The curse of the Superdome

[ELVIS]

NOLA.com (http://www.nola.com/weblogs/bourbon/index.ssf?/mtlogs/nola_bstdiaries/archives/2005_09.html#079088)

There is intense irony in the Superdome becoming the symbol of the horrors of Hurricane Katrina. In New Orleans lore, it's a haunted building - a cursed structure in this city that lives shoulder to shoulder with its Cities of the Dead.

Visitors are familiar with our huge expanses of above-ground tombs in dozens of cemeteries across the city. Coming in from the airport on Interstate 10, the "gateway" to downtown is flanked by sprawling Greenwood Cemetery on the left, and the elite Metairie Cemetery on the right. Downtown, the old St. Louis No. 1 Cemetery is a prime tourist spot, and has appeared in many movies. In the Garden District, diners at Commanders Palace's second floor can look out over Lafayette No. 1, filled with victims of Yellow Fever plagues.

But you can't visit the old Girod Cemetery. Abandoned for years, its iron caskets and bones were tossed up by excavation gear in the early 1970s as the crews moved in to build . . . the Superdome. Beneath the now-shredded roof and the fetid stinking mess of excrement and blood where tens of thousands huddled in storm and flood . .. and some died . . . likely lie even more unexcavated bones.

And local lore is that the Superdome was cursed . . . a punishment for desecrating this City of the Dead. Exorcists and voodoo priestesses have been here to dispel the curse. That lore will no doubt expand into an even more gruesome story for buggy drivers in the Quarter to enchant their passengers.

The main target of the curse, of course, has been the New Orleans Saints, as described in this 2004 story by Times-Picayune sports writer Josh Peter.


:elvis:

[ELVIS]

By Josh Peter The Times-Picayune (http://www.nola.com/weblogs/bourbon/index.ssf?/mtlogs/nola_bstdiaries/archives/2005_09.html#079088)


Black Sunday. Big Ben. The Botched Extra-Point.


Bungled drafts. The Ditka disaster. Three decades of futility and heartbreak.

And now this.

A year ago, Jake Delhomme sat on the Saints' bench, deemed less effective than the team's injured quarterback, Aaron Brooks. Today the Saints and the rest of the sporting world will be watching Delhomme, a Louisiana native who has led the Carolina Panthers to a place the Saints have never been: the Super Bowl.

As Vince Buck, a former Saints cornerback, wondered in 1993 after watching the Saints blow a 20-7 lead in a first-round playoff game against the Philadelphia Eagles, "Is this the Louisiana voodoo curse?"

Archivists and an astrologer. Coaches and a nun. Voodoo priestesses and vexed players. And those who dug up the dead.

All were contacted in recent weeks to understand what's at work, and whether the supernatural is conspiring against the Saints. To understand the alleged curse, it's best to start with the hydraulic backhoes.

The year was 1971. The Saints were in Tulane Stadium but eager for a new home. And construction workers were ready to build it, as soon as they could excavate the strip of downtown land on which the Superdome would sit. Those early days were not a sight for the squeamish.

When the hydraulic backhoes sunk their forked metal teeth into the earth, up came the bones. Human bones. Years before anybody thought to call in a voodoo priestess, the construction workers called somebody else -- the cops and the coroner.

"We thought maybe we had found somebody who had been killed, and they said, ‘Nah, he's been here for a long time,' " said Jim McClain, a project manager for the construction company that built the Dome. "They weren't too excited about it, and we didn't get too excited about it. From then on, everything was just dug up and moved wherever we moved the dirt to."

Human bones were just the beginning. Next came the caskets. Double deckers. Triple deckers. Wooden and tin caskets that likely housed the bodies of those who died during the cholera epidemic of the 1930s or the yellow fever plague of the 1850s.

It turns out they were digging up the remains of the old Girod Street Cemetery, and some think they dug up more than they realized. Bad vibes, for one.

"You know," said Ava Kay Jones, a well-known voodoo priestess in New Orleans, "it's really not kosher to plop a sports facility on the remains of one's ancestors."

Curse? Heh-heh. Those are the exact words that came out of the mouth of Saints receiver Joe Horn. Heh-heh. As if, "Gimme a break." Talking by cell phone, and dismissing the idea of a curse between shots during a round of golf at Ormond Country Club, he grew quiet. Yes, Joe Horn grew quiet. For a moment anyway.

"Speaking of curses. I just missed a bleeping 16-foot putt," he said. "Hit the back of the cup, baby. What about that?"

The 16-footers are one thing. It's John Carney's botched tap-in that had the esoteric astrologer and the nun and the voodoo priestesses once again wondering about the role of the supernatural -- wondering if the curse had reared its head yet again Dec. 22 in Jacksonville, Fla.

The Saints had just pulled off a miracle. Six seconds left to play. Down by seven. Seventy-five yards to go. And it all began, Aaron Brooks taking the snap and rifling a pass to Dontè Stallworth, initiating a bobbing, weaving parade down the field that ended three laterals later, with Jerome Pathon plunging into the end zone for a touchdown. A touchdown that rescued the Saints' playoff hopes and brought a city to its feet and filled the fans with unimaginable hope and . . . need we go on?

Carney missed the kick. Wide right. And down went the Saints, failing to make the playoffs for the 32nd time in the franchise's 37-year history.

Rejecting the idea of a curse, Carney said. "I have to believe they removed all the bones and put them to rest in a safe environment."

Think again, John.

Dave Dixon, who conceived of the Superdome, said he was aware bones and caskets were dug up. But he said the Saints' ill fortunes have less to do with that than the team's first owner. "The curse was really John Mecom and some of the coaches he hired," Dixon said.

Yet history shows there were losers on Girod Street long before the Saints arrived. Start with a letter preserved in Tulane University's Louisiana collection archives. It's frayed and yellowed, but the message is clear. It was written in 1825, in calligraphy, sent to the city's mayor and aldermen, and signed by 18 residents living on Girod Street and growing tired of the misfits and mayhem polluting their neighborhood.

"Ruffians who frequent and the Malefactors who find a harbour there compel us in duty to ourselves, our family, our property and the community at large to address this petition to you," read the letter.

It was no place to bury the dead, complained the letter, and yet buried they were. By the dozens. The Protestants who purchased land from the city opened the first non-Catholic cemetery in 1822.

In all, some 30,000 were buried in the cemetery. For the record, those 30,000 do not include Marie Laveau, the famous voodoo priestess rumored to have been buried under the 50-yard line at the Superdome. She was buried at the St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 at 615 Pere Antoine Alley. Who's under the 50-yard line? No one, according to documents.

In addition to the dead, Archie Manning and other Saints quarterbacks spent many years running for their life.

"I never got into the curse," Manning said. "Maybe I was always too busy or somebody was hitting me in the mouth or something. . . . Maybe there's something to it."

There is something to the story about all those dead bodies and caskets.

All the necessary maps are on file at the Historic New Orleans Collection. So curator John McGill spread them out across a long wooden table, made a few measurements and with his index finger marked the spot. Southeast corner of the Dome facility. A large chuck of the 600-square foot cemetery sat under the Dome parking garage, which instead of refuting the idea of a curse prompted McGill to ask, "Where's Tom Benson's parking space? Maybe he's parked over the bones and the caskets."

Regardless of where the Saints' owner parks, the dead at Girod Street cemetery were no match for the "ruffians' and "malefactors" -- or, for that matter, the march of time. In 1957, having fallen to disrepair, the cemetery was deconsecrated. Religious officials blessed the grounds, with the idea of restoring it for secular use. That was the easy part.

The tough part: finding relatives of the dead, offering them the remains, or making arrangements to re-inter them elsewhere. The Christ Church officials said they tried very hard to locate all of the dead and find them a new resting place. Of course, John Carney tried very hard on that kick, too.

Needless to say, there were a few bodies left over. Bodies found when the hydraulic backhoes sunk their teeth into the earth.

"If they were disposed of properly, there's nothing wrong building over a cemetery," said Mary Tarcisius, a nun from Lafayette who recently blessed the Superdome, with mixed results. "But if they left some things there, oh my goodness."

But Tarcisius is among those who think the Saints can be rescued by a higher power. Of course, it's been tried before.


Priestess Miriam

Oct. 31, 1999. For a voodoo priestess, it looked like the perfect Sunday to perform a purification ritual for the Saints. After all, they were playing the Cleveland Browns. The expansion Browns. The winless Browns.

Hired by a radio station, Priestess Miriam Chamani, who runs the Voodoo Spiritual Temple in the French Quarter, gladly obliged. She brought the live python. Brought the burning incense. Brought a pumpkin. Set it up outside the Dome and went to work when . . .

Dancing, chanting, working her magic, Priestess Miriam suddenly found herself face-to-face with a dog-masked Browns fan. Straight from Cleveland's infamous Dawg pound, one of the obnoxious, biscuit-throwing, profanity-spewing Browns fans who taunted opponents. And now he was in Priestess Miriam's face.

She had a bad feeling. Very bad. About her ritual. And about the game to be played.

"I could've gotten captured in the mouth of the dog," she said. ". . . It was then that I recognized the energy of the Browns was stronger, more aggressive than the Saints."

Most Saints fans recognized that about three hours later. On the last play of the game, Tim Couch connected with Kevin Johnson on a 56-yard Hail Mary touchdown pass and the Browns prevailed 21-16.

That day, the Dome felt more like the Dawg pound -- and historical research may explain why. Chew on this bone, an article in the Times-Democrat that ran Nov. 8, 1910 points out about Girod Street cemetery: "Some years since the back portion of the space was sold to the city, which erected there the old workhouse, now used as a dog pound."

Of course. A dog pound. Once again.


Priestess Ava Kay Jones

It was during the Mike Ditka era when Priestess Ava Kay Jones, tagging along with a friend, showed up at a taping of Ditka's weekly coach's show. She came with a game plan, and a fistful of her pamphlets. "I even talked to Coach Iron Mike Ditka," she said.

More than that, Priestess Ava handed Ditka a pamphlet explaining her powers of voodoo and, explaining she was a graduate of Xavier University and had a law degree, said, "Sir, listen, I'm not a kook."

She never heard back from Ditka, but she did hear back from the Saints. And like Brian Milne, who recovered a fumble to preserve the Saints' lone playoff victory in franchise history, she once was set to go down in franchise history as a hero.

Hired by the team prior to the Saints' first-round playoff game against the Rams a year after Ditka was replaced by Jim Haslett, Ava Kay Jones performed a pregame ritual Dec. 30, 2000 that included the works. With a boa constrictor draped around her neck, the Dome rocked as the sellout crowded chanted along with Ava Kay Jones, "Ashshay. Ashshay."

The ritual continued, with Ava Kay Jones offering prayers at her church and Congo Square while the Saints battled the Rams. In fact, Jones said she was on her knees at Congo Square, praying to the ancestral spirits, when she heard Milne had recovered the fumble, clinching the Saints' long-sought playoff victory.

But critics point out the priestess' stands at 1-1. Because the Saints called her back that next season. Wanted her to work her magic again before a Monday night game against the Rams. The priestess said she had a premonition about ugliness to come, and come it did.

The night ended with Saints fans tossing plastic beer bottles and other garbage into -- where else? -- the Girod Street end zone in protest of a pass-interference call. Like the bottles, the Saints fell hard, 34-21.

After the game, the priestess said, she discovered the Saints had reversed the power of her blessing and cursed themselves. Her friend showed her one of the 70,000 placards Entercom distributed before the game. Placards that included a "definition" of gris-gris that read in part, ". . . the power, the weapon, the force, the strength, the might, the magic, the hex, the spell, the whammy . . . To kick one's opponent's . . . posterior! . . . A BIG TIME JINX."

Even today, Ava Kay Jones grows indignant when she looks at the placard. She said she never uses her powers for evil. And that one never mixes good and evil -- at least not without serious consequences.

"I think the Saints cursed themselves," she said.

They certainly looked cursed. Entering the Rams' game at 7-5 and in the hunt for a playoff berth, the Saints lost their final four games and were outscored 120-52.

Priestess Jones wasn't the only one fuming. So was Haslett. He'd seen enough -- of his team's porous defense and voodoo priestesses.

"We're not going to do that again as long as I'm head coach," Haslett said recently.

And that's great news for the nun from Lafayette.


Sister Mary Tarcisius

She was not among those cheering when Priestess Ava Kay Jones performed her ritual before the Monday night game against the Rams. She was squirming, in her seat inside the Superdome. This, she decided, was the last thing her team needed.

She set out to cleanse the Dome -- her way.

Sister Mary, who wrote to Benson in 1997 and ever since has gotten free tickets for herself and children at her church to at least one game per season, made her first appearance this season Oct. 12. During pregame, she was invited onto the field.

While watching the players, she prayed hard to St. Michael, who Tarcisius said, "puts the devil back in his place." She also secretly sprinkled the field with holy water and said prayers while clutching the relic of St. Theresa. How did she sneak the holy water onto the field?

"We've got lots of folds under our habit," she said.

Magic, Tarcisius thought. Not only did the Saints beat the Bears that day, but they won again the following week and rebounded from a 1-4 start. Of course, there she was after Carney's missed extra-point attempt, collapsing in a chair at the church and wondering what went wrong.

She thinks her blessings went only so far.

"I'm not as powerful as a priest," she said. "I'm just a little old nun."

But according to the esoteric astrologer, nothing is as powerful as the Saints' birth date.


Astrologist Bill Williams

Pulling out two manila folders bulging with paper, Williams said, "Here's the problem for the Saints."

The papers included dozens of astrological charts, but not all of them. Williams estimated he's done up to 400 charts on the Saints, using birth dates of the players, coaches and the team itself. And, he said, the problem is this: The New Orleans Saints were born Nov. 1, 1966.

Holding the specific chart, Williams explained the grim particulars. The positioning of Saturn and Chiron. The positioning of Pluto and Uranus. A T-square in the middle of the chart. Williams shook his head. Disastrous.

The T-square, he said, "creates a frantic fear of football failure."

"This is a bad T-square if you're an athlete, surgeon or a military man," Williams added. "You damn sure won't be a good football team. . . ."

An avid Saints fan, Williams had tried to explain as much to the team. Coach Dick Nolan. Mecom. Benson. Williams contacted them all, and has yet to hear back from any. And he's got more to offer than gloom.

Yes, Williams said, the birth date is a terrible handicap. But he thinks the Saints could overcome their astrological albatross if they hired someone, like, well himself.

So forget the voodoo priestesses and the nun, Williams suggests. What the team needs is a full-time astrologist to do charts for prospective players, coaches and executives. Without astrological help. . . .

"They've changed stadiums, playing surfaces, coaches, players, uniforms, training camp sites," Williams said. "The only thing that hasn't changed is their birth date."

Something else the Saints have yet to change: Their name. And retired kicker Tom Dempsey is among the legions familiar with the idea that using Saints as the team's nickname, "pissed off the Almighty. But I'm sure he would do worse than cause us to lose football games if he was mad."



:elvis:

[Satan]

.....and then there was that killer bees movie where they lured the entire swarm into the Superdome and cranked the A/C to the maximum.

That's when the dome was new. Ironic that it's probable last act would be with a dead air conditioner. A living HELL on earth, if a Devil may say so......

[Nitro Express]

I thought it was cool when they first built it but now it looks 1970's futuristic. That building will always have bad voodoo vibes now. Time to tear it down and turn it back to mother nature again.

[Nitro Express]

Yeah, everyone had a hard on for the superdome in the 1970's because it was the most modern covered football stadium. It was suppossed to help bring New Orleans economy back. I don't think it really served it's purpose.