At Halloween, New Orleans Citizens Invoke Old-Fashioned Civic Spirits

I suspected something was up the minute we stepped off the plane at New Orleans International. There, above a ticket counter, a hanging banner read: “The Witch Queens of New Orleens and Their Love Slaves.”

The young airline employees behind the desk, decked out in appropriate witch and slave attire, were cheerfully passing out handfuls of candy corn with every ticket to smiling customers. And there were still five days to go before Halloween.

Mardi Gras in New Orleans is a wonderful sight, but the tourist crowds are enormous, you can’t drive down the streets for the people, and you can never get the hotel reservation you want.

Even better than Mardi Gras, I found, is Halloween in the Big Easy, where perhaps more than anywhere else in America, it is a truly spirited prelude to All Saints’ Day.

The “real” New Orleans, the one that surfaces at Halloween, is a city of masks and drama, of high life and low living, a city that attacks the senses and quickens the pulse.

A languid, sweet smell of decaying elegance almost oozes from every cobblestoned street in the French Quarter, ensuring that writers such as Tennessee Williams, Lillian Hellman and Anne Rice--their prose so evocative of the city--will stay in print forever.

That section of the city comes alive with a street party that begins the weekend before Halloween and lasts until the first rays of sunlight on Nov. 1, when all good vampires are sent scuttling back to their coffins to rest before rising again next year.

We arrived on that weekend last year and immediately took to the streets for a taste of the theatrical outrageousness that has made New Orleans famous.

One of my companions likened the scene on Bourbon Street to the infamous “Artist and Model” balls that were once held in the uninhibited Latin Quarter of Paris in the 1920s.

All along Bourbon and Royal, the gorgeous held court with the ghastly. A Viking shared a drink with the Phantom of the Opera, while nearby, a ravishing skeleton poured Dixie beer for Satan, red horns and all. A pregnant male bride partied with an 11-foot, green-faced Frankenstein-on-stilts and a princess with a mustache joked with his two-faced pal.

Near the doorway of Napoleon House at 500 Chartres St., a moody old mansion dating from 1791 that survives as one the city most popular bars, I saw a woman dressed as the Wicked Witch of the West sharing a meaty po’ boy sandwich with her companion, the scarecrow from “The Wizard of Oz.”

The place seemed to attract all types. It was included in Esquire magazine’s “top 100 bars in America and serves extraordinary Italian sandwiches called muffulettas and other light meals, enhanced by classical music. Prices are under $5 for lunch or dinner.

Looking around, I could have sworn the whole city was dressed for All Hallow’s Eve, from the graceful homes along oak-lined St. Charles Avenue to the gingerbread wrought-iron balconies of the French Quarter. Pumpkins, both real and cardboard, displayed their grins from across cool, fountained courtyards. In the Touche Bar near Jackson Square, skeletons and cobwebs danced from the dusty old chandelier.

“New Orleans is the most haunted city in America,” proclaimed Rice, who has written such celebrated New Orleans-inspired novels as “Interview With the Vampire,” “The Vampire Lestat” and “The Queen of the Damned.”

She believes that her early years in the city formed the roots of superstition and legend that are at the core of her works. Rice’s latest book, “The Witching Hour,” due out in November, is set in her own New Orleans home, itself reputed to be haunted.

“As a child, I was very aware of the layers of legend surrounding the city, which I know inspires my writing now so much,” Rice said. “I spent every Halloween in New Orleans up until I was 16 years old. We used to go trick-or-treating in the Garden District, where there are so many big, spooky haunted houses.

“It’s a spirit trap,” Rice continued. “One of my theories is that they gravitate here because they respond to the ornamentation of our lovely architecture--the houses, the churches, the cemeteries, the French Quarter buildings. Why are the spirits always said to haunt castles? Same reason--they love the beauty.

“There’s a school of thought that says ghosts are like records with grooves, just waiting for the right ‘needle’--person, that is--to set them off, so they can tell their stories again and again. I know New Orleans has quite a lot of those grooves, just waiting to be heard.”

Another great reason to visit the city at this time of year is the climate. Gone is the unrelenting humidity. New Orleans may also well be the only place left where grown-ups can still act like kids on Halloween and not feel embarrassed about it.

Take the annual “Search for the Loup Garou,” sponsored by the Louisiana Nature and Science Center. Named for the legendary creature-man who changes into a wolf at twilight on Halloween, this traditional event includes a specially produced laser show at the Planetarium, with ghouls and goblins dancing on the dome in time to frightful tunes. For more information, call (504) 246-5672.

Or the popular “Ghostly Galavant Through the French Quarter.” Led by a group called The Friends of the Cabildo, who help preserve the city’s Spanish heritage, participants are taken on a tour to some of the Quarter’s most haunted buildings and told tales of its famous phantoms.

The city’s astonishing number of cemeteries--31 at last count--attests to the fact that the dead are literally all around you. There were times in New Orleans’ history when the gravediggers could barely keep pace with the corpses. Plagues such as “Bronze John,” better known as yellow fever, devastated the city in the mid-19th Century.

Most of New Orleans’ cemeteries now lie in uneasy decay, but they are still fascinating places to visit. Jumbled, tumbling mazes of elegantly ornate marble angels and imposing mausoleums depict a form of folk art found nowhere else in the United States.

So decrepit and rundown are many of the cemeteries that a local group, Save Our Cemeteries, has joined forces with the Catholic archdiocese to help invoke a 1974 law that pressures living descendants to restore their ancestors’ final resting places.

Many Orleanians still remember All Saints’ Day as a time to visit and actually talk to a deceased loved one. Celebrating Halloween, then, becomes the obvious prelude to just such an outing.

Some of the best parties to scare yourself at are held at Tipitina’s, 501 Napoleon Ave. (504) 895-8477. The well-known nightspot features great live Zydeco, blues, Cajun and rock music. The costumes here are truly incredible.

Another spooky spot is The Dungeon, a late-night hangout in the French Quarter where ugliness is the order of the evening. Why not ask the bartender for a “Dead on Arrival” daiquiri?

While you’re wandering, look for the Vampire Bar, said to exist somewhere in the Quarter. I’ve been looking for its exact location for years, supposedly a darkened doorway with a drawbridge beyond.

One store in the Quarter is devoted entirely to the preservation of voodoo, spirit worship and the black arts. Traces of The Other Side leer down from the walls--masks of traditional devils, horned Satans and sharp African faces in carved wood, with only slits for eyes.

I noticed a jewel-encrusted human skull rested in a glass case next to the head of a jackal. I listened, amused, as the skinny shopkeeper explained some of the bizarre rituals to a shy-looking Midwestern couple.

By 7 a.m. on All Saints’ Day, the Cafe du Monde in the French Market (800 Decatur St., 504-525-4544; open 24 hours) was filled with bleary-eyed party-goers eager for their first cafe au lait and warm, sugary beignets .

New Orleans is host to all sorts of celebrations year-round, from the sacred to the profane. But the two never blend quite so innocently as at Halloween, when the city becomes a ritual dance of life.