Haunted History: New Orleans

One of our nights in N'awlins we took a ghost tour of the French Quarter. It was awesome, and I would definitely recommend it. Charles, our tour guide, was hilarious, and liked to adopt an English accent at times, regardless of the fact that the Quarter is French and Spanish. We learned a lot about the history of New Orleans and all of the stories that Charles recounted were based on historical research, and the paranormal activity had been studied and documented by legit ghost hunters. Most of the hauntings were at sites that involved executions and murders, and the ghosts manifested themselves by moving things around, talking, ringing bells, or dropping the temperature. The La Laurie Mansion was probably the creepiest. A rich family was secretly performing twisted medical experiments on servants and slaves there and also happened to bury 72 people alive below the floor boards (who does that?). Joe and I, unfortunately must not be sensitive to paranormal activity and didn't see, hear, or feel anything.

The next night we took a Vampire tour of the French Quarter (if you aren't into the bar scene you have to be a little more creative with your nightlife in the Quarter). It was pretty much the same deal as the Ghost tour, with historical accounts and real cases of Vampirism in New Orleans. Our tour guide was really into it (more than once did I wonder if she herself was a vampire), and did get super-offended when at the end of the tour some lady from Atlanta said "finally," apparently people in Atlanta don't like to walk too much. That lady may not have made it back to Atlanta, I am pretty sure that tour guide got to her later that night.

After our tours we made a habit of stopping at Cafe du Monde for Beignets and hot chocolate, a habit I loved and miss. The amount of powdered sugar on those things was insane.