This spooky French Quarter museum is haunted by the building's grisly, bone-chilling past

Bloody Mary will tell you, “This is not the Zack and Addie museum.” Yet the thing that sets her Haunted Museum on North Rampart Street apart from all other spooky French Quarter attractions is that it is also the site of an actual grisly murder in 2006, in which a down-and-out grocery deliveryman, Zackery Bowen, killed and dismembered his girlfriend, bartender Adriane "Addie" Hall.

In a way, the incident seemed to symbolize the chaos and desperation of the darkest period of the post-Hurricane Katrina recovery. Ask anybody who was around at the time, it was a crime that shocked a city that was already in shock.

Becoming Bloody Mary

Bloody Mary’s given name is Mary Millan. She grew up in Gentilly, before her family moved to Metairie. She graduated from Grace King High School and studied cultural anthropology at UNO, then headed off to New York to try to establish a career as a model and actress. She returned home after a few years and by 1993 she joined her sister, working at the New Orleans Historic Voodoo Museum on Dumaine Street, conducting tours, seances and such. She’d found her niche.

During a recent interview, Mary wore a scarlet dress and matching lipstick. Her hair is long and blonde.

Seated in a downstairs exhibit space, surrounded by animal bones, strange antique artifacts, photos of magicians and spiritualists, and other assorted creepy stuff, she skipped from metaphysical topic to metaphysical topic at head-spinning speed.

Mary touched on topics from the appearance of Tennessee William’s ghost in the beautiful courtyard out back, to the importance of Marie Laveau’s family crucifix, the poltergeist activity associated with a vintage wheelchair from Charity Hospital, a magic dagger meant to “cut the wind” as a hurricane approaches, and the function of electronic ghost detection devices.

She said her grandchild took his first steps on the huge Ouija board painted on the museum floor, in a manner that suggested the toddler could have already been in touch with the spirit world. Which may not be surprising, since Mary said she’s seen ghosts since childhood. She based her professional name on the children’s folk tale of summoning an otherworldly spirit in a mirror by reciting the name Bloody Mary.

Mary said she’s been initiated into varieties of voodoo that originated in New Orleans, Haiti and East Africa. She calls herself a “researchaholic” of spiritual customs. Mary said she’s 66 years old. But her immeasurable energy and enthusiasm for the subject of the metaphysical belies her age.

Adopting a murder scene

As she spoke, Mary was suddenly rivaled by a disembodied voice of equal fervor. Outside on the street, beyond the walls of the Haunted Museum, a tour guide had begun holding forth. Though his voice was somewhat muffled, Mary said he was very likely barking out the history of the murder that had taken place at the address.

It frustrates her, Mary said, that some guides get it all wrong. Strictly speaking, cannibalism was not involved, she said. The killer may have put parts of his victim in a pot on the stove and in the oven, but there’s no evidence he’d gone any further. It also frustrates her that in some tellings, Addie seems to be held responsible for her own demise, at the hands of a troubled war veteran. 

Mary said the murder took place in the tiny apartment upstairs from her museum. At the time of the crime, the downstairs was occupied by the Voodoo Spiritual Temple. But in 2016, Mary said, there was a fire in the building and the Spiritual Temple moved out. That’s when Mary discovered the place was for rent, and envisioned opening her own tourist attraction.

But knowing that 828 N. Rampart St. was the site of a real-world horror, she was reluctant. “I was worried about what people would say,” she said. “But I loved the space, and loved the courtyard.” She said she wasn’t sure if the memory of the murder would be a lure or a turnoff. 

She made up her mind to take the plunge for an other-than-earthly reason. "The spirits needed me, and I answered the call,” she said.

According to a 2012 story in the Times-Picayune, the apartment was rented to other occupants more than once after the murder. But Mary says it’s pretty much as it was, even the kitchen. The scene of the crime is part of the tour of the museum, but Mary doesn’t advertise it very conspicuously. It’s not mentioned on the outside of the building, nor is it easily found on the museum website. She said some of her first-time patrons don’t know about the murder, but others do.

“Some people only come for that,” she said.

Back in 2018, a story in the Times-Picayune gave voice to some who accused Mary of exploiting the murder. Asked about that point of view, Mary said: “Should I ignore the history of New Orleans that has a dark side? We have a dark side.” The murder, she said “is not going away, it’s public knowledge.”

A pretty freaky experience

Mary estimated that there was a 50-50 chance that the nine bachelors who planned to visit the museum soon after her Oct. 19 interview knew the upstairs apartment’s history.

Groom-to-be Joseph Ciaravalli said he and his gaggle of New Jersey groomsmen “went in just knowing that SOMETHING had happened” at the site of the museum. It wasn’t until later that they found out exactly what. He said he was expecting the murder to be some historical event and was surprised it had happened so recently.

“We went up to the apartment where this murder happened,” the Wall Street bond seller said. The group investigated the place with a gizmo that measures the electricity in the air, or something like that, and another device that generated random words that somehow resonated with the spiritual plane.

“People felt different sorts of energy,” Ciaravalli said. One dude felt something touch his leg, which was “pretty freaky.”

Later the crew went on a bus tour with Mary, exploring the cemetery section of Canal Street.

The experience, Ciaravalli said, “really had a pulse to it,” and Bloody Mary had an “unrelenting authenticity,” with “no breaking of character.”

“She had a huge passion for showing us the history” and “she would have kept us all night.”

But, he said, Bourbon Street beckoned.

Visiting the upstairs apartment

Before the murder, Zack and Addie had become minor folk heroes by refusing to be swayed by the pre-Katrina evacuation order and hunkering down to ride out the storm and its bleak aftermath at the edge of the French Quarter.

Just 10 days after the storm passed and floodwaters rose, a New York Times reporter wrote this about the couple: “Some holdouts seem intent on keeping alive the distinct and wild spirit of this city. In the French Quarter, Addie Hall and Zackery Bowen found an unusual way to make sure that police officers regularly patrolled their house. Ms. Hall, 28, a bartender, flashed her breasts at the police vehicles that passed by, ensuring a regular flow of traffic.”

But somewhere along the line, Zack apparently snapped under the pressure and/or succumbed to his demons. He killed his lover, cut her to pieces, then took his own life by jumping off a hotel roof. 

There’s a real, black plastic body bag hanging beside the narrow stairs that lead to Zack and Addie’s apartment. A green witch’s hand is painted on the wall, pointing the way.

In the apartment, the room closest to North Rampart Street is crowded with dolls, which are, for whatever reason, eternally disturbing.

Out in the windowless living room, more chairs line the walls. Mary says sit wherever you think is the most haunted spot in the room. There’s a terribly out-of-tune guitar to fidget with, which was not, Mary promised, owned by the notorious previous residents.

The kitchen is claustrophobic. Guests have piled small offerings of cigarettes, cans of beer and dollar bills on the original stovetop. The refrigerator is open. There are a couple of plastic chairs, in case you’d like to sit down.

As you enter the kitchen, Bloody Mary wants to know: Do you feel anything?