Ghosts of Prohibition Blues

In this story, our informant tells of a ghost story and/or legend that her aunt on her mom’s side has told her. Currently living in a small town in Bay Saint Louis, Mississippi, she and her husband moved out of their home after Hurricane Katrina. The informant explained that her aunt and uncle were the only people on their street to have survived the natural disaster. Considering the trauma, death, and destruction that they had experienced, they decided to move in 2009. That’s when they moved to a blues hall in Mississippi; this blues hall was special to the prohibition era that was in a dominantly black area. The locals would gather in this blues hall for music, dancing, and alcohol. Informant mentioned that “notoriously, when you do illegal things, bad things happen.” In this case, it was the consumption and making of alcohol. There were deaths in the hall because of it. So, moving in, informant’s aunt and uncle renovated half of the hall to make it into a house, and left the stage and parlor area, creating a business for throwing and booking events. After a year or so of living there, the aunt called her sister (informant’s mom) and told her “the craziest thing happened.” To which, she explained that she heard muffled voices coming from somewhere in the house. She also saw the dragging of a 12-ft. table across the parlor room. The aunt claims that these spirits aren’t harmful, but she does continue to hear voices and notices that things are always being misplaced. The informant first heard this eight years ago when these supernatural events happened in 2010. The informant enjoys telling this story because of how interesting the context of her family’s moving and its eeriness: coming from Hurricane Katrina to this setting is a different scenery, but still with an underlying tone of death. I personally think this is a super interesting piece of folklore and I wish there was more information on what kind of music was played and if there were ever any big names that came through the jazz hall. I also think it’s fascinating the context of why the family moved. They didn’t immediately leave New Orleans, but after they did, they went to another home where people were presumably murdered.