- Espresso Boarding
- Posts
- This Tree Sings to Ghosts
This Tree Sings to Ghosts
Wind chimes, love spells, and one very haunted oak in City Park—ready to meet it?
New Orleans Music, Magic, and Mayhem
New Orleans makes us think of jazz, Bourbon Street, and donuts (of course!). The real New Orleans is so much more interesting - darker, more colorful, and packed with scandal. Food is as central to the identity of New Orleans as jazz, and so each week we will share a local recipe so you can spice up your next picnic.
- Cris
The Backstreets of Faubourg Marigny
Music, Mischief, and One Very Persistent Ghost
New Orleans has a habit of hiding its best stories just off the main road. Case in point: Faubourg Marigny. Step off Bourbon Street and head a few blocks downriver and you’ll find a neighborhood dripping with secrets, swinging to its own rhythm—and maybe, just maybe, haunted by a woman who won’t stay dead.
This place was born of scandal. Bernard de Marigny, the flamboyant Creole who founded the district, reportedly blew through his family’s fortune on women, wine, and a dice game he helped make famous: craps. He sold off his plantation land plot by plot, creating a neighborhood where misfits, musicians, and mystics quietly took root.
Bernard de Marigny defined the phrase ‘oh crap’ by losing his estate to poorly played dice games - that he invented! The moral is: “make sure you create cheat codes in any game that you invent.” Your family will thank you. |  |
Fast forward two centuries, and Marigny is still allergic to normal. Jazz leaks out of cracked windows, murals bloom overnight, and there’s always someone rehearsing a one-person opera on their stoop. But tucked between Frenchmen Street and the cracked sidewalks of Burgundy, there's another story locals only whisper: the ghost of Madame Delphine Bachemin.
She was a Creole widow who lived on Dauphine Street in the 1850s—and died defending her virtue, or so the story goes. When a drunken suitor forced his way into her home one stormy night, she struck him with a fireplace poker, killing him instantly. The next morning, she was found dead in her chair—eyes wide, a scream frozen on her lips. No one knows who—or what—got to her. But to this day, musicians report amps blowing out, strings snapping, and cold hands on their shoulders while rehearsing late at night near her old home.
Marigny isn’t polished. It’s unpredictable, deeply alive—and just haunted enough to keep you on your toes.
The Singing Oak of City Park
Where Wind Whispers in a Different Language
In a city where music pours out of every crevice, it’s no surprise that even the trees in New Orleans have something to say.
Tucked inside the wide sprawl of City Park, just past the Big Lake and hidden in plain sight, is a massive live oak strung with what look like oversized wind chimes. But this isn’t some garden-variety tinkling in the breeze. This is The Singing Oak—an art installation by sculptor Jim Hart that turns air into song, and silence into something sacred.
The tree is rigged with chimes tuned to a pentatonic scale. That means every gust of wind, every playful swirl, creates a natural harmony. No wrong notes. No accidents. Just a hypnotic, meditative hum that somehow manages to feel ancient and futuristic at the same time. Some locals say it’s the sound of New Orleans breathing.
"Early jazz was invented in New Orleans, it was very improvisational. What could be more improvisational than the wind?" Meet Jim Hart, the artist behind the wind chimes at New Orleans City Park's Singing Oak. |  Listen to the tree sing in an interview with Jim Hart. |
But here's the part they don’t print on the tourist brochures: people swear it talks to them. Not in words, but in feelings. Grief lightens. Romance blooms. One guy even proposed under it—and swears the tree gave him a "yes" before his girlfriend did. Children lie on their backs and stare up like they’re in church. Strangers hold hands. Time slows.
Legend has it that a woman once visited the tree every Sunday for months after losing her husband. She never spoke. Just sat. Then, one day, she left a note tucked into the tree’s roots: “Thank you. You gave me his voice again.”
The Singing Oak doesn’t ask for money. It doesn’t post to Instagram. But if you stand there long enough, it’ll sing something just for you—and maybe, just maybe, you’ll hum it for the rest of your life.
Bring a little Creole zest to your next picnic
Next week we explore the world of voodoo and its influence on New Orleans culture. I have chills of anticipation!
See you next Wednesday.
What did you think of Espresso Boarding?
 |  |  |
Was this forwarded to you? Sign up to receive your own copy.
It’s free to subscribe.
Looking for previous destinations? They are safely located here.