Ghost Town
Despite their best intentions, many people have never met a ghost.
According to some traditions, now is the point in the calendar when the line between this world and the next is at its thinnest, so it might be high time for a little ghost hunting.
No doubt there's innumerable stories of the supernatural here in the Crescent City, where life and death are known to dance cheek to cheek. Here are a few French Quarter specter sites which are (in)famously haunted and are within walking distance between Canal Street and Esplanade Avenue.
You can't talk about hauntings in the Quarter without mentioning the LaLaurie Mansion, a nearly 200-year-old building standing imperiously on Royal Street. Rumors still swirl about how the LaLauries, an affluent, attractive, socially prominent French couple who lived there in the 1830s, treated their slaves. From throwing a clumsy barber over the roof or using their slaves for gory medical experiments in the attic to letting them all die in a fire, or while being attacked by outraged neighbors, while the LaLauries skipped town, everyone has a different version of what really happened.
Was Madame LaLaurie as beautiful and psychopathic as they say, or was it actually her diabolical doctor husband who was the true monster? Both? Neither? Where Y'at's own Emily Hingle has done some interesting research suggesting that maybe the madame was framed or smeared because of a business dispute. We may never know the real story. Once owned by no less an eccentric than Nicholas Cage, the building is currently on the market for someone with a little imagination and 10 million bucks to spare. It might make a nice rooftop cocktail bar for the dead and undead alike. Maybe it'll be the city's next haunted house attraction?
On St. Peter between Royal and Bourbon, Clyde's Corner bar has a second floor that was once upon a time a tailor shop owned by Mr. Green, who enjoyed Jack and Cokes and playing billiards. The story goes that Mr. Green was dangling dummies out of his window as Halloween decorations and accidentally hanged himself. At the same time, a little girl was run over by a horse-drawn carriage in front.
The confluence of those two traumatic events attracted a demon who lives in the smoky warp of the big mirror on the wall. If you stare at it alone at night, you might see floating lights. Some employees say they have heard billiard balls breaking, though there isn't a pool table nearby. Women at the bar have had a tall, well-dressed man approach them with what looks like a rope burn around his neck, politely ask them if they are safe going home, and then vanish.
Right across the street from Jean Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop is the boutique Lafitte Hotel and Bar, which had more stories to tell. The yellow fever epidemic of the late 19th century thrived in New Orleans' hot, humid climate and claimed so many lives that the city was referred to as "the city of the dead." Two little girls, about 10 or so, who died of it have been seen playing happily in the hallway outside one of the second-floor rooms. Reassuringly, they're pleasant ghosts. Guests say that a nice little girl mysteriously wanders around and follows them.
Not all spirits at the hotel are quite so amiable. One couple kept extending their stay because, every night, they felt a different presence on the ceiling watching them, rearranging their stuff on the counter, and even touching the woman's hair. There is a special guest log with 12 pages' worth of spooky experiences. Responses vary from erratically losing the hotel's distinctly large keys and having personal objects randomly rearranged to a baby's footprints to imprints of small feet appearing on a foggy bathroom window. The scariest account is a couple waking up in the middle of the night feeling something squatting on each of their chests and telling them to "leave." So, depending on your disposition, either beware or be prepared if you're planning on staying in or near Room 21.
The understood logic of ghosts is that if someone dies prematurely, either naturally or otherwise, their spirit lingers. This probably counts double if it's a tragic hate crime such as with the horrific burning of the UpStairs Lounge in 1973, a gay bar/performance space on the corner of Chartres and Iberville, which killed and injured over 40 people. Scarier still was the callousness of the official response at the time. The kitchen for the late-night haunt The Jimani is right below where the UpStairs Lounge was, and the manager, who is a medium, has reported that about 10 of those spirits still hang out upstairs. These are calm spirits, returning to a place of refuge and community, only becoming disruptive at noisy prolonged construction nearby, causing malfunctioning cameras and lights downstairs. There is also Eugene, a sweet man who handled deliveries for 45 years, whose cerebral palsy meant he had limited use of his hands. Now, he's always randomly knocking stuff off the shelves. Also, cups behind the bar will inexplicably flip up. Then there's Jonathan, a long-time employee the manager has never met, who once brought to her attention burning wires on the third floor under the beer lights, avoiding another catastrophe.
