Desperate Ghosts or Desperate Ploy?

Normally, I’m all for laughing off any hotel that claims to have “friendly ghosts” as a scam to draw in tourists, especially here in New Orleans. You can’t walk three feet without bumping into someone telling you their store, their bar, their hotel, their hot dog cart is haunted and the tourists eat it up (though if they’re smart, they won’t eat up that hot dog).

I read an article on the Hotel Monteleone that kicks it up a notch (sorry, Emeril). So, they’ve laid claim to ghosts in the past. Ghostly kids. Ghostly dancers. Ghostly jazz singers (because this is New Orleans, right?). Ghostly clock workers. Ghostly naked Mardi Gras revelers. You got a reason for coming to New Orleans, and they have a ghostly version of it. I’m surprised they don’t say the ghost of Marie Laveau haunts the place.

Well, now they’re saying that the ghosts are getting angry and acting up. Throwing things. Slamming doors. Wailing more? Why? On the one hand, it seems a strange marketing ploy to say, “Hey, you know our friendly ghosts? Well, now they are petulant, borderline crazy.” On the other hand, maybe business is slow and they’re trying to lock down the ghost tourism. I mean, if you fancy yourself brave and say you want to stay in a haunted hotel, stay there and tell your friends back home you stayed in the scary angry ghost one and not the Casper the Friendly Ghost one, right? Maybe draw in more ghost hunters? Take their money. Tell them, “Huh, that’s weird. Nothing happened last night. Normally they go crazy.”

It’d be funny if it turns out the place actually really was haunted now and the ghost was getting violent because people keep wanting it to be cutesy and do tricks like a trained puppy. What could they do? They couldn’t say the place wasn’t haunted because they built a reputation on it, that the scary ghost was all in their head. Same for an exorcism, because then they’d have to be like, “Well, no more ghosts here at all, everyone! Find a different haunted hotel!”

What do you think? Have they gone too far with their marketing or do you think maybe they actually finally have a real ghost and don’t know what to do about it?

Stay strange!

-Steve

The Mannequin Killer - Thoughts?

So, the Mannequin Killer. Killing two people and dressing up one in the other’s in their clothes. And always someone normal. A unique looking person and a normal looking person. Freakin’ weird if you ask me. Where are the bodies of the distinctive people? Why are they all missing and the bland people so easily found? How is he killing them? There’s no signs of poison or violence or anything. And what’s the motive? What would make a person do so much work (and not even take the cash out of the wallets)? Honestly, guys. Supernatural? Super weirdo? I’ve got nothing on this one. Consider me stumped.

 What do you guys think? Serial killer? Deranged artist? Spooky ghost? Share your theories.

As always, stay strange!

-Steve

Ghosts on Decatur?

So there's this warehousey kind of building down on the corner of Decatur and Marigny that's always popping up full of some indie scene of some kind or another. No budget coffee house. Art space. Experimental performance venue. That kind of stuff. A friend of mine likes to check out places like that, do a little urban exploring and see what all gets left behind once whatever it was falls through. What catches my attention is they say the place is haunted. I mean, old creepy abandoned building that can't keep a tenant longer than a few months, of course people are going to say there's a ghost or something haunting the place chasing business away or something. But the artsy kid says he was going by there this Sunday past and heard weird chanting and noises and stuff. Being the scaredy-cat little artsy fartsy kid that he is, he bolts.

So he tells my friend, who decides to check it out with some buddies. Inside he finds this:

  

salt_circle.jpg

That's weird, huh? Said it was salt. Ghost hunters, maybe?

burned_paper.jpg

This was lying next to it on the ground. What is that? Latin? A quick google search says it's probably part of an exorcism. What was going on here? Someone down on his luck property owner trying to purge the ghost and maybe get in a tenant that won't get scared off after a couple months? I tried to get a hold of the owner to get to the bottom of this, but I couldn't find out who owned it. If any of you loyal readers know, shoot me an e-mail so we can get to the bottom of this mystery.

Anyway, back to the story, my friend's buddy goes into this room. It's full of trash and stuff. My buddy is in the main room, poking around and stuff. He hears his friend scream. Like seriously horror movie scream. So he runs in there, and his buddy is just standing there, and he's like, "Dude, what's up?"

His friend turns around, crazy eyes like he's seen a ghost, and just says, "I gotta go find somebody."

Then he leaves, just like that. No goodbye, no nothing. Just walks away.

Crazy, huh? Later he shows me the pictures he took and we see this:

decatur-marigny_ghost.jpg

He swears up and down he didn't see that while he was there or he'd have booked it like his friend did.

I checked the place out yesterday and I'm not going to lie. Gave me the creeps. Between the salt circle and the cold spots, I'm a bonafied believer that places is haunted.

Anyone else have any experiences with this place to share? Or if you don't, if any of you brave NO Strangers have the guts to check it out, share your story and pictures in the comments!

Stay strange!

-Steve