New Orleans: City of Many Spirits.

This was a wonderful adventure my husband and I had in New Orleans on March 3-5, 2003 before Hurricane Katrina hit. We really enjoyed it and even met Anne Rice at Emeril's Delmonico Restaurant.

Bourbon Street is party central in the French Quarter of New Orleans, it is synonymous with sin, and yet the name has nothing to do with bourbon, despite the string of bars that line this legendary street. Bourbon Street is named after the French royal family of Bourbon. During the day I took my daughter for a walk to Bourbon Street, there were quite a few people walking around with beer at 10:00 in the morning. This is not really my preferred time to start drinking but whatever. There were aheck of a lot of bars for such a small street and tons of gaudy little souvenir shops, which were interesting and quite fun to shop in and buy cheap souvenirs. Now the most noticeable thing about Bourbon Street is the smell, it is like enormously stinky, horrible stinky, like walking in a sewer stinky. Now I know New Orleans is below sea level, but this was ridiculous. So we returned to the hotel laden with our cheap treasures, went sight seeing and then to see what the nightlife was like, and you guessed it returned to Bourbon Street. Now, not only is it stinky, it is over crowded with drunks. There were drunk people everywhere, drinking, spilling drinks, and being loud. I have been to sin city (Las Vegas) many times and I've never seen anything like this. There were peep shows, topless and go-go dancers all in this small area. It was truly unbelievable. I love New Orleans, I love to party like the next guy or gal, but Bourbon Street should be avoided at all costs. There is plenty to do in New Orleans without including this shady, stinky little street in your plans.

We got back to our hotel on my husband told me that Pat O'Brien's is the birthplace of the internationally renowned "Hurricane Cocktail", and Fritzel's is the only traditional European jazz club in New Orleans, so back we went the next night and you know after a few drinks. You don't even notice the smell. (Yeah!)

Walking around The French Quarter is pretty spooky; there are ghosts around every corner. Here are just a few:

The Bombay Club is what I like to call a Yuppie Bar; they were serving great martinis before the current on slot of trendy martini bars. In fact the Bombay's martinis were the best in town, the food wasn't all that good, but the staff was extra chatty. But in New Orleans you don't always go to restaurants for the food, you go for (you guessed it) the "alleged haunting". Now I love a good haunting like the next guy, but making a posh piano and martini bar out of an ex-coffin factory is tres bien in my books. In addition to being a coffin factory this building was used as a public bathhouse for over fifty years. In the kitchen, a bartender claimed that the dishwasher has a mind of its own. It would turn itself on at odd times when it wasn't suppose to and it would not turn on when it was suppose too. He claimed the activity increased or decreased depending on who was around. Now, it seems to me with this one we could go two ways: 1. Actual haunting. 2. Electrical problems and too many martinis. I vote for number two. Also a ghost is seen wandering in and out of the bar as well as the kitchen, which could explain the dishwasher incidents.

There was no paranormal activity at The Bombay Club while we were there that we could tell, but pictures of booth number three in the bar seem to have a misty quality about them and one has (what I believe to be) an actual orb in it. Also this club is one of the many stops on the Haunted History Tour.

Another great haunted destination was Reverend Zombie's Voodoo Shop. Reverend Zombie's sells oils, candles, "how to" books on Voodoo, Voodoo dolls, sacred arts and jewelry. Of course this dark, dank little shop has a haunting of its own. The American Homestead Company constructed the building where the incident (that caused the haunting) took place.

On September 19, 1788 Master Carpenter, Joseph Fernandez, agreed to build a house for his brother Andres Fernandez. The house was to be built of brick with wood flooring and a shingle roof. The house was to cost 4400 pesos. The house was never built-Joseph ran off with the dough. Andre later hired a man by the name of Francisco Gagnie, a Frenchman, to build a house for him on the same property. The original contract for the house, which was originally written in French and later translated to Spanish, called for the house to be build of the finest materials available, glass doors and windows, double paneled exterior walls and a well in the patio.

On October 15, 1795 Andre filed suit against Francisco for failure to comply with provisions agreed upon for the construction of the said house. After a great deal of litigation, on January 16, 1799. Francisco was ordered to pay Andre the sum of 210 pesos and 3 reales, quite a bit of money at the time. Shortly after the judgment was made Francisco met Andre at the property to explain that he was unable to pay such a large sum of money. Francisco Gagnie was never seen again, but it was noted in the investigative report that the well at the rear of the property had recently been filled in with bricks and sand.

In the 1960's, the owner at the time, had installed a very elaborate alarm system due to his belief that someone cursing in French was constantly kicking has door in the middle of the night. Also tenants of the rear slave quarter apartments have complained of missing construction tools.

Today this building is the home of Reverend Zombie's Voodoo Shop and courtyard apartments. A current resident of one of the apartments, has stated that she has left her hammer out one evening on the ledge of the old well. Although she was the only one on the property, the hammer disappeared from the ledge. In January 1999, on a very foggy night, she felt a cold clammy hand grab her ankle as she sat on the edge of the well.

My husband, our daughter and I toured Oak Alley Plantation while on vacation in New Orleans, LA in 2003. Oak Alley Plantation is now a National Historic Landmark, with its antebellum mansion and surrounding twenty-five acres, is owned and operated today by the non-profit Oak Alley Foundation. The balance of the original plantation id divided up as follows: are residential complex of seventy-five acres surrounds the Foundations property; six hundred acres are leased for sugar cane cultivation and four hundred fifty acres remain in virgin woodlands.

Oak Alley Plantation in Vacherie, Louisiana is an extraordinarily, magnificent house, and the most famous of the antebellum homes in Louisiana and an outstanding example of Greek revival architecture. The 28 massive oaks that line the driveway were planted in the 1700’s and that is where the house got its name. Parts of the movies The Long Hot Summer and Interview With a Vampire were filmed there.

A French-Creole sugar planter from New Orleans named, Jacques T Roman, built oak Alley between 1837 and 1839. Mr. Roman built this beautiful home for himself and his family. Although all physical traces of the Romans are gone, Oak Alley seems to be plagued by ghostly sightings of a young, beautiful girl. A guest taking a tour of the plantation house took a number of pictures of the various rooms in the house. When he developed his photos, he saw an image of a young lady in an old-fashioned dress, sitting in a dress that was empty when he took the photo.

It is thought the specter may be the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Roman, Louise. Louise had a boyfriend who came to call on her one evening in a state of intoxication. Like any proper lady of the day she ran away from him. While she was running, she tripped over her own hoop skirt and cut her leg on the wire. Gangrene set in and she had to have her leg cut off. Off course, she was considered unable to marry and run a household with one leg, so she decided to become a Carmelite nun. She lived out the rest of her life in a convent in New Orleans and lucky for her, her family saved her leg for her so it could be buried, and hopefully reunited with her in the afterlife. (Awesome).

This house is available to tour all year-round.

Lafitte's Blacksmith shop built in the 1720, is the oldest working bar in the country, and the second oldest building in New Orleans. The property is believed to have been used by Jean and Pierre Lafitte as a New Orleans base for their Barataria smuggling operation. The legend was based on the fact that the property was, at the time, owned by the family of Simon Duroche and privateer, Rene Beluche. Beluche was Captain of the legendary ship The Spy. Jean Lafitte has been described throughout history as a privateer, an entrepreneur, a diplomat, a spy, and as a hero in the battle of New Orleans. He aided General Andrew Jackson to defeat the British at Chalmette Battlefield in 1814.

Today, the bar is considered to be very haunted. The ghosts of soldiers and pirates alike have been seen to walk about the building in the middle of the night. One familiar ghost is that of a woman who is dressed in black with long dark hair. She has made appearances in the bar late at night as well in the upstairs office. There no records to document who she is, but, no doubt, there was no shortage of women in the company of pirates. This was a fun bar for my husband and me, but a lot of different people hangout here and it has a reputation for being a vampire tavern

The Lalaurie House or as most locals like to call it "the haunted house". Now here's why residents of the French Quarter still hurry past this otherwise beautiful building. When Madame Dolphin McCarty de Lopez Blanquette wed Dr. Louis Allure, it was her third marriage-she'd already been widowed twice. In 1832 the Lalauries moved into this residence and soon impressed the neighbors with their extravagant parties. At these parties guest could not help but notice the condition of the servants who were painfully thin and seemed to be terrified of their mistress. The gossip about how she treated her slaves was confirmed in April of 1834, when a fire broke out at the house. When neighbors rushed in to save the contents of the house and extinguish the flames, they found seven starving slaves chained in painful positions unable to move and a number of grim looking torture instruments. The sight combined with Delphine's stories of past slaves having "committed suicide", enraged the neighbors. A story in the local press further enraged the neighbors and a mob arrived intent on destroying the place. Madame Lalaurie and her husband escaped and went back to France. She died and her body was shipped back to New Orleans for a secret burial.

The building was a Union headquarters during the Civil War and later was a gambling house. Through the years, stories have circulated of ghosts inhabiting the building, especially that of one slave child who fell from the roof trying to escape Delphine's tortures.

This house is now a private residence but it is also included in a haunted tour of the French Quarter which is usually Monday-Saturday at dusk, weather permitting. There was no ghostly activity when I took the tour, but many people claim to have seen the little slave girl.