Scary Ghost Stories

New Orleans House

When my sister got married she and her husband moved into a house in "old Algiers"- a portion of New Orleans located on the West Bank of the Mississippi River.

The house was very old and had originally been built 7 to 8 feet tall from the ground and supported by huge brick pillars- much like some of the old Louisiana Plantation homes - before the levees. The height was the protection when the river rose in the spring.

Over the years the house was converted into a "double" with mirror image sides. The lower potin was walled in after the levees were built and this portion was converted into two apartments and laundry rooms for the four apartments.

My sister was renting the upper left side. The rooms were large with high ceilings. Upon entering there was the living room, "den" rather than what is usually called a bedroom, then the bedroom, the kitchen and a narrow hall with a bathroom and staircase down to the laundry room at the lsft and a bedroom at the end of the hall. This was a smaller room because it is part of what had originally been the porch for the big house but had been walled in when the house was made a double.

Since her husband worked offshore I would spend nights with her because she was afraid to be alone. Soon it became apparent something was wrong because you could here noises and walking accompanied by a cold, errie feeling that you were being watched. Tuesday nights were the worse- Almost unbearable. Everyone said we were "imagining" things.

One particular Tuesday night it was so bad that we sat in the kitchen and kept talking about anything and everthing because we were afraid to go to bed. As time passed, things got quiet and about 2:00 a.m. we decided to go to bed. My sister went to the back bedroom and I to the front.

I had not yet gotten into bed when I got that cold eerie feeling so I turned out the light and jumped into bed and covered my head. then I decided to turn the other way so I would face the window. Just as I turned I heard a voice say quite clearly, "Don't turn your back on me." Thinking it was my sister I turned back over and removed the covers from my head. I "saw" an image of an old lady in what appeared to be to be an old time night gown, white, with long sleeved and a high neckline standing in the doorway to the kitchen. AT first I thought maybe my sister had gotten up and had come to ask me something so I said, "What do you want?" Then he image was gone. I yelled to my sister, "Did you say something?" When she replied "No" I turned on the light and got out of bed. She got up when I told her what had happened. We did not sleep the rest of the night.

That next day we began inquiring about the history of the house and did find out that at one time it had been a funeral home. But that did not account for the woman. So we decided to try to "pick up a feeling" from the house itself over the next few nights. After a couple of weeks, from Tuesday activity, we came to the conclusion - like someone told us, that the lady was an old woman who had died in the house. She was not hapy then or now, that she was considered "mean" by those who knew her and she had died alone and unhappy in the house, on a Tueday night, in the back bedroom. We kept that information to ourselves because we wanted to find out if were right.

Finally, we pesterd my grandmother so much about the house that she contacted an 80 year old lady who had lived in the housse at one time. Grandma asked her if anyone ever died in that house. Guess what! An elderly lady, considered mean and "crotchety" had indeed died there,in the back bedroomon a Tuesday night.

Being Catholics, we arranged for masses for the womans soul and had the house blesse. The activity stopped after that, and my sister moved a couple of years later.