Cities of the Dead: Double Vision

Cities of the Dead, Jason Phillip Reeser

For newer readers of Room With No View, I'd like to let them know about my most popular book, which is perfect for this time of year.  Cities of the Dead is a ghost story collection set in the cemeteries of New Orleans, Louisiana.  Tales of ghosts, pirates, thieves, and dead rock-and-rollers can be found in this eclectic congregation of mystical chronicles.

Back in 2006, my wife and I took a guided tour of Lafayette Cemetery Number One in the historic Garden District of New Orleans.  It was the first time I'd been to one of the many above ground cemeteries that are nestled into the various neighborhoods of the Crescent City.  Due to the fact that the city sits below sea level, burying the dead is not possible, since the dead seemingly refuse to stay buried.  Citizens of the early city discovered that the saturated ground always shoved the dead back to the surface.  The simple response was to bury the dead above ground in crypts.  As a result, the cemeteries look like...well, let's let Mark Twain describe it.  His view on it sums it up the best:

Lafayette Cemetery Number One

There is no architecture in New Orleans, except in the cemeteries. They bury their dead in vaults above ground. These vaults have a resemblance to houses--sometimes to temples; are built of marble, generally; are architecturally graceful and shapely; they face the walks and driveways of the cemetery; and when one moves through the midst of a thousand or so of them, and sees their white roofs and gables stretching into the distance on every hand, the phrase 'city of the dead' has all at once a meaning to him. Many of the cemeteries are beautiful and kept in perfect order...if those people down there would live as neatly while they were alive as they do after they are dead, they would find many advantages to it.

Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi, 1880

During our 2006 tour, which was just one year after Hurricane Katrina devastated that venerable city, amid the rasping wail of power-saws and chattering hammer blows (evidence of New Orleans' second reconstruction phase), we followed our guide past sun-bleached sepulchers and vibrant green alleys of thick, recently mown grass.  As a writer, I was struck by the crowded nature of this necropolis.  I began to wonder just what it would be like for ghosts to live here.  We generally think of ghosts in lonely, empty places like an abandoned house or a distant moor.  But here, if a ghost were to haunt the earth, it would not be lonely.  It would, in fact, be heavily beset by other ghosts.  Many of the crypts are family crypts, and family members are stacked in on top of one another like chord-wood.  Imagine, I thought, what sort of complications would arise between them all?

At the 2012 Louisiana Book Festival--look for us again on Nov. 2, 2013

Before long, I had begun to write a few stories along this theme.  Over the next four or five years, I added more stories, until I'd completed thirteen of them.  It seemed an appropriate number on which to stop.  Since the book's publication, it has been well-received.  It is a mainstay on the tables of a handful of stores down in the French Quarter, and was a popular item during its release at the 2012 Louisiana Book Festival.

Several of the stories are available here at Room With No View.  Just click on the links below to read them.

The Wanting Dead  (originally printed in The Louisiana Review, Spring 2008)

The Soldiers' Home

And now for the Double Vision!  Beginning this month, Saint James Infirmary Books has made it possible for costumers who purchase the print version of COTD to receive a free eBook version along with it.  Even better, if you purchased a copy of this book through Amazon in the past, you can log in and receive your free eBook copy also.  We are offering the same free eBook copy from the Saint James Infirmary Books website.  If you purchased a print copy from us (and all of our copies can be signed if you request it) or you choose to purchase one from us now, we will send you a free eBook copy of the book.  So be sure to get a copy today if you don't already have one.

For more information on the book, check out our website here.

To order a signed copy, just click this link.

Or you can use one of the Amazon links below.  The Kindle edition is on the left, the print edition is on the right.

A View of New Orleans' other Cities

St. Patrick's Number One

Yes, New Orleans is known for its French Quarter.  This city, within the city, is a favorite of party-goers, sight-seers, and photographers both near and far.  But New Orleans also has a number of other cities tucked within the city that are just as unique as the French Quarter: the Cities of the Dead.

Lafayette Number One

I first began touring them many years ago and immediately became caught up in their history and inspiration.  Many of you might have read one or two of the stories I wrote that are set within these fascinating little cities.  I have written many more of them, and an anthology of them will be available later this year.  I'm not sure why, but the moment I set foot in the first one I visited, Lafayette Number One, I could not stop thinking about them.  They are, at times, beautiful, moving, sad, impressive, and stirring.  They are, in fact, just like the many towns and cities that fill in the map of our world.  Some of them are run down, others are immaculate.  They can be crowded, with crooked streets and confusing paths.  They can have wide avenues.  Some of them have rich neighborhoods, rowhouses, and even slums.  They even have apartment houses.

St. Louis Number One

Tucked inside these little cities are generations of families that all have one thing in common: they are filled with residents who no longer have opportunity.  Who no longer have dreams and grand schemes.  Though they might have had these at one time, they do not now.  Their stories have been written.  Yet here they all lie, in houses as varied in death as in life.  What they all have in common now is their shared knowledge of what comes after.  They know what we have always wondered at.  And not only do they know what comes after, they know more clearly what our lives mean.  They know more clearly how important our lives are, and how hollow our pursuits are, and how precious our lives are, and how sad our lives are.  They know how brave we are, how vain we are, and how afraid we are. 

St. Roch Cemetery

They know because they have been us.  They know because they are us.  Just as our younger selves, caught in the frame of a photograph, are us from the past, when we did not yet know the present us and all that we have done and learned and found and lost, so too can we view the residents of these cities of the dead.  They are what we will become.  We too, will know what comes after, and will know what our lives have meant and if we lived them well, or if we wasted them.

I don't say all of that to make us dread and fear what is to come.  That's not what I feel when I walk the streets of these cities of the dead.  I do not pity myself because I will end up like so many who have died before.  I simply see how important it is to take advantage of what we have been given.  To make sure that if and when I die, I have not left a life of regret and unrealized dreams.  I don't want to discover too late that I've neglected those I loved.  Because it is not how we die or when we die that is important.  It is how we lived, and who we lived for that is.




Greenwood Cemetery

I never miss a chance to wander the beautiful avenues and little streets in these cities.  It is always a time of reflection.  If you are ever in New Orleans, make sure you take the time to see at least one of them.  It will be well worth your time.  (Of which, you might just be reminded, is always shorter than you think.)