; Phantoms and Monsters: Pulse of the Paranormal

Thursday, April 30, 2020

New Orleans: Howling Man / 'Voodoo Bodies' After Hurricane Katrina


Yes, New Orleans is a very strange city. Here are 2 particularly bizarre incidents that are a bit above the norm


I recently found the following post:

"I live in New Orleans. Born and raised in Louisiana. It’s always been a hotspot for the paranormal (voodoo, witch craft, hauntings, vampire legends, bayou werewolves, etc). Anyway, due to the quarantine situation the city has been pretty much a ghost town; hardly anyone out and about. I’ve been going stir crazy being stuck inside because I battle depression and anxiety. So, we have started to go on morning walks around the city daily. We may occasionally pass someone (usually walking their dog or riding a bike, etc). Well, today felt different.

I have extremely pale skin, the fairest type you’ll ever see. So my whole life I’ve been compared to Snow White and to, of course, vampires. Well, at one point during our walk we were about to cross the street and on the other side was a man looking to cross to our side. I had the strangest feeling that he was going to think I looked like a vampire because I was wearing a black dress and my pale skin is as pale as ever. I don’t know why I felt that but I tend to have a very strong intuition. (Example: the other day I pre adopted a rescue kitten at Petsmart I bought a pink carrier and when I got in the car I strongly felt the need to keep the receipt “incase the cat isn’t really a girl”. That night I get a call from the foster mom who says she’s sorry that she told me it was a girl, and that they went to microchip her and it’s a BOY!). But back to my story.

So as I’m thinking about how I look like a vampire and about to cross paths with this man. The sun hits me as I cross the street and he lets out the largest wolf-like HOWL that I’ve ever heard coming from any creature in my entire existence. The weirdest part was, I didn’t feel afraid. And I didn’t feel like it was strange. Maybe the weirdness of New Orleans has gotten to me, or maybe it’s because I know deep down I’ve believed all along that everything is not as it seems. And that legends and stories exist for a reason. I calmly crossed the street and never looked back.

I just hope I’m safe now. I wonder if he picked up my scent. Of course, New Orleans also has a lot of homeless people, mentally ill and drug addicts as well. So it’s possible he’s just one or more of those. But maybe not..." KB

The following response to this post is interesting:

"Okay, here it goes. I have a medical background and a certification I rarely use though I keep going back and paying to renew it. Anyhow, I volunteered almost immediately thinking I would help those who have lived through Katrina. That was not the case. There were a few of us who are assigned once the water started to recede, to find houses that had dead bodies in them.

If you've ever had to do a body recovery when it has been lying around in the heat and the water for days, sometimes weeks at a time, you know how it smells. It does sort of smells like any other dead carcass but worse. I can't explain it, maybe somehow, sweeter smelling. Anyway, the key to not vomiting when you smell them is Vicks VapoRub in, under and around the bottom of your nose. It doesn't keep all the smell out but enough until you can at least tolerate the smell without vomiting.

We had to go to each house and go inside in wading boots and look for bodies. Many of them washed out to sea but some were still in the houses they had lived in prior to the hurricane. If we found a body, we spray painted a big X on the outside of the house. This other guy and I had been doing it for a while and we got assigned each other almost every day. We got along okay and he didn't vomit at the ones that had been "gotten to."

We came up to this one old shack. I say shack because it was pretty run down and in what had been a very bad neighborhood. Right away, I got chills down my spine. I knew there was something really wrong. Not like find a body kind of wrong, but chilling kind of wrong. New Orleans has certain areas that just give off these vibes and my understanding is there is a lot of voodoo practiced in certain areas.

Anyway, against everything my body was screaming at me, we went in the house. The first thing I could smell was a body, the second was something almost earthy and mold. I looked at my partner, (I will call him Jay). He was white as a sheet. I could tell he was getting that same feeling I had been getting. It was obvious from the weird bones hanging from the ceiling, (I would bet money they were cats), something odd had been going down in the house as well as strange beads and carvings in the bare wood in the walls.

We went into what was a kitchen and there chained to a beam was an old lady or what was left of her. She had chained herself by her wrists to the beam, her guts were falling out on the floor. The creepiest thing was her face still looked as though she were alive and staring at us with a wicked smile showing only partial teeth. (They were nubs). My skin started crawling as the goosebumps spread over my body and my neck hair stood up.

Suddenly, I heard the most unearthly cackling noise I have ever heard in my life and my flight or flight kicked in. Jay and I noped out of there. We quickly painted the X and literally ran to the next house.

Now I don't know if that old lady had practiced voodoo or whatever, but that scared the ever living sh*t out of me. It still gives me nightmares. The people I feel sorry for are the ones who had to take that crazy lady out of there.

Jay and I discussed it that night after we went back to the hotels north of there. He had heard the cackling too but we both said it had to be the wind or something." AF

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UNEXPLAINED CRYPTID / BIGFOOT / UPRIGHT CANINE / HUMANOID ENCOUNTER OR SIGHTING?

'Winged Cryptids: Humanoids, Monsters & Anomalous Creatures Casebook' is now available in paperback & on Kindle


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