be wary of the thistles at your feet!

but is it all smoke and mirrors?

BRADY has donated his painting "the octoroon mistress" to the american red cross in response to the tragedy still plaguing new orleans and the surrounding areas devastated by hurricane katrina. BRADY would like to also send his prayers and love to the people of his beloved "crescent city."

furthermore, BRADY wishes to congratulate and thank the winner of the auction for their kind generosity!

the octoroon mistress (2003)

new orleans’ royal street is home to many high profile ghost legends. one of the most tragic – and yet the sweetest – is the story of the octoroon mistress. julie was her name. she happened to be 1/8 negro – hence the moniker “octoroon” - and in the cruel days of a certain “peculiar institution,” that meant that although she was prized for her exotic beauty and passionate nature, she was still looked down upon and not considered worthy enough to be part of the aristocratic society of ante-bellum new orleans.

julie was the courtesan of a wealthy frenchman. although she was technically her master’s slave, julie was showered with the finest gifts and given her own set of minders who tended to her every need. in return, julie gave her body, willingly. the passion between the two grew, and in time, julie assumed that her lover would go public with their secret relationship and ask her to marry. this never happened, as the society of the day would never have approved. instead, julie was destined to remain the european nobleman’s eager sex-slave, forever hidden from family, friends, and neighbors.

but julie was certainly not content with this. after all, she was well-educated, gorgeous, and young. in her eyes, there was no reason her 1/8-7/8 status should prevent their matrimonial union. eventually, arguments ensued in regards to what the nobleman considered a foolish issue. finally, in one of his many attempts to evade the situation at hand, the frenchman gave julie an ultimatum – one that he never thought she could, or would, surpass. desperate to prove her devotion, julie agreed to her lover’s validation test. so, on the coldest day of december, the octoroon mistress spent the entire night atop the slick, wet roof of their four-story house – completely naked. the frigid temperature and freezing rain made the trial unbearable. that same night, the frenchman entertained a male friend. they drank cognac and absinthe. they smoked and played chess, and the frenchman forgot all about poor julie. when returning to bed later in the evening, the frenchman found it empty. too drunk to care, he passed out. inevitably, the next day, julie’s frail, cold, limp body was found dead, naked on the frozen slate roof.

to this day, on the coldest, stormiest nights in december, the sepia-tone image of a naked woman can still be viewed from the lonely rooftop of the four-story house at 734 royal street. there, julie waits patiently for her lover to join her and accept their love once and for all. the ghostly image paces back and forth until the morning light consumes her once again.

le retour de madame delphine lalaurie à la rue royale (2004)

shortly after her arrival in new orleans, madame delphine lalaurie became known around the french quarter as one of the most sophisticated, intelligent, and beautiful women in the city. she was consistently the talk of any party she might attend, and certainly of those she would throw at her own sumptuous abode. together with her husband, dr. louis lalaurie, she had arrived in new orleans in 1832. the couple quickly moved into a large, but unassuming mansion at 1140 royal. the three-story house was quickly filled with the finest oriental tapestries, enormous chandeliers, european china, and heavy mahogany doors with inlayed hand-carved flowers. due to their lavish parties, madame delphine and dr. louis left quite an impression on the new orleans aristocracy, and it wasn’t long before they became the most influential and prominent couple in town.

madame lalaurie, always a paragon of great style, was certainly a force to be reckoned with, managing most of her family’s business dealings, while also raising the couple’s two daughters. she was the most amazing hostess, flitting about her expansive house to make sure that all of her guests were pampered to their every whim. naturally, there was more to madame lalaurie then meets the eye. in fact, beneath her cool, refined veneer, delphine was a cruel, merciless madwoman.

neighbors on royal street were the first to suspect something foul might have been going on at the lalaurie house. there were whispers that the lalaurie slaves had a high turnover rate. servants would be replaced at a moments notice with no explanation, or they would simply just disappear never to be seen again. one fateful day a neighbor heard a loud scream coming from the direction of the lalaurie manse, and clamored to see what was going on. that same day, the lalaurie’s were hosting one of their famously extravagant soirées. no doubt, preparations were being made at a fever pitch, and tensions were high. the curious neighbor (apparently not invited to the fête) witnessed madame delphine, dressed in her usual high-fashion regalia, chasing her young personal servant, while brandishing a whip. madame lalaurie followed her slave onto the roof of the house, where eventually the frightened young girl jumped to her demise, landing on the sidewalk as guests were arriving by coach. the party-goers were naturally shocked, but the cause of the tragedy was swept under the rug, as the body of the young slave girl was unceremoniously buried in the backyard of the house.

but that incident was just a hint of what went on behind closed doors. tales have been told that madame lalaurie was especially brutal with her minders, even in times when slaves were looked upon even less than mere animals. whether chaining her cook to the hot fire-burning stove, or whipping those who got out of line, madame lalaurie’s inhumane treatment of her slaves eventually aroused the suspicions of the authorities, and it wasn’t long before an investigation was brought upon the house. due to an existing law at the time which prohibited the same kind of treatment that the lalaurie’s soon became secretly infamous for, their slave charges were impounded and sold at auction. but madame lalaurie had other plans. she was not about to let them get away so easily. instead, she persuaded some relatives into bidding on the slaves so that she could then buy them back at a later time.

in april of 1834, the lalaurie mansion - and all of its horrors - were finally exposed completely. when a cook deliberately set fire to the kitchen during another of the family’s elaborate parties, pandemonium ensued, and again, the authorities were summoned to the address. the fireman ordered all of the lalaurie guests out onto the street as they attempted to put out the terrific blaze which invaded all corridors of the house. once contained, the smoldering embers led firefighters to a secret hidden door in the attic. as the barrier was pried open, the men discovered a horrific sight: more than a dozen slaves chained to the wall and brutalized like none had ever witnessed before. some of the poor tortured men and women were strapped to makeshift operating tables – the product of crude sex-change operations, while others had been crammed in cages made for dogs. the outrageous experiments at the hand of the lalaurie’s included the most grotesque imaginings ever. some slaves had their mouths filled with animal excrement and then sewn shut. some had their fingernails ripped off, their hands sewn to parts of their bodies, and holes drilled into their heads so that their brains could be stirred. one of the slaves appeared to have all of her bones broken and re-set so that her limbs looked like a crab’s, while even another had his skin removed in stripes so that his torso resembled that of a snake or worm. the worst part of the whole macabre scene was that some of these souls were still alive. the firefighters witnessed human body parts and organs scattered around and thrown chaotically into random buckets as a variety of whips and other torturing devices shared display space with severed heads and other grisly trophies.

without saying, once doctors were summoned to inspect the gruesome house, the party guests were outraged and disgusted. the lalauries’ atrocities soon spread throughout new orleans, much like the wildfire that found them out, and it wasn’t long before a lynch mob began gathering outside the mansion. but naturally, mastermind madame delphine was one step ahead of everyone else. as the crowd outside their charcoaled edifice grew in numbers, madame lalaurie, her husband louis, and their daughters made a break for it by charging out of their gates in their horse drawn carriage. the carriage raced through the streets of the french quarter by night and soon disappeared never to be seen again.

not surprising, the house at 1140 royal street is the sight of some of the most prevalent paranormal activity in the city. the screams of the tortured slaves can still be heard to this day. incandescent naked apparitions adorned with chains have often been blamed for many of the deaths that have occurred within the walls of the mansion in its many reincarnations since the flight of the lalaurie clan in 1834. during one of the more recent re-modelings of the building, an improvised graveyard of bones and remains was found underneath the floorboards in one of the first-floor rooms, proving that delphine had even more victims to her malicious credit.

no one quite knows for sure what happened to the family in question. some have speculated that they fled to paris or new york, while others imagine that they made it no farther than the forest along the north shore of lake ponchatrain. other rumors circulated that they remained even closer to new orleans, sheltered by relatives in a town on the outskirts of the city. of course, even the most intelligent and sophisticated criminals in hiding often test their luck. one wonders if madame lalaurie, once the matriarch of new orleans high society, ever returned to the french quarter – incognito - to the scene of her vilified crimes.

the descension of madame mineurecanal of faubourg marigny (2004)

just outside of new orleans‘ famed french quarter lies the city’s faubourg marigny district. today, the neighborhood is emerging as the achingly hip epicenter of activity for young artists, musicians, and associated groovers, but at the time of the turn of 19th century, it was also the locale that gave way to the infamous ghost story of madame mineurecanal.

madame mineurecanal lived alone with her small white dog in a two-and-a-half story abode on royal street right off of franklin. that is until one fateful afternoon when the grand creole lady took her own life - and that of her trusty canine sidekick. naturally, no one quite knows why she hung herself from an overhead beam located in the attic of her house, but from her activity in the afterlife, one can suss that perhaps she might have felt as though she made some sort of mistake. at the very least, madame mineurecanal must have felt some amount of guilt for snapping the neck of her faithful domestic companion.

the first written account of madame mineurecanal’s terrifying reappearance as an apparition occurred sometime in the mid-1940’s. due to previous unexplained paranormal activity (which included not only typical moaning noises and cold spots, but also the sound of a non-existing dog scampering across the attic floor), the then-current owner of the house on royal street sold the property to the grandparents of a man named ramon. ramon has since gone on record describing his experiences with the ghost his sister teresa curiously dubbed “mini-canal.”

ramon recalls that whenever he and his sister would get punished as children, his parents would send them to the landing of the staircase to the attic. there, they would wait alone until called for. it is at this location in the manse that ramon and teresa would often see an unknown woman walking down the stairs wearing a white dress. sometimes, she was alone, and at other times, she was accompanied by a little white dog. every time she was frightening, reaching her hands out to grab the young kids, her eyes bulging and neck horribly bloodied.

without remembering quite why, teresa began calling the ghost "mini-canal.” the name caught on, and soon all family members began referring to the apparition as such. and no one in the family was spared. ramon’s father had a run-in one evening with the spirit as he climbed into bed to caress the silhouette of what he thought was his wife. (the phantom who responded was certainly a shocking horror.) ramon and teresa’s grandmother was also startled one night to see the see-through image of a woman leaning over the crib of a visiting infant relative. once again, the vision had arms stretched out as if to steal the precious babe. perhaps the spirit in question was just lonely and longing for children of her own, but that did not matter to the residents of the house. when the specter turned violent, all bets were off.

a certain visiting cousin was first to feel the inter-dimensional wrath of the displaced, stirring ghoul. the young boy teased not only his relatives about their strange haunted house, but also taunted “mini-canal” herself by singing her name over and over again and chuckling heartily. the ghostly vision had the last laugh though, and after going to bed one night, the boy was awakened in his bed and began screaming. much to the horror of his family, they found a definitive red hand mark on the left side of his face. the boy had been slapped from the afterlife!

but madame mineurecanal was not satisfied yet. she made another visit – this occasion to ramon and teresa’s mother, who was seven-months pregnant at the time. the experience made the expectant mother’s heart stop beating for a spell, and two months later, the baby that would have been ramon and teresa’s new brother or sister was still-born.

it is said that madame mineurecanal still haunts the stairwell to this day.

le fantôme caroline du la petit théâtre du vieux carré (2004)

one fateful day, while frolicking and flirting with her director on the third floor balcony of la petit théâtre du vieux carré, the actress caroline reportedly slipped and plummeted to her deadly demise. the actress was costumed for that evening’s performance in a white wedding dress, which upon impact, was soon marred by a considerable amount of internal bleeding. the actual cause of caroline’s untimely fall is certainly up for debate, but one thing is for sure – caroline was not happy to go.

la petit théâtré du vieux carre opened in 1927, positioned across from the infamous cabildo at 616 st. peter street in the french quarter. the traumatic death of the their premiere actress just a few years later was only the beginning of the theatre’s troubles. you see, caroline herself had not been ready to leave this earthly plane, and reports of her ghostly image haunting the edifice soon began.

mostly benevolent and just plain mischevious, the phantom caroline enjoys misplacing and replacing key wardrobe pieces, lights, and other props at will. to some, she is a help – bringing lost items from the attic to those in need. to others, she is a cunning nasty – hiding shoes, hats, and cloaks in order to complicate that evening’s stage presentation.

caroline is not the only resident spectre of la petit theatre, but she is the most prevalent, and to this day, on “dark” monday nights, the “ghost light” is left on most specifically for her.