Standing at the top of the stairs was a death-like image of a man whose stare was almost hypnotic. When Mrs. Faulkner moved towards him, he vanished into nothingness. Blood stained walls, unexplained moans, screams and ghostly apparitions had long been a part of the Pirate House mystique. The 1930s incident was one of many incidents stretching over more than a century at the large, elegant home on Waveland's beachfront road. The large house reportedly was built in 1802 by a New Orleans businessman who moonlighted as a pirate and financial agent for Jean Lafitte and his Barataria pirates.
Some accounts say the house actually belonged to Lafitte.
One of the earliest legends of the site tells of a deep well in the back yard that became the early graves of three men who had been thrown, alive into its depths. That very afternoon, the ghost of one of them who was wearing shirt sleeves returned to walk across the yard - and he has continued to do. In the mid 1930's when the Singreens bought the house, a family photograph was snapped of everyone standing on the front gallery steps. When it was developed, an image of a man in shirt sleeves could be seen at the window of an upstairs room. The Listers collected the thousands of bricks strewn about the area, including the doors and grillwork they could fine, and constructed a much smaller cottage 50 feet to the rear of the original house.