Inn on Ursulines in New Orleans. (Courtesy of FrenchQuarterGuestHouses.com)
If you've read my column (thank you, by the way), you know I believe in ghosts.
Jokingly, I've blamed creaks and groans around my house on Youngun, my dear friend from whom I bought my house. He used to tease that he'd probably haunt me once he was gone, so it's oddly comforting to think he may be keeping his word.
Otherwise, I'm quite skeptical of most ghost stories. Basically, I have to experience something for myself to believe it, as I think most things that go bump in the night aren't supernatural but natural, period.
But as I'll allude to in my Weekend column for Thursday's paper, I had an experience I can't explain any other way than to say it was, indeed, supernatural.
Almost 10 years ago, I was in New Orleans and spent a couple days in the Ursuline Guest House, now called the Inn on Ursulines, in the French Quarter. Not upscale like my favorite New Orleans hotel, the Monteleone, it was still pretty cool -- and one of the oldest buildings in the Quarter, I was told. In fact, someone on staff at the time told me the guest rooms were once slave quarters.
Anyway, at 30-something bucks a night, I couldn't resist. The morning after my first night, I was getting ready in the bathroom and, while shaving, spied something in the vanity mirror -- someone's silhouette against the window. I studied the image a few seconds in the mirror before turning around to see what looked like a woman's silhouette -- more specifically, a woman in a long skirt, hair up in something like a kerchief, staring out the window.
My heart started beating fast -- not because I thought it was a ghost but that some crazy person had entered my room, and this was how I was going to die: overweight and naked, save for a hotel room towel and shaving cream on one side of my face.
I turned back to the mirror and didn't see the silhouette anymore, then turned back around -- not there.
"She's under the bed," I thought, and promptly started searching the room with a disposable Bic razor in my hand. I spent a few minutes looking under the bed and in the shower multiple times -- even after checking to see that the door was not only dead-bolted but chained closed from the night before.
Slightly calmer but more than a skosh freaked, I finished getting ready and went downstairs to the front desk. I told the guy sitting there what I had experienced, hinting that maybe one of the cleaning staff had gone rogue-ninja and entered my room for the heck of it. He just smiled and plainly said, "Yeah, the place is haunted" -- like it was a service they offered along with an extra towel or bar of soap.
Like other New Orleans hotels claim, this place was haunted. Apparently, the silhouette I saw was the apparition of a slave who used to live there. Even in August, that sent a few chills rippling through me. And that night, I made a friend of mine in New Orleans stay with me in the room.
Having stayed in other allegedly haunted establishments since, I haven't had a similar experience -- nothing as seemingly tangible as that August morning in 2003.
Have you had a spooky experience in New Orleans? Or in any hotel, for that matter?
Peace, love and don't EVER be caught dead using a disposable razor ... XOXO
