Ghost Crusade X-Treme Investigation Report — Claiborne Cottage Hotel, Covington, Louisiana Intern: Jupiter Meteor Nguyen Published by: Joe Davenport Sr.
We came because Mr. Davenport read online about a ‘strings phenomenon’ reported along this stretch of the Bogue Falaya River. Something about harmonic resonance and misplaced geometry. He was already halfway out of the van with his cap askew and his notebook open before I’d even finished parking.
The Claiborne Cottage Hotel occupies a 7.26-acre site on the east bank of the Bogue Falaya River. The primary building is a two-story Greek Revival brick structure, originally built as the St. Tammany Parish Courthouse in 1819. In 1880, Mme. D. Jaufroid converted it into a health resort, tapping into the late-19th-century “Ozone Belt” health tourism. A major expansion in 1889 added a large new two-story hotel building, documented as five hundred feet long with broad galleries. That expansion burned down in December 1912. Hotel operations appear to have ceased around 1930. The property was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in July 2019. The two surviving historic buildings are currently used for storage.
The afternoon was thick with Louisiana humidity. Cletus hopped out and promptly claimed a spot in the shade of the main building’s chamfered gallery, flopping down with a sigh. I started with a basic dimensional survey of the façade. My laser rangefinder behaved erratically from the first reading.
JUPITER That’s not right.
JOE What’s up?
JUPITER The measurements won’t hold. I get sixty-eight feet, then seventy-three, then back to sixty-eight from the same spot. The device is calibrated.
JOE Battery?
JUPITER Full. No interference on the scanner.
Mr. Davenport was already prying at a gap in the gallery floorboards with a screwdriver.
JOE Draft’s coming from under here. Cold, too. Not just shaded—actively cold. This whole porch is raised on piers. Could be a channel, but the temperature drop is sharp.
My left forearm, where I’d cut it at the Edwards County site, began a dull, familiar throb. I packed the rangefinder away.
JUPITER Let’s move toward the riverbank. Maybe the interference is localized.
We walked down to the water. Scattered brick and rotted timber marked the linear trace of the 1889 addition’s foundation. Mr. Davenport paced the length, nudging a collapsed stone lintel with his boot.
JOE Five hundred feet. That’s not just a building. That’s a line drawn on the land. A marker.
I pulled out a portable flow sensor to get a baseline on the river. I submerged the probe. The digital readout, which should have shown gallons per minute, flickered and scrambled. Then it displayed a steady, impossible reading.
JUPITER You have got to be kidding me.
JOE What?
JUPITER It says seventeen. Not gallons. Pages. Seventeen pages per minute.
JOE Pages? Like… paper?
I powered the unit off and on again. I recalibrated it. I submerged the probe. 17 pages/min. A small, silent puff of infernal smoke, smelling of burnt sugar, appeared beside me on the bank.
Cletus’s head lifted. She stared at the smoke, then walked over and sniffed it curiously. She placed her front paw squarely where it touched the ground.
The smoke coalesced into the lanky, two-and-a-half-foot-tall figure of Beelzebubba the Third, in his shabby striped suit and feathered hat. He grinned at me.
BEELZEBUBBA Seventeen pages per minute! The efficiency is admirable. The account must be settled, Meteor. Interest accrues.
JUPITER Not now.
JOE Jupiter? You see a snake? Your face just went white.
BEELZEBUBBA He always thinks it’s a snake. Or a gator. The mundane is such a comfort. Tell him it’s fine.
Then the river surface changed. It didn’t ripple or splash. A section of it simply lifted, a cohesive, silent column of water that slid up over the muddy bank. It didn’t pour; it flowed with purpose, seeping into the cracks and gaps of the main building’s brick foundation.
Beelzebubba vanished in another puff of smoke. Cletus blinked at the empty space, then turned her attention to the moving water, her head cocked.
JOE Whoa. Okay. That’s new.
He was already moving toward the building, not running, but with a focused stride. I grabbed my gear and followed. We entered the central hall just as the floorboards in the center of the room began to warp and peel upward.
The wood wasn’t breaking. It was unfolding, like the pages of a soaked book curling back. Beneath was not subfloor, but wet, dark stone. The anomalous water streamed up into the room, flowing over this revealed stone surface. The air filled with a deep, subsonic hum that vibrated in my molars. I fumbled for my frequency analyzer.
JUPITER Seventeen hertz. Solid tone.
JOE It’s a schedule. Like the courthouse. It’s running on a schedule.
He pulled his worn copy of The Geography of the Unseen from his bag, but he didn’t open it. His eyes were fixed on the spiral pattern the water was tracing on the stone. The spiral didn’t just sit there—it appeared to descend, creating an illusion of depth that made my vision swim. The stone itself seemed to reform into the suggestion of architecture: walls that met at angles that strained the eye, the hint of a street grid that receded into impossible geometry.
JOE ‘Where geometry fails, the boundary wears thin.’ It’s not a ghost. It’s a place that’s… unbuilt.
Mr. Davenport took a step closer to the edge. Cletus pressed against his leg, a low whine in her throat. He reached a hand out toward the flowing water.
JUPITER Mr. Davenport, don’t!
He pulled his hand back. Cletus, however, stretched her neck forward and touched her nose to the surface of the water.
She jerked back with a sharp yelp, scrambling backward on the wooden floor. She held up her front right paw, licking at it urgently. I couldn’t see a cut from where I stood, but her fur was dark and wet.
The hum peaked into a pressure that made my ears pop. For a moment, the illusion in the stone clarified—a vast, intricate pattern of lines and angles, green-black and glossy, sprawling far beyond the room’s confines. It wasn’t a city. It was a diagram.
Then, with a sound like a heavy door closing deep underground, the water reversed.
It drained back down through the opening, swift and silent. The unfolded floorboards slapped back into place, soaked and warped. The hum faded, leaving only a faint, persistent 17 Hz vibration in the bones of my skull. The central hall was restored, save for a large, spiraling water stain on the floorboards and the smell of wet stone and ozone.
Cletus was still licking her paw. She looked up at me, her eyes huge and mournful, then let out a shuddering sigh and lay down, tucking the paw beneath her.
JOE Okay. That wasn’t in the manual.
We walked back to the van in heavy silence. My compass, when I checked it out of habit, was useless. The needle pointed straight down, indicating a point deep below the riverbed. I showed Mr. Davenport.
JOE Yeah. That tracks.
He tried to start the van. The engine cranked once and died. On the third try, it coughed to life. He left it running, not putting it in gear. We sat, watching the hotel through the windshield. The late sun glinted off the Bogue Falaya, which now carried a faint, sickly green luminescence that pulsed softly.
Cletus, in the back seat, laid her head on the console and stared out at the water. She didn’t whine. She just watched.
Mr. Davenport opened his notebook. On a fresh page, he wrote: Not a memory. A schedule. The place is unbuilt.
He looked at the words, then at the hotel, then closed the book.
JOE We’re not hunting ghosts. We’re walking through a… a diagram that’s still being drawn.
I didn’t argue. The building wasn’t haunted by people. It was occupied by a process—ancient, indifferent, and physically coherent. It didn’t want anything. It simply was. And for a moment, we were inside its geometry.
FIELD NOTES
Site: Claiborne Cottage Hotel, 19130 Rogers Ln., Covington, LA. Status: Two contributing buildings (1819 courthouse, 1889 cottage) used for storage. 1889 main hotel addition destroyed by fire 1912. Anomalies: Persistent measurement drift with laser rangefinder. Portable flow sensor displayed anomalous “17 pages/min” reading. A column of river water moved against gravity, infiltrating the building’s foundation. A 17 Hz subsonic hum detected during central hall event, accompanied by a visual/manifestation of non-Euclidean stonework and geometry. Compass now points vertically downward. Physical Evidence: Large spiral water stain on central hall floorboards. Cletus exhibited distress after contact with anomalous water, nursing her paw. Observations: The manifestation displayed physical continuity (water entrance/exit, floorboard movement). The revealed geometry matches descriptions of ancient, non-human architecture. Beelzebubba appeared and commented selectively. Joe perceived neither him nor his smoke. Physical Reaction: Dull ache in left forearm scar recurred during anomalous activity. Interpretation: The site appears to be a location where conventional geometry intermittently fails, revealing or interfacing with a much older, indifferent pattern or process. No evidence of intelligent haunting or human spirits. The phenomenon is environmental and architectural in nature.
