THE CONVENT ATTIC

Paranormal investigators discover a three-hundred-year-old secret of the old Ursuline Convent, but will they live to tell?

THE CONVENT ATTIC
a short story
​K M McFarland

​Copyright © 2023 by K. M. McFarland
 
All rights reserved. No part of this story may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of the publisher.
 
The Convent Attic appears in Ghostly Writes Anthology 2023 as a short story,
​(Copyright © 2023 by K. M. McFarland) published by Plaisted Publishing House. This is a condensed version.
 
Note from the author: 
 
***This story is fiction based on a New Orleans urban legend and historical facts. ***

 
Dusk had settled over the city when we reached the Hotel St. Germain, one of the oldest and most haunted hotels in New Orleans. For paranormal investigators like my wife and me, there’s no better place to spend a weekend collecting material for our Parafanatics Blog. 

Our mission on this trip was to see if we could spot any ghosts at Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop Bar and explore the legends surrounding the old Ursuline convent. Did the Ursuline nuns and casket girls transport the first vampires to the new world through New Orleans? The locals seem to think so.  

I glanced over at my wife. She was booking tickets for a ghost-vampire tour that included the convent. Gen and I met five years ago. The first time I brought her to New Orleans, we stayed at the Hotel St. Germain and it has been our go-to hotel ever since.
 
We can confirm that Hotel St. Germain is haunted. We’ve had minor experiences with ghosts like finding pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters in strange places in our room where we knew we wouldn’t have dropped any change. During one of our stays, we felt a small, cold, unseen hand tugging or tapping us.

One night, it was cold in the room, so we unfolded the extra blanket and placed it on the bed, pulling it up to our chins and snuggling under it. We woke up in the morning to find the same blanket neatly folded at the foot of the bed. Our door was locked, reinforced with a sliding latch, so it would have been impossible for anyone to enter without waking us up. That was a creepy experience that there’s no explanation for.

We pulled up in front of the hotel. I gave the valet my keys, and we stepped inside. We approached the front desk. An attractive and charismatic young woman with long red hair greeted us with a smile. “Hi. Welcome to Hotel St. Germain. How can I help you?”

I couldn’t help but notice her name tag and the title under her name. Rose Wylde, General Manager. “Wow. What an honor for the general manager to check us in. We have a reservation.” 

Rose laughed. “The regular desk person is by herself today. I’m just relieving her so she can take a much deserved break. It’s been hectic all afternoon. What’s the name?” 

“The reservation is under Lucas and Gen Laurent. By the way, you’re a good boss,” I said.

“I try to be.” Rose located the reservation on the computer. “Yes, I have it right here. Mr. and Mrs. Laurent. King room, non-smoking for two nights, checking out Sunday.”

“Correct,” I said. 

“That’s $349.00 for the two nights. Do you want to keep it on your Visa?”

“That’s fine.”

Rose’s eyelids lifted. “Are you Lucas and Gen Laurent from the Parafanatics Blog?”

I grinned. “Busted! That would be us. Are you familiar with it?”

“I’m a long-time subscriber. My handle is ghostbusterrose.”

Lucas pointed at Rose with widened eyes. “Yes, I’ve seen your comments. You’re the subscriber who sees ghosts?”

“Well, it’s not something I talk about every day, but yeah.” Rose shrugged.

“Wow! Is the St. Germain haunted?” asked Gen.

Rose nodded. “It is, and I know them all. No worries. They’re all harmless.”

“That’s what we thought. All the ghosts we’ve met have been nice,” said Gen.

Rose chuckled. “There’s nothing like a compliment to your well-behaved ghosts. So, who have you met?”

“Ah, is there one who takes the extra blanket off your bed and folds it in the middle of the night?” I asked.

“That would be Camilla. She was head of housekeeping. Camilla dropped dead of a heart attack in the hotel shortly after Katrina. She thinks she’s still at work.”

“There was a child we felt touching us once. Did a child die here?” asked Gen.

Rose shook her head. “Nearly 125 years ago. Of course, his grieving parents checked out, but he didn’t know that and still hangs around looking for them. You may have reminded him of them, and he may have been trying to contact you.”

“That’s chilling,” said Gen. 

“Yeah,” I said. “There’s so much we’d love to talk to you about. Would you consider an interview on our next visit?”

“I don’t put stuff like that out under my true identity, but if you want to interview me as ghostbusterrose, I’m fine with it.”

“No problem. We understand. We’ll contact you ahead of time, and set it up.”

Rose nodded with a smile. “You got it, and it was great meeting you guys. Here are your room keys, and you’ll find a card inside the folder for a complimentary drink at our bar and a complimentary appetizer at our restaurant. Enjoy your weekend.”

I took the folder from her. “Thank you, and it was a pleasure meeting you. We’ll be in touch soon about the interview.”

We brought our bags up to our room. After quickly freshening up, we made it to Antoine’s restaurant early for our dinner reservation. We waited for our table while sipping dirty martinis in their Hermes bar. After a delicious feast of New Orleans cuisine, we walked to Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop Bar on Bourbon Street. 

Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop, the oldest bar in the United States, was originally owned by Jean and Pierre Lafitte. The brothers were early nineteenth-century pirates and smugglers. Pierre was a blacksmith, and the building served as a blacksmith shop, but it was also a front for their other illegal operations. Even though Pierre died off the Yucatan Peninsula, the building is said to be haunted by both of the brothers, a woman who committed suicide upstairs, and a demonic spirit whose red eyes are sometimes seen in the darker corners. According to Trip Advisor, some even claim to have photographic evidence.

We went in hoping for a paranormal experience. After ordering drinks from the bar, we sat at a table in the back near the piano where the red-eyed ghost was alleged to appear. 

The bar has a haunted vibe, but the ghosts must have been taking that night off. The only spirits we encountered were of the imbibing kind, so we headed back to our hotel for the night. 

When we entered our room, our eyes did a double take when we found a bottle of house Cabernet Sauvignon waiting for us. We both looked at each other.

“Could it have been a ghost?”

“I don’t think so unless the ghost can write,” said Gen. “There’s a note attached.” She pulled the note from it and read: 
 
Lucas and Gen,
Thank you for your continued patronage of Hotel St. Germain. Here’s a token of appreciation for your business. If there’s anything you need during your stay, let me know. Enjoy the wine.
Rose Wylde, General Manager
[email protected]
 
“That’s so nice of her,” said Gen, nodding with a smile. “I’m looking forward to interviewing her.”

“Me too. She’s interesting and cool. Would you mind if we saved it for tomorrow? It’s late, and I’ve had enough alcohol tonight. We’ve had a long day today, and we have a big day tomorrow.”

“Yeah, we’ll open it tomorrow,” said Gen, placing the bottle on the dresser.

We woke up the next morning to the sound of music whistling from the calliope on the Steamboat Natchez on the Mississippi River playing When the Saints Go Marching In.

We had lunch and strolled the French Quarter, browsing the antique shops, Voodoo shops, and art galleries. After dinner, we made our way to meet our tour group for the ghost-vampire walking tour.

The first stop was the haunted LaLaurie mansion. Next, we stopped at the home of the notorious Carter brothers, vampires from the 1930s who are rumored to walk the French Quarter to this day. The one we had been waiting for was the most haunting of all.

Every evening, when darkness falls and the shadows lengthen, visitors gather in front of the Beauregard-Keyes house across the street from the old Ursuline convent or on the steps of St. Mary’s Catholic church next door. They listen attentively as tour guides rehash stories of history and legend that took place in the early days of colonization. These tales still haunt us today.

Roman, our young guide, looked like he could have been a vampire dressed in all black with prosthetic fangs and long, pointed, claw-like black fingernails. He might have stood out anywhere else, but in New Orleans’ French Quarter, he fit right in. He had been entertaining all night with his horrific yet humorous storytelling. We gave him our full attention as he relayed his tale: 


The Legend
 
The old Ursuline convent is the oldest building in the Mississippi River Valley. Built in the 1700s, the three-story structure served as an orphanage, a school, a hospital for wounded soldiers during the War of 1812, and a convent for the Ursuline nuns until it was gifted by the nuns to the bishop of New Orleans in 1824. It is the only original French Colonial structure that survived the catastrophic French Quarter fires of 1788 and 1794. 

Today, the building serves as the Cultural Heritage Center. The first floor is a museum; the second story is the home of the Archdiocesan archives dating back to 1718. If you look up to the third level, you may wonder why the shutters on all those dormer windows are closed. That attic is the subject of mystery and speculation, as people wonder why the shutters are always tightly secured. 
 
Shutters on attic windows are non-existent in the French Quarter. Summers are long, hot, and humid in New Orleans. Heat rises, and shutters on attic windows trap the heat inside the building, making the interior unbearably hot in our sweltering summer temperatures. Imagine how it must have been before air-conditioning. But, to this day, even on the hottest days, the shutters remain closed, and the entrance to the attic is permanently sealed off. People wonder what’s behind those shutters. Why isn’t anyone allowed in the attic? There might be a reason for that.

It all began in 1717 when a new French settlement was founded at the mouth of the Mississippi River, called La Nouvelle Orléans. The location between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain was ideal for trade between the French colonies, and the northern flow of the river gave the French access to their colonies from Louisiana to Canada.   

The city’s founder, Jean Baptiste LeMoyne de Bienville, asked the French government to help populate the colony by sending over people. They complied by sending over France’s most undesirable men. Vagrants, pirates, scoundrels, smugglers, and thieves. Prisoners exiled from France because of overcrowded jails were sent to the colony. They were promised if they reformed in Louisiana, they could return to France. 
In those days, La Nouvelle Orléans was a swamp infested with mosquitoes and overridden with malaria, yellow fever, and other diseases, placing the colony in dire need of a hospital. In 1725, twelve nuns arrived from Rouen, France to establish a hospital to care for the sick and educate young girls.

At that time, the men outnumbered the women five to one, threatening the future of the settlement. France had been sending groups of mail-order brides to the new world since 1634, landing in French colonies like Quebec, Mobile, and Biloxi. So Jean Baptiste LeMoyne de Bienville sent a letter to Louis XV asking him to send over marriageable young women to marry the colonists and help populate the swamp.

During the reign of Louis XIV, the streets of Paris were overrun with beggars, prostitutes, and undesirables. The Sun King found this situation intolerable and ordered the city’s poor, mostly women, into a hospital called La Salpêtrière. It became a hospital for the mentally ill, a women’s prison, a home for the poor, and an orphanage. Thousands of women had been taken to La Salpêtrière, so to solve the problem of overcrowding, the fate for most of the young women, not imprisoned or classified as mentally ill, was deportation to Louisiana.

In 1721, France began sending groups of young women on voyages to La Nouvelle Orléans. The girls were called the fille a la cassette because they each traveled with one small piece of luggage called a casquette, pronounced casket, so they became known as the casket girls. Most of the girls came from La Salpêtrière. Some had been beggars and prostitutes. Many were bawdy and unattractive and didn’t appeal to the male population as wives, so a plea to France for pious, virtuous, marriageable young women followed.

In 1728, a group of orphans who had been under the care of the Ursuline nuns arrived. They were accompanied by Sister Adelaide, a young nun appointed by the king to ensure they were not deflowered along the way. 

This group differed from all the others. They were said to have been handpicked and refined. One thing distinguished them from the fille a la cassette. They each traveled with one strange wooden box that looked like a burial casket, which held their trousseau containing dresses, petticoats, hats, accessories, linens, toiletries, and a bridal gown. The girls were to live among the nuns until they married. Deckhands transported their unusually heavy baggage to a storage room at the convent under the direction of Sister Adelaide, where they would be kept to protect their trousseau until the time came for the girls to marry.

These girls did not appear healthy upon arrival. After spending months at sea, mostly below deck, deprived of sunlight, they were pale and gaunt. Their skin became sensitive to sunlight. It would redden and blister in the sun. Some of them had tuberculosis that caused them to cough up blood. Were their delicate conditions a matter of health, caused by poor nutrition and illness, or was something more sinister at play?

After the girls arrived, everyone wondered why the mortality rate, especially infant mortality, substantially increased. Later, when the girls were ready to marry, suspicion mounted among the nuns when they opened their chests. Instead of being filled with their possessions, they were empty. The nuns searched for their belongings, but nothing was ever found.  

The nuns wondered if those caskets ever contained any personal items. What exactly was transported to the new world? Sister Adelaide was questioned, but she had no answers.

Fear of what could have been smuggled into La Nouvelle Orléans spread among the nuns, prompting them to contact the Archdiocese. After a thorough investigation by the church, the caskets were placed under lock and key. They were later transferred by day to the convent attic. The entrance was permanently closed off, and the windows were nailed shut from the outside with eight hundred silver nails, each one blessed by the pope, sealing the caskets and their occupants in the attic forever.

Were vampires smuggled out of Paris and into La Nouvelle Orléans with the help of Sister Adelaide and a group of unsuspecting orphans? Was Sister Adelaide appointed by the king to look after the girls, or was she chosen to look after the vampires?

If the king wanted to rid France of the blood-drinking creatures, what better opportunity could there have been than to send them to the disease-ridden, mosquito-infested Louisiana swamp disguised as cargo? Sister Adelaide could only provide the vampires with so many rats and mice. So during the long voyage, they fed from the girls, only taking small amounts of blood at a time, not enough to kill them, but enough to cause them to become weak and unhealthy.

It is widely believed the vampires remain sealed in the attic to this day. No one can explain why sometimes, late at night, when the streets of the French Quarter become silent and everyone has gone in for the night, someone will see the shutters suddenly fly open. Late-night passersby have reported seeing faces and feeling many pairs of piercing eyes following them. But nobody sticks around long enough to see if anything comes out of those windows. A nun in full habit is often seen on the grounds, but no nuns have occupied the convent since 1824.

In 1978, two curious paranormal investigators set up a video camera on the convent grounds. They waited through the night for paranormal activity. During the night, the camera stopped filming. 

The following morning, they were both found dead next door on the steps of St. Mary’s Church. Their throats had been ripped open as if they had been clawed by an animal, and their bodies were drained of eighty percent of their blood. The murders were never solved. Today, this crime remains a cold case.
  
So we ask, are vampires being held captive in that attic by the church? That, my friends, is for you to decide.
 
~~~

“That was a creepy story,” said Gen, wrapping her arms around herself, shivering.

“Yeah. It kinda makes you wonder about that attic.”

The tour concluded at Lafitte’s Blacksmith Bar. We ordered drinks, hoping to see a ghost, but just like the previous night, the only spirits around were in bottles and cups. 

We left the bar around two-thirty in the morning. After experiencing a disappointing weekend of no paranormal activity and probably the only ghost-free room in the hotel, we agreed to stroll past the convent to see how it appeared late at night. 

It didn’t seem any different in the wee morning hours than in the daytime. When we reached the gate, we were surprised it wasn’t locked. I pushed it open, and we entered the grounds. 

“Lucas, are you sure this is a good idea? Aren’t we trespassing?”

“Not as long as we’re outside the building. The gate was open. Babe, if you’re not comfortable, it’s okay. We can leave.”

“No, it’s okay. We’re here, and I am curious.”

Our eyes scanned the grounds. Nothing looked strange. Everything appeared just as it had during the day. 

Gen looked up, and her eyes widened when she noticed one shutter slowly opening and a stream of steam coming through the cracks in the window. “What the fuck? Lucas, look!” she said, grabbing my arm and pointing with her other hand. 

We reached for our phones to get photographic evidence before bolting when, in the blink of an eye, the shutters flew open, and within seconds, we discovered what the tour guide reported was true. What appeared to be faces and pairs of cold, piercing eyes staring at us chilled us to the bone. We tried to run only to discover we couldn’t move. Our hearts pounded as we stood frozen. A gray mist gushed out of the cracks of each window, growing thicker, until a heavy fog surrounded the convent grounds, covering the courtyard.

The fog quickly settled as we stood paralyzed, and we saw them. Distinct dark shadows with light icy-gray piercing eyes moving toward us, eyes so pale, they were unnatural. The eyes of bloodthirsty nocturnal predators in need of sustenance.  

Our first instinct was to run, but that was impossible. We tried to raise our feet, but it was as if they had been cemented to the ground. I tried to call out to Gen, but no sound came out. Some unseen power held us in place, and it wasn’t letting go. We couldn’t speak or move. Our hearts were about to beat out of our bodies as the shadows slowly drew closer, their starving eyes focused on us. All we could do was stand there petrified, thinking of the two found dead on the steps of the church next door in 1978, both of us struggling to breathe, anticipating a gruesome death. Terror that began in our brains and ran through every fiber of our being crept through us.

These creatures had us in some kind of hypnotic trance. They were far more powerful than us, and we were helpless against them. There was no way to escape the fate that awaited us other than to drop dead before they reached us.   

We both stood trembling as they got closer, knowing we had reached the end of the line for us, and there was nothing we could do to stop it. Then we heard a female voice calling out, “Arrêt! Reculez! Laissez-les tranquilles! Je t'ordonne de retourner d'où tu viens!”
 
Our eyes landed on a nun dressed in an old-fashioned habit pointing to the attic. She appeared transparent, yet we could see her. But if she had crossed our path, we would have passed right through her.

I haven’t spoken French since my grandmother passed away eleven years ago, but I still remember the language. I understood her to say: Stop! Back off! Leave them be! I order you to go back to where you came from!

I felt some relief when I realized I heard her right as we witnessed the shadows dissolve back into a mist, rising around the grounds, disappearing through the attic windows before the shutters slammed shut, leaving the grounds clear of fog, breaking the spell they had on us. The nun pointed to the gate and shouted, “Partez et ne revenez jamais!”

She didn’t have to tell us twice to go away and never come back. 

“Merci beaucoup,” I said to her as I grabbed Gen’s hand and held on tight. We darted to the gate and exited. 

We breathed a sigh of relief, looking back from the opposite side of the street to find the shutters tightly secured, as if nothing had ever happened. We watched as the nun became more transparent until she faded out of sight. It was clear she was an apparition because, aside from vanishing into thin air, no nuns had occupied the convent in almost two hundred years.
  
We made our way back to our hotel as quickly as possible. By the time we reached our room, our hearts had returned to a normal rhythm. The complimentary bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon waited for us, and we needed it.

I opened the bottle and poured us a glass, handing one to Gen. She sat on the bed, and I sat next to her, sliding my arm around her. “Gen, I’m sorry. I almost got us killed tonight.”

She placed her arm around my waist. “Babe, it’s okay. You told me we could leave if I wanted to. It was my decision to stay. I was as curious as you were. I honestly didn’t believe anything like that would happen.”

“Neither did I, but I guess when you play with the supernatural, you never know. No more exploring places rumored to be occupied by evil forces.”

“Agreed,” said Gen.

The wine relaxed us while we wound down from our near date with death.  

We slept until ten. After checking out a little before eleven, we grabbed some café au lait and beignets before heading home. 

I couldn’t resist the urge to drive past the convent one more time. Our eyes cast one last look at what could have been a crime scene, both of us thankful for the ghost nun. Whatever that nun was, she had saved us, and we were grateful to be alive.

I glanced over at Gen. She had so many questions and was busy searching the internet for answers. “It’s amazing how peaceful the convent appears in the daytime with people all around,” I said.

“I know.” Gen’s eyes were fixed on the screen. “I’ve been looking for those 1978 murders the tour guide talked about, but I haven’t pulled up anything other than some version of it rehashed in stories related to the vampire legends. There are no names of the victims or any specifics to be found. If it happened in 1978, it seems it would have been a major news story, but I can’t find anything to corroborate it. I don’t see where there have been any more murders related to the convent in all the years before or since then, and if that nun saved us, why wouldn’t she have saved them?” 

“Good question. The only murder associated with the vampires can’t be proven, and it seems to be the only one.”

“Not only that. Ursuline Academy for girls, grades K-12, is still around today. It’s the oldest school in New Orleans. High school students who were there in 1978 say they don’t remember the murders. I can’t imagine it wouldn’t have been the talk of the town, especially students at the school,” said Gen.

“That’s another good point that leads one to believe they didn’t happen, or they could be an exaggeration of another unrelated murder that occurred around the same time.”

“Could the nun be Sister Adelaide?” asked Gen. “She had power over those creatures, whatever they were. If the legend is true, it would make sense for her to be doomed to remain on the grounds as a guardian, protecting the city from the vampires she brought here. Not to mention, she helped them to sustain themselves until they were found out and locked away.”

I nodded, shrugging. “Sounds logical.”

“There are variations on the legend,” said Gen. “Some say the casket girls themselves were vampires.”

“I don’t know, Gen. Maybe the casket girls smuggled vampires. Maybe the girls were vampires. There may have been no vampires, and they brought some other diabolical forces with them from that horrible place they came from in France.” 

“Whatever they are, they can morph into a mist and slip through the cracks,” said Gen.

 “That’s the scary part. All I know is something is imprisoned in that attic, but whether it’s vampires or some other demonic entities is for somebody else to figure out.”


Summary for the blog:
 
Vampires or ghosts? Are the legends of the casket girls and the Ursuline convent fabricated, or are they based on some truth? We’ll never know the answer, but it is widely believed the building is haunted by the spirits of nuns, orphans, and soldiers who died there. 

As for us, we can’t verify the vampire legends, but we can attest that there is something diabolical detained in that attic — an evil of supernatural proportions — kept at bay by a ghost nun. 

We will return to New Orleans soon to explore more of the paranormal, but we have crossed investigating the convent off our list. One brush with death is all it took to convince us. We won’t be returning to 1100 Chartres Street for any more answers.

One word of advice for anybody walking past the convent late at night. If you see those shutters suddenly fly open — RUN!

Lucas and Gen Laurent
Paranormal Investigators

The End

Sources:

New Orleans Vampires-History and Legend, Marita Woywood Crandle
neworleans.com, The History of the Casket Girls of New Orleans
The Devils of Loudun, Aldous Huxley
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