Tony's pumpkin had LOTS of guts. He didn't like scraping out the guts.
Here is Tony posing with his skeleton pumpkin. He used a stencil that came in our pumpkin carving kit.
Here is me with my ghost pumpkin. I freehanded the design with a pen, but I got the idea from a tv commercial. The tv commercial showed the steps of how to carve the design.
Here is my ghost pumpkin lit up at night.
Here is Tony's pumpkin lit up with a candle.
On Saturday afternoon we went to the French Quarter. We parked at a pay lot and then walked into the French Quarter. We walked down Canal Street and St. Peter Street. To get to the pay lot, the GPS took us down Bourbon Street. On Bourbon Street we saw lots of strip clubs and one of the girls walked out into the street. I was traumatized.
We had a early dinner at Cafe Pontalba. We had never heard of it, but we ran into it on the way to meet the tour group. It was pretty good. They had New Orleans style food like jambalaya, red beans & rice, po-boys, etc. Tony ate Cajun pasta and gumbo which was fettucini with crawfish & shrimp. I ate a roast beef po-boy and fries.
We met the tour group at a voo doo shop on St. Peter. It was across the street from Pat O'Brians!!! I took a picture to commemorate my dad getting drunk from drinking too many hurricanes. A few people on the tour got some pre-tour drinks to take with them.
Below is our first stop on the haunted tour. Before the tour, our tour guide Jennifer gave us a brief history lesson in old French common law and some general social practices in the french colony. Most of the ghost stories were from the 1700 and 1800's. The home pictured below belonged to the mistress of a prominent businessman in New Orleans. The law forbade them to be married, but the wife of the businessman died young. So the mistress wanted to be the new wife, but she had trouble getting her man to agree. It was inappropriate to marry your mistress. On the night of an important party for his business associates, she begged and begged and begged him to marry her. He finally agreed to marry her if she stood on the roof outside, naked, all night long to prove her love for him. He got busy with his party and forgot about the conversation. At the end of the night, he could not find her. When he remembered their earlier conversation, he went to the roof and found her dead from the cold.
The building pictured below is the historic Andrew Jackson Hotel. After a terrible fire in the city of New Orleans, this building became a finishing school for boys that were orphaned in the fire. Unfortunately, a short time later, the boys in at the school accidentally started another fire that killed 5 boys in the building. Many guests at the hotel can hear children playing in the middle of the night. Creepy!
This is the balcony over the courtyard of the MRB Bar & Grill. Back in the day, this was a brothel. Many immigrant girls were promised rich husbands in the New World, but they ended up penniless in the street and became ladies of the night. One young Irish immigrant girl worked at this brothel and wrote in her diary. She prayed to God and the saints for a man who would take her away and marry her. Finally, a young sailor paid her fee and took her to dinner. Instead of using her services, he took her on dates with his small salary. When it was time to go out to see, he promised her that he would earn enough to buy her freedom. She waited 9 months for his ship to return. When his ship finally returned, she went to meet the ship. She didn't see her future husband, but she saw one of his friends. He told her that her sailor had died at sea, but left his wages for her. Stuck with the pain of losing her lover, she returned to the brothel and hung herself in a tree in the courtyard. Bummer.
The pictures below are of a convent in the French Quarter. After the fires that destroyed a large portion of the city, the arch diocese wanted the convent to be rebuilt. They tried to use as much of the original brick as possible. However, when workers deconstructed the walls to collect the bricks, they found the skeletons of many infants. No one knows what happened or why they were there.
At the beginning of the tour, the tour guide told us to be sure to take pictures at all locations because some of the paranormal spirits show up in the photographs. Jennifer said that spirits show up at a vapor, mistlike shape or as an orb of light. The picture I took below captured a lot of spirits!!! Jennifer said that 9 times out of 10 the anomalies are dust or something reflective, but I can send the picture in to have it authenticated as paranormal activity.
Here is a picture of me with our tour guide Jennifer. She was in costume as an character from one of the stories she told us. I don't really know why she carried a whip around with her.
On our Haunted History tour, there were a few stops that didn't have good picture opportunities. One of the creepiest homes belonged to a rich socialite named Delphine who had several husbands who died mysteriously. One night, one of her neighbors saw her push one of her slave girls off the balcony. Outraged, the neighbor reported her to the police and demanded a federal search warrant. The search warrant was put off until later. The police punished Delphine for mistreating her slave by taking away all of her slaves. After a probationary period, she could have them back. After a few months, her slaves were returned to her. Later, the search warrant was executed on the night of a party at Delphine's house. After searching her home, they found a basement filled with bodies that undergone medical experimentation. Apparently, Delphine was torturing her slaves by cutting off their body parts and sewing them back. A few years ago, Nicholas Cage bought this house. According to the tour guide, he lived there for a while with his wife, but moved when he found out the history of the home.
Here are the Halloween cupcakes I made for the weekend. They are Devil's Food with chocolate sprinkles.
