Jack Bessler’s UFO, Aliens, Ghosts and Zombie Adventuress in Nevada, California and Louisiana
Chapter Four Voodoo and Vampires in New Orleans October 2012
I have been twice to New Orleans for Halloween, which is actually celebrated for a week leading up to October 31. I was there in October 1995 for Halloween and I liked it better than Mardi Gras. So I went back to this awesome city for Halloween in October 2012 seventeen years later and I had a great time again.
I drove out to the Sacramento Airport and boarded the United Airlines flight to Houston and from Houston boarded the flight to New Orleans, Louisiana. For the flight I brought along a paperback novel about zombies, Resident Evil: Retribution based on the movie written by John Shirley a well-known cyberpunk science fiction and horror writer.
When I arrived at the airport in Kenner a suburb of New Orleans I had to get a taxi to my hotel, which I found out, was 14 miles from the French Quarter so I had to take the taxi from my hotel to the Quarter.
My first night in New Orleans I headed to Bourbon Street to Mango Mango where I was drinking Blue Crack Slurpee’s (Rum, Curacao, White Lightning) and pizza. Bourbon Street was filled with people in the wildest costumes so I headed to Marie Laveau House of Voodoo a favorite of mine. The small store sells voodoo dolls, charms, books on voodoo, the occult and UFOS along with Tarot Cards. The city has several places for voodoo that I have been too: The Historic Voodoo Museum, The Voodoo Spiritual Temple which I visited during 1995 Halloween Week in New Orleans that co-sponsored by both St. Jude’s Catholic Church on Ramparts Blvd. and the Voodoo Spiritual Temple. Voodoo is basically a mixture of African witchcraft and Roman Catholicism. Each loa (voodoo god) has a Roman Catholic saint that is their counterpart. The serpent loa Dambala Wedo is Saint Patrick, Erzuli the loa of love and sex is the Virgin Mary, Chango the loa of thunder and lightning is represented by both John the Baptist and Saint Barbara, Esu Elegua is the lord of the cross roads and a trickster and is represented by Saint Anthony the patron saint of the lost and the roads and in trickster by the devil. New Orleans voodoo combines both Haitian voodoo with Cuban Santeria.
I decide to go on the Voodoo Tour after watching all the wild costumes people are wearing on Bourbon Street many are truly bizarre. I first eat barbequed drunken shrimp with drinks at Oceania and then some Blue Crack Slurpee’s at Mango Mango. The tour meets in front of Rev. Zombies Voodoo Shop on St. Peter Street and there are people from New York City and Sweden and many other places on the tour. We learn from the guide how African slaves continued to worship their ancestral gods disguised as Roman Catholic saints. We learn about making zombies from a combination of the highly toxic puffer fish and datura a hallucinogen that was investigated by Wade Davis the ethno-botanist who wrote The Serpent and the Rainbow about his research in Haiti during the 1980’s that was made into the movie by the same name by Wes Craven. The serpent represents Earth and the rainbow represents Heaven and man’s soul can be trapped as a zombie between both places.
We visit Erzuli’s a voodoo shop where a voodoo priestess explains the religion’s history and its long practice in Southern Louisiana.
The night before the Voodoo Tour I went on The Vampire Tour, which was 2 hours long. Before the tour I ate dinner at Pat O’Brian’s Courtyard where I could watch the festivities on Bourbon Street. I had a delicious meal of fried catfish with red beans and rice with Andouille sausage washed down with Bud Light. I then went to Mango Mango and drank some Vampire Blood Slurpee’s made from cherry juice, vodka, rum and tequila so I will be in the proper mood.
The Vampire Tour starts at the front of St. Louis Cathedral, which is advertised as being about real and fictional New Orleans vampires. The guide starts with talking about Dracula and how Bram Stoker based him on Vlad Dracula a 15th century Romanian prince who along his knights The Order of the Dragon who defeated the Muslim Turks by using psychological warfare by impaling their soldiers by running a stake up their anus that gradually worked its way higher often taking 3 days to die a horrible painful death.
Next we go visit the house where in the 1930’s they would often invite drunken partiers on Bourbon Street for a meal at their house and they ended up being the main course. Sometimes they bled people for hours drinking their blood before they died. They would put the remains in a tub and dumb lye over the bodies to decompose them and then throw the bones into the Mississippi River. One night they brought a young girl back to their house that managed and brought the police to the house that were appalled by what they found. Both brothers died in the electric chair,
Next we went to the house where in the movie Interview With a Vampire was filmed where Lestat, Louis and the little girl vampire lived in the movie. After the tour I hailed a taxi and headed back to my hotel.
New Orleans is the most occult city in the USA.
