What makes New Orleans the perfect city for a vampire novel?

This was the question that guided our class discussions of Anne Rice’s Interview With the Vampire and steered my explorations of the city’s murkier side—and I'm not talking about the Mississippi River. But this question also intrigues me for a more personal reason, as it relates to my own novel-in-progress.

I have had the pleasure of experiencing the immersion of Bookpacking triple fold; not only do I get to delve into New Orleans literature while retracing the steps of its authors and characters, I also have the opportunity to conduct research for my own writing. My novel takes place in the underbelly of New Orleans subculture—which includes, to no one’s surprise, vampires. This course has been the perfect chance to familiarize myself with my setting, to gain cultural literacy and know my references (IWTV is, without a doubt, mandatory reading for any aspiring vamp), and conduct on-the-ground research to answer that essential question. Though my novel is in its early stages yet, I hope to one day contribute my own writing to the canon of New Orleans vampire literature.

There are many ways to answer this question; in fact, during our seminar, we wrote a list, and could have kept brainstorming if it weren’t for the constraints of time. New Orleans is a nocturnal city, with a culture of embracing and celebrating difference that has led to a proliferation of subculture. It’s a city full of opulence, of indulgence in food and drink and sex and celebration. It is a deeply superstitious place with no shortage of spirituality; tarot readers sit at card tables before the St. Louis Cathedral, a visual encapsulation of New Orleans’ unique blend of Catholic and Voodoo roots. This amalgamation of religion has created an observably unique culture surrounding death.

One cannot pass through New Orleans without noticing the cemeteries. They are landmarks in and of themselves, walled-off plots with rows upon rows of raised tombs and family crypts, like a gated community of the dead. It is no wonder Lestat sneaks off to sleep amongst these tombs; as one walks through the cemetery, eye-level with caskets sealed off from the world of the living, it is easy to imagine the grinding noise of stone on stone as a vampire emerges from a crypt. This unique style of above-ground burial is practical in origin: New Orleans’ high water table and propensity for floods makes resting six-feet-under difficult. When it floods, buried caskets rattle and bang around in their waterlogged graves. This effect is too eerie even for New Orleans. One does not have to think too hard to imagine why superstitions of vampires and the undead would catch in such conditions.

Funeral culture in New Orleans can also be community oriented. According to our ghost tour guide YhhYhh Universe (a self-identified “black cat” secret society member who meowed, often), some bodies are interred in public graves made of clay and later removed after a year and a day, when the heat of the Louisiana swamp has turned the tomb into an oven and the bodies have been naturally cremated. Other tombs are owned by Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs, membership-based organizations dedicated to mutual aid within Black communities. These clubs ensure that, at the ends of their lives, all of their members can be laid to rest with dignity, regardless of their means. And, of course, the famous New Orleans jazz funeral features a somber processional to the gravesite, and an upbeat celebration of life on the way out. At the Backstreet Cultural Museum, we learned about these Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs, jazz funerals, and more; one display featured a photo of Lionel Batiste, the late jazz drummer, preserved and posed in a lifelike standing position at his own funeral.

The idea of a standing corpse may feel gauche or grotesque, but the practice of any sort of open-casket embalming is a relatively new phenomenon, tied to an evolution in Christian funeral culture and the for-profit funeral industry. The preservation of corpses feels as old as the ancient Egyptians, but embalming as we know it today is a modern invention, requiring the use of harsh chemicals that are both dangerous to the embalmers and to the environment, as they seep into the soil and groundwater after bodies are buried. There exists a culturally engrained idea that decay is somehow wrong, a corruption of the body that is inherently harmful to the living; that the living should be able to view the dead, perfectly preserved and standing as if in life, creates cognitive dissonance that obscures the painful but necessary reality of death. The funeral industry profits from the desire to stave off decay at all costs through the sale of expensive pressure-sealed caskets, designed to keep the elements out and provide the illusion that a family’s loved one is resting peacefully, preserved for all eternity. In reality, by preventing the emission of gas as a part of natural decay, these caskets, combined with embalming chemicals, can cause bodies to literally explode in their graves. These practices are the industry standard, but New Orleans’ above-ground cemeteries remind us that there are burial practices and traditions other than the American Christian model of embalming and open-casket wakes.

There was once a time when the lack of decay was considered more frightening, disgusting, and unnatural; as such, decay plays a clear role in early vampire mythology. In the vampire classic Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu, villagers fearing the presence of a predatory vampire exhume the graves of their suspects to check for signs of decay; finding Carmilla’s body perfectly preserved, as if blood still flows through her veins, they stake her heart and kill the vampire. Even IWTV contains indications that open-casket embalming was not always the norm; Lestat tells Louis that they can travel across oceans by shipping their coffins under the guise of transporting the dead bodies of loved ones, taking advantage of the sailors’ reticence to view human remains. The Civil War marked a turning point, as sending the bodies of soldiers home to their families popularized embalming and changed the preservation of corpses from a sign of supernatural interference to a common practice.

It's no wonder that New Orleans’ unique culture surrounding death has created myths and legends of vampires roaming the streets, a wealth of vampire fiction, and a highly commercial vampire-themed tourist industry throughout the French Quarter. I could not skip a visit to the Boutique du Vampyre, the famous shop of occult wares and vampire paraphernalia, where a “fangsmith” can sculpt personalized fangs with the precision of a dentist. At the Vampire Café next door, I sipped on a red cocktail served in a blood bag, and on our ghost tour we passed a filming location from the 1994 film adaptation of IWTV. The list of spooky haunts and vampire-themed attractions goes on—but for my purposes, I wasn’t just interested in fictional vampires like Lestat, or tourist traps peddling the city’s vampire mythology. I was searching for the “real vampire” community of New Orleans.

A group of people who spiritually identify as vampires trapped in human vessels, the “real vampire” community commits to the vampire lifestyle full-time. Many adopt nocturnal sleeping patterns, leaving the house only at night, use cosmetic veneers or file their teeth to get permanent fangs, and practice consensual blood drinking. This community used to be a thriving subculture in the 1990s and early 2000s, coinciding with the popularity of the goth scene. For the same reasons IWTV could only work in this city, self-identified “real vampires” in search of community flocked to New Orleans.

This group is the subject of my writing. I am captivated by the question—what kind of person does it take to not just read about vampires, to not just dress like one, but to become one? For my research, I started by asking around at all the vampire tourist spots. When I asked the cashier at the Boutique du Vampyre or the server at the Vampire Café if they had ever encountered the “real vampire” community, I was met with wariness. They were all willing to talk to me, but did not seem to want to go into detail, and were most reluctant of all to point me in the right direction to learn more, claiming ignorance. Everyone I spoke to had met a self-identified vampire—but most described negative experiences, citing everything from creepy behavior, intracommunity power dynamics, borderline sexual harassment, and even complicated webs of secret societies and occult groups that don’t get along with vampires due to some unspecified drama.

The closest lead I could obtain through my amateur investigative journalism was an invitation to a vampire speakeasy. A small card with an address and the passphrase “the vampire sent me,” the invitation sent us to a jazz bar on Bourbon Street, bumping with live music and plenty of non-vampy tourists. We wound our way to the back of the bar, past the jazz band and the bathrooms, to a quiet courtyard behind the kitchens. There were only two people out back, a guy smoking a cig and checking his phone, and a lone figure slouching at a patio table. Neither man acknowledged us. But the man at the table had long black hair and white contact lenses, so he seemed like a safe bet. Once I gave him the password and our invitation, he stood up, gave a gravelly “follow me,” and unlocked a nondescript door labeled EMPLOYEES ONLY. Then he led us up the wooden staircase and into the speakeasy. The second floor of the French Quarter townhouse had been transformed into an opulent bar, textured with velvet chairs, fancy rugs, and cobwebs. The gimmick of it all made me absolutely giddy.

The bouncer, we later learned, had permanent fangs, and though he was not a self-identified vampire himself, his partner was. When I tried to pry for more information, he shrugged, and said, “if you know, you know,” a common refrain when I’ve dug too deep. It could be subculture gatekeeping, or it could be a script whose answering password I did not know. On the other hand, our server at the bar quickly identified us as the youngest, gothest patrons and was more than happy to chat with us.

She explained that the surface-level vampire tourist traps—the Boutique, Café, the speakeasy itself—are all owned by the same intimidating lady. They shuffle tourists like myself between these commercial locations. This was evident in the other clientele at the speakeasy; sadly more tourists and fewer goths than I had hoped. Sometimes, our server said, “real vampires” did come to the speakeasy to suss out potential inductees, to sort through the sightseers and identify the people who were actually serious about joining the vampire lifestyle, but there was no guarantee of ever meeting a “real vampire” at a tourist joint. The community generally keeps to itself. They especially don’t care for tourists who just want to gawk at them—which makes sense, but is sad for me, as I very much wanted to gawk at them.

The “real vampires”’ avoidance of tourists stems from more than just disdain; they don’t mess with us because they want to be left to their own devices, continuing to practice a vampire lifestyle consensually and with a standard of ethics. The “real vampire” community overlaps with BDSM subculture, sharing an emphasis on consent and contracts. Sanguinarians (blood-drinking “real vampires”) make formal agreements with willing donors, who are often but not always romantic or sexual partners, and use sterilized instruments to prick the skin for small amounts of blood. When put that way, one can still find this practice icky or weird, but it’s not nearly as depraved as it first sounds. Furthermore, “real vampire” organizations operate primarily as social clubs but also as charities. The New Orleans Vampire Association, for example, organized relief funds for victims of Hurricane Katrina and prepared meals for the homeless. The “real vampire” community expresses a desire to give back to New Orleans, the city which has provided them a second home, through that special culture of embracing difference which is fundamental to their existence as a community. At the end of the day, it’s highly unlikely that the “real vampires” of New Orleans are secretly evil murderers; they’re simply eccentrics, grateful to the city and glad to be left alone.

That said, I hesitate to delve much deeper into the world of the “real vampires.” It’s a dying subculture; according to the speakeasy bouncer’s estimate, there are only about 50 vampires left in New Orleans. That is too few for me to continue to comfortably poke my nose in where it doesn’t belong. I don’t want some guy who’s convinced he’s the reincarnation of Lestat to know my face and learn my name. I just touched the surface of this world, and I have many questions left. Why is it dying? Is it the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused irreparable damage to many communities around the world? Is it the economic strain post-Katrina? Is it due to the decline of subculture, especially music-based subcultures, with the accessibility and homogenization of global culture in the Internet age? I think it might be because of the over-commercialization of the vampire world (based on the speakeasy patrons we saw, it’s slim pickings for new vampire recruits). Or is the answer something deeper—a shift in New Orleans’ culture around death? Supposedly even Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs like the Divine Ladies are no longer fulfilling their duties to maintain the graves of late members. Perhaps death, too, has been commercialized, the egoic desire to stop decay from inevitably taking hold of our bodies altering New Orleans’ community-oriented view on death forever.

I didn’t go deep enough to find out the answer for certain. But by conducting my own research, I had a richer Bookpacking experience than I could have ever hoped for. No matter what’s real—and no matter why it came about—what is undeniably true is that the “real vampire” community and its reputation has worked its way into the city’s psyche, to which superstition and spirituality is intrinsic. Even our hotel doorman, Todd, has seen them. He told us so, matter-of-fact:

“There are people who only come out at night,” he said, “Oh, yes. They walk all over town at night. I’ve absolutely seen the vampires, yes.”