NEW ORLEANS – Have you ever heard of a boy-crazy ghost? Well, this restaurant has one!
Annie Nowak is a waitress at Cavan and the resident ghost-story teller! She told us about a ghost, named Lucille, who still roams the halls at Cavan. “Lucille was the matriarch of the Mooney family, which was the second family that owned this as a single-family residence.”
Lucille lived in the home at the turn of the century, so why has she stayed? Annie tells us it’s because she died in the home. Lucille does a few things that normal ghosts do, leaving marks in sawdust on the floor, and making herself known. But this ghost isn’t your typical spirit, she is boy-crazy!
Annie tells us, “Our first sommelier and bar director Isaiah, one night, he gets to work, his phone is dead in his pocket, he is bartending up here at our upstairs bar, he’s got one of our bartenders up here to kind of corroborate his story, phone – dead in his pocket. And all of a sudden in the middle of a really busy Saturday night, his girlfriend walks up the stairs, walks up to the bar and asks, ‘Why is there a woman answering your phone, saying I can’t talk to you?’ And his phone is still dead in his pocket! All of a sudden she gets an incoming call from him on her phone. They pick up and it’s about a three-second little clip, it kind of sounds like someone screaming in the distance. And then dead silence.”
They soon figured out that it was definitely Lucille messing with the phone. “We kind of thought she had a bit of a crush on him.”
Isaiah isn’t the only employee who contacted Lucille, some servers dabbled in the spiritual world and the occult, so they created a Ouija board. “They asked Lucille if she was with them, she said yes, they asked her where she was and they directed the glass they were using to one of the bathrooms in the home. When they asked her what happened there, she spelled out blood.”
So how do you keep an active ghost, like Lucille at bay? Annies says to give her what she wants, which is alcohol! “We have like a little mantle that we keep some little trinkets and offerings for Lucille, so usually, we’ll put a shot of gin or whiskey as a peace offering to Lucille.”