Marita Woywod Crandle

New Orleans Vampires
Author: Marita Woywod Crandle
Publisher: Haunted America - History Press
Date: 2017
Pgs: 241
Disposition: Irving Public Library - Irving, TX - Hoopla e-book
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REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS

Summary:
Vampires, Dracula. Lestat. Bram Stoker. Anne Rice. New Orleans. A heady mix. From the earliest days, Louisiana colonial history and New Orleans entire civic life span has been colored by a dose of the occult. Things go bump in the night. Some of them are hungry. Some have fangs. Some walk the night. Some want your blood. Some your flesh. The Casket Girls. The Comte St. Germain. The Carter Brothers. The origins of these legends are explored here.
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Genre:
Nonfiction
Politics
Social Sciences
Folklore
Mythology
History
Americas
United States
Louisiana
New Orleans
South
Religion
Spirituality
Occult
Supernatural

Why this book:
Vampires. New Orleans. Thank Anne Rice for my being sucked into this. Helped that it took stylistic nods for the cover that echo back to Rice’s Vampire Chronicles.
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Favorite Character:
The sad thing here is that St. Germain’s story is treated even shorter than the Casket Girls. When the story is told, it flows full force, but the background and historical pieces, while not falling flat, do tend to not be as well done or as interesting.

Favorite Scene / Quote:
The personal vampire story about the strange customer with his cane is well told. And it reads like the kind of thing LeStat would do were he real. Not Dracula, but definitely LeStat.

Hmm Moments:
The chapters regarding St. Germain read totally different than the Casket Girls chapters. You can tell which are the author’s favorite stories and which are either included for completeness sake or for filler.

When the Casket Girls story is finally put together, it is fascinating. This is why it has held a spot in the occult history of New Orleans. Was Sister Gertrude one of the Undead too when she returned from France with the Ursulines to do her penance for the horrible things she had done to her fellow travellers on the Casket Girls original trip?

Alchemist, vampire, immortal, wealthy standoffish patron...surprised that Comte de St. Germain didn’t end up burned at the stake.

WTF Moments:
There were elitist prigs in France in charge of sending women to New Orleans to try and stabilize the community. On speaking of the forced deportation of women and bait and switch tactics used to lure some of them, “This clan of hoodlum women were anything but desirable…” is the kind of thing that an elitist prig would say. Hoodlum women help make the world go round. I’m equally certain that the founding mothers of most societies have a fairly large quotient of “hoodlum women” among them. Thank God.

Meh / PFFT Moments:
Instead of building on the previous legends, the early parts of the Casket Girls section spend their time tearing down some of the mystery, going more history than horror.

The book blows holes in the Casket Girls legend before settle down to tell the story.

The Blood Brothers/Carter Brothers story is of recent enough vintage to be more true crime than vampire. Even with the admission of the brothers to the police that they were vampires. Would have been a better twist if the brothers had turned out to be familiars in the Igor vein.

Wisdom:
With the state of health of many of the forced deportees to begin with and shipboard hygiene being what it was in that era, of course, the Casket Girls ship had a high mortality rate, all ships would have. And if they survived the trip, they were delivered to the early 18th century miasma that was New Orleans; swamp, death, disease, before we even consider the predatory nature of their fellow travellers and the brigands, pirates, and monsters hiding in human flesh, they would encounter once they arrived. The death toll in New Orleans must have been horrendous.
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Last Page Sound:
Hit and miss.

Editorial Assessment:
Margarita’s chapter in the Casket Girls almost got me to give up on the book. Necessary info, maybe, but could have been shorter or glossed into another chapter.

The story of The Comte de St. Germain is interesting. But as presented here comes across disjointed. The chronology being flipped, telling the story of the New World St. Germain and, then, the European. A chronological telling would have given the story more flavor. And would have ended with the disappearance of the New Orleans one, instead of the unattended funeral of the one in Germany, if the one who died in Germany even was The Comte St. Germain.

The Carter Brothers story is weak sauce in context with the Casket Girls and The Comte St. Germain. They do not measure up to the other vampire legends of New Orleans.

Would have been well served to have left the Carter Brothers out entirely or treated them with the same short shrift as Varney.

Knee Jerk Reaction:
it’s alright
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