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MikkoMacchione,aNewOrleans historian,
has that job. As a French Quarter ghost tour
guide, he claims he is not peddling fiction.
“As I tell my tours, I’m a terrible liar,” he
says. “So I don’t tell a story unless I’ve
researched it or it has been corroborated
so much — and so similarly — that I can
report it in good faith.”
He goes on to tick off the names of local
ghosts like they’re old acquaintances:
Antoine, who wears a billowing shirt and
pantaloons as he wanders about Muriel’s
restaurant; Alejandro, who hangs out in the
balcony at Le Petite Theatre, and so on.
His theory about why there are so many
ghosts in New Orleans makes as much
sense as any other explanation:
“Who’s to say there’s no psychic component
to the universe,” he says. “New Orleans was
a really easy place to die in the 19th century
— floods, fires, hurricanes, Indians, pirates,
jealous husbands, duels and, of course,
yellow fever.
“So its like the trauma keeps your mind off
the fact that you’re dead. And spirits tend to
be found where the trauma occurred — or
in places they enjoyed being, like the church
or the theater.”
Hey, sounds good to me.
The actor James Franco, who has filmed
several movies in New Orleans, once wrote
about his experience taking a ghost tour
here. It was — as James Franco tends to be
— very candid, macabre and unusual.
“Our tour guide told us that New Orleans
has recorded the highest number of
missing-persons cases since those statistics
began being tracked,” he wrote. “There was
something strange about hearing all this at
the start of a walking tour. At a carnival,
inside a fun house, or around a campfire,
the recitation of disturbing information
serves to create a certain mood. That’s the
way many Disney films work. But to use
missing persons and murder to set a tone
within the environment where those things
are still happening confuses entertainment
and reality. Basically, New Orleans is an
amusement park where you can get killed.”
No doubt about it: When the subject of
conversation is the afterlife, people tend to
have strong opinions.
After all, It’s the only permanent state of
mind, body and being.
That I know of.
Now, about those real estate signs — the
Haunted, Not Haunted ones:
They are the work of French Quarter
Realtor Finis Shelnutt.
In addition to doing a double take at his For
Sale signs, one might also be taken aback by
his name — but that’s a whole ‘nother story.
Among other things, he is the ex-husband
of former Bill Clinton mistress Gennifer
Flowers, and you simply have to admire the
guy for surviving junior high school with a
name like that.
(Any Gulf Coast historian worth his salt
knows that Finis is a traditional name of honor
in the South. It was Confederate
President Jefferson Davis’ middle
name. But maybe this isn’t the
best time to talk about that!)
But I stray. Back to the story:
After former Star Trek actor and
cultural commentator George
Takei posted an online photo of
one of the “Haunted” signs last
year, Shelnutt responded:
“Speaking as someone who’s
from NOLA (New Orleans)
that IS actually a selling point
… Can’t swing a thing without
running into some haunted
local. Ah, the charms of home.”
USA Today then picked up the story.
They wrote:
“Shelnutt, a Little Rock native, says he
wasn’t always a complete believer in the
spirit world ‘until we started doing these
tours and it gets really bizarre,’ he says.
‘Every night, someone will pick up orbs,’
Shelnutt says, referring to white circles
sometimes picked up in photos that some
paranormal experts say represent ghosts.”
“Now, Shelnutt says he has seen so much
— including a frequently swinging trash
can lid in his kitchen — that he believes the
eight properties he has listed are haunted. ‘I
think all of them are,’ he says.”
Can’t swing a thing?
I guess that doesn’t include trash can lids.
After researching this story, I am pretty
much convinced that the Rouses Market in
the French Quarter is the only building in
the neighborhood that’s
not
haunted.
I mean, the testimonials are staggering.
Who is one to believe?
Me, I tend to be a skeptic.
Then again, several times while browsing
the aisles of that store, I have walked
through what definitely felt like a cold spot,
some sentient apparition in my midst.
And I have to admit: It’s a jarring, unnerving
experience. It raised goose bumps on my
arms, made me shiver, and made me wonder
if maybe there isn’t something to all this talk
about ghosts and hauntings in the French
Quarter.
That is, until I look around and notice I’m in
the frozen foods section.
LaLaurie Mansion, French Quarter
Finis Shelnutt, Realtor
HALLOWEEN