Where the Ghouls Are
by Kimberly Reed Barker



When you think of New Orleans you probably envision the Aquarium of the America's, the French Market and easy jazz. Maybe street artists, gourmet food or Chef Emeril come to mind. Most likely you subscribe to the notion that New Orleans and her French Quarter are proper little Southern places where manners count more the latest political scandal. If you'd like to keep your rose-colored dream alive, stop right here. Buy your ticket for that Gray Line Tour to the plantations and avoid the the no-holds barred, ghost-inhabited version of the "City that Care Forgot."

Yes...breasts at Mardi Gras, leather clad men in their butt-baring chaps, gun-toting tour leaders and unsuspecting tourists being robbed blind by criminals hiding behind tombs. Deviants, greedy in-laws, ghouls, bums, vampires, artists, astrologers, mimes and millionaires ... they all call New Orleans home.

St. Charles Avenue and her high-priced mansions and stately inhabitants are just a cool cover for what lies inside the city's sweltering doors. Take a ride on a trolley and eat your heart out at Commander's Palace and you'll think you've landed in a re-run of Designing Women. But hop in a taxi and head on down to the Quarter where life gets a little less milquetoast. New Orleans and the French Quarter specifically, are well known for wild parties and booze-swilling spring-breakers. But look a little closer -- pick up a few rocks, poke your nose into a few places that it probably shouldn't be -- you'll find the city that guidebooks don't really talk about: A city reputed to be the most haunted in America.

Violence is a hot topic down South. Just like New York, Los Angeles or a myriad of other cities where people visit with cameras, video bags and wallets hanging out of their pockets like bait, New Orleans makes its share of the headlines on a daily basis. Tourists come in droves. Celebrities like to "hang." Gambling is big and crime is rampant. New Orleans has been steeped in death and violence since day one. Carnage is what it was built on.

And the resulting phenomena are what people are buzzing about. Lest you think this is information supplied by Dion and her Psychic Friends Network, digest the following: parapsychologists swear the French Quarter is inhabited by more disembodied spirits than real live flesh because of the city's murderous past: Pirates, rapists, murderers and your general run-of-the-mill devil spawn types.

This history rich in deviant behavior attracts ghostbusters, researchers, paraspsychologists, even scam artists. They all come to investigate the musty streets of the Quarter for specters and ghouls who were killed violently during years gone by. The ghosts can't find peace because of how they died. The ghostbusters can't find peace until they prove they're out there.

Those spooks that died quietly really do rest in peace. They have no need to search the earth for solace. No one knows where they go but the point is, they go SOMEWHERE. It's the poor souls who die violently -- those with the shortest lives -- who wander the streets in ceaseless angst. These are the entities that live a life akin to that of being trapped in a sixteen-year-old's body for all eternity. It's no wonder ghosts throughout the ages -- whether in classic literature or contemporary media -- tote heavy chains and moan a lot.

This search for all things unsolved has created an entire sub-culture within the French Quarter; A sub-culture of capitalists out to make a buck on the erythrocytic frenzy engulfing this country. While Joe and Joanne tourist are busy tromping along with Gray Line Tours seeing the aforementioned plantations, many tourists have discovered that hunting ghosts (and to a lesser degree, vampires, which are an entire story unto themselves) makes for one hell of a different kind of a vacation.

Innumerable ghost and vampire tours borne from this fascination with the dead are offered in the Quarter. These tours purport anyone -- even a person who has absolutely no pre-disposition to the supernatural side of life -- can experience their very own psychic phenomena. Just part with fifteen bucks and a couple of hours and the specters are yours for the taking, they say.

If you want to learn about Voodoo, go to the Voodoo Museum. Better yet, travel to St. Louis #1 Cemetery, take out your red marker and dutifully mark that X on Marie Laveau's final resting place. But if you want to hunt ghosts ... if you want to actually touch the equipment ghostbusters use to document their investigations, caveat emptor: Buyer beware. Whether your hard-earned $15 will get you even 60 seconds with a ghoul looking for everlasting peace, who knows. The one thing you won't have trouble finding is a tour that swears if you "show them the money," they'll show you Casper.

Whether that's actually "the truth" or not is up for debate. Many of excursions, while thoroughly entertaining, are fairly devoid of factual evidence. While there are those that do actually provide information of an educational nature, there are also tours with tall tales told in costume complete with theatrics. But truth or no, excited tourists line up for these hunting expeditions in droves and at the end of the allotted tour time, they head to their hotels, over to O'Brien's for a hurricane or off to dinner at the Court of Two sisters feeling perfectly satisfied that they're $15 poorer.

America's fascination with the supernatural has been on an upswing since the X-Files started winning Gillian Anderson Golden Globes and got David Duchovny a wife that looks like Tea Leoni. On any night of the week you can channel surf over at least a half-dozen shows on network or cable TV -- shows like "Sightings" or documentaries digging into unexplained phenomena occurring throughout the world. The great beyond, it seems, is a hot commodity.

Are there really ghosts out there for the taking? Perhaps for some.

The search in the Quarter looks as if it won't abate. Contented vacationers will walk the streets looking for otherworldly beings, dead serial killers and children sold into slavery who have returned to haunt their great, great step-families. Seems divorce has that one-in-two rate even in the spirit world. The guys with the costumes still put on shows for people who want that kind of thing, and paraspychologists come into the New Orleans International Airport as if it were New York Harbor and the French Quarter was their Statue of Liberty.

Perhaps the supernatural is an escape mechanism for people exhausted from the reality of every day life, with its inherent tragedy and senseless violence. Perhaps we want to believe there's more to this world than what we can see, hear and touch, and it's only those who are open to the idea of life after death who actually "see" the ghosts floating all around us.

Me? I've parted with the bucks, blown a few hours walking into smelly old buildings with radar equipment and special "Kodak Moment" film, and still, I haven't hit the spirit-world jackpot. No ghosts, no spooks, specters or phantoms. Like many people, I like to believe what I see is real and what I don't see isn't there. But sometimes when it's dark, foggy and the streets of New Orleans seem abnormally silent, I still find myself wondering what if. Doesn't everyone?


If you're going:

THE NEW ORLEANS GHOST TOUR
http://www.neworleans.com/ghosts/tours.html
1-(504) 504-944-7424

ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS TOURS
http://www.comm.net/abfab/
1-(504) 482-2259

HAUNTED HISTORY TOURS
www.hauntedhistorytours.com
1-(504) 861-2727 or 1-888-6GHOSTS

SOUTHERN NIGHT HAUNTED WEEKENDS
www.neworleans.com/southernnights
1-(504) 861-7187

THE NEW ORLEANS HISTORIC VOODOO MUSEUM
www.voodoomuseum.com
1-(504) 522-0708