There’s a house on 734 Royal St. in New Orleans with a very peculiar ghost. She appears as a beautiful golden woman, sitting or walking in the building’s roof top, and apart from a pair of hoop earrings, she’s completely naked.
According to legend, the woman is named Julie, and she was madly in love with the building’s owner, a wealthy businessman by the name of Zachary. Depending on the telling, Julie is either a slave or a well-to-do lady, and is usually described as being of mixed-race, contributing to her golden hue.
The tale goes back to the 1850’s. Julie was in love with Zachary and wanted to be his wife, but to Zachary she was just a plaything, an object for a few moments of fun and nothing more. Their trysts would occur on the building’s third floor, and Julie was forbidden from visiting the lower levels. Zachary would often meet with her secretly on her floor, then return to the lower floor where he’d be having grand parties and or sometimes long chess games with his friends.
Eventually, one December night, Julie lays down an ultimatum, demanding that Zachary marries her. Hoping he can finally get her to drop the subject, he says he’ll only marry her if she strips naked, climbs out of the roof, and stays there all night to prove her love.
Zachary figured the notion was settled, and left downstairs to see to his other guests, but Julie was too determined to back out now. She stripped buck naked, climbed out onto the slanted roof, and spent the night out there, where she sadly died of exposure before the sun came up.
The next winter was the first time her ghost appeared. People reported a slender, naked, golden skinned woman wearing only hoop earrings, huddled up and pacing the roof trying to build up some body heat. Often times people even reported seeing her collapse up there.
Other apparitions associated with Julie include an ethereal chessboard in the third story windows seen on stormy nights, sometimes being played by a man or two. There have also been reports of Zachary being seen through the windows of the building or wandering in the garden below.
Witnesses to Julie’s appearances continue to this day, and local lore says if you write her a note on yellow paper with blue ink about your love problems and leave it next to the house, she may solve it for you.
Featured photoby KEN COOPER from Pexels. 734 Royal St. is a privately owned building today, so please don’t harass the residents about ghost hunting.
We figured that we should probably share some of the photos from our investigation of home to Alice Rheem, Moran Manor. As we discussed in Episode 008, Moran Manor is the crown jewel of the Rosario Resort & Spa, on Orcas Island, part of the San Juan Island chain in Puget Sound.
Nick and his wife Kel visited in late January 2021. Winter being the island’s off-season, and with Covid restrictions in play both by the state of Washington and San Juan County, so there was not much to do on the island at the time. The island’s main industries are tourism, agriculture, and outdoor recreation, so with tourism hampered by the season and restrictions, and outdoor recreation made uncomfortable by the winter storm blowing in from the Pacific over the weekend they visited, it was good that they had ‘ghost hunting’ on their agenda because there was precious little else to do.
The resort covers 40 acres of the island, a scant sliver compared to the 7,000 acres originally owned by Robert Moran. The majority of the original Moran estate was donated to the parks service, creating the 5,000+ acre Moran State Park. The centerpiece of the park, covered with tons of waterfalls and hiking, biking, and horseback trails, it Mount Constitution, the highest point in the San Juans at just under 2,400 ft.
A shot from the top of Mt. Constitution. Our Bellingham friends may notice the small wisp of their city in the upper center bay, and Mt. Baker and the Two Sisters on the horizon.
Moran Manor itself sits near the foot of the mountain, right on the edge of the state park, constructed by Robert Moran himself. Moran, a shipbuilder and former mayor of Seattle, arrived on the West Coast in 1875 with only a dime in his pocket. He worked his way up from an engineer to running one of the largest shipyards in America, supplying transportation for much of the Yukon gold rush and building the USS Nebraska.
Construction on Moran Manor finished in 1909, after Moran’s doctor pleaded with him to take things easy for his health. The plan worked; island life agreed with Moran, outliving the doctor’s expectations by over 30 years, and in the 1930’s the home was sold to Donald Rheem, the water heater and heat pump magnate.
Rheem intended to use the Manor as a summer home, but as he ran out of ways to subdue his wild socialite wife, Alice, he decided his last resort was to send her out to Orcas Island where the amount of trouble she could cause would be at a minimum. Naturally, the seclusion only instilled desperation in Alice, and it was soon a regular to find Alice donning her favorite red dress, climb aboard her Harley-Davidson motorcycle, and drive into the small nearby town of Eastsound to drink and play cards.
Alice died in 1959, reportedly from complications with alcoholism, but it appears she hasn’t yet left. Alice’s ghost has often been reported on the grounds, sometimes walking down the stairway at the main entrance in her nightgown, occasionally in the parking lot departing into town on her motorcycle. Today, the Manor is part of a resort and spa, and many guests and employees have reported encounters with Alice over the years.
Living in nearby Whatcom County, Nick decided to investigate, and reserved a child-free weekend at the resort to entice his wife, Mikael, to come along. Mikael is not a believer in ghosts and spirits (with the possible exception of theatre ghosts), but played along and let Nick have his fun.
Though the Manor building itself no longer has guests overnight, much of the building is open for free exploration (some areas were closed off this weekend simply for Covid restrictions). A large portion of the second floor has been converted into a museum space for Robert Moran and his accomplishments. Among the artifacts were stories of shipbuilding, items from Robert’s office and his photography habit, odds and ends, and some of his stained glasswork collection.
The grandest feature of the second story is the two-story Aeolian pipe organ. During less restrictive times, the Manor is known to show old silent movies scored by the organ (most famously the original 1929 Phantom of the Opera). It was in this room that Nick thought he collected potential EVP’s.
Nick was using two pieces of equipment as he searched the museum, a micro camcorder and a voice recorder app on his cell phone (he has never declared himself a serious ghost hunter). While in the main music room, Nick heard a creak from the floor above him, though Nick and Mikael were the only people in the building above the first floor. In this clip, you can hear a series of audio pops, Mikael ask Nick what’s going on, and Nick answers he thought he heard someone above him. In the background is music being piped into the room, likely by CD. The creak happens roughly where the pops occurs.
Nick hears a creak
We noticed what may be a whisper under the pops, so cleaned that up and isolated it as best we could. Nick thought it sounded like someone saying, “never around”.
Never ’round?
Having thought they heard something, Nick and Mikael sat down in the music room and just listened for a bit. That is when they recorded another voice without an owner.
Unclaimed male voice
Though is it possible to hear people talking on the first floor (as evidenced in the full walkthrough recording) it is more muffled and continuous than the voice in this clip. Nick thought it sounded like a man saying, “twelve”.
Twelve?
We are making the full walkthrough recording available for anyone who wants to go through it on their own, but fair warning: Nick often forgot that he was carrying a recorder, and let his sleeve brush against the mic a lot and once or twice even absent-mindedly put it in his pocket.
There was little about Alice Rheem in the building, despite a plethora of information on the website. The bar has a drink named after her, The Lady in Red, and Mikael managed to locate a collection of old Vogue magazines owned by Alice in one of the bathrooms.
So, did Nick collect evidence that Alice or someone else still is creeping around Moran Manor? Maybe? Nick’s evidence is pretty thin, at best, but it definitely is interesting enough to warrant a second look in the future. Until then, the closest Nick got to finding a ghost was accidentally taking a picture of a park ranger while looking something up on his phone:
It’s nearly Valentine’s Day, love is in the air, and Nick finally followed through on his threats to go looking for sex ghosts. In this episode, we take a look first at the ‘Lady in Red’ phenomenon, then focus on one in particular, Alice Rheem, the specter of Moran Manor on Puget Sound’s Orcas Island. Nick captures some probably-not-EVP’s, Cait eats a lot of french fries, and we present a whiskey-based Valentine’s drink sure to knock the socks (and other clothing articles) off your special someone!
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It’s getting murky in here! In this episode of The Booze + Spirits Podcast, Nick takes us on a quest for bloody Confederate vengeance, Cait introduces us to a Voodoo priestess who refused to die alone, and Theo the dog gets his butt in everything. All this, plus a lemony tequila drink that’s sure to thrill your taste buds!
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The Phantom Trapper is a ghost seen in the Labrador area of Canada, whose presence is often said to herald the arrival of a large storm.
The person most commonly accredited to being The Phantom Trapper was a man named Esau Gillingham. He was a Newfoundlander who would regularly cross the Straits of Belle Isle into Labrador to trap. Depending on who tells the tale, there’s two slants on the story that are usually told.
The first is that trapping never made Esau the kind of money he wanted, so he ended up setting an illegal still up in the tall spruces. This swill was a foul but effective alcohol made from pine cones, sugar, and yeast, and he called it ‘smoke’, earning him the nickname ‘Smoker’.
The other version of the tale is that he actually brought back very fine, valuable furs whenever he returned, which was kind of fortunate since in this version he was a horrible, raging, hot-headed, woman-attacking asshole. The money he and his skins brought into town were the only thing that would convince the townspeople to put up with him for a short time. But eventually his drunken and ornery side would become too much, and he would wear out his welcome and get kicked out of town until the next time he had a load of furs. He still makes and sells smoke in this version, but it ends up more a feather in his ne’er-do-well hat rather than being a key part of his origin story. In some tellings, he continued selling smoke even though he was well aware that it was poisonous.
Whichever the version we prefer, eventually the Mounties found Smoker’s still, smashed his kegs, and hauled him off to jail in St. John’s for a year. But that time in the cooler just gave Smoker the time he needed to plan the next stage of his evolution.
After being released, he went around begging or stealing every white husky he could in the area, building a new team of dogs–some say a team of 8 while others say as many as 14. He then made himself a suit exclusively of white animal skins, and after restarting his distilling business, painted his komatik and kegs white as well.
Now decked all in white, Smoker began selling his contraband booze again. RCMP tried several times to shut him down again, but his new white camouflaged outfit made it impossible to track him for long in the snow.
There’s several tales about how Smoker met his end. Some say he harassed the wrong innkeeper’s wife and got gunned down by her husband. Some say he got lost while out in the wilderness or maybe got caught in a vicious storm.
My version is that it was his own smoke did him in at the end. While soused on his own drink, Smoke fell off of a fish flake and broke his back. He lay, on the frozen ground, suffering and unable to move for three days. Sensing his time was drawing to a close, and having a pretty good idea what was waiting for him in the great hereafter, he shouted out, “Lord God, don’t send me to Hell! Let me drive my dogs till the end of time, and I’ll make up for all the bad I’ve done!”
Eventually Smoker’s body was found and brought back tp Newfoundland to be buried, but he would not find peace in the grave. Legend tells that even today the howl of the Labrador wind is sometimes joined by the sound of a dog team running through the night.
Some hear them passing by in the snow, while others have heard their traces slapping against the outside of their cabin. Occasionally a person might catch a glimpse of an all white dog team being driven by a figure in white furs on a white komatik, but they never leave tracks in the snow or stop on their eternal run.
Stories tell of a Labrador man who got lost in a blizzard while driving his dog team, and became desperate to find shelter. As he drove on, he was passed by a team of all white dogs piloted by a man in white furs. Sensing this was his best opportunity, he followed the team.
A half-hour later, the lost man and the white driver came upon a fishing village, and hearing the dogs a fisherman stood in the doorway of his hut to see who was approaching. The white driver continued on past with his team, but the lost driver slowed to a stop, thrilled to find shelter, and called out, “Thank you!”
“You’re welcome!” called out the fisherman. “Come in a get warm!” The lost man thanked the fisherman, but corrected him that he was calling out to the other driver. The fisherman just looked at him strangely, and said that he never saw or heard another driver.
Another story involved a man on foot who got caught in a blizzard and had nearly froze to death by the time the Phantom Trapper found him. The trapper easily picked the man up and set him on his sled, covering him with warm skins, and drove towards the nearest inn. Upon arrival, the trapper again easily picked up and carried the man inside, sitting him on a chair next to the fire. The trapper turned to the innkeeper, told him to take care of the half-dead man, and promptly disappeared into thin air.
Hero, villain, or antihero, the Phantom Trapper, or sometimes Damned Trapper, is a proud piece of local folklore. He was fictionalized in the 1972 novel White Eskimo: a Novel of Labrador, and is a respected entity in the local folklore.
Where there’s smoke, there’s fire, and where there’s fire, there’s the McDonald siblings. In this episode, Nick and Cait have turned their eyes to stories of supernatural smoke and fire this week, as we visit a fiery poltergeist (feuergeist?) in Illinois and a witch’s tree in North Carolina that refused to burn down. All this, plus smokey beverages and feet discussions!
A photo of Macomb Firestarter Wonet McNeil is found here. You can find some good photos of the Cora Tree here.
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And be sure to rate, review, and subscribe through Anchor, Apple, Spotify, Google, YouTube, or the podcast delivery system of your choice!
Holiday tidings to you all! Once upon a time, it was traditional to gather family and friends together on Christmas Eve and share tales of ghosts and spirits to scare and delight each other, a tradition that sorely needs to make a come back in our opinion!
So in this special episode, join Nick and Cait for a classic Victorian Christmas Eve, where we chill the air with tales of ghostly fur trappers, haunted hot springs, and a ghost named ‘Daddy’. It’s a double-length episode! That means Cait runs out of alcohol, Nick does NOT, and chaos and over-sharing ensue.
Unfortunately, the Tom & Jerry Batter talked about in this episode didn’t come together in time to have the recipe published along-side the episode (stay tuned, we WILL post it in the future). But, being the holidays, we’ve included some additional recipes (not always of the drink variety!) to make up for the loss, as well as because, hey, it’s Christmas!
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In this episode, we investigate the legend of The Red Ghost, a demonic beast that terrorized the American Southwest in the late 19th century. From there, things get tangential as we discuss camelcide, ghost miner role-call, and how to properly cook your wine.
*Technical Note: Again, we had some serious audio problems on Nick’s side during the recording of some segments, and we apologize. We guarantee that problem has been totally ironed out for future episodes. (Guarantee does not extend to future technical problems. Void where prohibited.)
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Everyone knows at least one story about a Lover’s Lane ghost, but let’s call these specters what they really are: cockblockers. In this episode we investigate a trio of these incorporeal cockblockers–The Pitcher Man, The Bandage Man, and Skinned Tom. And in case you haven’t been blocked enough, a salty, foamy whiskey drink is on deck to try to finish you off. All this, plus Cait gives advice, Nick botches his audio, and both of them overshare about underage drinking.
*Technical Note: We had some serious technical issues this episode, and as a result sound quality has suffered. We apologize, and will iron out the wrinkles as well as we can for future episodes.
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In this episode, we travel to the Atlantic coast off Connecticut to visit one of America’s most unique buildings, the New London Ledge Lighthouse, and try a bright and bloody take on a whiskey Old Fashioned. All this, plus Nick tripping on his own tongue and bartending sins that will cause Cait to judge you.
The New London Ledge Lighthouse is operated by the New London Maritime Society, who offer tours, rental, and educational resources about the historic landmark. Check them out!
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The Booze + Spirits Podcast 