N is for NEW ORLEANS_City of Mystery

There are many mysteries in the French Quarter.

There is even a street called Mystery but that is a 20 minute bus ride from there in an area called Mid-City.

If you are feeling brave and adventurous, you may choose to stay in the French Quarter's Mystery Hotel. 4 stars even.

You know you want to.


The French Quarter, also known as Vieux Carre {Old Square in French,} has long murmured a siren call to extreme personalities -- one such was the Sultan, whose famous ghost is said to haunt the halls of the 4 story house on 716 Dauphine Street.

In the latter 1800's, he rented the house from the Le Prete family. A dark day for everyone involved. The Sultan, a cruel and dangerous man, was not above kidnapping women off the streets, torturing them into submission, and then adding them to his harem.


One mysterious day, the Sultan met his fate in an ironic, cruel and hideous fashion. A neighbor strolling by his house stiffened in horror. She saw tiny rivers of blood trinkling from beneath the front door.


When the authorities broke down the door, they found a scene from a nightmare. Body parts and blood were everywhere. Every member of the household had been horribly murdered. Only the Sultan was missing. Where was he?


They discovered his body in the backyard in a shallow grave. He had been buried alive. The murderers were never discovered. It remains one of the city's most haunting, intriguing mysteries.

Friends have asked how the jazz club, Meilori's, is enchanted. It is the crossroads of three major ley lines, mystic lines of energy, allowing it to be the portal to another plane of existence. What exactly that plane happens to be is a matter of heated conjecture by many in New Orleans. It is much like the question of who or what is answering the questions on a Ouija board.

At first glance, New Orleans appears but a hodgepodge of streets. Look closer. First laid out by the French, the city bears the mark of Masonic training : the city's plan is based on phi {the proportion of life}. A walk down Bourbon Street triggers your chi {life force} with the ley line extending from New Orleans to Dublin, London, Brussels, Kosova, Haifa {Israel}, and Amman Jordon. If you are versed in the paranormal, you know that New Orleans connects dimensionally like no other city in the world. Or so it is said.

Some believe that the theory of dark matter implies the existence of alternate universes. Think of it. Between your nose and this computer screen could exist heavens, hells, lost dimensional wanderers, or entire galaxies. Impossible? Right now, dozens of radio and television waves are coursing through your head. You just can't see or feel them. A much more detailed explanation of New Orleans' mystic importance is written by Peter Champoux. Check his site :

http://geometryofplace.com/NewOrleans.html
***

SECRETS OF SEVEN GHOSTS_PART I

I have often warned friends not to casually play with the Ouija board. Do not knock on any door that you do not know what is on the other side.


Ouija is a combination of two words: "oui" and "ja" which mean "yes" in French and German respectively. And do you really want to say "yes" to something like the picture on yesterday's post?


So saying that, there I was sitting in the dark, about to write this article on the wisdom of posting excerpts from your writing and thinking about that very picture from yesterday's post ... when I heard a deep, thunderous voice :


"Oinops pontos."


I looked up and sighed. I just had to write a horror post yesterday, didn't I? There in his worn toga, battered sandals, and walking staff stood Homer.


"Wine dark sea?," I asked. "And that means exactly what?"


"It is what I have crossed to please your Valkyrie."


"Marlene?"


"Yes, she knows you have been worried that you have spoken too much of your epic. And she wanted me to counsel you."


"And 'wine dark sea' is it?"


He whacked me on the shin with his staff. "I have little patience."


Rubbing my smarting shin, I grumbled, "So I noticed."


"Then notice this as well. The measure of a story is not the teller but the listener."


I tucked my legs under my chair and said, "This must be a lesson 'cause my understanding of it lessens and lessens the more you speak."


He spun his staff and thumped me on the head. "OW!"


"Tell your story. Listen to the audience. Learn insights you would never do otherwise. That is my wisdom."


He smiled, and it didn't reach his white-filmed eyes. "Denied sight, I saw truth in the criticisms of others. Try and have as much vision as this blind man."


And with that, he disappeared. I sighed. I thought a moment, then I smiled.


"Well, that wasn't so bad." {You should never say things like that -- even if you're not in a horror movie.}


Gyspy, my cat, hissed and ducked under my chair. A trilling like the moaning of melting ice wraiths filled the darkness. A blur of gold swirled to my left. A ghost throne solidified next to me.

In black robes in whose fabrics swirled suns and comets sat another frequent guest : Merlin. Tall, guant, he possessed a face not even in the same galaxy with human.


"Hello, Emrys," I said, using his childhood name.


The face underneath the domed hat kept changing : child, werebeast, old man, crystaline facets of diamond. I felt like I was watching Bush delivering a speech.


"Your Faerie Queen can be most persuasive," he whispered, the tones of his voice changing from crone, to crow, to child.


"She asked you to come, too?"


"Yes. To tell you the magic of words."

His smile was colder than the shivers they gave me. "The magic of words increases with the speaking of them. The more you tell your tale aloud, the more strength it will have, the more lyrical and fluid will become the words."

He jabbed at me with a long, bony finger. "Speak your story, child of the Lakota. Speak it often and listen to the cadance of your prose, sculpting it into magic. Listen, mold, sculpt. Then say them aloud again, letting the music of them roll from your tongue. Speak them to all you can. When you see their eyes light up with your words, you will know you have sown magic in them."


His own words were still lingering in the darkness when he disappeared. Two cloven hoove marks were burned into the carpet where his feet had been. Gypsy hissed at the smoking reminders of his visit, then scurried to investigate the wonders that lay hidden underneath my bed.


I didn't blame her. I wanted to join her in fact. The throne blurred to the sound of a tinny trumpet. Laughter sounded all around me. I groaned. Not him. Please, not him tonight.

A high desk suddenly replaced the missing throne. A smoldering cigar thrust into my face. Fake eyebrows shot up and down.


"Say the secret word, and I'll tell you why I came."


Groucho Marx.

I sighed. I'd have to count my books after he left. A voracious reader, Groucho always "borrowed" one of my leather-bound classics to while away whatever afterlife he ambled through.


"Marlene?"


"The very same songbird. And the legs on that bird would make Col. Sanders a very happy man."


His eyebrows did the rhumba on his forehead. "In fact, those legs have made many a Colonel a happy man. And Major and General and Major-General and ...."


"I won't have you joke about her morals while she's not present to give her side of ..."


"Morals? Not present? I have you know she was a whiz at giving in to her morals when she was present."


A shimmering glow swirled behind him. I made a cutting motion against my throat with the fingers of my left hand, but Groucho kept on.


"Why the look? Not following me? I tell you a child of five could understand this."


He cupped a hand around his mouth, "Someone fetch a child of five!"


As a white satin gowned woman appeared behind Groucho, I groaned. He smiled, totally oblivious to his danger. I saw the long, sharp dagger in an elegant right hand.


He chuckled, "If you see the divine diva, quote me as saying I was mis-quoted."


His eyes went to mine. His face paled. His cigar drooped. His throat felt the dagger across it. "She's right behind me, isn't she?"


I nodded sadly, and he looked up into the icy face of Marlene Dietrich. "Marry me, and I'll never look at another horse."


Her eyes became slits, and he winked at me. "Either she's dead, or my watch's stopped."


Marlene spoke in a velvet whisper, holding the dagger close to his neck. "Another word, and I will make you the headless coarse man."


"Egads, woman. You wanted me to speak words to your ...."



The dagger pressed harder against his throat, "... my very good friend here."


"Words about his concern for his idea being stolen, about his art, buffoon."


"Well, Art is Art, isn't it? Still, on the other hand, water is water. And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now you tell me what you know."


She slashed long and hard, tearing Groucho's still talking head from his body. "Oh, sure, be that way about it. I mean, I've heard about some of the things you did to get a-head in Hollywood, but ...."


I saw Marlene's eyes and shouted, "Groucho, if not for you, then for me, will you please shut up!"


"Oh, well since you asked so nice. Oh, and about your worry for someone stealing
your joke -"


"Story," Marlene and I both said at once.


"Whatever. No one can tell your joke like you, boy-o. Your little twists, your little asides. And in telling it over and over, you get a better sense of what works and what doesn't. So don't worry about someone stealing your joke, kid. Only you can tell it your way."


"Thanks, Groucho. I never thought about it like that."


Marlene smiled at me. I would have been more charmed if she weren't holding Groucho's eyebrow-lifting head at the same time. "And remember, Liebling, great stories have great scenes."


She winked slyly at me. "If it detracts from the flow of the story it is not a great scene. It is ... how do they say it now? Yes, it is a speed-bump."


Groucho muttered, "I need my own body under me right now. Then, could I have your body under me?"


She began to walk into the darkness, taking Groucho's head but leaving his body. "I have always said, Julian, that you are a no-body. And now, I prove it."


She disappeared as Groucho squawked, and I called out after her, "Oh, come on, Marlene."


"For you, Liebling," her words whispered right into my ear, and Groucho's body disappeared.


I leaned back in my chair and let out a long sigh. Gypsy stuck her head out, checking if the coast was clear. Suddenly, her eyes narrowed, and she hissed, ducking back under my bed again.

A plush leather chair was next to mine. Cigar smoke tickled my nose. The deep aroma of an expensive cigar. A stout figure appeared in the chair. My goosebumps began to skate along my shivers.

Not him, too?

Ever have one of those nights?

End of Part One
*******************
And here are some of Groucho's better moments :

HAUNTED NEW ORLEANS

Friends have asked how the jazz club, Meilori's, is enchanted. It is the crossroads of three major ley lines, mystic lines of energy, allowing it to be the portal to another plane of existence. What exactly that plane happens to be is a matter of heated conjecture by many in New Orleans. It is much like the question of who or what is answering the questions on a Ouija board.



At first glance, New Orleans appears but a hodgepodge of streets. Look closer. First laid out by the French, the city bears the mark of Masonic training : the city's plan is based on phi {the proportion of life}. A walk down Bourbon Street triggers your chi {life force} with the ley line extending from New Orleans to Dublin, London, Brussels, Kosova, Haifa {Israel}, and Amman Jordon. If you are versed in the paranormal, you know that New Orleans connects dimensionally like no other city in the world. Or so it is said.



Some believe that the theory of dark matter implies the existence of alternate universes. Think of it. Between your nose and this computer screen could exist heavens, hells, lost dimensional wanderers, or entire galaxies. Impossible? Right now, dozens of radio and television waves are coursing through your head. You just can't see or feel them. A much more detailed explanation of New Orleans' mystic importance is written by Peter Champoux. Check his site : http://geometryofplace.com/NewOrleans.html



Now, for a glimpse within Meilori's :





CHAPTER FOURTEEN

RIGHT TURN ON DEAD

I move in all kinds of circles, meet all sorts of people. I learned

engraving from a counterfeiter, accounting from a swindler.

A succubus once tried to teach me the tango. But nothing doing.

I didn't have the hips for it.

- Samuel McCord


I turned around and faced my newly re-minted night club. Meilori’s was back. And it had only taken a small fortune to make her return breath-taking. Luckily, I had stumbled across more than a few lost treasures in all my manhunts. When the last owner of a fortune is several centuries dead, it made giving it back harder than just keeping it. But I spent it wisely. Or tried to.

My night club sparkled in the dim illumination of spinning, sparkling chandeliers. Meilori’s stood on a busy French Quarter corner. But even so, it seemed to go on for much longer and wider than it appeared from the outside.

Which made sense. It was wider and longer within than without. Courtesy of Rind, the Angelus of Death, my place led into a dimension that only a few could enter and from which even fewer could return. Everyone was safe who stayed up front. Those who ventured deeper did so at their own peril. The sign to my place read : HERE BE MONSTERS. TO VENTURE DEEP WITHIN IS TO CHANCE NEVER RETURNING AT ALL.

Not that many paid much attention to the words, mind you. But they had only themselves to blame if they never returned from the shadows. Besides, New Orleans had lost a good many visitors long before my place showed up. The city had just lost a site more since then was all.

Hicock was playing poker in the far table, his new spectacles gleaming on his nose. He nodded. I nodded back. He gestured to an empty seat beside him. I shook my head. I kept my gambling limited to my life not cards.

Major Strasser, immaculate in his black Nazi uniform, sat closer to me. I ambled to his table. He smiled with sharp white teeth.

“Still hold Casablanca against me?”

“Not so you notice. Remember I shot you in your withered heart, not in the acupuncture point that could have killed you.”

“Just so. Is it really the year 2005 out past those doors?”

“Yes, but I’d advise against going out there. Go back the way you came. You’ll still have years of blood and madness across all of Europe if you return that way.”

He stared at me curiously. “You know how the war ends?”

“Yes, everybody loses.”

I turned from him and made my way to the gleaming bar. And yes, if you are wondering --- there were mirrors on the walls -- when you could see them. Each table surface was reflective as were the steps of polished marble scattered in random spots along the length of the red carpet sweeping it seemingly into eternity. Elu got lonely sometime. And he also got --- hungry.

What can I say? Meilori’s is that kind of place.

I was in my dress black western suit. Black shirt, black tie, vest, long coat, slacks, boots. Even my broad Stetson was black. I sighed. I missed Sammy in his all white attire. Samuel Langhorn Clemens was probably having them all in stitches somewhere in a far better place than my night club of the damned. I blinked back hot tears. Sixty odd years is a long time to know a friend. I missed him.

I slowly moved through the room that seemed to become larger, wider, deeper the longer I was in it. The president of France sat with his young love. They were chatting with Marie Antoinette, her slender throat neatly stitched so well only I could see the slight scar of the incision. She smiled coldly at me.

I tipped my Stetson to her and moved on. That was one of the problems to my night club. Every aisle led to a place you’d rather forget. Every table brought back memories of what you had done or should have done.

And every woman reminded you of another woman. Or in my case, one woman. The only woman. Meilori.

Off to the left was one of my internet jazz stages. Erin Bode was singing in the middle of its spotlight. She was an up and coming jazz vocalist. She didn’t like to be type-cast as a jazz vocalist. There were worse things to be called. I should know. I had been called most of them.

I liked her. Meilori would have, too. Erin had called me up and volunteered to sing at my place. She had wanted her fee to go to the Katrina Relief Fund. All the money from the live internet feeds of tonight and the nights to follow would help the hurting in my adopted city.

As Erin was singing “Alone Together,” Toya swayed up to me. I smiled wide at her, the image of the six year old I had found out by my dumpster settling over her Cleopatra features. Skin the color of milk coffee gleamed under the swirling lights above us. Her black dress was so short that it could have qualified as a long blouse. Any shorter and it would have been a wide belt. Tonight she was dressed as a buccaneer. Lafitte would have made her captain of his ship, if not his heart.

**************

Right now, I'm listening to Alison Moyet singing "All Cried Out." She is an inspiration to many of us who have fought the battle of the bulge. Her weight struggle has taught her why the first syllable in diet is die. Check out her website http://www.alisonmoyet.com/. And if you're interested in seeing her do the song I'm listening to check this out :