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| Photo courtesy of www.omnihotels.com |
621 St. Louis St.
New Orleans, LA 70140
29.948051,-90.071066
I previously mentioned how it was not uncommon for a place to be haunted due to the possessions that it contains, as opposed to the individuals that died there. Such may be the case with our next location, although there are a few additional spirits thrown in for good measure. We folks in Louisiana love to live in excess. We often eat too much, drink too much and party too much so why would we not haunt too much? The Omni Royal Orleans Hotel is such a place, rumored to be haunted by over fifty spirits, many of which are attached to the hundreds of centuries-old antiques that are spread through the building.
The property that the hotel currently sits on dates back to the 1830’s, when a small dirt-floor café stood here, allowing locals to trade in real estate, local goods and even slaves. To accommodate to the rise of the growing community, a grand hotel was built here in 1843, named the Saint Louis Hotel, by architect Jacques Nicholas Bussiere De Poilly. The hotel was one of the top places to stay in the area, often offering free lunches to patrons and serving their creation, the American "cocktail", a drink served in an egg cup, or coquetier. This term, easily handled by the Creole patrons, was soon mangled into the word cocktail by the Americans.
