Houma, Louisiana

You're near Valhi Boulevard in Houma, by the Houma-Terrebonne Civic Center, where the two thousand twenty six Rougarou Fest set up its grounds. Every October, this is where the rougarou gets his party. The very first Rougarou Fest was set for Friday, October twenty-sixth, two thousand twelve, in downtown Houma. It was planned as one evening, with a costume contest and a Krewe Ga Rou Halloween parade. It grew into a whole weekend, and in two thousand twenty two it moved to a new home, the grounds of the South Louisiana Wetlands Discovery Center, near the civic center. The fest is free, and all of its proceeds go to the Discovery Center and its work on Louisiana's disappearing coast. The two thousand twenty six schedule had a howling contest, the Krewe Ga Rou parade, and a Cajun Critter Pardoning. In two thousand twenty two, the plan was for a nutria named Beignet to be pardoned and allowed to keep his tail another year. All through October, local businesses on the Rougarou Trail make something in the rougarou's honor. The trail has listed a Rou-Ga-Red Ale at Spigots Brew Pub and a Rou-Ga-Gooey King Cake at Cannata's. The William G. Pomeroy Foundation even lists a Legends and Lore marker for the rougarou on Valhi Boulevard. So if you hear howling out here some October night, don't worry. It might just be somebody practicing for the contest.

You're in Raceland, and if you grew up here, you may have known exactly where the rougarou lived. Jolie Johnson did. She's a Raceland native, and in two thousand twenty one, as a museum consultant in the Lafayette area, she told Sixty-Four Parishes magazine about it. "There was a specific place I thought he lived," she said, just off Interstate Ten. Not out in some faraway swamp. One particular spot. That's how a lot of rougarou lore lives in south Louisiana, as personal accounts more than polished tales, and the stories change with location. In two thousand one, a woman named Brandi Baville told the Nichollsworth the rougarou only lives in Dulac. When she heard the legend is told all across south Louisiana, she shook her head. "I think the rougarou only lives by my house," she said. "He's a scary old man. Not a werewolf." So the rougarou keeps a lot of addresses. And if you're rolling through Raceland tonight, maybe you still remember which spot was his.

You're in Chauvin, one stop on a long, slow move up the bayou. People in Terrebonne Parish have been inching upward along the bayous for a long time. Bay St. Elaine, just north of the barrier islands, is a perch for pelicans that used to hold people too. When rising waters threatened it, Cocodrie was the next high ground for some families, then Chauvin, then Bourg, and finally Houma. Jonathan Foret, who led the South Louisiana Wetlands Discovery Center in two thousand twenty one, has seen his own family move along Little Caillou. So when Foret talks about the rougarou, he's talking about home. "If the Rougarou doesn't have a place to live, then neither do we," he told WWNO in two thousand twenty two. Even the very first Rougarou Fest, announced in two thousand twelve, set out to raise money to restore and conserve the Rougarou habitat. Foret calls the festival a trunk of traditions, a place where the folklore can outlive the land it came from. "If we have to move away," he said, "we put all the things in there that make us who we are." Gumbo. Music. How they catch seafood. Their trawls. And in two thousand twenty two the fest set out to honor Terry Lapeyrouse, a fourth-generation resident of Chauvin, for keeping up the traditional craft of drying shrimp. Down here, the rougarou story rides in that trunk right next to the dried shrimp.