SEPT_OCTOBER_2015_FINAL_no bleed

the Savings issue

Haunted History

by Chris Rose + photos by Erika Goldring

J ust around the corner from the Rouses Market in the French Quarter, prospective homebuyers are presented with a real estate option you won’t likely find anywhere else but New Orleans. In addition to the choices between hardwood floors or wall-to-wall carpeting, central A.C. or ceiling fans, balcony or courtyard, several properties offer Haunted or Not Haunted. I am not making this up. The bleary-eyed visitor to America’s most libertine neighborhood, suffering from the effects of a long night on Bourbon Street, might be forgiven for doing a double-take when he sees a local “For Sale” sign which New Orleans is pretty famous for not doing things the way other cities do, and that obviously includes our real estate transactions. It’s the only place — that I am aware of, at least — where spooks and apparitions are included among a property’s premium selling points. It is a point of local pride and a long-held specifies one or the other. Haunted. Not Haunted.

notion — and even a marketing gimmick — that New Orleans is the most haunted city in America. That may or may not be true — but it certainly makes sense when you think about it. The city is old and mysterious and inscrutable and beholden unto ancient rituals. It is also more death-obsessed than most places. Cemeteries are tourist destinations, and funerals are public spectacles. One former funeral home is now a seafood market, and another is the former home of rock star Trent Reznor. On All Saints Day and All Souls Day, families gather to picnic at their relatives’ gravesites and mausoleums. And any seasoned visitor to the city has certainly noticed that we have more people walking around our streets who look like zombies than anywhere else in America. There is an entire cottage industry in New Orleans built upon the afterlife, a thriving necromantic economy. Ghost tours, ghost books, vampire novels, cemetery tours, voodoo rituals, séances, Anne Rice — and the biggest, baddest, scariest selection of

Halloween haunted houses in the world. Hauntworld.com, an online informational clearinghouse for all things, well, haunted, says of one local Halloween destination — The Mortuary on Canal Street: “Those who enter will be tested and pushed to the limits of their sanity.” That’s high praise coming from what is essentially the Yelp of haunted houses — a Consumers Digest for the fright industry. When an attraction established for a holiday that is ostensibly supposed to be catered to children doesn’t allow admittance to children — as several New Orleans haunted houses do not — then you can bet they’re serious about the business of scaring. But New Orleans’ supernatural scene is by no means limited to Halloween. The sidewalks of the French Quarter are packed with ghost and vampire tours every night of the year, with visitors paying a pretty penny to get their shock on. I don’t know if there are many cities — if there are any cities — where dozens, maybe hundreds, of people make their living telling ghost stories. Nice work if you can get it.

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MY ROUSES EVERYDAY SEPTEMBER | OCTOBER 2015