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| Saint Louis, Missouri, United States |
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| Information |
Location and History
The oldest park west of the Mississippi, the 30-acre Lafayette Park sits in the heart of Lafayette Square, St. Louis' oldest historic district, less than a mile south of the city's downtown area. Initially used as public pasture and farm land by the French settlers who founded the city, the area was officially reserved as park space in 1836 and named after the French revolutionary Marquis de Lafayette. The area surrounding the park remained largely undeveloped until a population boom in the 1860s, after which the neighborhood's esteem peaked and the park became the most popular recreation site in the city. Tornado damage in 1896 and a shift toward transient lodging, in the early 1900s blighted the neighborhood, leaving it largely in disrepair until the late 1960s when a group of residents began a lengthy and ongoing restoration process to restore the neighborhood to its original Victorian grandeur. Today the park remains open to the public and is the site of frequent outdoor concerts, film screenings, and festivals.
Civil War Significance and Reported Hauntings
During the Civil War, the area around the still largely undeveloped park made up the city's southernmost defensive edge and was marked by a number of forts and trenches used by the Union military. According to William C. Winter, author of The Civil War in St. Louis: A Guided Tour, on October 29, 1864, Union forces executed six Confederate prisoners just south of the park in retaliation for the murder of six Union soldiers killed earlier in the month. None of the Confederates to face the firing squad were implicated in the prior execution of the Union soldiers, and eyewitnesses to the execution supposedly heard one of the prisoners openly profess his innocence to no avail.
It is believed that this act of revenge is the root of numerous alleged ghost sightings that have occurred in the park in the 100 years since the end of the war. Typical reports involve fleeting glimpses of men dressed in military uniform, either patrolling the perimeter of the park or camped around a fire, yet no reports on available record indicate that any of the apparitions were sighted in Confederate colors, implying that if Civil War spirits do haunt the grounds, they are not the young men who were executed, but rather members of the brigade that carried out the execution.
Many current visitors to the park assume that the cannons located at the northwestern corner of the park, placed by the Missouri Commendry of the American Legion, were used during the Civil War, but in fact they reportedly came from a British war ship that attacked Charleston Harbor in 1776. |
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| Related Sites |
Lafayette Park
Article by the City of St. Louis chronicling the history of the reportedly haunted Lafayette Park. |
Lafayette Square Entry on Wikipedia
History of the reportedly haunted Lafayette Park and the surrounding neighborhood. |
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| Similar Destinations |
| Mount Holly Cemetery, Little Rock, AR |
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| See Also on TheCabinet.com |
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