeral of ‘Aunt’ Julia Brown, an old negress who was well known in that section, and was a big property owner. The funeral was scheduled … and ‘Aunt’ Julia had been placed in her casket and the casket in turn had been placed in the customary wooden box and sealed. At 4 o’clock, however, the storm had become so violent that the negroes left the house in a stampede, abandoning the corpse. The corpse was found Thursday and so was the wooden box, but the casket never has been found.
So many lives were lost, that the locals still claim to find skeletons surface, only to drift down the swamp. They also speak of Julia as a beloved local healer, choosing to believe she wouldn’t have acted with malicious intent, suggesting that Julia’s song of doom was more of a warning, than a curse. Some even believe she had tried to perform an anti-storm ritual and that had failed, or she ran out of time.
One of the lucky survivors recounted his experience from New Orleans, having left Manchac Swamp during the storm.
“The water was washin’ in the front door. We thought we were gone. All the camps down there gone. On the big lake, that had big timber, big cypress timber, it was just like a break boar went along there. I’ll bet that storm blowed ever bit a hundred and twenty or thirty miles an hour. You could hear it come across the South Pass when it hit our place – just like a freight train.”
Despite efforts by developers to rebuild the area, the only thing that remains on the island where Julia Brown once called home, was a mass grave where the dead were buried. As a result, the island is believed to be a highly active paranormal hot spot. If you listen carefully you may even hear the sound of a ghostly voice singing Julia’s infamous song.
Today, if you care to see for yourself, you can take a boat tour through the waters of Manchac Swamp, and onto the island with Cajun Pride Swamp Tours.
Up Next: The Monster of Royal Street: Delphine LaLaurie
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