 "Photo: Mandy Derfler")
NEW ORLEANS - Walking along the streets of the French Quarter, many will notice no matter what corner they turn, there is always a story to tell in this historically rich city.
The Crescent City is renowned for its laid-back way of life and decadent celebrations such as Mardi Gras.
But come 8:30 p.m. under the clock of St. Louis Cathedral, there is the beginning of a darker story of New Orleans that many have not heard and may not want to hear.
Garden District Tours offers vampire tours of the city's oldest section that dispel and explain the myths of the centuries-old creatures that have piqued the curious and the morbid. They also offer ghost tours.
Brent Baudean, a theater performer since the age of 6 and New Orleans native, presents the tour.
Dressed in black from head to toe with a red mesh undershirt and a blood red ribbon tying back his ponytail, Baudean enjoys the spotlight.
Surrounded by seven tourists - the largest group Baudean has led since Katrina - in Pirate's Alley alongside the cathedral, he begins his tour debunking the folklore of vampires: They are not repelled by sunlight and don't turn into bats.
He jokingly reminds them that they were crazy enough to pay to go on this tour.
"Ignorance is bliss and you paid to take this tour," Baudean taunts his audience who rewards him with laughter.
Baudean highlights the history of vampires with such famous storytellers as Bram Stoker, who penned the novel "Dracula," and former New Orleans resident Anne Rice whose novel "Interview With The Vampire" went on to become a major motion picture starring Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise.
As Baudean heads off down Pirate's Alley, he makes the point, "At no point in this tour am I going to tell you to believe in vampires."
He adds that the stories are all based on facts and police reports.
After two blocks, Baudean stops at the house on Royal Street that housed the principals in the film "Interview With A Vampire."
The production spent $1.5 million on the house in the French Quarter and built a replica set six miles away for a key scene in which the house is set afire.
Enthralled, the crowd trades trivia as the tour continues.
In front of a red two-story corner house down the street, Baudean tells the tale of two real blood-drinking serial killers.
In 1928, two brothers, John and Wayne Carter, lived on the second floor.
In 1932, a young girl escaped from the Carter brothers' apartment and told local police of the horror she had survived: The brothers had slit her wrists and drank her blood for three days.
Police found the Carter brothers in their home along with three other captives and 13 decomposing bodies.
Eventually, the Carter brothers were executed and buried, Baudean said.
Decades later, many stories have been told of people still seeing the Carter brothers in human form at the house where they committed their heinous crimes.
One account had the Carter brothers sitting on the balcony of their second story home and jumping easily the 20 feet from the balcony when they were recognized, Baudean said.
As he passes the Cornstalk Fence Hotel on Royal Street, he highlights the cornstalk fence and points out to the crowd the upside down keyhole in the fence.
"The keyhole is upside down to confuse the vampire," Baudean says as his listeners ooh and ahh in their newfound knowledge.
Stopping at Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop, Baudean insists it's time for refreshments.
One of the oldest buildings in New Orleans, Lafitte's holds the title as the oldest building to be used as a bar in the United States.
History holds it as the place where the privateer Jean Lafitte stashed his contraband and slaves.
As voices become louder in the bar, Baudean explains he has always been interested in history and, as he grew older, the occult.
Born and reared in the metropolitan New Orleans area, Baudean said it is still hard to talk about the events in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
He says he will not include stories from the storm in his tour routine. "For now, that's not entertainment."
The tour resumes with a stop at St. Mary's Catholic Church and convent on Chartres Street.
Near the church is a nurses' convent where the third floor attic has shutters nailed shut.
Baudean tells the story of the French settlers who were convicts in their native country but alone and urgent for companionship in the New World.
The French government gathered prostitutes intent on sending them to New Orleans.
The prostitutes disembarked prior to arriving in New Orleans, but the caskets of those prohibited from Catholic burial in France continued on the final destination.
The men anxiously awaiting brides found caskets instead.
The Catholic priests accepted the caskets, which are popularly believed to contain the undead and to remain on the shuttered third floor.
In 1978, interns on a research project across the street from the convent and former orphanage tried to sneak into the third floor but were quickly shown the door.
Later that night, the bodies of the interns were found on the front steps of the church with 80 percent of the blood drained from their bodies.
"Their bodies were pristine," Baudean says in a whispery voice.
The tour ends at Pirate's Alley where Baudean finishes the story of the Carter brothers' victims.
He tells of Felipe, so distraught and traumatized he insists, "I just don't feel right around other people," Baudean intones in a twangy Southern accent.
His wealthy parents became so petrified of their own son they sent him away.
Felipe moved to a house six blocks from the Carter brothers' house and opened a business in which a young assistant accepted business during the day while Felipe slept.
One evening Felipe, with no explanation, bludgeoned his young associate to death, writing in a diary found later:
"That boy should not have turned his back on me!"
By his own account in the diary, Felipe killed 32 people, disposing of the bodies in vats of sulfuric acid he used for his business.
Baudean ends the tour with this thought: "New Orleans is the missing persons capital of the world."
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