65: Casket Girls
Kathryn (00:10)
Hello everyone, welcome. Welcome to I Scream, You Scream we are your weekly scoop of the most chilling histories, mysteries and paranormal perplexities. My name is Kathryn.
Gina (00:22)
I'm Gina.
Kathryn (00:23)
And it's a brand new month, which means brand new topic. And this topic, what else would we be covering in the month of February other than New Orleans? And we will be covering New Orleans stories while we enjoy some coffee and bourbon ice cream. More on that in a little bit. But before we get to all that friendly reminder that we do post behind the scenes stuff regularly on Patreon.
So go ahead and join us over there if you are so inclined. If not, that's alright. We would love for you to give us a review instead. And if you do choose to do that, send us a screenshot of the review so that we can mail you a sticker. Please remember to give us your address, iscreamyouscreampod@gmail.com and we'll send you a free sticker for your preferably five-star review. Yeah, until then grab a spoon and let's dig in.
Gina (01:20)
was beautiful, you nailed it!
Kathryn (01:22)
Thank you.
Gina (01:23)
Great job.
Kathryn (01:26)
so let's address the elephant in the room and that is the fact that we do not currently have coffee and bourbon ice cream.
Gina (01:33)
Listen, it's been a week. We're trying to, because of, you know, we're still kind of coming off of like the craziness of December, we're trying to record quite a few episodes very fast. And so believe it or not, we time traveled and Cryptids Month was only two days ago for us.
Kathryn (01:37)
It has.
Yeah, and lots of cryptid stuff all at once, I'll say. ⁓ So I'm still dreaming of that rainbow sherbet, more of which I do have. I still have that whole ass tub, so I was like really excited to have more sherbet today. But I don't. So my excuse is just simply Phil did the shopping this week and I made the mistake of not putting ice cream onto that list,
Gina (02:00)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Kathryn (02:21)
yeah, that's my excuse. What's your excuse?
Gina (02:24)
My excuse is that Tom did the shopping.
Kathryn (02:28)
The problem is we both married 21st century men who share the household load with us. The problem is feminism, really, if you ask me.
Gina (02:35)
But you know what? I do
think the problem was a little bit me. Because I asked him to get coffee ice cream. Because I was going to try and make like a bourbon and coffee ice cream milkshake. And he sent me a picture of the only thing coffee ice cream related that they had in the store, And I was like, yeah, sure, it's fine. I'll make it work. So instead, I have...
Kathryn (02:48)
yeah.
Gina (02:58)
coffee flavored mochi balls, which I'm really excited about because I like mochi.
Kathryn (03:02)
my God, I love
mochi balls, what? Ooh, those are so good. Okay, that counts. That definitely counts. Ooh, yeah, okay, yeah, I love that for you.
Gina (03:06)
Cheers!
on the bourbon front, I also thought that I had a bottle of bourbon downstairs, but I didn't. So.
Kathryn (03:22)
Okay, I was
wondering if you- because you mentioned it and I didn't know if you were gonna... Okay, good. It does, what is it?
Gina (03:27)
I still have a drink. I have a drink that kind of looks like bourbon, but it is
Stroopwafel Liqueur.
Kathryn (03:35)
What? That sounds good.
Gina (03:37)
Delicious. My mom sent it to me
a few days ago, because the last time we were together we had some of this and it was awesome. So she sent me a bottle because she rocks. So thanks mom. I'm enjoying it very much.
Kathryn (03:45)
Gail, my goodness. Wow,
what a lovely present. my God, I love that for you so much. Damn, that sounds so good. That actually reminds me, I was gonna do something similar. Okay, so mine is, I just have a boring ass cup of coffee that I was going to put like some type of flavoring in to make it a little deserty, but I forgot and you just reminded me.
Gina (03:52)
Very good, yes.
Hehehehehe
Kathryn (04:12)
of that. So unfortunately
it's just black coffee. while Phil was shopping, he got these little... This is a stretch, so bear with me. He got these little honey, like dark chocolate covered honey graham bites. And I love honey bourbon. So that's my contribution. Yeah.
Gina (04:29)
⁓ yum.
enough, you know what I mean? Like we both
did our best.
Kathryn (04:40)
It's what I have.
Okay, so I mean, while we're making excuses for ourselves, did we ever explain to people why we chose what we chose?
Gina (04:52)
No, because it was my job to do it and I forgot.
So, here's the skinny. Kathryn and I went to New Orleans together
We had so many good memories on that trip. And one of our favorite ones was going to... It's Cafe du Monde, isn't it, with the beignets? Going there. And I think you described it the other day as just being covered in powdered sugar and drinking coffee together, because we were kind of towards the end of the trip. And so we were a little bit tired, but we still wanted to be out and doing things. And so that trip...
Kathryn (05:12)
Mm-hmm. That's the famous one, yeah.
Yes.
Gina (05:29)
that coffee and beignet trip saved our lives a little bit. And so when we, yes.
Kathryn (05:33)
that gave us the last day and
a half on that trip. We needed that coffee and sugar to sustain us for the rest of the trip. And for anyone who's not been to New Orleans, especially people over on your side of the pond, I can't even begin to verbalize how hot and sticky it is 24-7. It is an amount of humidity and heat that feels oppressive, but kind of in a beautiful...
Gina (05:38)
Mm-hmm.
my God. Mm-hmm.
Kathryn (06:03)
like liberating type of way. Like that was the first time I genuinely didn't give a fuck what I looked like on a trip because like everyone is just so hot and miserable, but like together and so therefore it's wonderful and great. So like when I say we were covered in sugar stick, it was like we were like children in candy covered coating, but like in a really great lovely way.
Gina (06:05)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yes.
Kathryn (06:31)
And yeah, Gina was the one that proposed this flavor idea. And we've never talked about the fact that we did so many awesome things on that trip that we have talked about many times. So I'm not going to just give a rundown of our New Orleans trip together. But we've never talked about that particular day being a favorite memory of that trip. So I just really loved that both of us had that.
Gina (06:46)
Hmm.
Mm-mm.
Kathryn (06:58)
And like we've literally never mentioned it as that as like that being the thing that like sticks out to us or whatever. So, yeah, just paying homage to the thing that got us through our trip in New Orleans, which is sugar and coffee and bourbon. Of course, so much bourbon. Yeah. Right now, we just have it like metaphorically. Eventually, we will have it for real.
Gina (07:14)
Hell yeah. And so much bourbon, which we will have eventually. We'll get there.
This is the pregame. In true New Orleans style, this is the drinking before the drinking.
Kathryn (07:32)
yeah, another announcement. I'll take this one because I've been sitting on this for a year. Friends, guess what holiday is coming up? Ice cream for breakfast day. At the time this is published will be this Saturday, right? Saturday, February 7th is National Ice Cream for Breakfast Day. And I was so excited.
Gina (07:50)
Yes. huh.
Kathryn (07:57)
to talk about it last February and completely forgot and I have been so distraught over it. So please join us. We will be having ice cream for breakfast on February 7th. There's nowhere you need to be. This isn't like a real gathering, but just like emotionally. If you have ice cream for breakfast on Saturday, February the 7th, 2026, let us know because I definitely will be.
Gina (08:01)
Yeah.
Kathryn (08:26)
I'll be having so much ice cream for breakfast because I've been waiting for this. I'm so excited.
Gina (08:32)
Ice Cream for Breakfast Day because I was curious about why it exists. Like, love that it exists, but just seems a little random. So I went on its Wikipedia page and apparently what Wikipedia says is it all got started when a mom had two young kids who I think like they were...
She was trying to find a way to entertain them or something, so she said, let's have ice cream for breakfast today. And it just became a yearly tradition that they started doing. And then when grew up, they told their friends about it and would invite people over for it. And it grew and grew and grew. And now it's this international thing, which I love. A mother's ingenuity.
Kathryn (09:05)
Hmm.
Wait, first and foremost,
I just love that you looked it up. I just check what weird national day is happening. I've never once questioned the origins of any of them. I'm like, was national dog day? Great, no questions. Let like sign me up. I love that you like, you're the first person I know who like actually looked into the origins. I think that's fantastic. you ever have ice cream for breakfast growing up?
Gina (09:37)
I don't think so. We had ice cream traditions in my household, but never for breakfast.
Kathryn (09:40)
Yeah,
that was our every year for our birthday. We were allowed to have ice cream for breakfast. Yeah. Yeah, that was like the birthday thing.
Gina (09:44)
Aww.
Cute.
Yeah, ours was always you got to pick what you had for dinner on your birthday. And it could be anything you want, then the ice cream thing was, I think it was every Sunday, my dad would make, yeah, every Sunday, my dad would make ice cream sundaes for me and my sister. And he would do it in a French accent, like he was a waiter taking our order. And it was really funny. It was awesome.
Kathryn (09:55)
Mm-hmm.
Cool.
⁓ Wait, I love that.
I love that. Yeah, we did the like, choose your own dinner or whatever. My favorite one. This is such an aside, but I think of this every year around my birthday. grew up in the country. I've always been a city girl at heart. So I'd like watch movies of like single girls in their twenties in the city and blah, blah, blah. And I always thought it was so cool. And I fully romanticized when like,
the gal pals would get together and be eating Chinese takeout out of those white boxes, just like with their chopsticks right out of the box. And we didn't have any Chinese restaurants in my town. You had to like go to the next town over, so nowhere delivered. So my mom I asked specifically for what I wanted for my birthday that year, my birthday dinner was...
Gina (10:39)
Mm.
Kathryn (11:02)
Chinese takeout in white boxes. Because the ones near us just had those plastic containers. So my mom literally went through the phone book calling Chinese restaurants to ask what their takeout container situation was. And she found one that she had to, it was far away. She had to drive out to this restaurant just to get takeout in these white boxes.
Gina (11:05)
Aww.
Mm-hmm.
That's so sweet!
Kathryn (11:30)
Which like kind of defeats the purpose. Like she put like the purpose of takeout is like low effort. She put so much effort into this, but I've never forgotten that birthday. Thanks mom. That was like to this day, one of my favorite birthday meals I've ever had. I was so excited. I was so excited to eat out of those white boxes. Yeah.
Gina (11:45)
It's so classic.
That's how I always felt about Cosmos, because it was always in those same shows where they would go, they would drink Cosmos or they would drink Lemon Drops. And so on my 21st birthday, when it was my first time in a bar and they asked me what I wanted and I panicked and I said Lemon Drop and the bartender just gave me this look, but I didn't know.
Kathryn (11:51)
Yes! Mm-hmm.
Yep.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. That's just not the vibe at those
va- yeah.
Gina (12:09)
Yeah, I just had no idea and it was good. It was nice
Kathryn (12:12)
I do love a lemon drop martini so much, but that is like, yeah, the types of bars that we have frequented, particularly around here, that's not a normal order.
Gina (12:15)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Yeah, no. And
it was like one in the morning too. Yeah.
Kathryn (12:28)
⁓ God, yeah, no.
Remember when we did green tea shots with my mom? That was fantastic. That was so much fun.
Gina (12:32)
Yeah. I will never forget doing green tea shots with your mom. That was the most fun night. that
Kathryn (12:42)
have a story for me about New Orleans? I don't know this one.
Gina (12:45)
I do have a story for you about New Orleans.
Kathryn you will know this because I don't know if you remember, but we actually went to New Orleans together a while ago. I'm sure it's like distant past for you, but we did go, believe it or not. And we know firsthand that there is absolutely no shortage of spooky sites and stories about that city, which is one of the reasons why if you
ever do go there, you'll run into like roughly 20 million tour groups, give or take, plus or minus. And if you listening have been on one of these tours, there's absolutely no shame because Kathryn and I did the same thing when we were there and it was great. And while you're on one of these tours, you're very lucky, might take you to see the oldest building in New Orleans, which is a 275 year old convent.
in its oldest neighborhood, the French Quarter. Your tour guide might tell you about its lovely French colonial architecture or the long history of Ursuline nuns in the city, or they might tell you that some of the convent's residents were rumored to be vampires. It's a vampire story. So the legend goes that in the late 1720s, a ship
Kathryn (13:59)
What? Yay!
Gina (14:07)
of young single women from France arrived in New Orleans looking for husbands. And when they disembarked, residents were immediately taken aback by their deathly pale skin, which blistered just moments after stepping into the Louisiana sunshine. Try saying that five times fast when you're drinking liqueur. That is hard. my God. No, I'm never gonna say that again. I'm deleting this document after I'm done with this.
Kathryn (14:29)
I was gonna say, I don't want to do that sober. My goodness, good job.
Gina (14:38)
But stranger than their pale skin was the women's luggage, because each of them carried a massive suitcase that was shaped suspiciously like a casket that you would keep a body in. Strange appearances aside, the women moved into the third-floor attic of a local convent where they would live until they found a husband. But pretty soon after they arrived there, the nuns noticed that strange things had started happening.
mirrors started going missing, neighbors started falling sick, and mysterious deaths seemed to crop up across the city where bodies would be found with wounds on their neck, drained of all their blood
The nuns naturally started growing suspicious of these newcomers, these mysterious women, and so one night they decided to sneak into the women's rooms on the third floor and take a look in those casket-shaped suitcases. But when they opened them up, there was nothing inside. Not a single possession in sight. Almost like whatever was in them had gotten out. Some say...
that when the women traveled to New Orleans, they smuggled over vampires from the Old World in those caskets and set them loose upon the city. Others say that the women themselves were the vampires and that they retreated into those caskets to sleep during the daylight hours. Either way, nuns obviously could not abide such devilry in their lovely convent, so they made sure nothing and no one
got into or out of that attic again. do it, it's said that they nailed the shutters closed with hundreds of silver nails blessed by the pope. Which is intense, yeah, yep. But ultimately their efforts were in vain because the legend goes that the casket girls are still there to this day, sleeping in the same caskets they brought with them while the sun is up.
Kathryn (16:29)
Okay. Yeah.
Gina (16:45)
and breaking out of the convent to stalk the streets of New Orleans by night.
Kathryn (16:51)
obsessed.
Gina (16:53)
So that's my episode. Thank you so much for coming. Keep it cool, keep it creepy. Told you it was gonna be short.
Kathryn (16:55)
You
Honestly, like I do feel like I just went on a whole ass journey with you and like if that was a whole episode I Like my emotions already feel like that is possible. I'm obsessed. I didn't never ⁓ my gosh I just realized I'm wearing my vampire Rolling Stone shirt. ⁓ That's perfect. Okay. Tell me more
Gina (17:11)
I'm
my God, perfect. Yes, I love it. That is perfect. Okay.
Okay, so that is the legend of the Casket Girls, which is obviously an incredibly compelling legend. I absolutely love the story of this so much, but I will tell you right now, it is very unlikely to be true.
This is something that is grounded in real historical events, like the Casket Girls were real people, but it's a story that morphed and shifted over time from reality into this dark, twisted tale of killer women besieging a city. today, I want to talk about the actual history of the Casket Girls. Because like I said, they were real, they just probably weren't vampires.
We will get into it, but to tell the whole story, we have to go all the way back to the very beginning of New Orleans when it was like an itty bitty baby little city. And really way back in the early 1700s when this story starts, it was more of like an outpost than anything else. The area was owned by France at the time, so my French accent may or may not be making a comeback in this episode, apologies in advance.
Kathryn (18:30)
Where I do want to just do a disclaimer for this whole month, please forgive our French accents when we say French names because New Orleans is like a French city. So like that's going to be true for all of our episodes, I think.
Gina (18:34)
Mm-hmm.
Ugh.
Can I tell you something funny? It has to do with French pronunciation. So when I was researching this episode, ⁓ Lore did an episode on the Casket Girls. And so I wanted to listen to it, but I didn't want to listen to something. I wanted to read something. So I was reading the transcript of Aaron Mahnke's episode and the street that the convent is on. I think it's pronounced like Chartres Street or something like that. But the transcript called it Shart Street.
Kathryn (18:47)
What?
okay.
Mm.
Gina (19:15)
And it made me laugh and laugh. Yeah. But yes, sorry in advance. Wee ha ha ha.
Kathryn (19:15)
Love it. Love it. I love a transcript.
Gina (19:26)
So yes, this area was owned by France back then, and New Orleans was part of a larger colony than included parts of modern day Mississippi and Alabama. And also like lots of other places as well, but that's kind of where our story takes place. So right now, we're not talking about New Orleans, the city specifically, but we will get there, so stick with me. A lot of people who lived in French colonial this area,
were mostly men. There were a lot of explorers, a lot of trappers, lot of tradesmen, a lot of soldiers, that kind of thing. And there were women there, but just not a whole lot of French women, AKA not a whole lot of white girls. And for a while, that was totally fine. But eventually, local religious authorities got pretty angsty about that.
because they were worried that by marrying women from native populations, the colonists would lose their inherent Christian Frenchness. they decided to launch this big campaign to literally import women from France for the sole purpose of marrying the colonists and populating the area with these white Christian babies. Which already, I like...
Not surprised to learn that this is something that happened, but it's not something I've ever heard about before. You know what I mean?
Kathryn (20:48)
Yeah, I'm just purposely keeping my mouth shut on all my thoughts on that. We know what our thoughts are on this. I feel like that's something retrospectively, it makes sense that they would do that, you know, but it feels weird to talk about in 2026, you know.
Gina (20:53)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
It
does. Yeah. like by the time that this would have happened in the early 1700s, the practice of shipping women overseas to get married to strangers wasn't anything new, even by then standards. Like King Louis XIV, or had done something similar in Canada about 40 years previously where they, again, they sent hundreds of women over from France to become wives.
Kathryn (21:24)
Yeah.
Gina (21:36)
and they were called Les Filles de Roi or the King's Daughters. And it was considered to be like this big successful venture that they wanted to replicate in their more southern colonies. So they decided to do it again. And that meant that they had to find some eligible young ladies that they could send over. But not just any ladies. No, no, no. They had to find good Christian women who wouldn't mind overhauling their lives.
And they also definitely for sure had to be virgins.
Kathryn (22:08)
Well, of course.
Gina (22:09)
Of course, of course.
So naturally, they started combing through convents and religious orphanages in France to find women who maybe didn't have that much money, so they would be open to starting a new life. But more importantly, because they were raised in a religious environment, their virginity was seen to be guaranteed. Which I'm sure was a foolproof plan.
Kathryn (22:32)
Yes,
as all religious endeavors are.
Gina (22:36)
Yes, agreed.
It is worth noting, though, the women weren't technically forced to go. They did volunteer. However, they were definitely misled about the kind of life they would have in the New World. So they were promised throngs of strapping young bachelors and land that was rich in wealth and resources and all this stuff. I know, your face is my feelings. But the reality of it wound up being the total
of what they thought they were gonna get. The first group of women who came over, well, first group of girls who came over, there were 23 of them, and they arrived in 1704 in Mobile, Alabama. So we're not in Louisiana yet, but like, trust the process. And the reason I call them girls is because they were between the ages of 14 to 19 years old.
Kathryn (23:29)
That's just why. See, that's the thing. Like, man, those were women back then. Isn't that so fucked up? Oh my God.
Gina (23:35)
Mm-hmm.
Yep,
I think I remember reading that at the time ⁓ women in France could be married starting at the age of 12. And so this was like, they had given them a few extra years in all of their benevolence.
Kathryn (23:46)
Yeah. Yeah.
Well, I hope they pat themselves on their backs. Nice and hard for that one. I'm going to mute myself.
Gina (23:55)
Well, think these,
but yes, these girls, came over on a ship called the Pelican, which is why you'll also hear, in the same breath as like casket girls, people often reference the Pelican girls. They're technically different groups of women slash girls, but they're, yeah, they're in the same kind of wave of history. Yeah. And.
Kathryn (24:11)
⁓ I've heard of that. Okay.
Interesting. Okay. Nice.
Gina (24:22)
Again, all of these girls had come from convents and orphanages, which maybe wasn't the most glamorous way to grow up to begin with, but their living conditions dropped drastically when they reached their new home. The heat, like you were talking about earlier, was oppressive as hell, not to mention no AC. Their homes were shoddy, they had dirt floors.
Their windows were covered with animal skin. There were issues with disease. A few of the girls on the way over caught yellow fever and died because conditions on the boat were so bad. Like it just really, really, really sucked. when the girls were matched with husbands, shocker, things really didn't get a whole lot better. Many of them were abusive and pretty much all of them spent the majority of their time out trapping or hunting or
instead of helping their foreign wife build a new life here. And it got so bad that these girls banded together and decided to launch a rebellion.
Hell yeah, right?
Kathryn (25:29)
Okay, I'm listening.
Gina (25:31)
Yeah. So they launched this group of teenage girls launched what is now called a petticoat rebellion where they refused their husbands bed and board until conditions improved. So like I'm not doing a goddamn thing with you or for you until you get your shit together was the vibe. Love it. And wouldn't you know it, it worked. Conditions did improve and ultimately the Pelican girls were seen as yet another
Kathryn (25:50)
Okay, yeah.
Gina (26:00)
Success.
Kathryn (26:02)
reminding me of that play. What's that play where they go on a sex strike until the men stop going to war? That's what it's reminding me of.
Gina (26:06)
Oh, I know the one you're talking about. It's the Greek one.
Yeah, I can't remember the name of it. But it's, I think it's meant to be a, maybe, I'm, there we go. Oh my gosh. Nice. Yeah, yeah, yeah, 100%. That's totally what it was. But without the, it's about.
Kathryn (26:15)
Lyssa? Lisa? Lysistrata That reminds me of Lysistrata is the name of the play. That reminds me of that. Yeah.
Very different story,
but just, love a story where women identify their greatest power and use it against men. That is the theme of all of my favorite stories throughout history.
Gina (26:39)
Agreed. Yes.
Very big fan
and love that it goes back so far. Cause that's like some ancient Greeks, you know?
Kathryn (26:47)
Yes. That was an ancient... Yeah, yeah.
Gina (26:52)
anyway, yes. years passed by and the colonist population, it was still considered too small for what France wanted. Plus by this point, the French economy was not doing too well because King Louis XIV was a very opulent king
So he had spent a lot of the country's money and he had also taken part in like some casual warfare that left the country pretty much close to bankruptcy. So the king turned to a guy named John Law to help him figure it out.
Kathryn (27:29)
Literally Johnny Law.
Gina (27:31)
Literally Johnny Law, yeah. And you're not going to like Johnny Law.
Kathryn (27:32)
Okay.
No, of course I'm not. His name is John Law. Of course I don't like the guy.
Gina (27:40)
Yeah, and
he was a bit of a nepo baby. He came from a family of very wealthy bankers and John had managed to ingratiate himself with the French royal family after he had to flee the UK for killing someone in a duel. So he's just like, of course he's qualified to give the French king economic policy opinions and feedback. Why not? So John was like, look, Mr. King, I can get you the money that you need.
Kathryn (28:03)
Sure, why not?
Gina (28:10)
to help your economy, but to do it, we have to keep populating Louisiana so that we can profit off of trade and minerals and other stuff. And the king was like, great work, John. A plus, supply and demand, ha ha ha, wee wee wee, totally see what you mean. We can definitely send more people to So they kicked off this big marketing campaign where they described Louisiana as the new Garden of Eden, like paradise on earth.
in an effort to convince more people to move there and labor for them so they could profit off of it. Issue was, it didn't really work. Turns out that picking up your entire life to move somewhere that kind of sucks a little bit isn't the most compelling narrative, even if you compare it to Eden. So they only wound up getting around 800 settlers to move to Louisiana, which is like great and all positive progress, but not enough for what they needed, not even close.
Kathryn (29:04)
Yeah.
Gina (29:07)
So John came up with a new idea. He said, hey, we have a bunch of people just hanging out in prison here. Why don't we send them to Louisiana? And that's what they did. They went to guys who were in prison and said to them, hey, you can have your freedom if you marry a prostitute and move to French colony of Louisiana. With the idea of like, it gets rid of two people.
who are seen as undesirable, the guy who's in prison and the sex worker. And they both get sent over, and then they have babies once they get there.
Kathryn (29:45)
Wait, like I hate this as a concept in the way of like tricking people to go do labor for you. But like, I kind of love like knowing that this is how New Orleans was built. Like I'm loving that seed planting, knowing what New Orleans culture is now. I'm kind of obsessed with that.
Gina (29:52)
Ahem.
Right? Yes, yeah.
Yes, yeah, and it did wind up becoming, like in a lot of the research I was doing, people talked about ⁓ how people trace their lineage back to a lot of the women who were brought over from overseas. And it was a point of pride to say that you weren't related to one of these women because they were seen as like rough and lower class.
Kathryn (30:33)
Yeah.
Gina (30:34)
So it did impact the history and the legacy of New Orleans in a very, very big way. And that's before we even get into, it wasn't even just the couples they were sending over. They also wanted to find additional wives for the male colonists. So they started just crawling through the streets of France looking for more women who they thought that no one would miss. So that included female prisoners and sex workers, but also women who were just in debt or poor. And a lot of the times, the women who were in prison
Kathryn (30:38)
Yeah, absolutely.
Gina (31:04)
their families would be the one going to the government and saying, hey, can you deport my daughter because she'll stand a better chance over there than she does here.
Kathryn (31:14)
Okay, that makes sense. was like, ew, why were they trying to get rid of their daughter? But, yeah, maybe if, I mean, I do get it.
Gina (31:17)
I know.
In the narrative of the New World and it being the Garden of Eden, I get the appeal.
Kathryn (31:25)
Yeah.
And also like the lack of options there. Like if you have a record and you have an opportunity to be somewhere where it's kind of, I imagine it was marketed as kind of a clean start for people. Yeah, I get that.
Gina (31:40)
Yes. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Yeah, it was kind of like American Dream before we had that phrase. Yeah. Yeah, so one way or another, they rounded up a new group of women who became known as the Corrections Girls. So we've got the Pelican Girls, and now we have the Corrections Girls. We will get to the Casket Girls eventually. But I just think this is so they were sent over.
Kathryn (31:47)
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
Gina (32:08)
And it didn't go very, very crowded, very fast. There were, again, problems with disease. And a lot of the men who lived there just straight up refused to marry these women who they thought of as criminals or lower class or something like that. And in fact, a lot of people here wound up moving to the area that would become New Orleans proper to get away from what they saw as a rough crowd. So long story short.
John was relieved of his position and ran away to Venice where he died in poverty in 1729.
Kathryn (32:43)
Okay, wow, that's random as hell. All right.
Gina (32:45)
Yeah. I wanted
to include how he died because I appreciate it.
Kathryn (32:50)
Yeah, that was like, I was not expecting that at all. ⁓
Gina (32:54)
Yeah, I wanted
to that one in there. But we have to go back to France where they still needed more women to move to Louisiana. But they had learned their lesson about finding the right, quote, quality of women. So this time they went back to the orphanages, back to the convents to find more. And they found the women who would eventually become known as the Casket Girls.
So we're finally there. It took a while. We're 40 minutes into this recording, but I'm ready to talk about the actual casket girls now. the story goes that 88 women were chosen specifically because of their virtue and good health. And they departed for New Orleans on a ship called La Baline or in English, the whale. And the conditions on board were not great. For starters, the journey would have taken around three to six months.
and the women spent most of that time below deck in conditions that were less than favorable to make the understatement of the year. It was filthy, it was crowded, the weather wasn't always cooperative, disease was once again an issue, and they were in a constant state of anxiety due to the threat of pirates and things like that. So not exactly a leisurely cruise across the Atlantic. Plus, and this was like kind of the cherry on top for me,
A lot of people say that the women had babysitters traveling with them, it was a group of three nuns that people say watched over the girls to make sure that their virginity remained intact while they were on.
Kathryn (34:29)
was very confused when you said babysitter.
Gina (34:33)
Yeah, not like
literal babysitter, but might as well be.
Kathryn (34:37)
Yeah.
I'm gonna be myself again. I just am so like, my, ugh. Do do do.
Gina (34:43)
Yeah.
So I couldn't find any direct accounts from these women about what their experience was like on board the whale, but it seems to be characterized as a very dangerous, extremely restrictive ordeal. So that by the time they arrived in New Orleans, they were deathly pale and probably very gaunt looking because they had spent the majority of the last three to six months without seeing the sunshine.
and being close to malnourishment. And that's where the first hallmark of the casket girl legend as vampires kind of starts, that these girls must have been vampires because they looked like death, when in reality they looked like death because they probably felt like death.
Kathryn (35:29)
Yeah, that makes sense.
Gina (35:33)
Yeah, and once again, conditions off of the boat were not that much better than conditions on the boat, because when they arrived, New Orleans was only around a decade old, and it was described as, quote, a place of a hundred wretched hovels.
Yeah, not great. It had been designed to be this like wonderful city was the epicenter of trade and all of that stuff. But because John from earlier fucked around and found out the economy wasn't doing too hot and things like food and resources were still really hard to come by. So these women, much like the ones who came before them, went from hell on a boat to hell on the ground. let's talk about the luggage.
Kathryn (35:51)
Okay.
Gina (36:18)
did they actually bring caskets with them? No, not the way that we think of them. Instead, they brought these little suitcases with them that held a few personal possessions, like big enough for a few dresses, maybe a couple of petticoats. These things were designed so that they would be really easy for the women to carry across this voyage. And in France, the word for this type of suitcase was cassette, which evolved into casquette.
which is very similar to the English word casket, and that's where we get the rumor that they brought caskets with them.
Kathryn (36:52)
Okay, that makes sense.
Gina (36:54)
Fun little linguistic trivia.
Kathryn (36:56)
I like that.
Gina (36:58)
by this point, the women didn't have husbands yet, because they had just gotten there. So they needed someplace to stay while they waited to be married off. And they did wind up staying with Ursuline nuns. If you'll remember the convent at the very top, that was an Ursuline convent. And at the time, Ursuline nuns were very new to the area.
The nuns had only arrived in 1727, so about a year before the Casket Girls did. And their whole mission was to educate the female colonists. We talked about this a little bit in the ⁓ Loudon possessions episode, but Ursuline nuns are very big on education. It's like one of their whole things. So the nuns in New Orleans offered the Casket Girls a place to stay, but they also started a school to educate them.
while they waited for husbands, which I thought was pretty nice, because you don't really hear that much about that kind of thing.
Kathryn (37:51)
Yeah.
I don't know, I have nothing to say that other than I like when people treat women like humans in historical stories. Yeah. Yeah.
Gina (38:01)
It is nice, isn't it? Sure is nice, yeah.
Yeah. Not to be an immediate bummer, but it's okay.
Kathryn (38:11)
Okay, that's why I didn't
want to say anything, because I was like, this is, I'm having too positive a reaction to this. What else do you have for me?
Gina (38:15)
you
It's okay,
I'm not yet going to talk about ⁓ women being mistreated. I'm going to talk about a misconception about the legend of the Casket Girls. So the convent that I mentioned at the very beginning, the one that a lot of tour guides say is haunted by these vampires, that's not really the one the Casket Girls stayed in. By the time they arrived, there wasn't even a convent in New Orleans yet.
And the one that people say is the Casket Girl Convent was actually built in 1751, which was 25 years after the Casket Girls arrived. But yeah, yeah, there was an earlier convent as well, but even that one was built six years after they arrived. So there wasn't really a period of time where all of the Casket Girls were living in a convent with the because the girls were still taken in by the nuns or like taken care of by the nuns,
Kathryn (38:54)
Interesting, okay.
Gina (39:13)
They've always been associated together. And so over time, people were like, there's an old Ursuline convent in the area that the casket girls lived in. We know that they lived with the nuns, therefore the casket girls must have lived in that convent, which is not the case. And to dig into a few more details from the legend, those ⁓ shutters that I mentioned that were supposedly nailed shut with silver nails blessed by the Pope.
Those are actually hurricane shutters, So there's very practical use for them, which makes a whole lot of sense. But also, the whole Pope thing probably isn't true either, because New Orleans didn't have a Pope come to visit until 1987, quite a long time after. And in theory, people in the 1700s could have imported silver nails blessed by the Pope to New Orleans, but I don't think they could have afforded it because France was broke.
Kathryn (39:44)
Yeah.
Gina (40:11)
They had to buy the store brand nails. Sorry, we can't all afford nails from the Pope.
Kathryn (40:14)
No
designer nails here, we've got generic only.
Gina (40:19)
No.
Michael Kors nails.
But regardless, ⁓ as the women found husbands or jobs and integrated into society, because not all of them got married, some of them got by as seamstresses or things like that, story of their voyage was passed down to their children and then their children's children and their children's children's children, and eventually it made its way through decades and generations and became the vampire legend that we know today.
So how did that happen? How did we get from girls came over, chilled with nuns for a bit, were kind of pale, had tiny suitcases too. They smuggled over Nosferatu from France. Well, we've talked about some of it already. Where the pale skin came from, the whole casquette versus casket thing. But even then, the vampire rumors didn't really start spreading in earnest until maybe the 19th century. But really,
it's in the 20th century that they started to gain a lot of traction. Why, you ask? Well, it's because in the 20th century we saw a huge boom in vampire interest, which a lot of people attribute to Anne Rice's novel, Interview for a Vampire. there's the whole argument that that book kicked off a lot of the vampire mania that we're still seeing today. like vampire diaries, true blood, the whole...
the peak millennial experience that was Twilight. And so of course, when society started to develop a strong appetite for this kind of story, interest in things that could be seen as vampire adjacent, like the story of the Casket Girls, gains a lot of attention, despite the fact that all of the vampire-y factors can pretty much be explained very rationally.
That's the boring part, sorry. None of it's actually probably true. ⁓
Kathryn (42:18)
I love the apology. You
know, damn well I was over here like, okay, but how could there really be vampires there?
Gina (42:28)
Well, I will tell you because just because we can explain some things rationally doesn't mean that rumors no longer spread about the convent. Specifically, there's a story that gets thrown around a lot that says in 1978, two paranormal investigators decided to see if the rumor about the casket girls or the convent was true. So when night came, they snuck onto the convent grounds and set up camp.
in front of the building with like cameras pointing at those shutters. Hours passed, they didn't see anything, they didn't see anything. And after waiting long enough, you know, they started to get tired. So they slowly drifted off to sleep. And it said that in that period of time, right, as the two people were like, they had fallen asleep, the camera captured one of those shutters opening before the camera died.
Kathryn (43:21)
Ooh.
Gina (43:23)
The following morning, passersby found the cold, lifeless bodies of the two investigators still on the lawn, but they had been drained of all of their blood.
Kathryn (43:35)
Wait, is that real?
Gina (43:37)
Okay, so it's a very spooky story, but it's never been substantiated by a police report or a newspaper or anything like that. So there's a very high likelihood that this is fake lore. Throwback to an earlier episode. Hey, bring it back. Even still, some people swear that sometimes those shutters on the convent really do open. And when you look inside, you can see a gaunt, pale face of a woman looking back at you.
Kathryn (43:41)
Okay.
Okay.
my gosh, wow, okay, yeah. Okay. ⁓
Gina (44:06)
with hunger in her eyes.
Kathryn (44:09)
I just got chills. Wow, that was good. That was really good. That's spooky.
Gina (44:12)
Thank you. And that's the story
of the Casket Girls. That is the true and also legend story of the Casket Girls.
Kathryn (44:21)
That's spooky. Man, you know I love a New Orleans vampire though. I'm just sitting here trying to like, maybe they were vampires. I don't think.
Gina (44:23)
Interesting,
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I know.
I know, I really wanted
them to be.
Kathryn (44:38)
I don't think they're vampires. I do believe there are vampires in New Orleans though, which feels very counterintuitive because it is so sunny and hot. But there's a lot of secrets down in New Orleans, so they could be hiding lots of different places. Doesn't it just seem too sunny for a vampire?
Gina (44:46)
Mm.
Yeah, I don't know that much about New Orleans, but I imagine there's places that the sun doesn't really touch.
Kathryn (45:04)
That's what I'm thinking, because they've got those narrow streets, so it'd be easy to dip in and out of... Yeah, I don't know. I love a New Orleans vampire vibe, like the True Blood vampire vibe. I don't know, I love that. There's a grittiness to it that doesn't occur with other vampire legends that I just really appreciate.
Gina (45:07)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
I like it too, because whenever I picture vampires in New Orleans, it's always jazz music in the background, and I like the mix of those two things.
Kathryn (45:27)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. that's interesting. I never heard of the casket. I've never heard of the casket girls before. That's interesting.
Gina (45:43)
Well, now someone mentions them
in front of you, you can say, well, did you know that? And then you can talk for 40 minutes.
Kathryn (45:51)
I'm just going to be like, funny you should mention that and then send them a link to this episode and then just leave and never speak to them ever again.
Gina (46:01)
I'll speak to you when you've done your homework. Bye. Yes, but just like an Ursuline, nun would.
Kathryn (46:03)
Educate yourself.
Wait, am I a nun? ⁓ that's the other thing I was gonna say.
I just love the combination of a nun being a vampire.
Gina (46:22)
Ooh, that would be cool. Yeah, I'm into that. That's not too far off from a dowry of blood, because Constanta, I've never said that name out loud. Constanta? Is that how you say it? I don't know. The main character, she was a super religious vampire, which was interesting.
Kathryn (46:22)
How cool would that be? A vampire nun?
Me too.
I don't know.
Mm-hmm.
feel like, yeah, this story kind of has similar vibes of that book. Like that book, who was the other one? Who was the other woman? The other love interest. I don't remember her name. ⁓ my God. Which funny enough, I had a I don't know where she is, but when I was younger, I had these two.
Gina (46:49)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Mmm, it started with a Magdalena.
I loved her.
Kathryn (47:10)
⁓ skeleton ornament doll things. And it was a man and a woman and the woman, the skeleton, I named her Magdalena. ⁓ But she also had kind of New Orleans skeleton type vibes. Anyway, her character gives me like New Orleans vampire vibes, like how she was very like sexy and party and blah, blah, Anyway.
Gina (47:23)
nice.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Kathryn (47:38)
Just for the listeners, go read A Dowery of Blood because it was recommended to me by a coworker. The author came into the bookstore asking if we had any of their books that she could sign. And I didn't know who she was, but my coworker was like, my gosh, this author is here. You would love this book. You need to this. So I immediately purchased this book that this author signed.
Gina (47:51)
wow.
Nice.
Kathryn (48:08)
I read the book and I literally like, it was read in, it was like I stayed up all night reading this book. So highly recommend to all the listeners, because I also made Gina read it and I was very happy that you enjoyed it. ⁓ But anyway, yeah, this story gives me those vibes.
Gina (48:16)
Yep.
It was great. Yeah, I loved it.
Thank
I agree. I could see any of those characters going into a New Orleans environment flawlessly.
Kathryn (48:35)
Mm-hmm, yeah, for sure.
I'm
Gina (48:39)
Anyway,
do you have something for me?
Kathryn (48:44)
I do.
I'm going to be talking about voodoo a little bit and I wanna like make a blanket statement for this entire month that I am not a voodoo expert. And I will be talking a little bit more in depth about voodoo as a spiritual belief and practice in my next episode. But disclaimer for the scary on top and also for all the stuff we talk about all month, if anyone has more and or better information.
please send it to us, iscreamyouscreampod@gmail.com. So I feel like there's a lot of misclaim and I feel like there are a lot of misconceptions with voodoo practices and I do wanna make sure that we get it right. So as a disclaimer, I am going to be sharing a story as I know it. ⁓ If you have more, again, and or better information, please send it to us so that we can update people and also just learn ourselves.
Because an additional disclaimer is I literally just learned about this yesterday. So this is very much coming from a, oh my God, I just learned about this and I'm excited to learn more type of place versus I am an expert because I'm absolutely not. as a little background, I am currently reading this book. It's called City Witchery and...
Gina (49:47)
Mmm, okay.
Kathryn (50:10)
I recommend it to everyone who lives in a city. It's by an author named Lisa Marie Bacille, I think is how you say it. And just as a quick aside, it's very good. It's basically just tips and tricks. I'm going to call it like a pocket guide in bringing magical practices to city living. Because I feel like a lot of people, myself included, feel like
You can't have a full magical practice if you don't live in like a cottage in a meadow. ⁓ So I just, really love this book and highly recommend. We'll link to it. But one of the sections of this is like kind of wandering through your city and getting to know your city on...
Gina (50:41)
Mm-hmm.
Kathryn (50:57)
I'm going to say, not to be cheesy, but kind of on a personal level, like the value you can get spiritually from just wandering the streets of your own city or city you're visiting or whatever. So you can kind of get in tune with the natural rhythm and cycle within that city, because there is life in all cities. You don't have to be out in the middle of the woods in order to experience nature and natural cycles. They do exist in urban areas as well. And one of the examples she gave
was of seeking out specific landmarks or quote unquote, I don't want to use the term famous, but like well-known areas of your city and just learning their historical relevance and stuff like that as a way to get to know your own city. And one of the examples that she gave was the Seven Gates of Guinea in New Orleans. Are you familiar with this?
Gina (51:52)
Mm-mm.
Kathryn (51:54)
Neither was I. I had never heard of this before. And like knowing full well that we were doing a month on New Orleans, I wanted to look into it. And this is where I'm going to reiterate, if anyone knows this story better or this tradition better, please let us know. But the way I understood it as I was looking into it.
is according to ⁓ voodoo legend and tradition, when somebody dies, their soul goes to kind of a part of the underworld called Guinea. And because it's associated with the underworld, there can sometimes be mistaken association with like this torturous hell type place. But I would say it's more closely comparable to
kind of like a limbo type section of the underworld. It was described as this murky kind of stopover on the way to the underworld where the souls will reunite with their ancestors.
And like I said, this place is called Guinea and it's guarded by seven Loa, essentially gods. And the guardian of the seventh and final gate is a guy named Baron Semedi, which translates to Saturday from French. so these gates are typically associated with the days of the week. I didn't go super in depth into all of that.
specifically focus on these physical locations that are these gates. ⁓ But to dive into this Baron guy real quick, because you've definitely heard of him, you've definitely seen him before, he is depicted as a skeleton in corpse paint, and he's dressed in a top hat and tails. So like very New Orleans vibes, like this is the guy that you always see in like Mardi Gras parades, and he's usually being very like...
Gina (53:47)
Yeah.
Kathryn (53:56)
⁓ I'm gonna say like sexy because like he's very he's like trickster-y and you know that type of vibe. There is a misconception that he's this evil demon type situation, ⁓ very much a grim reaper type of guy, but he's not necessarily evil or wicked, but he is depicted as being amoral.
Gina (54:06)
Mm-hmm.
Kathryn (54:22)
Which that's like I said, that's kind of the vibe that you see when you see someone dressed up as him That's the energy that they kind of bring to this
But like I said, he's not evil. He's representative of kind of a part of us that we don't necessarily like or want to deal with, kind of that amorality, know, sins, if you will, particularly as it relates to death and kind of the understanding that death is coming for all of us. And, you know, you can't really escape him and people just don't like that vibe. want party vibes only, basically.
So not only is he not evil, but he's really important to keeping the dead souls in Guinea and helping them kind of move on into the underworld where they will be reunited with their ancestors.
He's essentially, as the guardian of the seventh gate, he's kind of the final defense to make sure that none of the souls ever break out of Guinea, AKA he is the reason that zombies do not roam the earth. It's like basically what it comes down to. So he's very important, yes. So apparently, even though these Loas are guarding the gates, it may be possible for you to access this realm.
Gina (55:29)
⁓ Cool!
Kathryn (55:42)
if you successfully unlock the seven gates of Guinea. And it has to be in order. Like there is a particular way that you have to access these gates and like certain things you have to do. I didn't have time to dive into all of that. think it's all, I don't think anyone like knows exactly how it's done, but there is some debate on this. But it is said that the seven gates all,
reside in the city of New Orleans, specifically in the French Quarter. thing is, we don't know exactly where they are. This is just ⁓ suspected to be true. And it is believed that there's like a list of places that are most likely to be the spots of these kind of spiritual gates. And they are the St. Louis Cemetery, numbers one and two.
specifically Marie Laveau's grave, Greenwood Cemetery, Cypress Grove Cemetery, the St. Patrick's Cemetery, and then the Canal Street crossroads. And the reason these locations are suspected to be the locations of these gates are not just because all of these spots are very energetically heavy, like
If you visit any of these places, they will say that you can definitely feel there's something like heavily spiritual about all of them. But it's also, if you draw on the map, like connect all of these locations, it creates the sigil of Baron Semedi. Yes, yes. So if you're wandering around the French Quarter, you'll sometimes come across
offerings or just random things like shrines or whatever on the sidewalk. And oftentimes these are placed at each of these locations as either a gift or kind of a bribe to the Loa. Some people will give them offerings as like a thank you for guarding these gates and keeping us safe. Other people will sometimes try to like bribe them to open the gates so that they can connect with the underworld.
I highly recommend not doing that. I don't know the story well enough to know what will happen if we open these gates, but I'm like, we've been through enough, so just don't set the zombies free is all I'm saying. Yeah, exactly. ⁓ All of this is to say there are certain days of the year that people suspect the veil thins in a way that makes it easier for these gates to open. And it's the standard in between times that
Gina (58:06)
Okay. Yeah.
I'll wait.
Kathryn (58:29)
you hear about in other types of magic like solstices, equinexes, New Year's is one of them. And of course, Mardi Gras is also a big time to try to access these gates. But yeah, that's it. That's all I have to say about them. I literally just learned about these gates. I just learned about Guinea. So like I said, if anyone has other information on this, I didn't have time to dive super deep.
⁓ mostly just found a bunch of blogs from people trying to access them. But yeah, I thought it was really interesting and I would love to know if anyone's ever had any like experiences at any of the locations in New Orleans. So yeah, that's all I have.
Gina (59:16)
That is so
cool. We have to go visit all of the gates.
Kathryn (59:20)
I know.
Well, and it's interesting because, I mean, all of these locations are locations worth visiting if you're in New Orleans anyway. ⁓ So it's kind of like, I wonder if anyone's ever like accidentally opened them just as like a tourist. Like, whoops, I just wanted to like see the sights and now I've actually like accessed the underworld.
Gina (59:42)
Heh.
God damn it,
Kathryn (59:48)
I would watch that movie. That'd be a good show. Limited series. Yeah.
Gina (59:52)
Me too. my gosh,
yeah. The tourist who accidentally opened the zombie portal. I'm into that.
Kathryn (59:59)
I would watch that. Sounds like an episode of Buffy.
Gina (1:00:03)
It does. Buffy on vacation. Yeah, she goes to New Orleans. Yeah.
Kathryn (1:00:04)
Yeah. Yeah. Buffy goes to Nilla.
Anyway, yeah.
Gina (1:00:13)
That was
awesome. Thank you so much.
Kathryn (1:00:16)
You're welcome. ⁓ So yeah, if you have anything that you would like us to discuss at the end of one of our episodes, please feel free to send us an email at iscreamyouscreampod@gmail.com And yeah, if you have any other additional information on the stuff that we've already talked about, please feel free to send that too. And any stories you send do not have to be on topic for the month that we are covering. anything you have for us, we'll take it any time.
⁓ yeah, until next time, low spoons, keep it cool.
Gina (1:00:48)
Keep it creepy.
