HAUNTED NEW ORLEANS

News, events & tales from the dark side the Crescent City

The new parading organization - Krewe of Boo - drew crowds in the Quarter, CBD and Warehouse District during its inaural parade Halloween night. The new krewe was formed by famed Mardi Gras float designer Blaine Kern post-Katrina.

Editor's note: Did you brave the crowds on Frenchmen? Share your thoughts on the experience »

Keith I. Marszalek / NOLA.comFrenchmen Street experience what it's like to be Bourbon Street on Mardi Gras Halloween Night, Friday, October 31, 2008.View more photos and videos from this weekend »NOLA's complete Halloween coverage »

Ask anyone who was there and they'll say the same thing, "Frenchmen was insane!"

Take one Mardi Gras style float laden parade, toss in Molly's annual walking parade, add one Friday night and multiply it by perfect weather and you get what was quite possibly the busiest night Frenchmen Street in the Marigny has ever seen.

From Esplanade Avenue to Royal Street, the popular drag experienced what its big brother Bourbon Street knows all to well during Mardi Gras; what it's like to cram capacity crowds from sidewalk to sidewalk without an inch of freedom to be found.

Photo by Milena MerrillGoth/biker/vampire enclave ushers in Halloween 2008

So wrong.

Editor's note: Check out NOLA's complete Haunted New Orleans section with event updates, photos, videos, contests and more at www.nola.com/haunted.

Susan Poag / The Times-PicayuneBlaine Kern, founder of the Krewe of Boo, is ready for the parade to roll Friday, raising money for the GNO First Responders Fund.

For more than two decades, Blaine Kern has brought his flair and "spooktacularness" to Universal Studios Orlando's "Halloween Horror Nights." But all the while, the self-proclaimed "Mr. Mardi Gras" said he dreamed of bringing such ghoulishness home to New Orleans.

"Each year we were drawing bigger and bigger crowds to Universal with our work," said Kern, who said he decided after Hurricane Katrina that it was time to make New Orleans "the Halloween center of America.

"I kept thinking," Kern said, " 'What if we could bring one more annual event to New Orleans? Wouldn't that be great for the city?' Halloween is just a natural with all the cultural ties we have to Marie Laveau, voodoo and all of our beautiful cemeteries. Everyone knows no one does a parade or party like New Orleans, so why not turn Halloween into yet another reason to come to New Orleans?"

Check out NOLA.com's complete Haunted New Orleans section. »

New Orleans area Halloween Events for 2008

Editor's note: Check out NOLA's complete Haunted New Orleans section with event updates, photos, videos, contests and more at www.nola.com/haunted.

Dylan Slagle / The Times-Picayune Jim Monaghan's Annual Halloween Parade snakes its way through the French Quarter.

Halloween parades are supposed to be spooky, but this year's version of Jim Monaghan's Annual Halloween Parade through the French Quarter has almost supernatural implications.

The feisty opinionated Irishman, one of the city's great characters and curmudgeons, died almost seven years ago but his wit lives on and so does his fright night parade, which emanates from Molly's at the Market, 1107 Decatur St.

Long an oasis and soapbox for journalists and politicians, it is now run by his son, Jim, who is the parade's big kahuna/grand marshal, a staple for any procession in New Orleans.