As the Endless Night: New Orleans Vampire Ball 2019 “Black Magick” approaches here is a mood setting story by local storyteller Rose Sinister.
In a city lit by gas lamps and shrouded by river fog, ancient mysteries swirl beneath eternal oaks, even as modernity continues its mechanical reach forward. Streetcars clatter past decaying mansions of bygone splendor, held together by tendrils of ivy and crumbling cast iron shedding blood-red rust.
In the old quarter, the French Quarter, things have already been changeless for decades. They will remain changeless for decades to come.
Is there magic here? Do witches and vampires and their dark sorcery pervade this hallowed timeless place? In the dim flickering of gaslight, things are not always as they appear to be. In the shadows, darkness provides obscurity for many secret things, but moths are drawn to the light of the flame, as we are drawn towards the light of discovery.
Marie Laveau is dead, her children are gone to dust as well. Is there anything that remains of her once great empire of Voodoo chants and drum beats? Listen, listen. The echo in your chest might simply be your heartbeat...or maybe it is a dark reverberation of some half-forgotten truth.
What is the truth behind New Orleans magic? The spirits of the past, of the ancestors, of those gone before, the forgotten, the misunderstood, the slandered, they speak to us in this place. They have truths to tell, of what lies between the inky shadow and the blinding flash of the phosphorus flame of a match.
Draw closer, children. You seekers of the truth, you spiritual descendants of all who came before you. Listen, listen for the black magic in the New Orleans night, and you may be rewarded with understanding, and delight."
