One of the best places in the world to celebrate Halloween is New Orleans. Photo / Getty Images
One of the best places in the world to celebrate Halloween is New Orleans. Photo / Getty Images
New Orleans leans hard into Halloween with a weekend-long spooktacular that showcases its always-on embrace of all things supernatural and celebratory, writes Cassie Tannenberg
New Orleans, considered one of America’s spookiest cities, is known for its local spirits – and I don’t mean the potent cocktails on Bourbon Street.
The Big Easy (or should that be “The Big Eerie”?) has long been a city where the living and the dead mingle in mutual spiritual harmony.
It’s a distinction earned by its unique heritage, culture and geography as one of the country’s oldest cities, founded in 1718.
Haunted by a dark past of slavery, with a history of successive colonisation by France, Spain, the French again and finally sold to the US, each wave has added their traditions and superstitions to the heady New Orleans cultural gumbo.
New Orleans leans hard into Halloween with a weekend-long spooktacular festival. Photo / Getty Images
Seek out the city’s voodoo
The city even has its own brand of voodoo, brought by enslaved West Africans to Louisiana in the 18th century, with legendary practitioners such as Marie Laveau, and continued by the likes of high priestess Catherina Williams at her French Quarter store, Intuitions.
The historic French Quarter or Vieux Carre (”Old Quarter” in French) is where New Orleans voodoo had its start.
Here, the religion that has contributed so much to the city’s cultural canon is revered at the tiny but detailed New Orleans Historic Voodoo Museum and the practitioner-owned Voodoo Authentica – a working apothecary full of ingredients or pre-packed spells to go.
Some of the local folklore and evocative storytelling come with the terrain. Voodoo priestess Williams says New Orleans derives its magickal (“with a ‘k’”) power from the crescent moon and the mighty Mississippi River.
The historic French Quarter or Vieux Carre (‘Old Quarter’ in French) is where New Orleans voodoo had its start. Photo / Getty Images
Following the curve of the Mississippi and situated between the river and Lake Pontchartrain, the so-called Crescent City dips in the middle, surrounded by levees keeping bayou swamps and sinkholes at bay and where the majority of reclaimed land is no higher than1.8m above sea level.
This high water table means the city has to bury its dead above ground and the elaborate crypts with ornate metal trellises and inscribed tombstones are a fascinating focal point on cemetery tours.
Take a guided ghost tour
New Orleans often doubles as an eerie backdrop, inspiring spooky TV series and supernatural films such as Disney’s Haunted Mansion, American Horror Story, True Blood and Interview with the Vampire.
At any time of year, visitors can learn about haunted happenings on guided ghost tours to the French Quarter’s infamous spectral sites such as the LaLaurie Mansion, Le Petit Theatre Du Vieux Carre and St Louis Cemetery. Even beignet-and-coffee tourist favourite Cafe du Monde has an in-house apparition.
With iron lampposts that still flicker with flames, wraparound wrought iron balconies draped with greenery, moody antique stores and an aged grid of sombre narrow streets, the neighbourhood is a main character all of its own on an after-dark tour.
Dine at Muriel’s, a Creole restaurant haunted by resident bon vivant Pierre Antoine Lepardi Jourdan whose love for high-spirited parties continues into the afterlife.
On a tour of the sumptuous salons and decadent private parlours above the restaurant, dining room manager Terence “Uncle T” Bechet reveals where staff set a table nightly – complete with red wine – for the mansion’s ghostly former owner.
Even New Orlean's favourite tourist haunt, Cafe du Monde has an in-house apparition. Photo / Getty Images
Experience the city’s other carnival: Krewe of Boo!
After all, New Orleans is a party town where even the dead don’t want to miss out on the year-round festivals and impromptu events.
The fascination with the macabre fittingly peaks with the annual Krewe of Boo! Halloween-themed weekend of frighteningly fun festivities, staged before Halloween (October 31).
Experience New Orlean's other annual carnival: Krewe of Boo! Photo / Supplied
It’s grown from a single parade into an entire weekend of events, including a Zombie Run with costumed participants chased by undead roller girls and a Second Line with a marching band and the hot-stepping crowd who follow them through the streets.
The main draw is the Krewe of Boo! Halloween Parade, which began as a Hurricane Katrina relief fundraiser in 2007 and is now the second-biggest parade in New Orleans after Mardi Gras, drawing an estimated crowd of 100,000 on October 21 this year.
As the only parade to travel through the French Quarter, the Krewe of Boo! procession is a spooktacular sight with 650 costumed riders on 16 double-decker floats plus 45 marching, dancing and walking krewes – member organisations that take part in the parade.
As the only parade to travel through the French Quarter, the Krewe of Boo! procession is a spooktacular sight. Photo / Richard Nowitz
Riders on the colourful, themed papier-mache floats toss coveted beads, trinkets, toys and sweet treats to the mostly costumed crowd of locals and visitors, arms outstretched, who throng the route from Decatur St to Tchoupitoulas Ave.
Pulsing with energy and tunes, it’s a ghoulishly good way to experience a spirited time. That’s just like New Orleans – casting its beguiling spell again.
