Bloody Mary - Bloody Marys Guide to Hauntings, Horrors, and Dancing with the Dead: True Stories from the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans

A journey to the corridor of spiritual experience! Bloody Mary's supernatural side of New Orleans is both fully documented with history and rich with the magic act of invocation through storytelling. Recommended not only for the adept, but also for students of metaphysics, paranormal enthusiasts, practicing spiritualists, and those who need to see how to extend motherly love beyond the human realm.

Yeye Luisah Teish, author of Jambalaya: The Natural
Woman's Book of Personal Charms and Practical Rituals

New Orleans is a place with a colorful history shrouded in dark mystery. Ghosts and voodoo are a part of daily life, and who better to tell you the stories than Bloody Mary, the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans. Mary doesn't just tell the stories of the Big Easyshe lives them. She bridges the world of the living with the realm of the dead, and takes you on this thrilling, lifelong journey of hers in this book.

Brad Klinge, lead investigator on Ghost Lab, Discovery
Channel, producer/star of 9 Diamond Productions' Strange
Curiosity, and co-author of Chasing Ghosts, Texas Style

An entertaining and interesting fact-filled journey guided by the inimitable voice of raconteur Bloody Mary who brings the dead back to life in her Supernatural guide to the other side of New Orleans.

Carolyn Long, author of A New Orleans Voudou
Priestess: The Legend and Reality of Marie Laveau and
Madame Lalaurie: Mistress of the Haunted House

I love this book. Bloody Mary brings to life those who are gone but still with us. And Bloody Mary writes their history so beautifullypoetically and lyrically. But, more importantly, she shares her own supernatural insight and experiences with them too.

Angela Hill, award-winning journalist, veteran news
anchor, and New Orleans television personality

Bloody Mary, Voodoo priestess, folklorist, and storyteller, allows the reader to enter her spiritual and professional world... the author illustrates the marriage between the mundane and the spiritual, between the supernatural and the religious, between legends and the truth.

Alexandra Reuber, PhD, professor of Practice in
French at Tulane University in New Orleans

Fascinating insight through Bloody Mary's eyes into the paranormal and New Orleans. A hauntingly good read.

Nick Groff, coauthor of Chasing Spirits and founding
team member of Travel Channel's Ghost Adventures

This edition first published in 2016 by Weiser Books, an imprint of

Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC

With offices at:

65 Parker Street, Suite 7

Newburyport, MA 01950

www.redwheelweiser.com

Copyright 2016 by Bloody Mary

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC. Reviewers may quote brief passages.

ISBN: 978-1-57863-566-5

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available upon request

Cover design by Jim Warner

Cover images: Greenwood Cemetery, New Orleans, Louisiana Paul Souders/World-Foto,
6836 16th Ave NE, Sea/Corbis; Sky: Shutterstock Stephanie Frey

Interior by Deborah Dutton

Typeset in Adobe Caslon Pro

Printed in the United States of America

M&G

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To all the spirits, especially my mother, Beverly
Millan. She taught me how to pray and how to
love an undying loveshe still does.

Gratitude and thanks also to my living and loving
family who ground me here and now, with special
honors to Jagger, Matthew, Gina, and Olga.

I am an afterlife coach to those who have passed, but I am
always their student. I learn directly from the source
because I listen. I try to help these phantoms evolve and
provide a mirror of truth to aid in their rescue, but I believe
it is a two-way mirror.

N EW ORLEANS. THE BIG EASY . Like its music and food, the city itself is a blend of cultures, beliefs, flavors, sights, and sounds.

With much of the city residing below sea level, the constant threat of Mother River reminds all who live and visit that life is both fragile and short. Given her historyfull of tragedy, travesty, and triumphsthere's no question that New Orleans is America's most haunted metropolis.

In August of 2005, Hurricane Katrina claimed thousands of lives. That disaster is but one chapter in a long book of New Orleans legend, lore, and history.

Around 800 C.E., the Mississippian people settled this region and built earthworks and burial mounds. In the 1690s, the French arrived sowing seeds of their culture that can still be found in every Creole's accent and cooking. Later, New Orleans was caught up in the war between the French and Spanish. The outskirts of town were once full of plantations and African slaves were brought in by the boatload. They brought their folk magic and Voodooadding to this gumbo of culture.

Who could forget the infamous early-nineteenth-century pirate Jean Lafitte calling New Orleans his home port? Or Madame Lalaurie, a socialite and serial killer known for torturing and murdering her slaves? With most of the graves in the city cemeteries located above-ground, it's no wonder the dead walk so freely here, including the spirit of the city's most famous Voodoo Queen: Marie Laveau.

What you're holding in your hands right now has been more than twelve centuries in the making. By turning this page, you're embarking on a journey of haunted New Orleans with one of the most visible and qualified guides you'll ever meet... Bloody Mary.

Unlike television's ghost hunters who rely on gear and gadgets to look for ghosts, or psychic mediums who offer only their mental impressions of spirits, you have Bloody Mary who blends her psychic abilities with limited technical gear. As a Voodoo Priestess, she can also bring those magical elements into her work. Mary offers drumming and dance, conversation, libation, and of course, creole food, to the spirits as a way to glean a complete picture with local flair.

Bloody Mary is a product of her environment, just as her city is a product of the millions of people who have come and gone through the Big Easy over the centuries. Each person has left their mark on New Orleans... and some of those voices still echo today... if you know how to listen.

Fortunately, Bloody Mary does in a method she calls Voodoo Paranormal. I've had the privilege of knowing and working with her for over a decade now. I can think of no better person to take you on this trip to haunted N'awlins.

Laissez les bons temps rouler!

Jeff Belanger, author of The World's Most Haunted Places

W ELCOME... I AM BLOODY MARY , a born and bred, proud native New Orleanian. My lifelong quest is dedicated to spiritual endeavors the world over, but it is my own backyard that has proved the premier microcosm of mysticism with a heavy hotbed of spirit activity to share. I was exceedingly blessed to be born and raised in America's Most Haunted City, where my roots were planted nearly three hundred years ago, long before we were American. My earliest ancestors Troxler (later Troxclair, or Troslcair), came here from the AlsaceLorraine area of France in 1718, and their spirits still speak.