Catholic New Orleans
Years ago, at the height of the Chef Paul Prudhomme cooking craze, Lori and I took a long weekend trip to New Orleans to go to K-Paul’s Louisiana Kitchen and sightsee. Walking around town, especially at night, we thought New Orleans was the spookiest, most haunted place we had ever been in. We were warned not to go to Marie Laveau’s tomb…
If New Orleans is covered in the miasma of the occult, it is layered with Catholicism. One isn’t separate from the other. Like the city mist it envelopes you…
Two of New Orleans’ most famous daughters of the occult were devout Catholics: Marie Laveau and Ann Rice.
Marie Laveau, a renowned Voodoo priestess, went to Mass every day, was renowned for her charity and generosity, and was laid to rest with the blessing of the Church. She was famous in her lifetime as the “Voodoo Queen” of New Orleans. 
Ann Rice has written a series of novels on vampires, witches, demons and humans who desire them. Her explorations of good and evil, love and alienation, darkness and light–certainly have their roots in her religious upbringing. 
Is it the “other worldliness” of Catholicsm that makes the occult so familiar; or it is the ritual, the symbols, and sexual allure?
