The association between the vampire culture and the city makes a lot of sense to me. I never used to think that the birthing ground for something so elegantly evil could be these rusty alleyways and unpolished French corridors, but I come to understand that New Orleans is shared between the living and the dead.

Over the past few days, a thorough investigation into the haunted neighborhood prompted some surprising discoveries. When I first arrived at the Central Business District, I did not take this investigation as seriously. Fresh from our stay at the shore, I am still fascinated by the swampy landscapes and the geographical beauty. But the more I become drawn to the spiritual energy of the French Quarters, the more I feel incentivized to unveil the hidden secrets of this erosive society.

For multiple days in a row, I woke up early in the mornings to go on exploratory runs. The city is silent (and mostly clean) until 9 AM, then it resumes its usual shimmery delinquency. So, I learned to take advantage of the time before adults decide it is appropriate to start drinking again. Objectively speaking, the downtown is not the best urban district to linger around as a runner. My only goal is to watch the sunrise on the Mississippi River while sprinting freely down the sidewalk. However, even this desire proves impractical with the numerous small shops and vending machines set up along pedestrian paths.

Around 7 AM, I can’t find a single other runner (or biker, anything that involves aerobic cardio movements) besides myself. If this were Los Angeles, I would already be surrounded by a crew of lean and fit 20-something-year-olds maximizing their calorie burn. However, here, I suspect working out is not the norm or the preferred means of killing time. No one else has the desire to exercise outdoors: all the residents here sink deep into their chambers of sleep. Even the charming chirping of birds cannot wake them from their state of coma. This dullness scares me. When I am charging through the blocks utterly alone, I turn back every few seconds to check if I have been followed. If I were a character in a horror movie, my survival instincts would probably protect me until the very end. Making my way past the jazz lounges and painting collections, I noticed it’s easy to grow extremely dark thoughts. The soul-shattering atmosphere here is infectious. Even as an optimistic person, I am starting to doubt the existence of heaven. If the purgatory had a direct source on Earth that offered supplies endlessly, it must be here.

Although the streets smell like a mixture of the lemon-flavored cleanser and strong liquor, I can picture the scent of sweet, dangerous blood staining the concrete dark red. This hint of dark essence is not apparent to the nose; you will only accept the blood existing in broad daylight if you understand the context of the French Quarter. Similarly, you will also come to fear the discrete, run-down storefronts if you have heard whispers about their terrifying owners.

As a long-term reader of Southern Gothic, I pride myself in the fact that I am familiar with the genre as well as its historical backdrop. Compared to other parts of the country, the South is old enough and broad enough that you hear variations of cultural shifts told from the perspective of those who follow the status quo and those who push for changes. There is always a stark contrast between our idealized expectations of the sweet homes and the sharp realities of racial divides and violence. The legacy of this genre is the creation of flawed characters. Dynamic, complex people who battle with their faith, ethical guidelines, and relationship with their loved ones. I find myself drawn to these contradictions, yet I simultaneously resist the magnetic pull. The more the dark secrets make me uncomfortable, the more I sit through detailed depictions of gruesome death, either conveyed in between the lines or on the big screen. I have always loved Flannery O’Connor and Tennessee Williams, who write about the simple rural charm while incorporating dark, surrealist, yet magical elements. Nonetheless, the literature focused on New Orleans is more elaborate than most of the unconventional stories I have read about the decay and madness of aristocrats, peasants, and urban citizens alike.

If it isn’t for the fact that each session costs an exuberant amount, I would not be opposed to getting a tarot card reading outside Jackson Square. There are plenty of practitioners who lay out their toolkits with convincing advertisements. As a devout Catholic, I am definitely not supposed to adhere to these “demonic practices”. The spirits they conjure directly clash with my belief system. Under the Holy Trinity, there is no space for the immortal creatures or malicious ghosts. However, to justify my fixation on macabre stories, I justify this as a cultural survey outside of my normal religious practices, hoping that the Church would not be offended by my betrayal as God’s dearest child.

Our hotel is right next to St.John the Baptist, so on our way to class, we often passed by families in their Sunday Best attending Mass together. The women are adorned in exquisite white lace veils, and the men are dressed in their formal suits. Compared to their devotion, I feel out of place in my pajamas, and more importantly, I am absent from Mass. Instead of facing the Father and asking for a full-scale exorcism, I let the tiny hateful spirits prowl about within me.

Since I can’t engage with the demonic rituals in a close capacity, the next thing would be chasing them down through a haunted tour. With immense curiosity, we approached the highly commercial and almost theatrical experience with an open mind. I have previously taken similar trips in Savannah, Georgia, and this tour essentially reminded me of the same atmosphere: under the hues of the night sky, it’s hard to tell what is staged and what is real. Every creaking of metal doors and wind blowing through the oak trees can be seen as the spirits at play, and the mansion on St. Charles Avenue looks more appealing than ever.

The most recent version of the story as a TV Series

The tour guide’s voice becomes distant. I am now captivated by the steel galleries, illuminated in neon lights at night. The historical architecture begins to blend with the reflection of the disco ball, revealing the sinfulness of typical nighttime activities. Indeed, I am not referring to visitors like myself. The guide’s narrations of the horror stories begin to merge with my prior knowledge of mystical beliefs and other grotesque acts that have occurred in the area, including the iconic characterizations of Louis and Lestat. To fully understand the context of Interview with the Vampire, for several nights, I went down the rabbit hole of researching Anne Rice’s Immortal Universe. After hours of browsing synopses and reading about the franchise, I could tell that she had a complete vision for her vampire lovers. Although the Interview was the first book published more than fifty years ago, the most recent iterations of the vampire stories came out just a couple of years ago.

Similar to many fantasy authors, in Rice’s literary and cinematic series, there is no absolute definition of good and evil. At first, I found her lack of moral stance to be slightly unsettling. Although I never overcame this slight disgust and unease, I came to appreciate this ambiguity as I learned more about crime and justice in the city. Portraying ethics is challenging when there is little lawfulness in the town to begin with. Most of the tales the guide depicted to us have no factual evidence; they are either oral traditions or exaggerated speculations that have been disseminated and reproduced through iterative processes, such as these commodified walking tours. Nonetheless, even though the stories are not reliable recollections of the bloody tales that have taken place decades, if not centuries ago, they are vivid demonstrations of the rampant criminality that is somehow normalized in this area. This is the moment my pre-law knowledge comes in handy. As an international humanitarian law student, I am not particularly invested in forensics or capital punishment. Yet, my basic instincts remind me that the casual and frequent homicides and sexual offenses are tied to corrupt businesses and weak governance. After all, it’s easy for us to blame the murders and assaults on unnamed spirits and fearful presences, as opposed to looking inward to find the human beings who have committed these unspeakable acts. Therefore, relating the historical backdrop of New Orleans to my modern critical judgment, I have a bold theory that there is a chance the entire vampire culture is a scapegoat for a legal system that lacks integrity and rigor.

I bought more books at the bookstore

The newest novel produced by Professor Everett who taught me fiction writing. He is now known as one of the most brilliant African American authors of our century.

This is how myth-making occurs and becomes extremely successful. Those who retell the stories intentionally blur the line between fiction and reality, disorienting the audience until we too lose the ability to distinguish between ancient rituals and human nature. Under the disguise of twisted desire and eccentric power dynamics, such as the type of servant-master relationships described in Rice’s novels, I suspect that the core of these strange tensions actually has to do with the great injustice of the real world. Throughout the tour, I constantly made notes of the stories that involved wealthy, upper-class white perpetrators torturing their supposedly subservient affiliates of color. To me, noticing this pattern is not an afterthought but a spontaneous habit. Though most of the other participants on the tour outside of our group did not even flinch the slightest when they heard the grotesque descriptions of the perverted individuals tormenting their victims, I felt a sense of uneasiness trying to imagine the helplessness of those wounded or killed in the incidents. Is it really possible that every single one of the stories here is tainted by supernatural forces? What if the driving motivations have nothing to do with possessions or blood-thirsty impulses, but rather just a sense of hatred so strong that it compels someone to kill?

Pulling back to the realm of reality and the burden of staying pragmatic, I have to reject the theories emerging in my head. Observing the other amused (and potentially tipsy) patrons, my outcastness is clear even on a tour we paid for. The eccentricness of my mind prevents me from being agreeable, or at the very least, a regular listener who can endure through an hour tour without raising a series of questions that evolve from “where is the supporting evidence?” to “what is the social-cultural implication of this guilty sentence?” My skepticism all came from an earnest place, but it was driving me mad. When you have a stomach full of doubts, no amount of homemade gumbo or delicious seafood boils could fill the hole of eagerness. So when my stomach growls with a funny sound after only having two meals a day, it is also my body protesting for being given unsatisfactory explanations.

I guess we will never know whether the ruthless killers were proven to be small-minded, discriminatory syndicates, because I didn’t want to bring it up to the guide. It’s not that I didn’t have the nerve to open up a potentially unpleasant conversation. There are some grievances and deep frustrations that are hard to communicate verbally. I am fearful that no matter how much I try to explain the discrete social hierarchy embedded in the vampire fiction and the subtle tone of racial dispossession, it’s easy to dismiss and rebuke these angles of interpretation rather than leaning into them. After all, one may easily overlook this perspective by categorizing the sanguinarians as a product of a niche subculture. But this is not the type of underground rebellion that should be celebrated. In fact, the marginalization of these unspoken norms provides more reasons for the hedonistic individuals to conceal their true intentions under the name of deviance. But I concur we ought to call it for what it is. Some criminality extends beyond secret societies and loosely regulated lifestyles; they are fundamentally motivated by the desire to commit wrong without being held accountable, finding excuses through the myths passed down through bonfire circles and witchcraft.

Strolling around the French Quarter on a rainy day, I let my thoughts drift away with the monotonous sounds of the raindrops and feel that I have been transported back to the past, when people wore high collars and flat caps; or even earlier when carriages were stumping through the cobblestone; maybe even earlier than that, when chains robbed against each other as enslaved people walked through the headquarters of human trafficking commerce. These images, though far less intriguing and mesmerizing than the brothels and blacksmith bars painted in Rice’s novels, feel more intimate to me.