The sun sets over New Orleans’ Elysian Fields Avenue. Costumed kids ride on parents’ shoulders, dressed-up bar hoppers and plain-clothes revelers crowd the curbsides. It’s about to begin — the Krewe of BOO!’s annual Halloween Parade!
Spangled, bangled female dance krewes bop to the beat as parade-goers hoot and holler, raising their hands towards the floats to catch one of several signature tossed treats: beads, chocolate Moon Pies, pumpkin-shaped Peeps marshmallows, and CheeWees snack bags.
A jack-o-lantern smiles. A giant Dia de Los Muertos skeleton plays guitar. A green witch outstretches her hands. Each one, a giant paper-mâché sculpture, sits atop the hood of a trailer pulling a two-story float. Aboard 16 floats, 640 riders — secured with a safety rope around their hips — toss the pre-sorted beads and snacks.
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Occasionally, they toss larger ornamented bead necklaces — a much sought-after prize. Some accidentally hit spectators in the face as the revelers reach, jump, and stumble over curbs pursuing them.
The Krewe of BOO!’s now-deceased founder Blaine Kern started the Halloween Parade in 2007 to cheer up the city after Hurricane Katrina. He already had a reputation as the “King of Mardi Gras” for his years constructing spectacular floats, but he wanted to celebrate Halloween in true New Orleans style. In 2011, the parade even helped fundraise for September 11 first responders.
The parade paused due to COVID-19, and Blaine Kern passed away in 2020 at 93 due to an unrelated illness. However, the parade returned the following year and was the city’s first large in-person public event following the pandemic. It has since become one of the city’s biggest events — second, of course, to Mardi Gras in February.
Kern’s son, Blaine Kern, continues the new tradition and has added a few extra spooky activities.
He tells GayCities that the Halloween Parade is sort of the unofficial local kick-off event for the week before Halloween, giving locals and out-of-towners a chance to celebrate before the actual holiday. This year’s will be held on Saturday, October 19, at 6:30 p.m. — it’s free to the public and travels from Elysian Fields past Jackson Square down Canal Street.
Halloween is already “gay Christmas” for the queers. But while Christmas is all about uniting with family, giving gifts, and celebrating a birth, Halloween is about standing out individually, taking tricks and treats, and partying with the dead.
Kern says New Orleans is a perfect place to celebrate Halloween. The city’s generally accepting, live-and-let-live attitude has long made it a welcoming destination for LGBTQ+ travelers and other eccentric outsiders, including those who happily roam the streets in costume any day of the week.
“[It’s] a perfect fit for New Orleans,” Kern said, “and New Orleans is America’s most haunted city! There are so many different haunted attractions here, like the Sultan’s Palace, and the LaLaurie Mansion. You’ve got all these different cemeteries in town too.”
Indeed, a handful of city tour guides offer haunted history tours—including a “gay ghost tour”—as well as explorations of the city’s voodoo heritage. During Halloween, families trick-or-treat and sightsee amazingly decorated front yards. Adults can visit local costume parties and haunted houses, and LGBTQ+ folks can enjoy drinks and dancing at a handful of local gay bars, each decorated for the occasion.
Blaine Kern was “Mr. Mardi Gras,” but his son Brian seems well on his way to earning the title of “Mr. Halloween.”
In addition to organizing the annual parade with a skeleton crew, he also organizes parties and events before and after the parade, including the Captain’s Masquerade Party on October 18, a Royal Luncheon at Galatoire’s Restaurant that same day, a Second Line jazz procession through the French Quarter at 3 p.m., balcony parties along the parade route, and a two-mile Zombie Run on Saturday morning.
There, costumed and blood-smeared runners jog through the warehouse district to the finish line at Lucy’s Retired Surfer’s Bar for drinks and laughs.
He organizes the springtime Halfway to Halloween Dance-off, featuring live music and about 25 costumed dance krewes competing in the city’s Spanish Square. He also organizes the Axeman’s Ball in March.
The spooky real-life horror story of New Orleans’s Axeman
The Axeman’s Ball, a roaring 1920s-themed dance party with a live jazz band, is inspired by the city’s historic serial killer. One night in March 1919, the then-renowned murderer — who had already butchered several people, leaving few clues — sent a letter to the editor of The Times-Picayune. It said:
“Undoubtedly, you Orleanians think of me as a most horrible murderer, which I am, but I could be much worse if I wanted to… They have never caught me and they never will…. I am not a human being, but a spirit and a fell demon from hottest hell.”
He wrote that “next Tuesday night,” at 12:15 am, he would pass once again over New Orleans.
“In my infinite mercy, I am going to make a little proposition to the people. Here it is: I am very fond of jazz music, and I swear by all the devils in the nether regions, that every person shall be spared in whose house a jazz band is in full swing at the time I have just mentioned.”
“That night, every home, jazz club, and bar of every social class played some form of jazz music to keep the Axe man away,” Brian Kern told GayCities. It helped popularize the musical genre in its infancy, he added.
Kern commemorates that historic night with the ball and a free halfway-to-Halloween dance-off in the Spanish Plaza featuring gift giveaways and 25 costumed crews competitively dancing to a live DJ before celebrity judges for prizes.
“My dad always said… things were done differently here than other American cities and the north and all that,” Kern said. “People get together here. We, everybody, love each other. There are always music shows. You have rich, poor, Black, white, whatever, everybody — we mingle here all the time.” Jazz Fest, we used to get along, and everybody happy here.”
“[During the Halloween Parade],” he continues, “I don’t know if you saw it, but you could feel the euphoria in the area, the positivity, the happiness…. You could not help it; if you were in a bad mood, you would be in a good mood at the end of it.”
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