Vampires in New Orleans

Vampires are everywhere in New Orleans.

Long before anyone ever sank their teeth into an Ann Rice novel about the vampire Lestat and his undead posse, New Orleans has had strange happenings. I mean walking the streets of New Orleans you can feel the undercurrent of the occult and the supernatural. This is a city where the living and the dead co-exist on the same plane. This is a city where you can imagine pirates, voodoo priestesses and vampires all having a sazrac together in a dark alley bar.

With that in mind, I went on the New Orleans vampire tour. We met at the assigned time in front of Jackson Square. The night was dark, chilly with that damp Winter-in-New-Orleans rain that is constantly there, leaving you perpetually damp. In short, the perfect weather for a vampire tour. Our guide showed up - all 6'4" of him in full goth regalia - black coat, cape, long ponytail and big black umbrella. This was going to be a fun evening.

Our guide, Jonathan. Looking very Gothic. How does he know so much? Could he be one of the undead?

The stories were great, as was the storyteller. Stories of suspense and crime, like the one about John and Wayne Carter, two working brothers who worked all day at the shipyards. Coming home to their third floor apartment in the French Quarter. Being very quiet (arent they always the quiet ones?) One day a girl ran down to the police, saying she had escaped the Carters' apartment. She had cuts on her wrists. The police came to their apartment and found 4 others tied to chairs with their wrists sliced in the same fashion also. Some had been there for many days. The story was that both of these brothers had abducted each of them and would drink their blood at the end of every day when they came home from work. They also found about 14 other dead bodies. The cops waited that night for the return of the brothers and when they did, it took 7 to 8 of them to hold down these two averaged size men who had been doing manual labor all day. The brothers were executed and buried. A year later their graves revealed empty vaults. To this day, the brothers are sighted flying off the balcony on their third floor apartment.

Or the stories of the old Urseline convent where, of all things, french prostitutes lived. The convent was supposed to shelter these women sent to New Orleans to have sex with the dock workers, but there were too little of them and were sent to live in the convent. But if these girls were the only ones in the convent? Why are there steel bolts on all the windows? Still? To this day? And why were two innocent girls filming a documentary on the convent found dead on the convent steps drained of all blood with their cameras smashed to pieces?

Two girls were found dead and drained of blood - are these orbs their spirits?

The tour also includes some great New Orleans legends about pirates, ghosts, the plague and general gruesomeness. It stops at John LeFette's blacksmith shop (now a haunted bar with no electric lights) for a cocktail before a tour of some sites of the filming of Interview with the Vampire and a suggestion from Jonathan our guide - want to make sure a vampire doesn't follow you home tonight? Tip him!