##Chapter 1: The Cursed Courthouse

The old Calcasieu Courthouse of Lake Charles stood like an indomitable monument harboring secrets, contractor mistakes, and legends. Amid these legends, none was more bone-chilling or infamous than the tale of the restless spirit of Toni Jo Henry. Fate had cast her into the unforgiving arms of the law in 1942, and some claimed she’d never left. A convicted murderess, she had danced her last waltz in the cold embrace of the courthouse’s hidden electric chair.

There had been numerous attempts to bury the forbidding past of the Court house, to smother it with renovations and redesigns, but the spectral presence of Toni Jo seemed immune to these mundane treatments. Her unseen footfalls would echo against the aging stone walls and threadbare corridors, belying their silent emptiness and sending an icy wave down the spines of the unsuspecting visitors.

##Chapter 2: The Life and Times of Toni Jo

For any passerby to look at Toni Jo Henry, the petite woman in the vintage 1940s outfit, they would hardly believe the blood-stained horror woven into her past. One could almost hear Sinatra play in the background as she fluttered coyly around the Courthouse, reminiscent of a bygone era. But beneath her cherry lip rouge and meticulously curled locks hid the terrifying idiosyncrasy of Toni Jo – her fiery temper, her knack for manipulation, and a chilling disregard for human life.

Once convicted, she had been escorted to the cold, metallic confines of the electric chair. Her dainty figure was hulky in contrast to the grim apparatus. As the switch was flicked, the light faded out of her eyes, the life drained out of her… Yet the courthouse refused to let her bid adieu. It was as if the old stones had absorbed her presence – her pain, her envy, her malice – and granted her new life as the spectral mistress of the place, hosting an eternal wake for her mortal days. Her silent vigil was born.

##Chapter 3: The Phantom Specter

Now a resident spirit, Toni Jo melted into the whispers that danced around the courthouses, revealing herself only to a select few, perhaps to satiate her afterlife’s loneliness. In her spectral form, gripping fear accompanied her every move as chill-inducing shadowy apparitions frequented her haunts.
Certain places – a particular corridor, the old questioning room, a seemingly innocuous door at its end – became synonymous with Toni Jo. The well-worn, eerie spots would pulsate with an unacknowledged dread, the cold seeping into the bones of those brave enough to tread there. The heavy silence would often break loose, disrupted by an ominous cacophony of step sounds, each set louder and distinctively more vengeful than the previous.

##Chapter 4: The Wandering Apparition

Try as one might to ignore these cries of the long-dead woman, the continued presence of ghostly vignettes of Toni Jo was terribly hard to ignore. The same woman, adorn in her favorite 1940s attire, would make her random appearances. Aimlessly, she would wander through the corridors of the old courthouse. A spectral silhouette in the peripheries, a slight obstruction in the light would catch your attention, forcing your eyes to locate her. On other occasions, a fragment of a reflection, a shuffle in the shadows, or a sudden drop in temperature would announce her presence.

##Chapter 5: The Haunting Mythology

Thus, Toni Jo Henry became indistinguishable from the old Calcasieu Courthouse. She was etched into the bricks and the wood. Her phantom self became absorbed into the city’s folklore, held within hushed whispers that commingled with river breezes and woven into the haunted tales of Lake Charles. Toni Jo wasn’t just a petty criminal who met her end at the electric chair. She was a ghost story, a chilling tale that added an ominous layer to the legend of the old courthouse, a specter that wove her age-old mystery into the warp and weft of the town’s lore. And she continued to persist, as unseen forces often do, ambling through her courthouse’s hallways long after her conviction, long after her mortal life had been extinguished. After all, the ghosts of the past often have a potent hold on the present.