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Reported phenomena — as catalogued
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1858 sugar plantation home and Terrebonne Museum
1208 Museum Drive, Houma, LA 70360
Research updated May 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
$$
Tour pricing posted on the museum's official site; check the venue website for current rates.
Access
Limited Access
Historic plantation house with stairs
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1858 · Sugar Plantation Heritage · National Register of Historic Places · Terrebonne Parish History · Antebellum Architecture
Southdown Plantation occupies a tract along Little Bayou Black on the western edge of Houma, in Louisiana's Terrebonne Parish. The land was first allocated under Spanish land grants in 1790 and 1798. Jim and Rezin Bowie, brothers later associated with the Alamo, briefly held the property between 1821 and 1828, attempting an indigo operation.
William J. Minor and James Dinsmore acquired roughly 1,200 arpents, or about 1,020 acres, in 1828 and established Southdown Plantation. By 1831 the principal crop had shifted to sugarcane, the engine of antebellum south Louisiana wealth. The current main house was constructed in 1858, a 10,000-square-foot home roughly 85 feet wide, 65 feet deep, and 50 feet high. Twelve- and fourteen-foot ceilings and porches on all four sides addressed the southern Louisiana climate. The Minor family retained ownership for several generations.
The Terrebonne Historical and Cultural Society was founded in 1972 by area residents working to preserve the property and the parish's broader heritage. The plantation house was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1974. In 1975, Valhi, Inc. donated 4.46 acres of land, the plantation house, and the servants' quarters building to the society. The site opened as Southdown Plantation House and the Terrebonne Museum in 1982.
The museum's permanent exhibits cover sugar cane history, Native American artifacts of the region, a Mardi Gras collection, and the original servants' quarters. An 1885 plantation worker's cabin stands on the grounds. The home is at 1208 Museum Drive in Houma.
Sources
The most consistently reported figure at Southdown is the apparition of a young girl, identified in local accounts as Katherine Minor, a daughter of the Minor family who once owned the plantation. Witnesses describe seeing her gaze through upstairs windows and hearing the sounds of a child playing in second-floor rooms when those rooms are unoccupied.
Visitors and staff have reported items moving without obvious cause, with personal belongings reappearing in unlikely locations within the museum. The sense of being watched, the murmur of indistinct voices, and unexplained footsteps all surface in published accounts.
Darker folklore attaches to the plantation's enslaved labor history. The original Shadowlands submission alleged that an unnamed plantation owner abused and killed enslaved people on the grounds, with figures reported in the windows. The museum's official interpretation does not authenticate these specific allegations against named owners, but the plantation's documented dependence on enslaved labor makes the broader cultural memory unavoidable. Source materials describe rumors that the grounds are haunted by enslaved people who died there, framed explicitly as legend rather than archival fact.
The museum does not promote a paranormal program in its standard interpretation. Visitors interested in the folklore should engage with it as one layer of a site whose primary mission is sugar industry and parish heritage.
Notable Entities
Tour the 10,000-square-foot plantation house along Little Bayou Black, with original 19th-century furnishings, sugar cane history exhibits, a Mardi Gras collection, and an 1885 plantation worker's cabin on the grounds. The Terrebonne Historical and Cultural Society interprets both the home's industrial heritage and the lives of the enslaved and freed laborers who built it.
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