Page 32 - ARUBA TODAY

A32 FEATURE
Tuesday 31 OcTOber 2017
New Orleans museum Halloween tour highlights the macabre

By JANET McCONNAUGHEY rie’s attic after her house someone on the wheel or
Associated Press caught fire in 1834. branding someone who
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Talk But Eli Haddow, the mu- tried to escape with a fleur-
about spooky: a Hallow- seum’s marketing assis- de-lis or cutting off ears,”
een-themed tour of New tant, said, “We won’t bar Jordan said.
Orleans’ grisly history opens anyone from entry. We just Another exhibit: cannon
next week and it’s not for suggest that they’re not in- balls dating to the War of
the squeamish. tended for children under 1812, muskets and a sur-
The Historic New Orleans the age of 13.” gery kit used at the Battle
Collection has given a Daily 11 a.m. tours run Tues- of New Orleans. “The ve-
PG-13 rating to “La Danse day through Sunday, in- locity of these musket shots
Macabre: The Nightmare cluding Halloween. and cannon fire was quite
of History ,” a one-hour, $5 “We wanted to do some- low. If they struck a limb
guided tour of its history thing special for the Hal- they would shatter the
galleries. And there’s good loween season. So we cre- bone, so amputations were
reason for the rating. Stops ated this tour to kind of cel- really the only way to go,”
along the guided tour in- ebrate and tell these tales Jordan said.
clude a photograph of a that we think are some of Even more gruesome is the
shrine bedecked with plas- the most compelling in the story of Madame LaLaurie
ter body parts, a picture city’s macabre history,” (LAL-uh-ree).
of a woman who tortured said Dylan Jordan, the visi- “There were rumors dur-
slaves in the early 1800s, tor services staffer who cre- ing her life that she was
even a ragtime composi- ated the tour. mistreating her slaves,”
tion inspired by a New Or- “It’s a mixture of true crime, Jordan said. “One day in
leans serial killer and titled ghost stories, voodoo, and 1834, there was a fire at
“The Mysterious Axman’s war, sickness and health.” the house. People rushed in
Jazz .” The gallery tour starts with and found slaves chained
It also includes such grue- colonial executions and a — and they’d been tor-
some lore such as colonial slave named Louis Congo, tured — in the attic.”
executions on the wheel, who was freed for agree- A crowd gathered, but
amputations during the War ing to serve as executioner. LaLaurie and her physician This undated photo shows a copper and wood printing block
of 1812, and the chained, “He was given land, and husband sneaked out, flee- by an unknown artist, of Madame Delphine LaLaurie; ca. 1830.
tortured slaves found in paid for each punishment ing to Paris, he said. Associated Press
Madame Delphine LaLau- meted out, be it breaking Later stops describe duel- ing and voodoo. For voo- in New Orleans, and photo-
doo, the guide talks about graphs of the shrine where
two 19th century voodoo plaster legs, feet and hands
practitioners who became were left by those thankful
rich serving black and white to be cured.
people alike: “voodoo A priest in the 1860s vowed
queen” Marie Laveau and “that if no one in his con-
fortuneteller Jean Monta- gregation died of yellow
net, or Doctor John — now fever that year, he would
the name under which a anoint a shrine to Saint
famous musician performs. Roch, the patron saint of
Doctor John was “the last good health,” Jordan said.
really important figure of St. Roch cared for victims
a long line of wizards or of the black plague in the
witches ... who exercised 1300s and himself survived
an influence over the col- the disease.
ored population,” Laf- The next story is about the
cadio Hearn wrote in an “Axeman” — a serial killer
1885 magazine article on who terrorized the city from
which the tour’s informa- May 1918 to October 1919,
tion is based. He said Mon- and was never caught.
tanet claimed to have This segment of the tour is
been — and may actu- illustrated by the cover of
ally have been — a prince a ragtime piano solo pub-
kidnapped in Senegal by lished in 1919: “The Myste-
Spanish slavers. Freed by a rious Axman’s Jazz (Don’t
master in Cuba, he worked Scare Me Papa).”
as a ship’s cook and even- Jordan said the piece was
tually settled in New Or- inspired by a letter sent to
leans, where he hauled area newspapers in March
cotton on the docks and 1919 by someone claiming
claimed to tell fortunes to be “the great Axeman”
from marks on the bales. and threatening to kill peo-
After the eerie, horror re- ple who weren’t playing
turns to the fore with yel- or listening to jazz at 12:15
low fever outbreaks of a.m. the following Tuesday.
19th Century New Orleans. “Apparently all of the
This undated photo shows a photo titled St. Roch’s Chapel interior view; Sept. 20, 1925; gelatin dry There’s a Harper’s Weekly clubs that night were jam-
plate negative by photographer John Tibule Mendes.
Associated Press article about the outbreaks packed,” Jordan said.q