Heart Starts Pounding: Horrors, Hauntings, and Mysteries - 49: Haunted New Orleans: Cursed Cemeteries, Voodoo Queens, and more

Episode Date: January 4, 2024

Come with me on my trip to one of the most haunted cities in the world, New Orleans. Which ghosts haunt the St. Louis Cemetery No. 1? Could Marie Laveau truly influence the legal system with her voodoo? And for as hard as I tried, did I actually see a ghost? Subscribe on Patreon for bonus content and to become a member of our Rogue Detecting Society. Patrons have access to ad-free listening and bonus content. Follow on Tik Tok and Instagram for a daily dose of horror. We have a monthly newsletter now! Be sure to sign up for updates and more. This episode is brought to you by Daily Harvest. Say yes to healthy habits without the hassle with Daily Harvest. Go to dailyharvest.com/hsp to get up to $65 off your first box + free shipping, for a limited time only. Heart Starts Pounding is written and produced by Kaelyn Moore. Show Notes & Transcript: Haunted New Orleans: Cursed Cemeteries, Voodoo Queens, and more — Heart Starts Pounding: Horrors, Hauntings and Mysteries

It's 9 p.m. on a Wednesday night in New Orleans, and I'm sitting in a bar, sipping a hard seltzer and watching a small fireplace crackle in pop. I'm here to see a man, but the bar is crowded and loud, and I don't know if he'll actually come out tonight. In the back corner of an area that looks like a cobbled addition to the place, a piano player sings Billie Joel and Elton John beneath strings of blue Christmas lights, and some people sing along. And as I look around the crowd of mostly tourists filling every available seat, I start to worry he'll be a no-show. The man I'm here to see isn't really one for crowds.

Even though there's portraits of him on the walls of this establishment, he's hardly ever here. Also, he's been dead for 200 years. The bar I'm in is called Jean Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop Bar, and it used to belong to a violent 18th century French pirate named Jean Lafitte, and his ghost is said to haunt the premise. It's one of the oldest surviving buildings in New Orleans. The bar itself was built in the late 1700s as a private residence and hasn't changed

much since then. As I get up to walk over to the man playing tiny dancer on the piano, I can feel the uneven foundation under my feet, adding to the effect the one-seltzer had on me. Even the fireplace in the center of the room is brick and looks ancient. And I wondered to myself if Jean Lafitte ever tended to it when he was using this place as a front for his illegal smuggling operations. There's a reason Jean Lafitte is still talked about today in New Orleans. He was a legend, even in his day.

Once the mayor of New Orleans put a bounty out on the pirate for $500. When Lafitte learned of that, he put a bounty out on the mayor of New Orleans for $5,000 to be paid to whoever brought him the mayor alive. One time Andrew Jackson came to New Orleans to personally ask Lafitte to help him win the war of 1812 against the British. Lafitte agreed. Not necessarily to defend the nation he now called home, but probably to get something out of it for himself.

When the British made it to New Orleans in 1814, they were no match for the vengeful pirate who didn't play fair and didn't care to. His reward? A full presidential pardon for him and his men. And though he hasn't taken up residence here in the flesh in almost 200 years, people have reported seeing him in the bar since it opened after the War of 1812. Sometimes, it's been said a man in 18th century garb goes and sits by the fire, making eye contact with someone in the bar for just a moment before dematerializing.

Bartenders have mentioned seeing a pair of red, glowing eyes peaking through the cracks in the basement walls, as if an angry visitor was lurking there, watching them. And looking around, I couldn't help but think that perhaps if Lafitte were to operate here in the middle of the night, he'd still feel at home. The wobbly floor, the French cottage exterior, and the fireplace all looked just as they did 200 years ago. And even if he walked outside into the French Quarter, he still might not be surprised. The city has mandated that the entire neighborhood remain almost identical to how it looked at the turn of the 19th century gas lamps,

cobblestones, French balconies and all. Now if he came to Happy Hour and saw the man belting piano man under the twinkle lights, that might be a different story. This bar is a small piece of New Orleans, but it holds a big piece of the city's history. And that's how a lot of New Orleans feels, especially the French Quarter, small pieces that hold stories both happy and incredibly dark that add up to a much larger story. So in today's episode, I want to walk you through New Orleans with me, exploring the darker side of those stories, and the ghosts associated with them. And just a heads up, a few of these stories do touch on suicide, so as always, listener discretion is advised.

Welcome back to another year of Heart Starts Pounding, a podcast of horrors, hauntings, and mysteries. I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season. I'm your host, Kaelin Moore. This is a community for those with a dark curiosity, and here is how I know we're all cut from the same cloth. So last year I told you guys that I visited the most requested haunted city for an episode, and I asked where you thought I went. And I thought that this was gonna kinda be more of a mystery, but basically everyone guessed

New Orleans. And listen, I am a woman of the people. If you want me to go to New Orleans and collect some scary stories in Dark History, I'm not going to say no. But before I went, I dove into some of the lore of New Orleans, just to get a better idea of the spots I wanted to hit. And I found that almost every square inch of the city had some sort of ghost story attached to it.

So I decided I was going to try my hardest to see a ghost while I was there. And I can't wait to get into what my journey was like. Today's episode is going to bleed the line between research and folklore. If you can't tell, I love research. But as I talked to locals, I learned that a lot of the history of the city was passed down like folk songs, tales that a lot of the history of the city was passed down like folk songs, tales that have built up the myth of New Orleans. It only felt right to honor the storytelling of the residents in today's episode. If you're listening to the ad-supported version of today's episode, thank you so much.

Our sponsors make this show possible, and I've been adding more to my stories to make sure our ads are placed far enough apart to not affect the flow of the story. But if that is still too much, join us over on Patreon for ad-free listening. I seriously love my patrons. We chat about episodes, I've gotten some fantastic recommendations from them, and they enjoy ad-free listening a bonus episode a month and some extra content. I've gotten some fantastic recommendations from them and they enjoy ad-free listening, a bonus episode a month, and some extra content. Last month, I did an episode on Hauntings in Galveston, Texas. Also, if you stick around to the very end of the episode today, I'm gonna share some of my spooky city recommendations for you if you ever visit New Orleans.

We're gonna take a quick break, and when we get back, I wanna jump straight into where I started my journey in one of the city's most haunted cemeteries. This episode is brought to you by Daily Harvest. It's the new year, and if you're at all like me, you maybe want to eat a few extra vegetables this month to make up for the fact that you ate basically nothing but sugar for the last six weeks.

Every January, I can feel my bones asking for vitamins. So this year, I actually threw in a little healthy eating in advance with daily harvest. Daily harvest is a chef-crafted plant-based meal delivery service that makes it easy to get loads of fruits and veggies without sacrificing any flavor. I tried a bunch of different daily harvest meals over the holidays because I wanted something fast and healthy to break up the cookies and cakes. And it was great. My favorite was probably the broccoli and cheese bowl because it was super hearty, non-dairy, which I love. And the only preparation was tossing it in the microwave. My dad even loved it, and that man refuses to eat vegetables. Of course, his favorite was the chocolate mint smoothie because it tasted like ice cream, but secretly it had some spinach in it.

If you're listening, Dad, I'm sorry for tricking you. Also, while there's no dairy, eggs, or meat, it's not just for vegans. I personally am not vegan, so I love that I could just toss in some shredded chicken or salmon if I was in the mood. Say yes to healthy habits without the hassle with daily harvest. Go to dailyharvest.com slash HSP to get up to $65 off your first box and free shipping. New Orleans was never meant to be a city, and the Native Americans who inhabited the

land for thousands of years knew that. The land was swampy and uncomfortably hot for part of the year, devastating weather, wrecked shelters, and stagnant water acted as a breeding ground for yellow fever-infected mosquitoes, which would decimate human populations. The Native Americans were privy to this information, and only used the land at the times of year when it made the most sense. But all of that changed when the French came to town and founded New Orleans in 1718. They had to fight nature to establish the city on the sinking swamp land. Yellow fever came in waves, killing large portions of the population. But when grave diggers dug down to bury the dead, they struck water.

Anyone who was buried underground in this below sea level city would slowly rise back up to the surface. I started my trip where many others ended theirs. In New Orleans, first above ground cemetery, St. Louis cemetery number one, which is also the oldest operating cemetery in the city. Now, listen, I love ghost stories, but I approach everything with a healthy amount of skepticism, and I don't consider myself particularly sensitive to energy, an empath, I guess, someone would say. But I got an overwhelming feeling of dread, the second I passed through the gate into the

giant concrete enclosure of the cemetery. Like all the energy was sucked out of me and someone dropped away on my chest. And I just want to mention that this feeling did not go away until after I left New Orleans. When you walk through the gate of St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, you notice it's not like other cemeteries, where headstones lay and meet rows over a sprawling field. No. Here the tombs are above ground vaults, meaning the reminder of your mortality is looking at you face to face, sometimes even towering over you.

The layout is also a little chaotic. The cemetery is only about one block by one block, but it is a winding maze. The tour guide even told us to stick together because guests often get lost from their tours if they take too long to look at a tomb. Plus, you really don't want to get lost here. Ghost sightings are really common, so common that many know the resident specters by name. Like a ghost named Jimmy, who asks for guests to put flowers on his wife's grave. Or a particularly rowdy ghost named Fagan, who belt-songs out loud and asks visitors for rides. His voice

can be heard booming from the back of the cemetery. Apparently, he is annoyed that he can't get a cab at the cemetery gates. And that's for a good reason. gates, and that's for a good reason. In the 1930s, a cab driver pulled up to the gates of the cemetery in the dead of the night when he was flagged down by a young woman in a white dress. Without saying a word, she slipped into the back of the cab. Where, too, the driver asked. The woman instructed him to take her to a house in another neighborhood, so off he drove. Once they arrived, the woman asked the cab driver to approach the house and ask the man inside

to come out and talk to her. The driver did, as he was told, and when the man answered the door, the driver explained that he had a woman in his back seat and that she wanted to talk to him. The man stood in his doorway and just rolled his eyes. This seemed to not be the first time this woman had made this request. He explained to the cab driver that the woman in his cab was his wife, who died young and was buried in her wedding dress. She would occasionally hail cabs and show up at his door. The driver didn't believe him, but when he went back to his car, the woman was gone. He ended up telling the story to other cab drivers in the area,

and it became common practice to avoid picking up anyone at the cemetery gates. There's also been sightings of a ghost named Henry Vignet. He was a sailor who bought himself a tomb inside of the cemetery before taking off on an extended voyage. Before he left, he asked his landlady to hold onto the deed of his tomb, but she assumed he would never return, so she sold it. Eventually, Henry did return though, but he had no money to repurchase a tomb, so when he finally passed away, he was interred in the massive tomb for the poor. Guests have said they've seen Henry wandering the grounds. Some have said he's asked them where

his tomb is, or that he's appeared at Barriels asking if there's enough room in the vaults of their loved one for himself. The thing is, there is enough room in these vaults for Henry. When you first look at one of these vaults, you would think that maybe with the bodies being placed inside horizontally, about six people could probably fit inside. Three on each side all stacked on top of each other, maybe each on their own individual shelf. Bodies get placed in the tombs, not in caskets, just loaded in under a sheet. Remember, this cemetery is still operating, and these vaults don't look like they hold that many people, so I was curious how it could still have space.

Well how many bodies do you think he said go in each vault? Because it's not six. He said that 100 people fit in each vault, easily. See, what happens when a person dies is they get placed in the tomb laying down under a sheet, but the summers in New Orleans get hot, like really hot. And soon, the inside of the vault will get up to 150 degrees Fahrenheit or 66 degrees Celsius. That causes the body to rapidly decompose. They basically cook, and by the time the next person in the family dies, which is typically some years later, the first loved one inside is mostly ash and sumpown.

They are then swept into a burlap sack and placed in the back of the tomb. This repeats for generations, until dozens of family members are in burlap sacks on top of each other in the back of the tomb. And then, over time, the burlap sacks will disintegrate, leaving the family in one giant pile of remains. I stood there thinking that that was kind of oddly beautiful, to not be alone in a box under the earth, but instead in a messy heap with your loved ones for all of eternity. But then I started thinking of which family members I would conveniently forget to tell

about the shared tomb as to not have to deal with them for infinity, and before I knew it, the tour group was nowhere to be found and I had done the one thing they told me not to do. So I jogged around a corner to catch up, and I saw that the group was congregated around a white vault covered in groupings of hand drawn X's. It's kind of creepy. Hundreds of quickly drawn X marks all over this one vault. How they got there, I'm not really sure.

The cemetery is only open for tours. No one is allowed to just wander around unless you have a special pass because your loved one is inside. We weren't even allowed to touch the vaults on my tour, let alone draw on them. The X's, I soon learn, most likely come from voodoo practitioners

who are drawing them to ask for blessings and assistance at this vault. Because the woman who is in turn here is known as the voodoo queen of New Orleans, Marie Lavo. Marie was born in 1801 in New Orleans and grew up to be a hairdresser in town. She worked with everyone, mostly doing hair for the rich and powerful, but she also worked with the poor because Marie was incredibly empathetic and loved giving back to her community.

As a result, she knew everyone in town. And everyone knew her. For a Creole woman born to a slave, she grew up to be who some called the most powerful figure in New Orleans society. People both feared and respected her, like a Machiavellian prince. She made such an impact that the New York Times

ran her obituary when she died in 1881. And since then, the myth of Marie Levoe has only grown to be larger than life, just like the Python she was said to carry around her neck at all times. Marie practiced a form of voodoo that she blended with Catholicism, maybe to make her practice more palatable to the Catholics of New Orleans. And it worked. Everyone would visit Marie for various potions, spells and amulets.

People believed she could help them find love, curse their enemies, even win court cases. She had a supernatural power she had conjured over the years, and she appeared to be all-knowing. It was said that Marie would stop people in the street and be able to tell them things about themselves that no one else knew. The tour guide I was with seemed really keen on the fact that Marie was a hairdresser, and therefore probably wasn't an all-knowing voodoo queen, but just knew the town gossip because of her work. She would hear all of the best gossip in the city and could spit it back to people as

a form of blackmail. But there are some things that Marie is said to have done that I don't know, I've never seen my hairdresser do. There was the one time that a wealthy businessman approached Marie in the 1930s. His son had been accused of murdering a cruel girl. And the businessman begged Marie to use her powers to exonerate his son of the crime. Marie agreed to it, but only if he would sign over all of his land to her.

The businessman agreed, and she got to work. According to the legend, Marie went to the St. Louis Cathedral with Zombie, her python, wrapped around her neck. She prayed at the altar as she held three spicy guinea peppers in her mouth. She asked that the pain she felt from the peppers be penance for the crime committed. Then she took those three guinea peppers and placed one under the judge's seat, one under the jury, and one under the seat of the businessman's son. He was eventually acquitted of the crime and the land was signed over to Marie.

And that wasn't the only time Marie used Voodoo to help the accused. Marie was staunchly opposed to the death penalty and was incredibly empathetic to convicted criminals, especially those who came from impoverished backgrounds and weren't really given tools to succeed. In the summer of 1854, a man was set to be hanged in the city square. Marie, at first, tried to use her worldly powers, going around to city officials as well as

judges, asking for the execution to be commuted to a life sentence. This did not work, and that angered Marie. On the day of the execution, she arrived in the city square with zombie wrapped tightly around her neck. As she angrily glared at the executioner, dark clouds rolled in, covering the previously blue sky. Finally, when the executioner holds the lever, the man fell through the open floorboards and his noose slipped off of his neck. He landed on the ground below with a thud, confused, but alive.

This was considered to be an act of God, and therefore the execution could no longer be fulfilled. He was instead given life imprisonment. And not long afterwards, public executions were completely banned in New Orleans. I stood at her tomb, wondering if any of the wishes other voodoo practitioners made with their three X's ever came true. I had recently heard a story from a woman who stood at this very tomb a few years before me on an oppressively hot and humid summer day.

She was so moved by Marie's story she wanted to make her an offering, so she took one of her husband's cigarettes and placed it neatly by the vault, asking Marie for a safe ride home. She had heard somewhere that spirits like tobacco. As she turned to leave, she looked down one of the long walkways of the cemetery lined with other like-and-covered vaults when she saw a shadow at the other end. Someone dressed in robes, hair wrapped in a scarf, slowly walked behind a vault, and then vanished. It was far too hot that day to be as covered as the figure was. The woman felt like maybe that was Marie, acknowledging that she heard the woman's wish,

and ultimately she did make it home safely. I looked around to my left and to my right, and I didn't notice anyone else in the cemetery except for our tour group. I didn't have any coins or cigarettes on me to make a wish to Marie, and besides that, I just don't know enough about Voodoo to really want to mess with it. And plus, with all of the other wishes that have been asked of Marie, I figured she wouldn't mind if I just let her rest. Next, our tour group turned the corner and walked up to a giant white pyramid tomb that stuck out like a sore thumb. None of the other vaults were pyramid shaped, and this one was not only spotlessly clean compared to the other faded and mossy tombs,

but it had lipstick kiss marks on the front. You'll never guess who owns this one, our tour guide remarked. We're gonna take a quick break, and when we get back, I want to tell you about the actor who is still alive, mind you, who owns this tomb, and is strange tie to one of the darkest stories in New Orleans. So I'm standing at this white, giant pyramid with my tour group. When the tour guide asks us to guess who bought this cemetery plot, I had actually read about the man who bought this prior to the tour, but I didn't say anything. I'm really trying to be better about not being a know-it-all.

I just sometimes can't help myself when I know a fun fact, but someone else in the group clearly had read about them too. Nicholas Cage, they cry out. And they're right. In 2010, Nicholas Cage purchased this exorbitantly expensive cemetery plot in the St. Louis cemetery and had a white 9-foot tall pyramid with the words Omnia Abuno written on the front, which translates to everything from one. I had read somewhere that someone had valued this plot and tomb at around a half million dollars. Rumors started swirling as to why he made this macabre purchase.

Some swear it's because he has ties to the Illuminati. Some say it was because he was facing bankruptcy, and there's a loophole that says the government can't take your final resting place from you, so he sunk some money into the one place it couldn't be taken. Others think it has to do with a haunted house that he lived in in New Orleans. In 2007, Cage bought the LaLaurie mansion, a 200-year-old home that once belonged to the notorious Delphine LaLaurie. Some say she was a serial killer. Others say she wasn't doing anything that others weren't also doing in secret in New Orleans. The next day, after I had finished the cemetery tour, I took another ghost tour of the streets of the French Quarter. And as I approached the three-story La Lourie mansion, nestled in between other apartments

and shops in the city, my tour guide turned to us and with a big smile, let us know that this was the spot on the tour that some people throw up at. What do you mean, I asked? She explained that some people are more sensitive to spirits than others, and those that are sensitive have visceral reactions to this house. Naja, dizziness, vomiting, I looked at the house saying if I got a feeling from it. But to be honest, I was still feeling the same drowsy and sad feeling I felt when I first walked into the St. Louis cemetery.

The mansion was completely dark, except for one light that was on up on the third floor. No, Nicholas Cage was not inside. He only owned the home for a short period of time around 2007 before it was said that the house drove him mad. Madame LaLaurie, as she was known around town, constructed this house in 1831 with her third husband, Dr. Leonard Lewis-Nickless LaLaurie. She came from a well-off family and married a physician, though it was only her, her husband and two of her children in the house, she insisted on having a large staff of slaves to tend to her family's

every need. On April 10, 1834, Firemen were called to the Lola-Lori mansion after a fire broke out in the kitchen. Smoke was billowing from the bottom floor near the street, so much so that it attracted a crowd of bystanders. Firemen arrived to find an enslaved woman inside the LaLaurie kitchen, chained to the flaming stove.

She was released and brought into the fresh air out in front of the crowd, where she admitted that she set the kitchen on fire herself in an attempt to take her own life. Earlier, she had made a mistake and was afraid of being punished like the other slaves were. What happened to the other slaves? Someone asked. They go upstairs, she said, and they never come back down. The crowd gasped in horror, and firefighters ran to the top floor to see what was going

on, and that's where they found the horror of Madame LaLore's slave quarters. Accounts of what they saw vary, but every single report states that it was gruesome. The Times pick a unran an article in 1941 that referenced how papers at the time described what was found. Human beings chained up in small cubby holes, starved, people actively dying from lack of care, but the New Orleans B from 1834 described a much more grizzly scene. Quote, 7 slaves, more or less horribly mutilated, suspended by the neck with their limbs apparently stretched and torn from one extremity to the other, who claimed to have been imprisoned

there for some months. Some thought that Madame LaLaurie had been practicing surgery on these people. And this cruelty had been going on for some time. Neighbors in the street recalled a time they watched her chase a 12-year-old girl around the balcony of the house, only for the girl to fall off the side of the balcony to her death. This was all over the little girl snagging Madame LaLaurie's hair while she brushed it. She was buried in the backyard.

But as the neighbors are watching in horror as starved and abused people are being helped out of the LaLaurie house, even starting to mob at one point, Madame LaLaurie and her husband had an escape plan. They took their coach to Lake Pontitrain, where they loaded onto a boat and headed straight to France. The house went on to change hands over the years, but no resident held onto it for very long. Nicholas Cage eventually lost the house to foreclosure, but some say the curse of the house is what caused him to lose his fortune.

Others say that he bought his tomb after he visited a voodoo queen to help with the home's haunting, purchasing a grave was part of the ritual to clear the house, something about tricking the spirit into thinking you're dead. Today, it's owned by a Texas billionaire who only comes twice a year, once for Marty Grau and once for Halloween. All other times, the house is completely empty, save for one light that stays on on the third floor, the one I was looking at. What became of Madame LaLaurie?

No one really knows. Many believe she's buried in France, but the Times pick a UN article from 1941 says something else. They reported that in the late 1930s, Eugene Bax, a 53-year-old man who helped upkeep the St. Louis cemetery number one, found an epitaph plate for Madame LaLaurie in the cemetery. It read that she had died in Paris on December 7th 1842, and yet, there it was in the St. Louis cemetery. This suggested that she had her body shipped in secret back to New Orleans to be buried in the place she had called home for most her life.

So if that's the case, and Nicholas Cage really did buy his tomb in order to escape the ghost of the former owner of his home, he might be upset to know that she's possibly buried right beside him. him. The tour I was on was heading to its final stop, and my trip to New Orleans was almost done. I couldn't help but notice that I still hadn't really seen a ghost. Jean Lafitte didn't show himself at the blacksmith's shop turned piano bar, and though I still had a lingering bad feeling from the St. Louis cemetery, I didn't notice anything particularly supernatural happening there. But on the tour, I noticed we were walking up to the place that I had just had dinner

that night, a two-story, French-inspired building that held a restaurant called Murials. I had heard that Murials had a say on the room, but I hadn't looked much into it. I just kind of figured it was a touristy thing for Bachelorette parties to do, dined with a ghost in the say-ons room, but I hadn't read much about the history. The food was actually pretty good, though. I had salmon over stewed black-eyed peas, and my husband had shrimp and grits. At one point, I remembered bending down to get a dairy pill so that I could try some of the grits when I felt a glass on the table move. I shot up

quickly and caught it right as it was settling back into place. It wasn't like it was tipped over, but more like it had lurched an inch or so. I looked at my husband to be like, careful, you almost knocked a glass into my food. But he had put his knife and fork down and was looking around the walls of the restaurant. The old painted murals and still lifes hanging on the walls, the dripping chandeliers. He wasn't really in a position where he could have hit my glass. It felt like such an insignificant moment, but for some reason, I was reminded of it when we approached the restaurant. Our tour guide, once again, turned to us and smiled. People sometimes feel really nauseous at this stop, she said.

Damn, this woman really loves when people get sick on her tours. She went on to tell us that this restaurant used to be a house at the turn of the 19th century. One owned by a man named Pierre Jordan. I looked at the restaurant and could picture it as a house. It had a beautiful wrap around balcony on the second floor and French style bay windows. The first floor was all dining room and kitchen now, but I could see how a living space would be in the room we ate dinner in. The house was nestled on a busy corner of other restaurants, bars and hotels. It must have been

prime real estate, even back then. Mr. Jordan used to throw the best parties at this house. The who's who of New Orleans society would come over and party until the early hours of the morning. But there was a darkness to these parties, because Mr. Jordan was a gambling man, and what started as small bets for fun and thrills soon snowballed into large debts. Maybe it was the alcohol or maybe it was the desperation because he had already lost so much, but in 1814, Mr. Jordan wagered his house in a game of poker and lost. This was the greatest embarrassment of his life, and before he had to vacate the house, he took his own life on the second floor.

Now, the second floor contains a seance room where, yes, Bachelorette parties can rent out, so yes, maybe it is a little bit of a gimmick. But our tour guide had us come over to a locked door just off the street that led to a dark hallway near the back of the restaurant. Tables and chairs were stacked on the sides. It was clear that this part of the restaurant was not visited by guests. We peered into the old warped glass of the door

and at the end of the hallway was a red velvet rope placed in front of an open door. It led to a room with one light on and a set table. That's the table the restaurant keeps for Mr. Jordan. Legend says that when murals first opened, staff noticed that plates would shatter and glasses would be thrown around the room by some invisible force. Eventually, someone looked into the history of the property and learned about Mr. Jordan and his parties.

They joked that maybe he was sad to be missing out. Sad that someone was using his house for festivities that he wasn't invited to. So they set him a table in the back of the restaurant and made sure a glass of wine was always poured for him. After that, the glass breaking stopped. But he still loves to move wine glasses, our tour guide quipped. And I thought about my wine glass and how it lurched earlier. I looked at my husband. Did you hit my wine glass while we were at dinner?

He squinted his eyes like he was thinking really hard. I could tell he probably wouldn't have remembered it even if he did hit the glass because it was such a small moment. But it was a nice gesture for him to even try. Our tour guide showed us some photos that visitors had taken of Mr. Jordan's table. Ones where it looked like a figure was sitting down to have dinner. And I will say, it was kind of freaky. She had multiple photos where there was a big smudge by the table.

Some looked like it was a figure sitting down. I looked up some more photos online, and I'll link the one that really looks like a man in a suit jacket standing over the table looking down at his wine glass. I snapped a few photos thinking about my wine glass moving earlier, but unfortunately, I didn't see anything. I had to leave New Orleans the next day, but maybe I had accomplished my goal. Maybe the ghost of Mr. Jordan really had shoved my empty wine glass, probably in anger that I wasn't drinking.

Honestly, that guy sounds like a party animal. Honestly, though, that could have been anything. Maybe I hit the tablecloth, maybe my husband really did hit it with his elbow and just didn't notice. But I maybe did see something else. And this is something I actually didn't notice until I was prepping this episode. I was recently going through the photos I took of Mr. Jordan's table, trying to see if I could find anything in the photos that I may be missed, any smudges or apparitions that I may be glossed over. And while I was looking at one of the photos, I held my thumb to it and realized that it was a live photo, so the three-second loop started playing.

I don't know if you all believe in orbs or not. I'm honestly still skeptical, but the photo looks like a normal photo with nothing in it until the live video starts playing. And a green orb appears at Mr. Jordan's chair. It hangs out there and then hovers around the wine before taking off to the left. It's gone by the next photo. I'm gonna link it in the show notes and post it on Instagram so you all can see,

but I do think it's worth looking at. Maybe the ghost of Mr. Jordan really was there that night, sitting at his table, just glad to have been included. Okay, we're gonna take another quick break and when we get back, I'm gonna give you some of my recommendations for the city. Both spooky and not. Alright, so first and foremost, I did the St. Louis Cemetery official tour. So now you can't enter the cemetery on your own because of vandalism that happened in the past, so you do have to sign up for a tour. The one that I did

was like 25 bucks, and I thought was really worth it. The history and the storytelling was great, and the guide was knowledgeable when I asked him like a hundred questions on how the vaults worked. Then for the ghost tour, I did a city ghost tour, specifically one called the Ghosts of New Orleans tour. And they covered a lot of amazing stories that I didn't even get to talk about in this episode. Like the most haunted alleyway in New Orleans next to the St. Louis Cathedral.

And the Ursuline Nunn Convent where the casket girls were sent, those girls were maybe vampires, which is another crazy story I hope to talk about at some point. Ghost City Tours also have other tours you can do, like the Killers and Thriller's One, which is more true crime focused. For haunted bars, I went to Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop, but I also went to the absent house, which is also pretty unchanged from its original setup and is said to be very haunted.

That's where Lafitte met with Andrew Jackson and agreed to help America in the War of 1812. I recommend personally getting an absent frappe, a drink that was invented there in the late 1800s. It's just absent, soda water, and sugar. It's delicious if you can stand the taste of absent. I personally love absent, at least the myth of it, the antiquity of it. Fun fact, it does not make you hallucinate, not even close, so you don't need to be worried about that.

The hallucination bit of absent was actually a myth that the wine industry in France made up to get people to stop drinking Absenth and start drinking wine. So enjoy. Restaurants swise, we did murials. If you go with a group, you can try to book the Sands Room, if you do it far enough in advance. It looks really cool. We also loved the restaurant Jewel of the South, which was really close to the St. Louis

Cemetery one. And then I didn't have a chance to go, but almost everyone, tourist, and locals alike told me to go to the World War II Museum. I've heard it can take hours to get through, and I just didn't have time to go on the trip. museum. I've heard it can take hours to get through and I just didn't have time to go on the trip, but if you have any interest in World War II or honestly, even if you don't, this might be a good stop on your trip. I also recommend if you're into vintage clothes, Century Girl vintage had a really cool supply of vintage clothing and jewelry. They had original flapper dresses

and some really cool vintage designer pieces. It was really interesting to check out, even if you don't buy anything, it's a little bit outside of the French Quarter. They also repurpose old buttons into jewelry. And then of course, I ate Benye's nearly every morning at Cafe Dumon and Cafe Benye. Cafe Dumon only takes cash, so be mindful of that.

Okay, I think that's everything. This has been another episode of Heart Starts Pounding, written and produced by me, Kaelin Moore, sound design and Mix by Peach Tree Sound. Special thanks to Travis Dunlap, Grayson Jurnigan, the team at WME and Ben Jaffee. Special shout out to all the new patrons, I hope you liked the bonus December content that we had last month, I will be thinking you all by name in the monthly newsletter. You can sign up for that on our website. Okay, until next time, stay curious.