“The Fall into Time”

“For centuries, people have come to New Orleans looking for a fresh start, hoping to find fortune, adventure, even love. Young society women imported from France with the promise of marrying a proper New Orleans gentleman. Like the legendary Casket Girls.” — Rebekah (Claire Rhiannon Holt) — The Originals

None of those things brought me to New Orleans, but a promise to visit new places every year. Choosing this one was a no-brainer since my favorite Art History professor moved here a few years ago...

To walk 0.66 square miles (1.7 square km) or 13 small blocks you only need half an hour or so. But not in the French Quarter. Here, amid vampires and witches, time expands. Minutes turn into hours and the past comes rushing into the present, blurring the lines between today and the early 1700s.

I borrowed Emil Cioran’s book title for this post because it best describes how walking the French Quarter’s cobblestone streets made me feel. It was a journey back in time, in a different realm even. A place where today’s realities intertwine with old magic. A place where “normal” means hydrating from blood bags, looking for the perfect doll in voodoo shops and wearing a vervain necklace to protect yourself from vampire attacks.

Imagine this: you walk the narrow streets and arrive at the corner of Chartres and Ursulines. It is 1752. The Ursuline Convent (Louis XV style, today the oldest French Colonial architecture in the U.S. and the oldest building in the Mississippi Valley) stands tall, its white plaster gleaming under the streetlamps, on a full moon night. The Ursuline nuns are already part of the community. They settled here more than two decades earlier. And so did “the Casket Girls.” Their arrival marks the beginning of vampire lore in this part of the world. Legend has it that a group of French girls came to New Orleans to marry and help with Louisiana’s colonization. They unknowingly smuggled vampires onto their ship, inside the coffin-shaped trousseaus they carried (hence the name Casket Girls). And so, during the journey West, turned into creatures of the night, they became the first French immortal maidens of New Orleans. The local lore says the Casket Girls have been held captive in the Ursuline Convent’s attic for almost three centuries. Today, the shutters on the attic’s windows are still sealed shut. A mystery yet to be explained.

This is but one of the vampire legends that shapes New Orleans’ bewitchment that lures knowledge-thirsty tourists in its midst. Filled with stories of immortality and magic, the French Quarter rises as the heart of the Crescent City (the bend of the Mississippi River around the city resembles a crescent) in a mix of historic French, Spanish (beautiful wrought-iron balconies and stucco exteriors) Creole, and American architecture. There is a sensory overload that cannot be found anywhere else. Besides restaurants and coffee shops selling the staple beignets (like the Café Beignet on Royal Street) or the Vampire Caffe at the corner of Royal & St. Ann, where you can find the best gator Po' boy, the neighborhood is packed with “unconventional shops.” If you find yourself contemplating to change religions, the French Quarter authentic voodoo shops can be your starting point. If you are only interested in voodoo dolls as souvenirs, you need only enter one of the tourist (muggle) worthy shops. But if you’re more of a wizard than a muggle, then witchcraft shops are on your alley. Not the Diagon Alley per se, but in a way, a much older version of it. You can buy spells and potions while gaining some insight into pagan religion and culture. If you have Transylvanian origins like me and believe you are more vampire than muggle, then the only vampire shop in the country— Boutique du Vampyre—will be the place where you’ll linger the most. If you arrive before they open like I did, you will be greeted by a “Sorry, we’re DEAD” sign. Nothing more fitting for a vampire store if you ask me! When the old door finally opened, I entered a small, dark room packed with vampire-related merchandise and went straight for the bookshelf. A few minutes later, I was the owner of a black book with a red Fleur-de-lis sigil called New Orleans Vampires -History and Legend by Marita Woywod Crandle. I chose it because it is a signed copy. Or so I thought when I decided to buy it.

A few days later I was already in Florida, armed with pen and paper and ready to tackle the reading schedule for the upcoming school year. Among my required readings and textbooks, I found Waywod’s 105-page book. The reading schedule could wait another day. I opened the book at the “Foreword,” and I read: “As a Stoker family historian and vampire enthusiast myself…” and I was hooked and intrigued. What does Stoker have to do with this? It turns out that the famous Dracula writer was Dacre Stoker’s (the Foreword writer) great-granduncle. OK. One Romanian connection check marked. On the third page of the Preface my eyes met the picture of none other than Vlad Tepes (Voivode of Wallachia three times- the caption reads).

Woywod learned about her connection with Tepes from her father.

“If you look up Vlad Tepes, as I have many times since, there is my maiden name staring right in the face. Over the years, it has been modified various different ways, but our family name Woywod, pronounced ‘Voivot,’ is one of those modifications. I thought, what are the chances that the only girl in the country to open a vampire shop has a connection to one of the oldest vampire legends in existence” (Woywod 12).

And now, I wonder, too. What are the odds that the only book on that shelf that got my attention was one connected to Romania and Transylvania in more ways than I thought possible?

And so, I discovered my NOLA’s allure meaning…

P.S. Check Facebook for more pictures.