Last Podcast On The Left - Episode 113: Henry's New Orleans Adventure

Episode Date: February 17, 2015

We got a minisode for ya as Henry comes to us live from New Orleans to tell us about some of the creepier things he's experienced since he's been there, including the horrors of the Lalaurie Mansion, a bearded nerd, and a very bothered sandwich shop worker.

There's no place to escape to. This is the last talk. On the left. Right above your glass. That's when the cannibalism started. What was that? Hi New Orleans. Sederans.

Ribbeads of rice. Jazz music. I'm sorry, I just can't. I'm in New Orleans. This is Henry Zabrowski from last podcast on the left. I'm in New Orleans. I'm walking outside. It's raining.

It's the most haunted place in America. And I'm about to tell you why. Welcome to the Sharper One. That's Marcus Parkes. I'm Ben Kessel. Did Henry's voice change? What happened? He assimilated into the culture of New Orleans in what a matter of 48 hours?

48, at the most. He reminds me of that Woody Allen character, Zeleg. Is it Zeleg, Zeleg? Yeah, yeah. The character that just blends into his surroundings like a wonderful chameleon. Chameleon. And of course, Henry Zabrowski is one of the greatest chameleons around there. Fantastic actor.

And we all love him. And we currently miss him, but he seems to be doing very, very well in the haunted streets of New Orleans. And that's what we're going to be talking about today. We're going to be following Henry on his adventures. Hopefully at some point he stops by the burrito stand that he's constantly bragging and raving about. And we can hear the actual interaction. He has with the individuals who work there. Well, I hate to disappoint you, but it's a sandwich shop.

It's a sandwich shop. But he does go to the sandwich shop. Maybe. Maybe. We'll see. Something to look forward to, everyone. So yeah. So today we're just going to talk about New Orleans, some of the haunts and spooky things that occur there.

And we're going to, we're going to follow Mr. Zebrowski on his trail of horror. So I guess let's just pick it up again. See what he's up to now. I'm down St. Charles Avenue in front of a genuine Popeye's Louisiana kitchen, which I'm really excited about trying. Here it's really good. No spinach though, which kind of makes me mad. New Orleans is a place of contradictions. It started off as a sort of vacation spot for French aristocrats when we first purchased it, when Napoleon purchased it.

And basically it turns out a bunch of rich people don't want to come to a fucking swamp ridden mosquito infested hellhole down in the bottom of a new country filled with savages. So they send a bunch of criminals here. Those criminals are raped and murdered everybody. That's why this is literally the most haunted place in America. Took a tour guide, a ghost tour out in the French Quarter. Basically he said, in every building in the French Quarter at least seven people have been registered as been murdered. There's ghosts at every single block. Our tour guide had confessed, named Trevor, big long beard.

He asked him if he believes in ghosts and he says, well I can just show you the old man that used to visit me in my sleep every single night in my old apartment right outside New Orleans in the Tremay. I was like, huh, let's go see your old pope in the Tremay. And he's like, you don't want to go there because they will turn you into a human lamp there. We can all agree he's getting super winded, right? I think that's the most I've ever heard Henry talk well walking. And you could hear the pauses because Henry doesn't pause when he talks, when he talks. He's a very rapid fire machine gun type guy. When he pauses, when he walks and talks, we know that.

Imagine if he was trying to chew gum doing this entire thing as well. So yeah, so he's touching in on some of the more macabre, macabre things that occur in New Orleans. And Trevor, his tour guide, he must have been freaked out at the sight of Henry, huh? That's a bad day for a tour guide when you see the big fat nerd come up and you're like, oh, this douche bag is going to ask me a bunch of questions about the bullshit that I'm doing. I'm making 750 an hour and I hate to break it to you. I don't believe in ghosts. This is a goddamn tourism season job for me, okay? Well, let me expand a little bit on some of the things that Henry said.

When he said that it was bought by French aristocrats, New Orleans is one of the oldest cities in America. Definitely one of the oldest in the South. It was founded in 1718. So you've got hundreds upon hundreds of years of deaths. Well, of course, nothing bad was going on. Nothing bad was going on in the South in the 1700s. I mean, it was peace and harmony, wasn't it? Oh, no.

It was different than that. It was the opposite of that? It was the absolute opposite of that. Oh, I see. And also, New Orleans used to be much smaller than it was up until the late 1800s. It was essentially just the French Quarter, about a 78 block square. Oh, also known as the most annoying quarter in America. The French Quarter in the 1700s.

Holy Lord, who wants to be there? And now we have another very interesting factoid from Henry Zabrowski about New Orleans. Another interesting factoid about New Orleans is the fact that when they first began, the first influx of settlers here, they started a gigantic convent. And what people didn't know is that basically what traveled with them was a gigantic epidemic of tuberculosis. And the symptoms of tuberculosis, what it does to you over time, gaunt, drawn face, bruised, under eyes, aversion to light, you start to, because back in the, they begin to resemble vampire victims, and then eventually vampires themselves.

There was an entire convent that was riddled with tuberculosis. And over here, it's right down in the French Quarter off of Decatur Street. And you go, and apparently the epidemic was so massive. So many, because they thought that, well, back in the day, vampires weren't, of course, as we know, they weren't like super-gay-lista, they were gaunt creatures like Nosferatu. And they believed that they would crouch on your chest at night and suck your soul energy out of your mouth, kind of like a girlfriend. And so you go, and people started seeing these gaunt-drawn nuns everywhere.

And they started to believe there was a vampire epidemic inside of this convent. And so a cardinal came, the cardinal of Louisiana, the newest cardinal, got petitioned, you have to call me, you have to shut down this vampire epidemic. So he showed up, he made a big show about it, there was a gigantic parade down Decatur Street. All the people just being like, burn the nuns, burn the nuns, which I gladly would have been in front of if I could have had the chance to be. So they go, he goes to the convent, he goes inside, and he comes out and he says, don't worry guys, I handled it.

And he's like, they want proof. So he pulled out these gigantic nine-inch silver spikes. And he's like, I'm going to put these, I'm going to take a bunch of nuns, I'm going to put them in coffins, I'm going to close them with these silver nails. And they will never get out. So even now the convent exists, which is now an old Burntown building, they believe that there is coffins of vampire nuns in the attic that they were, and they are nailed shut by long nine-inch silver spikes.

But according to this ghost tour leader, he said that his buddy came and did a bunch of recovery work after Katrina and saw no such coffins, which I think is bullshit. Again, going back to my previous point about Trevor, the poor ghost trip leader, Henry's quizzing him about coffins in a Burntown nunnery. The guy's like, yeah, I don't know, my friend after Katrina, that huge natural disaster that devastated the city. Yeah, I know.

Yeah, he was helping put sandbags up and stuff because people were losing their houses. But what about the coffins? Well, I'm sorry, Chubby. What's your name? Henry, I'm sorry, Henry. There were no coffins. There were no coffins. And by the way, those nuns, they were on meth.

That was all the symptoms of crystal methamphetamine. And during Katrina, there were reports, many reports, about coffins being unearthed by the floodwaters. I've seen video. I've seen the videos. I've seen the evidence, of course, not the witch nun nail coffins that Henry's talking about, but actual real people with real families in real life. I think that's a beautiful irony, though, if you're floating down in New Orleans straight,

which you're not supposed to be floating down them. You know, I'm drowning. I'm drowning. And then a coffin comes up from the muddy waters to save you. That's kind of sweet. And then, of course, it pops open. And then you look at your granddad. He's got another McGold teeth next to him. You're a multi-millionaire.

That sounds pretty great. I did like, Henry brings up an interesting point, and I don't think it's really brought up very often, the gaunt dangerous vampire versus the gay vampire. Of course. What's your vampire? We've really gone into more of a very erotic sort of a, what is it?

What's it called? Lottener? Yeah. Taylor Lottener. Dreamboat of a vampire? Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're all saucy and sexy. That's quite a light thing.

Gay, right? So you would equate those of the gay ones. It's sort of on par with the conversation over slower, fast zombies. Well, except that there is an obvious choice as far as vampires go. Scary. Yeah. Scary, gaunt, long noses, long fingernails. Fucking Nosferatu, man.

That's right. The best and most, and the best and scariest vampire that has ever been created. You also reminded me, I was watching an episode yesterday of, what is it, always studying Philadelphia. Danny DeVito's character, when he plays the troll toll, the toll troll. That's pretty, that's what I want my vampire to look like.

You want to look like Danny DeVito? Short, fat, big nose, weird ears. But Marcus, he was mentioning a bunch of diseases and things. You know about this. Yeah, he was mentioning about tuberculosis. There's a huge yellow fever epidemic in New Orleans in 1853. 7,849 people died just that year alone. Wow.

And between 1817 and 1905, over 41,000 people died of yellow fever. So you've got, of course, that hanging over New Orleans as well. As far as the death toll, yellow fever is a fucking horrible disease. It's mosquito borne. Of course, New Orleans is fucking full of mosquitoes. The jazz music brings them out.

Mosquitoes love jazz. Everybody knows it. The symptoms are fever, headache, vomiting, backache as the disease progresses. The pulse slows, gums start bleeding. Your urine is full of blood. You start developing jaundice. So you turn yellow, hence the name yellow fever.

And usually that occurs three to six days afterwards. But if you have yellow fever once, you have a lifelong immunity to it. And in fact, there was, as far as tying all this into voodoo, which we would be remiss if we did not discuss voodoo in a conversation about New Orleans, which we'll talk about a little bit later on. But at the time of this yellow fever epidemic,

black people were not, they were not infected very much. White people were affected so much more. And there were rumors around that there was some sort of voodoo curse being put on the white man by the black man, or that black people had some sort of voodoo protection. Oh man, I'll tell you, these black people, they couldn't catch a break. They were like, oh, we avoided the yellow fever for you Asco,

but wait, wait, you're blaming us for it? How is that possible? Blaming us for it? The reason why they were essentially immune to it is because a lot of them had already died generations ago because they've been in the area for over 100 years at this point so the people who survived that passed on their genes naturally were more immune to it.

So that's why black people survived and the white people, and especially because the majority of the white people who died were immigrants. So they were new to the area and had no immunities whatsoever, much like us bringing the smallpox over to the Native Americans and killing 90% of their population. Well, you know, it's always tough to move. That's what it's all about.

It's interesting, yellow fever, it does sound again like crystal meth, but it also, it sounds like it has similar attributes, but yellow fever, I feel like that's the nicest thing it gives you is a fever. I would have gone with yellow piss and blood or yellow just insane diarrhea. Like yellow fever, you got the yellow fever and you're like, I've had a cold before, I've had a headache,

I can deal with the yellow fever. But then they didn't mention everything when you vomit up your own insides. But now yellow fever, that's just one of the many catastrophes that have just brutalized this poor city of New Orleans. So now Henry, he's going to explain a couple more of those. This is a town riddled with a catastrophe. It says here in this paranormal New Orleans article

about the seven reason why New Orleans is the most haunted place in America. So one is, there's a great deal of tragedy here. Of course, we all know about Katrina. I was sitting in a bar by myself just drinking some suds, spending the time. When I listened to the bartender talk to a patron, they were talking about how, you know,

she goes to her Vodon Healer every week, which is that she goes to a locals only place down the street. And they were talking about the influx of bad juju in New Orleans since what the soldiers did after Katrina. And like, you know, there's a lot of conspiracy theory that still happens because apparently there's thousands of bodies still missing. And that she was saying that the soldiers would go

and like literally during Katrina, the survivors, would line up the girls that were, that they found, and they would make them kiss them in order to get them onto the helicopters to take them out. There's a whole new breed of evil energy that's coming back and influxing the city, which I think is kind of cool. Yeah, Henry would think that's kind of cool.

Yes, he would, of course he would. A new breed of evil energy. Take it over the city. All right, so Henry mentioned Vodon. I mean, Vodon is a very respected tradition in New Orleans. Yeah, yeah. And they're obsessed with death. Oh, in New Orleans.

Oh, yeah. I think so. Yeah, I've heard that about it. Cemetery's everywhere. There's even, there's one haunted intersection, Canal Street at City Park Avenue. 13 cemeteries converge on this one intersection alone. Oh, that's fine.

That's great. You know, it's always important whenever you're driving through there just to say the sentence, something bad can happen now, because everything is going to be totally fine when you go to the place where 13 cemeteries meet. Nothing bad could happen there. That's not where the devil is summoned.

No, no, not at all. They say that there is the ghost of a woman in a white dress. They said that she's a pale ghost-like creature with a gaunt skeletal face and long bony hands. They make a horrible clack, clack of noise on the car doors. Oh, please. I walk around Williamsburg, Brooklyn all the time. She's just a hipster.

She's a model in Soho. Are you kidding me? They clack, clack on car doors. Oh, yeah. They're always trying to get a ride. I got an audition. I have an audition. Well, not here, lady.

Go shove a burrito down your face. Something like that. Something like that. Yeah. All right. Well, very interesting. And now Mr. Zabrowski, he's going to continue guiding our hand

on this wonderful tour of New Orleans. And on this, you know, I was just talking about haunted things. On this one, he covers what is argued to be the most haunted place in all of New Orleans, the LaLaurie House. Oh, I mean, it's second to his belly button. But that's fine.

It's raining in New Orleans. And when it rains outside, it smells like poo poo vinegar. This place is disgusting. And the nighttime, it's beautiful. You know, you got titties out. You got bombing on your shoes. But you don't care because Zideco is carrying you on a field of notes back and forth

to every single cramped bar during the day. It's a broken, weird city. Everyone has jobs. So I went on a ghost tour called the French Quarter Phantoms out of Flanagan's pub. And I cannot recommend it highly enough. It was super creepy. Really, it was a lot of fun if you go.

Tell them we sent you because I'm going to try to get an interview with one of the tour guides. I love the place. The bar is amazing. And the tour is very informative. Matter of fact, I literally watched our tour guide. There was this nerdy bearded dude break up a dude trying to beat the shit out of some woman,

which is, I guess, the nicest thing that's ever happened in New Orleans. So we took us to the LaLaurie Mansion. Now, I know that we've covered LaLaurie Mansion a little bit in the podcast, but just as an overview, Madame LaLaurie ran the LaLaurie Mansion. She was a 45-year-old, super-rich woman who had two husbands previous

that both died of mysterious circumstances. She married a hot young new doctor in town, a surgeon named, he was Monsieur LaLaurie. And she wanted to have the prettiest mansion in town. So she bought, which is, so the LaLaurie Mansion, when you walk down Royal Street, it's the biggest building on the block. It's three floors, which is unheard of at the time,

at a courtyard and a gigantic separate kitchen and slave quarters. Now, as we know, basically, they love to throw lavish parties. They would spend up to what was the equivalent of modern day of $4,000 on booze per weekend for these gigantic weekend parties because she loved to entertain, right?

She loved appearances. And she had something like 20 slaves on the premises, which is like 10 times what anybody had in the entire French Quarter for any one building. What people notice is that these slaves would basically turn over four to six times a year. Four to six slaves would kind of be turned over and left and seem to, they quit.

Where'd they go? They get promoted, you know? No one asked questions because Madame LaLaurie was heavily connected in New Orleans government. Her brother was a prominent lawyer and her father was going to be eventually going to turn to be the governor of Louisiana.

So basically, it all came to a head when a fire was started in a kitchen by a slave woman. They show up during, it's the middle of a party. She says to everybody, like, basically, this fire breaks out in the kitchen. She says to everybody in the party, grab all the expensive furniture, grab the original or work and get out of the house.

And they're all like, well, what about the slaves in the slave quarter? And she's just like, I can buy new slaves next week. That's an original Renoir. This is an incredibly expensive table. Get it out of here. So you didn't care. So basically, the cops show up.

They go and look in the kitchen. They find a woman that has been shackled to the stove. And she said that she set the kitchen on fire on purpose. And I asked her why. And she says, like, because at the time, this is a very Catholic community. So in suicide, it's the worst sin that you could possibly do. And she said, I'd rather be in hell in the afterlife

because I'm already in hell now. And she's like, why? She's like, have you seen the attic? They go up to the attic and they find that Monsieur de l'Ori has been running a series of experiments, surgical experiments in the attic involving slaves and the four to six ones. Basically, any slave that disobeyed any one of their orders

would go up to the attic and be a part of the experiments. There was one that had a strip of flesh missing from the top of their head all the way down in a spiral on their body and a continuous strip. And they know it was going to continue a strip because they found it in a jar filled with alcohol. And they found a young slave woman, a young girl,

a little girl in a cage with all of her longest bones shattered. And she was basically made to fit in this cage like a bunch of veal. She crawled out of it and she died on the way to the hospital. Now, all this is overview. So across Struthner's is fucking awesome sandwich place called the Verdi Mart, which I have been frequenting. And apparently one of the biggest ghosts

in the haunt and the lorry mansion has basically had new owners every nine years because every nine years their lives are over. Like the last owner was Nick Cage. And on the ninth year he went bankrupt. There's a lot of to it. Right now it's owned by a Texas billionaire who basically has parties there once every six months

to kind of show everyone his summer home. But apparently the official word is is that he's decided that he's no longer interested in owning the house and now it's going up for auction. It is supposedly riddled with ghosts. And the most famous ghost is on the out in the balcony of the lorry mansion, out in this porch. Basically the story goes that a man and lorry

was beating a young slave girl. And a woman, someone spotted her on the street and said, hey, stop that. The slave girl ran away from her, ran up the balcony. Madam lorry chased her around the balcony and essentially threw her over the side into the corridor below. And then she disappeared and the cops all covered it up.

And so apparently this ghost of the slave girl keeps running back and forth across this porch. And I was talking to the dude, the guy who works at this sandwich place, the Verdi Mart, which is amazing. And I was like, have you ever seen this ghost? And he's like, I've never seen that ghost. And he's like, yeah, but I was like, so people come in

and he's like, I don't know how many times they come in here because they're kind of like, they're a little crunchy, they're a little mean in there. So it's like, I don't know how many times someone would come in here and be like, oh my God, oh my God. I just saw a little girl jump from the balcony. And he's just like, yeah, sure, a little girl jumped from the balcony and they're like,

no, no, what do you mean? I just saw a little girl that fell at the balcony. She's like, she's been doing that for 175 years. What kind of sandwich do you want? Okay, so we can all agree Henry is the most annoying tourist in New Orleans history, right? Between the tour guides and this poor bastard who runs the Verdi Meats or the Verdi Market.

I mean, he is just, he is grilling people. Oh man, I mean, well, he's been there all alone. By the way, for like, I mean, five days, he's been there all alone all by himself. Of course he's going bothering the locals. That's a good point. That's a good point. He did describe a slave girl as veal.

And then the next mental thought was sandwiches. I do want to point that out that that was the mental segue to get to the sandwich shop was to describe the poor slave girl who had all of her legs broken because Miss LaLaurie is a complete monster piece of shit. And then he immediately into sandwiches. Anything, anything will trigger this guy's hunger button. You know, anything will do it.

My God. But it sounds like, they do sound like amazing sandwiches. They do sound great. He described them to me in full detail the other day. I'm sure he did. I mean, unsolicited. Really? And that's just one of the ghost stories that happen in this city.

There's so many incredible stories that I've heard already. But the Andrew Jackson hotel, which has been basically haunted by a sea of little boys ever since a little boys boarding school burnt down there. And they're mischievously will like play with your stuff when you leave. And apparently on this ghost tour, a couple on their honeymoon came and told the ghost guide.

The guide was taking her onto the Andrew Jackson hotel. And he's like, ah, here's the Andrew Jackson hotel. Very famous for ghosts. And there was anybody staying here. And this couple was like, oh, we are. And they were complaining about how they didn't see any ghosts. And so they were going to leave to, they were going to go and find a new hotel.

They ended up completing their stay. And there was like, oh, we didn't see any ghosts. They get home. And they go through their role of pictures. They go home. They go through their role of pictures. And they see that there's one picture taken from the ceiling of the room of the two of them asleep.

And so they end up sending an extra tour fee to the ghost tour people to basically say, sorry for ruining the tour that day. Well, again, come to New Orleans. This is the most haunted place in the world. It's beautiful. The people are beautiful. People got big butts. I've eaten pork nine times a day.

I mean, I'm seeing ghosts because it's my blood pressure, I imagine. It's probably like 279 over 47. I don't know what's good and bad blood pressure. I haven't been to a doctor in eight years. Come here, eat the luscious food, drink some beers, come to Mardi Gras because I'm going to be here the rest of my life. I don't know when I'm going to leave.

This is a very special remote last podcast on the left. Sorry for my rambling. This is what I do when I'm alone in the hotel room. Never mind when it's just recording. I just sit here and I talk to, is that a ghost? No, that's not a ghost. There's just a maid in here. And what a terrified maid that must be.

Can you imagine walking in on a Henry Zabrowski, shirtless, talking into a telephone about ghosts, maybe even pantless. We don't know if he was wearing any clothes whatsoever. We know that when he's alone, he doesn't wear any clothes whatsoever, so we do know that he was not wearing any clothes whatsoever. So we have a nude buttered up Henry Zabrowski and a poor maid walks in.

And he accuses her. And to say filled Henry Zabrowski. Yes, indeed, indeed. To fill up his refrigerator there that's, I'm sure, completely empty of all booze. I'm sure he drank all the little airplane bottles of booze that they offer you in the hotel room. He sounds drunk. Oh yeah.

You know, naked Mr. Zabrowski. That poor, poor maid. All right. Well, that has been Henry's New Orleans adventure. And you know, I wish we were there with him. God damn it, I wish. If we were there with him, Marcus, we would probably save him 2,000 calories a day.

I mean, you can imagine. Oh, he's so bored. He's just eating and drinking the whole time. That's all I would do as well. Yeah, me too. What can you do? And then of course just, did he wear a fanny pack on these tours? That's what I want to know.

I want to see exactly what Henry, Henry, when you come back to the show, when he comes back to the show, I'm going to grill him on exactly what he wore on these tours. And these tour guides, they aged, they aged like a Vietnam veteran, the five days that Henry's been in New Orleans. All right, everybody.

Thank you so much for listening. And we'll be back to a normal, more of a normal last podcast next week and the following weeks. And we love you very much. Of course, hail yourselves. I'll gain. Hail Satan.

I'll say hail me, but I'll do it like Henry. Hail me like that. And of course it's at Marcus Parks, the Twitter and then I'm at Ben Kissel. And it's Henry loves you. And all right, we'll talk to you soon. Me gustalations. All right.