Le Pavillon Hotel in New Orleans and a Recipe for Peanut Butter and Jelly Cookies

It’s been quite the scary week!  First, we wrote about Bonaventure Cemetery in Savannah on Monday and today we are headed to Le Pavillon Hotel in New Orleans.

When we stayed at this grand, turn of the century hotel while we were in New Orleans in February, I had no idea the place was haunted. Not only that, but it is rumored to be the number one haunted hotel in New Orleans and one of the most haunted hotels in the world! According to some sources, New Orleans is number one of the most haunted cities in the world! It was a good thing that we were too busy eating and drinking and drinking and eating to see the ghosts!

Photo courtesy of Le Pavillon Hotel

Known as the “Belle of New Orleans”, the rooms were lovely at Le Pavillon and the service at the hotel was excellent. I much prefer these older hotels (even if they have a few unregistered guests). They are elegant and gracious and I think we have lost much of that appeal in many of the newer hotel properties over the years. Besides, newer hotels don’t have the history (or the special visitors). 😉

Our room at Le Pavillon

Too bad it wasn’t cold enough to have a fire!

I love this quote in a piece about the history of the hotel. It reads like something from an Anne Rice novel (of course, she happens to be from New Orleans).

“By the turn of the 19th century, the area was a forbidding outward fringe of the city, described by a writer of the time as a place of “foul deeds and midnight murders…the dismal gust of the wind”. Cypress thickets and cemeteries; treacherous bogs inhabited by mosquitoes, bats, hoot owls and runaway slaves; the land was a place where “no ordinary courage was required to venture alone”. The night was filled with sounds of wild men and beasts, the air thick with intrigue and desperate plots.” Now, doesn’t that sound just like Mardi Gras Anne Rice?

I don’t think I would have wanted to spend the night in that neighborhood back in those days! It is, however, this type of worldly living (according to articles I have read) that allowed New Orleans to become a breeding ground for the paranormal.  How about a little bedtime reading of The Vampire Chronicles?

What is it with the Bunkycooks and the spooky haunts that we like to visit? We also stayed at The Grove Park Inn and Asheville, North Carolina and found out that place was haunted by the Pink Lady. Geez….

Le Pavillon has gone so far as to hire a renowned Parapsychologist, Dr. Larry Montz, to come in to test and verify that there are spirits and ghosts in the hotel. Their work was successful (if you want to call it that) in proving there is definitely “a presence” on many floors of the hotel. According to his studies, the 4th floor (where we stayed) was clear (other than for a smell of Sulphur), although I have read some accounts that say there is a man who has been seen on that floor (and he doesn’t belong there). Thank goodness for all the food and booze we had…I was far too exhausted to see anyone besides Mr. B!

The lobby of the hotel is filled with crystal chandeliers from Czechoslovakia.