Of all of the places I'd been in my life, the allure of New Orleans was always one that seemed to elude me. Being a Halloween fanatic, it seemed a good destination. I mean after all, I was always watching the creepy ghost shows on TV. I didn't want to go during Mardi Gras though; I wanted the "real" Louisiana experience. I started my New Orleans tour strolling down Bourbon St. taking in all of its authenticity. Each hotel and bar had its different vibe. Some of the places seemed as if spirits from days long gone were still roaming the grounds. Each hotel and bar had so many brochures with things to do while in the area. Of course I had to go on a haunted cemetery walk. I didn't realize that due to the water table, people were buried above ground as opposed to coffins in the ground. All the same, I felt uneasy walking on the ground. Even in the dog days of summer, the ground seemed kind of soggy. I asked the guide (who was wearing really dark sunglasses on a dark gloomy day) if there were people buried underground and he gave me an odd look and said "no no". As we were about to leave the cemetery, I noticed a few small headstones in the back and left the group to check them out. I found mostly just really old stones from the late 1700's. There was one however, that appeared to have been turned over so you you couldn't see a name or date. All that was on it was some seaweed and what looked to be an alligator print in the soft ground. Ok, how weird is that...
I caught up with the group and said nothing about what I saw. Some people in the group said they saw orbs and a few said they saw apparitions. Hey, who was I to question. I just saw what looked like crocodile marks in the ground. We all went our separate ways and I made my way back to the hotel. While the tour was fun and kind of spooky, I was really looking for some heart pounding adventure. I saw a brochure for a trip down the Bayou in an old paddle wheel, steam powered boat. That sounded adventurous! Little did I know how "adventurous" that trip would be....
I met up with some other people near the loading dock. We were all excited to start our tour "Deep into the Bayou". The boat was so cool. Literally looked like it was out of the 1950's; Smokestack, paddle wheel and all. Even the Spanish moss added to the eerie ambience. Our tour guide fit the part too. He looked like an Indiana Jones throwback. It was odd though that he was wearing dark sunglasses on a cloudy dank day. Hmmm... Not too far into the Bayou, we began to see so much wildlife. Large birds, massive snakes, and bugs the size of half dollars. We also saw turtles, wild boars and otters. Being in the Bayou is like being in another world. Most areas are weedy and narrow, but all are creepy. Almost at the end of the tour, we saw our first alligator. That made me think of that print I saw in the soggy cemetery. I asked our tour guide if alligators often left the water to come on land. It was a fair distance between the water and that cemetery. He said they seldom come out of the water and virtually never travel more than a few yards. The prints I saw were much further away than that....
Now I was really perplexed at what I saw in the cemetery. Well, we were on our way back and things were going smooth until we ran into what looked to be a bunch of logs and trees in the water. Those were definitely NOT there on the trip down! We all ran to the front of the boat in a panic and asked the tour guide what was happening. He had no answers for us. Suddenly we felt a loud bang on the bottom of the boat. The situation was quickly going from eerie to terrifying. We heard another bang as if whatever it was, was trying to get into the boat or knock us over. I looked over the side into the murky water and wasn't sure what to expect. What I saw would haunt me forever. Kind of expecting to see a huge alligator, what I saw unreal. It looked like a human, but its hands were webbed and it had scales all over its body. Maybe the murky water was distorting the shape or my eyes were playing tricks on me. The one thing that was crystal clear was its glowing blue and rust colored eyes. They seemed shaped like a human but looked reptilian as well?
I asked if anyone else had seen anything strange in the water. They said they hadn't. By now the guide and his crew had removed the logs that were blocking us and we made our way back to the dock. As per protocol, the tour guide did a roll call to make sure everyone was accounted for. There seemed to be one person missing. A search party was sent back out, but the person was never located. None of this made sense. What did I see? What happened to that person on the tour? Before I left New Orleans, I made my way back to that cemetery. This time I found a second headstone turned over with no name or date on it? I know there was only one when I was here days earlier... And I saw those same prints in the soft ground. But what I hadn't noticed earlier was that there were no drag marks that an alligator would leave and the print markings seemed different as well. By this time I was too freaked out and there were too many unanswered questions that I wasn't sure I wanted answered. As I stood up to leave the cemetery I happened to glance off at the Bayou in the distance. All I could see through the darkness were those glowing blue and rust colored eyes!! I quickly began to hightail it back to the hotel to get out of this this place. As I was ready to board my bus back to the airport I saw the cemetery and paddleboat tour guides talking on a corner. They slowly lowered their sunglasses and a terrifying chill went through my body as I saw those same glowing blue and rust colored eyes.
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