1859 Greek Revival Antebellum Home, Private Residence
Stonewall, LA
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Private residence; viewable only from public roads.
Access
Limited Access
Rural roadside
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1859 · National Register of Historic Places · Greek Revival Architecture · Civil War Hospital Tradition
Buena Vista was constructed in 1859 for the planter Boykin Witherspoon by builder M. Robbins, on land roughly 3.8 miles southeast of present-day Stonewall in DeSoto Parish, Louisiana. The house is a two-and-a-half-story frame Greek Revival mansion with a one-story front gallery carried on octagonal columns, a central-hall plan, and detailed interior woodwork including fluted pilasters and dentil moldings.
Witherspoon, like many DeSoto Parish landowners, operated a slaveholding cotton plantation in the years preceding the Civil War. Outbuildings associated with the enslaved workforce stood near the main house; some quarters reportedly survived into the twentieth century, and their footprints are still visible in archival surveys.
During the Civil War, local tradition holds that the plantation served as a hospital for wounded Confederate soldiers. Documentation for the hospital use is limited but recurs in regional histories, and the geography is plausible: Shreveport, approximately 20 miles north, was the headquarters of the Confederate Trans-Mississippi Department, and DeSoto Parish saw extensive military movement.
Witherspoon retained ownership through Reconstruction. He died at home in Gloster on May 21, 1898. The property remained in private hands across the twentieth century. In 1969 the house was used as a filming location for the Herbert J. Biberman film Slaves, an early commercial production to address American slavery directly. Buena Vista was added to the National Register of Historic Places on January 19, 1989. The house remains a private residence today and is not open to the public.
Sources
The Buena Vista folklore centers on its Civil War hospital tradition. Visitors and former residents have reported figures in Confederate uniform appearing inside the house. The areas near the former enslaved quarters in front of the main building are described in regional accounts as carrying a heavy, oppressive atmosphere.
Two recurring environmental phenomena appear in nearly every retelling. The first is unexplained cold: even on summer days reaching seventy degrees, parts of the house reportedly drop to a marked chill. The second is standing water. Floors have allegedly been found covered in water with no rain in the forecast and no plumbing failure to explain it.
A more romantic strand of the legend describes the apparition of the plantation owner's wife, said to ride a horse down the long oak alley that fronts the house, looking for her husband. The story appears repeatedly in Northwest Louisiana folklore collections and regional radio features but has no documented witness attribution outside informal local retellings.
Because the property is a private residence, no organized paranormal investigations are conducted on-site, and the lore exists primarily in oral tradition and aggregated paranormal listings rather than documented investigation reports.
Notable Entities
View the columned exterior of the 1859 Witherspoon mansion from the public road. The house is a private residence, listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Do not approach, enter the grounds, or photograph through fences.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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