Haunted History Tours

09/17/2024

Social media is the new word of mouth—spreading and helping businesses reach customers across the globe. A single post can make all the difference!

09/08/2024

It feels like the fall weathers has crept up on us.

09/08/2024

Johnny Thunders died at the St Peter Guest House on St Peter Street in the French Quarter. His family insisted he was murdered. Because he died of an overdose however, the police wrote it off as an accident. The ransacked room indicated possibly it was inflicted by an unknown intruder.

It was rumored that he died hugging his guitar. Some claim that when his body was removed from the room, rigor mortis had set in causing his body to stiffen in the shape as if he was still clutching it. His death remains a mystery to this day.

Like a good who dunnit? Take a True Crime Tour.

https://hauntedhistorytours.com/our-tours/new-orleans-true-crime-tour/

Johnny Thunders and David Johansen, 1973. Photo by Bob Gruen

08/21/2024

Our tours offer an authentic encounter with the supernatural—no flashy tech gear needed. Feel the chills of New Orleans the old-fashioned way! 🌙🕯️

08/18/2024

Take a Vampire Tour in the dark corners of the French Quarter with tour guide, Rose.

Tonight feels like autumn might be a possibility, after all.

08/01/2024

I think this will be the best horror movie for 2024! This looks amazing! and Willem Dafoe (who played the vampire in Shadow of the Vampire; based on Nosferatu) is now playing the Van Helsing-type vampire hunter is the icing on the cake!

First movie trailer for Nosferatu starring Nicolas Hoult.

07/23/2024

Paranormal Planet welcomes musician, filmmaker, teacher, and historian, Jamal Morelli to talk about what he has experienced during Moroccan rituals and the mysterious spirits called The Djinn. You do not want to miss this!

Creator & Host, Kalila Smith, welcomes musician, filmmaker, teacher, and historian, Jamal Morelli to discuss real djinn as witnessed by him during rituals in...

07/20/2024

G'MORNIN FRIENDS

Sunrise Lake Palourde

Amazing capture by John Corso Photography

07/14/2024

Paranormal Planet Season 1 Episode 1 - The Dybbuk

Join host Kalila Smith & her guest, Haunted History Tours/ guide, Toast Korozsia as they demystify the truth about dybbuks.

We actually have a photograph from one of our tours that contains a dybbuk behind am unsuspecting guest on the tour. These beings are not what is being portrayed on these unreality shows. They are not to be played with.

*Paranormal Planet is scanning the globe to bring the truth about this and other spiritual anomalies rather than stir the pot of paranormal misinformation.
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In Jewish folklore and popular belief an evil spirit which enters into a living person, cleaves to his soul, causes mental illness, talks through his mouth, and represents a separate and alien personality is called a dibbuk. The term appears neither in talmudic literature nor in the Kabbalah, where this phenomenon is always called "evil spirit." (In talmudic literature it is sometimes called ru'aḥ tezazit, and in the New Testament "unclean spirit.") The term was introduced into literature only in the 17th century from the spoken language of German and Polish Jews. It is an abbreviation of dibbuk me-ru'aḥ ra'ah ("a cleavage of an evil spirit"), or dibbuk min ḥa-hiẓonim ("dibbuk from the outside"), which is found in man. The act of attachment of the spirit to the body became the name of the spirit itself. However, the verb davok ("cleave") is found throughout kabbalistic literature where it denotes the relations between the evil spirit and the body, mitdabbeket bo ("it cleaves itself to him").

Stories about dibbukim are common in the time of the Second Temple and the talmudic periods, particularly in the Gospels; they are not as prominent in medieval literature. At first, the dibbuk was considered to be a devil or a demon which entered the body of a sick person. Later, an explanation common among other peoples was added, namely that some of the dibbukim are the spirits of dead persons who were not laid to rest and thus became *demons. This idea (also common in medieval Christianity) combined with the doctrine of *gilgul ("transmigration of the soul") in the 16th century and became widespread and accepted by large segments of the Jewish population, together with the belief in dibbukim. They were generally considered to be souls which, on account of the enormity of their sins, were not even allowed to transmigrate and as "denuded spirits" they sought refuge in the bodies of living persons. The entry of a dibbuk into a person was a sign of his having committed a secret sin which opened a door for the dibbuk. A combination of beliefs current in the non-Jewish environment and popular Jewish beliefs influenced by the Kabbalah form these conceptions. The kabbalistic literature of *Luria's disciples contains many stories and "protocols" about the exorcism of dibbukim. Numerous manuscripts present detailed instructions on how to exorcise them. The power to exorcise dibbukim was given to ba'alei shem or accomplished Ḥasidim. They exorcised the dibbuk from the body which was bound by it and simultaneously redeemed the soul by providing a tikkun ("restoration") for him, either by transmigration or by causing the dibbuk to enter hell. Moses *Cordovero defined the dibbuk as an "evil pregnancy."

From 1560 several detailed reports in Hebrew and Yiddish on the deeds of dibbukim and their testimonies about themselves were preserved and published. A wealth of material on actual stories of dibbukim is gathered in Samuel *Vital's Sha'ar ha-Gilgulim, in Ḥayyim *Vital's Sefer ha-Ḥezyonot, in Nishmat Ḥayyim by *Manasseh Ben Israel (book 3, chs. 10 and 14), in Minḥat Eliyahu (chs. 4 and 5) by *Elijah ha-Kohen of Smyrna, and in Minḥat Yehudah by Judah Moses Fetya of Baghdad (1933, pp. 41–59). The latter exorcised *Shabbetai Ẓevi and his prophet *Nathan of Gaza who appeared as dibbukim in the bodies of men and women in Baghdad in 1903. Special booklets on the exorcisms of famous spirits which took place in Korets have also been published (end of 17th century in Yiddish), in Nikolsburg (1696, 1743), in Detmold (1743), and in Stolowitz (1848). The last protocol of this kind, published in Jerusalem in 1904, concerns a dibbuk which entered the body of a woman and was exorcised by Ben-Zion Ḥazzan. The phenomena connected with the beliefs in and the stories about dibbukim usually have their factual background in cases of hysteria and sometimes even in manifestations of schizophrenia.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Sha'ar ha-Gilgulim (1875), 8–17; Moses Zacuto, Iggerot ha-Remez (1780), no. 2; Moses Graff of Prague, Kunteres Ma'aseh ha-Shem ki Nora Hu (Fuerth, 1696); Moses Abraham b. Reuben Ḥayyat, Sefer Ru'ah Ḥayyim, (1785); M. Sassoon, Sippur Nora shel ha-Dibbuk (1966); Phinehas Michael, Av Bet Din of Stolowitz, Ma'aseh Nora'ah… (Yiddish, Warsaw, 1911); S.R. Mizraḥi, Ma'aseh Nora shel ha-Ru'aḥ (1904); M. Weinreich, Bilder fun der Yidisher Literatur Geshikhte (1928), 254–61; G. Scholem, in: Leshonenu, 6 (1934), 40–41.

Creator & Host, Kalila Smith, welcomes Haunted History Tour Guide, Toast Korozsia to discuss real dybbuks caught on cameras in a Jewish cemetery in New Orlea...

06/20/2024

When in New Orleans, you never know what you might encounter...

06/14/2024

In Victorian England after-death photographs became a way of commemorating the dead and blunting the sharpness of grief.