Why is New Orleans so Haunted?
When asked why New Orleans is haunted I think of the scene in Beetlejuice, when Lydia sees the ghosts of Adam and Barbara, and Adam asks…
Adam: You can see us without the sheets?
Lydia: Of course I can see you.
Adam: Well, how is it you see us and nobody else can?
Lydia: Well, I’ve read through that handbook for the recently deceased. It says: “live people ignore the strange and unusual”. I myself am strange and unusual.
I like to say New Orleans is a place where people like the strange and the traditional, and along with our surroundings, the combination is ripe for tales of ghosts. One needs a place with the sense of the eerie but also a feeling that the past is not gone. For what is a ghost story but a fear of the past? Werewolves are the fear of the beast within. Vampires are often the fear of overlords overpowering us. Often times a ghost story is the fear that the past is not dead. That it still motivates us and controls us. In A Storm of Swords Tyrion muses “It all goes back and back to our mothers and fathers and theirs before them. We are puppets dancing on the strings of those who came before us, and one day our own children will take up our strings and dance in our steads.” New Orleans reminds you always that the past is not dead. Old buildings that defy the American desire to destroy the old and worship the new. Is there any other city in America like New Orleans, where people often casually live in buildings that date back to 1832 or 1882?
Yet another reason is the people. More than any other state, people who are born in Louisiana die in Louisiana. People sometimes live in homes passed down for generations in the same family. More commonly, they rest together in our cemeteries for generations. We bury our dead in large collective tombs. Many cemeteries have multiple family tombs. Families for generations are buried in the likes of St. Louis Cemetery No. 2, St. Patrick’s Cemetery No. 1, Metairie Cemetery, or any other. These families share tales of the past, and I was told of the ghosts that scared ancestors I never met, who worked as housekeepers and carpenters in mansions that dot Uptown from Coliseum Square Park to Audubon Place.
The people remain here. The buildings remain here. So does the trauma. Yellow fever epidemics, slave auctions, criminals shipped from France, all scarred New Orleans. Jackson Square is lovely today, but until 1860 it was the place of execution. The French and Spanish tortured people there and in the 1730s some of the Natchez tribe were even burned alive in retribution for the massacre at Fort Rosalie on November 29, 1729. New Orleans accepts its trauma better than others, and one way is with tales of ghosts. For what is repressed is often more afflicting. New Orleans accepts, for better and worse, that terrible things will happen here. For those that forgot that terrible things happen, Hurricane Katrina in 2005 taught the lesson anew. Katrina stories themselves are now part of the folklore and fabric of the city, woven in the memory of trauma.
New Orleans has also is known for in magic. Witches covens exist to this day. Voodoo survived here, while it expired elsewhere in America. Marie Laveau, the Voodoo Queen, had such a reputation her obituary was in the New York Times in 1881. In the 20th century, Mary Oneida Toups reigned in the French Quarter on Decatur Street. Among her devotees, the musician Dr. John, who took his name from a Voodoo doctor and contemporary of Laveau. The Process Church of the Final Judgment moved from the Mayfair District of London to 627 Ursulines Ave. Tales are still told of that ill-fated group, who had supposed connections with Charles Manson, among others. The magical drips off New Orleans and draws people in, and ghost stories always require a bit of magic
Growing up in Gretna everyone believed in ghosts. Nearly everyone had a story, either personal or passed down. Those who did not believe seemed like the odd ones. How could one not believe in this city of the dead and magic and aged buildings? Those with such experiences then might ask what are ghosts? I do not know, but I know hardly anyone who doesn’t have at least have a story and I have many I could tell.
