The construction on my house was moving along rapidly—Ryan’s sizable crew had already finished the guest bedroom and they were now putting the finishing touches on the bathroom. Ryan’s guess was that I’d probably be able to take up residency in another few days. Even though Ryan continued to give me grief about it, I was on the job site every day, complete with my pink safety hat and my coordinating tool belt. In the course of a week, I’d learned more than I ever wanted to know about construction. What was more, I actually enjoyed it. It was fun to work with my hands and see the result of my labor every day. Even though Ryan acted like he was less than thrilled with my being there, I knew it was mostly for show because we continued to laugh and joke like old friends. We also ate our lunch together every day, and he seemed as happy to teach me as I was to learn.
As to the newspaper articles in the guest bedroom, I managed to recover all of them once Ryan and I finished removing the remaining whitewashed boards in the room. Even though I was pretty convinced that my Drake dream had been nothing more than a figment of my imagination, I was still eager to uncover the mystery of the ax murders that had occurred so long ago. By the time I’d removed each newspaper clipping, I was left with a stack of maybe thirty articles. I tried to organize the articles by date and was mostly successful, although there were a few pages where the dates were missing—either they’d been cut out way back when or the corners of the paper had crumbled away with age.
The articles I was able to recover painted a pretty complete picture of the terror the so-called “Axeman” had put on New Orleans. And with the added information and background provided by the Internet, I felt I had a very complete picture of the past…
From 1918 to 1919, this killer, who was later dubbed the “Axeman” by the New Orleans Times-Picayune newspaper, attacked twelve people. Some of his victims died, while others were merely injured (I couldn’t seem to shake the visual of one woman who survived but also lost some teeth in the process of being bludgeoned in the face). Because seven of the victims were Italians and eight owned grocery stores, there was a belief that the murders were somehow linked to the Mafia. Then there were arguments posed against this line of thinking, the proof being that not all of the victims were Italian and, furthermore, many of the victims were women and one was a child (apparently the Mafia was against killing women and children). I also learned that all of the victims were attacked in the early morning hours and ten were struck with their own axes, which were then left behind for the police to find. In the majority of cases, the Axeman entered the homes of his victims by chiseling out a panel in the back door.
While these were the known facts, as far as I could gather, there were also quite a few lingering questions that no one then or now seemed to have the answers to. First, no one understood how the Axeman was able to chip away a door panel and enter a home without any of the residents ever hearing him. Furthermore, the Axeman appeared to be familiar with the layouts of each home, as he easily located the ax with which he attacked his victims and seemed to have no trouble navigating their homes, even in the dead of night. The biggest question posed, though, was how a grown man could fit through the impossibly small openings chiseled into the doors. Some people posed the theory that the openings were simply a way for the Axeman to reach in and unlock the door but this notion was quickly put to rest when it was reported that those first on the scene always found the doors locked—from the inside.
Quite a few of the articles referenced the idea that maybe the Axeman was some sort of “malign supernatural spirit.” The more I read, the more I realized that people at the time were really beginning to believe that they were dealing with something or someone otherworldly. One eyewitness account described the Axeman as disappearing “as if he had wings.” Apparently this belief that the Axeman wasn’t mortal was even more pronounced once the editor of the Times-Picayune received a letter purported to be from the Axeman himself. In it, the Axeman (if, in fact, the letter was written by him) announced himself to be a demon sent from “the hottest hell.”
Interestingly enough, when comparing the articles I’d uncovered from my house with the archives of the Times-Picayune, I realized my collection was complete, minus the article that included the Axeman’s letter. I couldn’t help but shake my head at this apparent oversight because it seemed to be one of the most important aspects of the case. Yet, whoever had gone to the trouble of cutting out and attaching each article to the wall had clearly forgotten this one. I just wasn’t sure if the oversight was by design or by accident.
When I found the Axeman’s letter online, it didn’t really strike me as that interesting aside from the parts about him supposedly being a spirit or a demon. The only other section that caught my interest, though, was the Axeman’s warning whereby he planned to visit New Orleans on the night of March 19, 1919. He went on to “swear by all the devils in the nether regions that every person shall be spared in whose home a jazz band is in full swing.” The more research I did, the more I learned that the night of March 19 saw people “jazzing it up” all around the city and the Axeman apparently held true to his word, as no murders occurred that night. What was perhaps the most interesting sticking point to the whole case of the Axeman was that the killer was never caught. The murders just simply stopped as mysteriously as they’d started.
At the sound of a knock on my hotel door, I glanced up from my laptop, where I’d been devouring the Axeman’s letter. I stood up and, glancing at the clock, realized it was seven p.m. I wasn’t expecting any guests. Glancing through the peephole, I recognized Trina on the other side. I pulled the door open and wore my surprise as I took into account the bottle of wine she held in one hand and the Ouija board she had nestled beneath her other arm.
“Oh no,” I started, shaking my head immediately as it dawned on me that we were about to go ghost hunting.
Trina offered a huge grin before immediately rushing past me, leaving behind a breath of floral perfume. She went straight for the bar, where she grabbed two glasses. “Come on, girl, we got us a date with your ghost.”
“My ghost?” I repeated as I held my arms out helplessly. “I don’t have a ghost.”
She shook her head and pinched her lips together in the same way Ryan did whenever he was bent on getting his way. “That’s not what my brother said.”
I’d never told Ryan about my dream so I figured he must have told Trina about the footsteps I’d heard and how the temperature had dropped so unexpectedly. I had to wonder if he’d also filled her in on how he’d called the police, only to have them think he was the perpetrator. “Well, I’ve since decided my house isn’t haunted,” I replied flatly.
She threw her hands on her hips (which was a feat in and of itself considering she was still carrying the Ouija board underneath her arm and holding a bottle of wine along with two wine glasses) and frowned at me. “Well, Peyton, I don’t mean you any disrespect but I think the Ouija board will know better than you.”
I sighed as I realized the obstinate Kelly will was about to win out. “I’m not talking myself out of this, am I?”
Trina beamed at me and clinked the glasses together in a clear display of her happiness at having won the argument. “Nope.” Then she started for the door again before glancing over her shoulder at me. “And grab your keys ’cause you’re drivin’.”