Adventures with the other side

I was recently in New Orleans for a visit and had the opportunity to explore many “haunted places”. One of the houses I saw on multiple tours was the LaLaurie mansion, said to be the most haunted house in New Orleans. That is an impressive claim as the whole city boasts haunted spots. From the outside the mansion is rather plain looking, it takes  up one corner of Royal street and is large but if I did not know what it was I likely would not have thought much about the home. It is said that the inside courtyard and home are rather elaborate. As the home is privately owned no tours are offered of the inside, but a quick internet search will pull up photos of several of the interior rooms and an elaborate staircase that is certainly beautiful.   Haunted tours tell the tale of the torture and murder of slaves inside these walls at the hand of the owners Louis and Delphine LaLaurie, of a fire that finally shed light on the horr...

As someone who has a fascination with old historic cemeteries, New Orleans was a phenomenal place to visit. I could have spent days just wandering the dozens of old cemeteries in the area. As it was I enjoyed two of them and learned a bit about the history of above ground tombs.   The first cemetery in New Orleans Saint Peters was established in 1721 in the French Quarter, it began with above ground graves. However it did not take long to discover that the high water table, heavy rains, and flooding lead to caskets making their way to the surface. Numerous tricks were tried to keep the caskets underground, to include drilling holes and placing heavy rocks but none kept  all of the dead buried. In the 1780’s the Spanish government decided it was time to start another burial ground and the cities   first above ground cemetery St. Louis   Cemetery 1 was created, bearing a strong resemblance to Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris France . By this time...