Hunting for Ghosts and Good Beignets in New Orleans
As I’ve previously said, New Orleans is America’s most haunted city. Even the dead can’t seem to leave this city behind. Some believe that the reason for this is because there is no solid ground that can be consecrated to bury the dead in while others point to the history of Voodoo, witchcraft, vampires, and pirates that runs through the city streets and surrounding bayous. Maybe, like Muriel’s resident ghost, Pierre Antoine Lepardi Jourdan, they just can’t leave the food behind. The BaconMedic can certainly believe this theory is true.
Pierre Antoine Lepardi Jourdan’s reserved table at Muriel’s.
Whatever the reason for the high paranormal activity, both Hollywood and the general public look to New Orleans as a setting for encounters with the supernatural. There are tours that explore the local cemeteries (complete with a visit to a Voodoo Queen’s tomb), tours that explore the history of vampires in New Orleans made popular again by Interview with a Vampire and the True Blood series, or tours that take you around different locations giving you a taste of all the other worldly encounters the city has to offer. In other words, there is a tour for everyone.
Full of catfish and ready for our evening adventure, we strolled down Bourbon Street. Resisting the siren song of the local establishments promising us Huge Ass Beers and Hand Grenades, we made our way to Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop to meet up with the tour guide for our evening of ghost hunting.
The oldest bar in New Orleans.
Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop is the oldest bar in the city. While the bar is famous for making one of the best (and strongest) Hurricanes in the city, it is also known as one of the most haunted buildings in the city. The ghost of Pirate Jean Lafitte is the most famous resident here. He is often spotted standing by the fireplace as a full-bodied apparition, staring at patrons until someone stares back and then *poof*, into the shadows he goes. While the ghost of the Pirate is the most famous, he is not the only one. Patrons have reported hearing a woman whispering in other areas of the bar. Others have reported that they have seen red eyes glowing in the dark that are often associated with demonic presences.
Enjoying one of Lafitte’s famous hurricanes before ghost hunting. Liquid courage!
Fortified by Hurricanes and with the stories of the resident ghosts on our minds, we stepped out into the New Orleans night. Our guide led us through the darkened streets of the French Quarter, telling us stories and pointing out locations along the way that reportedly host more dead residents than alive. Wandering around in the dark, hearing the stories of days and people gone by was a fun, if not spooky way to learn about the history of one of my favorite cities.
With our heads full of ghost stories and New Orleans history, we approached our last stop on the tour. This stop was different from all of the others; here we were actually going to hunt ghosts ourselves. We received a quick tutorial from our guide on ghost hunting and some commonly used equipment. Things like copper rods are used to find ‘hot spots’, while a battery operated sensor lights up as the paranormal activities in the area increase. Since many of us were carrying our phones with us, our guide also gave us a rundown on some free or inexpensive (and fun) apps that we could use to hunt ghosts with on our own.
Ready for our debut as paranormal investigators, we followed our guide into a tiny three room apartment on the second floor of a building. Without giving us any clues, our guide assured us that the apartment was filled with spooks and that two of them were infamous in New Orleans history. As we began exploring, I wondered: was this the home of another famous pirate? A Voodoo Queen? Perhaps a vampire? Or his victims?
The BaconMedic apparently isn’t sensitive to the supernatural (perhaps because his mind was still on the delicious catfish he’d had for dinner), but other members of the tour group definitely had a reaction to the apartment. People reported freezing up or feeling themselves become tense in different areas of the rooms. My wife said she felt chills and goosebumps as she entered the kitchen; this feeling was reported by most of the other women in the group as well.
After we finished exploring the tiny apartment, our guide led us back downstairs. She requested that the spirits we encountered tonight return to their normal harmless state and then asked the group members what they had encountered in those three rooms. While I felt nothing more than the occasional chill, the rest of the group reported a number of common feelings.
In the bedroom, people reported a feeling of playfulness or like they were being brushed up against when standing near the closet. Our guide confirmed that the ghosts of two young children who died in the 1800’s are often sensed in that corner of the apartment.
The most common feeling though was of cold, dread, or chills in the kitchen by the stove. These feelings were well based as we learned that this apartment was the site of one of New Orleans most infamous murder-suicides. And this one wasn’t ancient history; this one happened in 2006.
Zack and Addie were a young couple living in the apartment we had just left. Their love story is one that was fueled by passion, alcohol, and occasional violence. Despite those odds, they loved each other, stuck together, and rode out Hurricane Katrina in that very apartment.
Months later, police responded to a reported suicide on the top deck of a local parking garage. Given Zack’s troubled past, the story might have simply ended there; once the police found the suicide note in his pocket, the story took a turn for the worse.
Police were directed to the apartment the couple shared and found the apartment walls spray painted with the message “I’m a failure”.
But the true horror of the crime didn’t become apparent to investigators until they stepped further into the apartment. The kitchen looked as if someone had left the kitchen in the middle of preparing a meal. Carrots, onions and potatoes were cut up and left on the counter waiting to be added to the still simmering pots on the stove. What the investigators discovered next was gruesome. The pots on the stove contained Addie’s head, hands, and feet. In the oven were more burned body parts. The last pieces of Addie’s murdered and dismembered body were found in the refrigerator.
Were the chills we felt in this room remnants of this act of violence? Or were they something more? There are those who believe that despite the unstable and often heated relationship between the couple, that this murder suicide would never have happened without an outside influence. These people believe that Zack may have been influenced by a demonic presence living in the voodoo shop below their apartment. (For the record, the BaconMedic did not see any demons here.) The truth is we will never understand what drove Zack to do what he did. It is just another sad story in the haunted city.
Even though we left the tiny apartment and its ghostly occupants behind, the feelings of sadness stayed with us. We wandered the city in search of something to lift our spirits and put all of these feelings behind us. Another hurricane? No, that wouldn’t do. Some local brews? No, not what I needed. After a night like we had and the stories we heard, there was really only one thing that would fuel both my belly and my soul: beignets. These light and fluffy balls of dough are deep fried and served piping hot covered with a generous coating of powdered sugar that forms an irresistible glaze as it starts to melt. Warm, fluffy beignets covered in sticky sugar was exactly the mood booster that I needed.
With the craving for beignets firmly planted in my mind, I set out for my go to location for this sweet treat. Understandably, a new comer to the Crescent City would immediately head for Cafe du Monde. Here, the new comer would wait in a long line for a pretty decent order of three beignets. The new comer would happily finish these beignets and wipe the powdered sugar off of their faces without ever realizing that they missed out on an even better beignet.
Let’s talk about baked goods and pastries. Its a well known fact that they are better when made by hand in small batches. Cafe Beignet (as well as some other smaller shops) does this. They make their beignets in small batches and you can taste the difference!
Maybe its the ingredients, maybe its the love they put into their craft, but there is definitely a reason that both Alton Brown and the BaconMedic prefer the beignets at Cafe Beignet over Cafe du Monde.
Trust the experts and give them a try. You won’t be disappointed. You’ll also probably get to eat your beignets faster as the line isn’t out the door all day—and who doesn’t want their beignets faster?
