New Orleans a Halloween destination
NEW ORLEANS – Ghosts and ghouls, voodoo and vampires, mansions and mortuaries and celebrations in the cemeteries – what better place to celebrate the season of spookiness than New Orleans?
Parapsychologist Larry Montz, who once dubbed the Crescent City “America’s most haunted,” speculates that distinction is due to the high concentration of deaths in such a small space over the city’s history – for many years, during fires and floods, wars and epidemics, New Orleans mainly comprised the 13-block area that is now called the French Quarter.
Whether you’re a die-hard skeptic or a true-blue believer in the paranormal, the Crescent City is the place to explore the outer boundaries of human (or nonhuman) experience. Halloween is one of the top five reasons people name for paying a visit to New Orleans – and the fun doesn’t end on the 31st.
Grab a ghost tour, visit a voodoo temple, participate in a parapsychological experiment or wander the elaborate aboveground cemeteries. Visit any one of the scores of sites believed to be haunted. Suspend your disbelief, and take a dive into our guide to the ghoulish in New Orleans.
Paranormal observatory
It isn’t often that a haunted attraction carries the distinction of actually being haunted – but that’s exactly what makes the Haunted Mortuary special. At least that’s what Montz says, after using the latest equipment and his team from the International Society for Paranormal Research to identify nine “earth-bound entities” in the mortuary.
Scream theme developer Jeff Borne had purchased the mortuary and developed it into a scare-your-socks-off Halloween attraction this fall and was trying to decide what to do with it next. He was considering turning it into a haunted bed-and-breakfast when he heard about Montz’s venture. He pitched an unusual idea: turn the mortuary into a first-of-its-kind paranormal observatory, laboratory and museum. The idea would be to wire the facility with cutting-edge technology and high-tech, round-the-clock surveillance, and invite the public in to participate in the research.
“My partner Daena Smoller and I had come up with the idea of a paranormal observatory about 10 years ago,” he said. Surrounded by cemeteries and equipped with a lively collection of “entities,” the site was ideal, he decided. Borne wasn’t long in jumping on board, and the project will become reality in the next few months. In the meantime, Borne’s Haunted Mansion theme attraction has been drawing thrill-seekers by the thousands and will remain open through Halloween.
For those who want a taste of the coming attraction and don’t want to wait, the organization’s Ghost Expeditions are available, in which participants are outfitted with equipment and allowed to participate in a ghost-hunting experience in the company of one of the ISPR’s researchers.
“Ghost Expeditions are basically paranormal research workshops conducted in the field, which has to be haunted or we can’t use it,” Smoller said. The ghost tours at the Haunted Mortuary, on the other hand, are conducted during the day and night.
“It’s amazing how many people have been having experiences – which is not advertised as a feature, as it is a tour. But the cool thing is that the tour is updated daily because tour participants are having experiences inside the three-story, 14,000-square-foot former funeral home. It’s SO cool!”
(Ghost Tours & Ghost Expeditions at the Haunted Mortuary will continue throughout November & December 2007 at night, during the PHASE II build-out. And watch for Winter 2008 when the Haunted Mortuary becomes home to the World’s First 24/7 INTERACTIVE PARANORMAL OBSERVATORY, LAB & MUSEUM)
http://www.HauntedMortuary.com – more coming soon
http://www.GhostExpeditions.com
http://www.myspace.com/HauntedMortuary
October 31, 2007
Posted in: United States South