The Hanging Noose

CW for violence, domestic violence, and murder

The Hanging Noose

“Don’t go in there. It isn’t safe.”

We kids in the neighborhood would tell people. We had seen things.

I lived next door to the house in question in a second-floor apartment. From there I could look down directly into two windows of the single one-bay shotgun house next door.

The house in New Orleans was located on the old Desire Streetcar line, now a bus line, right before it turned onto Royal Street. The house was abandoned long before I was born. People would buy the house, and then shortly, often even before they completely moved in, they disappeared.

If they’d brought anything into the house, it disappeared, also. The house always remained empty inside.

We found out later that even the realtors had trouble with the place. A realtor only entered once to show the property. Either that realtor became so frightened they refused to enter or show the property again or they simply vanished. It didn’t matter which real estate company.

It was all about the house.

Of course, we kids, even knowing this, had to test its limits—and ours. We’d play ball in my next-door side yard; and of course, we made sure the ball went over the fence. Someone had to climb the fence into the yard of that spooky house, as we called it. Whoever climbed the fence would walk all around the yard, in the pretense of looking for the ball, but they’d never go inside.

Sometimes the back door looked like it wasn’t completely shut. Once John even had the courage to climb the steps to the back porch. He stood on that porch for about four seconds then turned and ran as if the devil himself were chasing him.

He came over that fence so fast he left his torn pants hanging on the fence. We understand he didn’t quit running until he reached his home. And as for the ball… we had to get someone’s mom to buy us a new one. And we made sure it never went into the yard next door.

John never fully shared what happened. All he’d say was that he couldn’t stand there any longer. We didn’t see much of John after that except at school. Otherwise, he stayed near his home. He flatly refused to come over to our street anymore.

What confused us kids was what we could see in the house. At just the right angle in the yard it was barely visible, but it was clearly visible from my second-floor bedroom window. We never understood why those realtors or the people who’d buy the house couldn’t see it.

The hangman’s noose.

How could anyone miss a hangman’s noose? It hung from the rafters right in the middle of the second room of the house?

It quietly hung straight down—mostly. Other times, though, we saw it gently swing back and forth. We even, more than once, saw it jerking and moving in circles like someone were hanging from it and fighting to get loose.

That wasn’t all. Even though the house was empty, we’d see lights. Often when we saw the lights we’d hear screams and moans… not every time, but usually.

Mostly we would see the lights on a completely dark night with a storm coming in… traditional, yet true. But other times the light would show on a normal night, with or without a full moon.

What was even stranger is we couldn’t identify what kind of light we saw. Sometimes it flickered dimly like a candle. Sometimes the light was brighter, more steady like a lantern or lamp. And since I lived next door, I saw more than my friends. A couple of times I even saw an overhead light flash quickly on and off like someone flipped on and off a light switch.

When I’d try to tell anyone about the screams and moans, they’d laugh and tell me it was my imagination and the wind.

So, there you go. We were kids. We had a spooky house. A hangman’s noose. Lights. Screams. Moans. Very vivid imaginations, as we were told. And no one believed us.

If they didn’t want to believe us, well, I guess that was fine. But what about the realtors? Why did people disappear after buying the house before they even moved in?

I know we were children, but this did not make sense.

Eventually we all grew up. Somewhere along the lines our families or us after we graduated high school moved away. And mostly, we lost contact with each other. So, I can’t speak for them, only for me.

My family moved us away when I was twelve, but I never forgot the spooky house with the hanging noose. It somehow had a hold on me that would not let go.

Therefore, years after I was grown, I started doing research. I had to somehow satisfy my curiosity about that house.

At first, there did not seem to be much about the history of that house. I knew the street name it was on, but I wasn’t sure of the actual address to begin with. Or if the house was still standing, for that matter. 

I spent hours researching the house. Hours turned into months, and months into years. I haunted libraries, searched police records, and dug through courthouse property records—anything that might help me understand what had happened there.

I eventually found the beginning of the house. It was built sometime between the late 1700s to early 1800s. Nothing I found could pinpoint the exact date.

The house stood close to the Mississippi River, separated from it only by the levee. The ship captain who built it never wanted to be far from his beloved sea.

Actually, the house’s beginning revolves around two ship captains. They had been friends for many years, even though they were captains on different ships. Their paths crossed often in different ports, so they always knew what the other was doing and where he was.

Eventually, they decided they needed a central place to call home. A place where either one of them could rest when he was in port, without having to find lodging somewhere.

So, one of the captains built the house. It was small, but adequate for their needs. Sadly, the other captain claimed the house as his own.

That was when their trouble began. To be fair, they were rarely in New Orleans at the same time, so joint ownership of the house worked for a while. But the captain who had built the house resented his friend for claiming the house. He harbored that resentment, letting it fester and grow.

Consequently, whenever their paths crossed, whether in other ports or in New Orleans, they fought.

Finally, one dark, cold, rainy night they both wound up in the house together. Both had been frequenting the grog houses and dance halls and barrel houses along the wharfs and were drunk… very drunk. 

As soon as they saw each other, they started arguing about whose house it was. Loud hate filled words turned into fists. Fists turned into holding knives. And knives led to their deaths. They both mortally wounded each other.

It was the middle of the night, they were loud—so loud. Everyone near that house heard them. Someone finally ran for a constable, but by the time he got there it was too late. The news articles showed pictures and described in gory detail the bloodbath that had taken place inside that house.

The house was closed. No one entered the house for many years. But almost immediately afterwards, the stories began. People would swear they heard loud angry words, moans, screams of pain, along with other sounds they couldn’t explain.

That violent argument replayed for years for anyone who came close to the house late at night. 

I almost completely stopped my research. I truly did for quite a while. I couldn’t get that fateful night out of my mind. The grim accounts I’d read in the gazettes, and especially a rendering of the scene sketched by a clerk during the coroner’s inquest, haunted my mind.

Months later I resumed my research. Truthfully, I was concerned about what I would find next, if I found anything at all, that is.

I had just about decided there was nothing else to find until a small slip of paper fell out of the last newspaper in the stack in front of me. Someone had written about a murder that had occurred in the neighborhood where the house was located.

A murder? In the neighborhood or the house? My imagination was off to the races, as they say.

I had to find out if that slip of paper was true. Back to that stack of newspapers in front of me. I picked up the one I’d just been looking through and started again.

It took a while. I searched through years of newspapers. Each little tidbit I thought I found led nowhere until one unusual item in the personal section. That led me to a grave in the St. Louis Cemetery No. 1.

The grave the item referenced was all the way back in the pauper section. It was an actual grave rather than a mausoleum. The marker was still there, but it was so old and cracked, time and the elements had nearly obscured what was written on it. Jason McIlheney, 1808 – 1835, unjustly accused and hung.

The story goes that Jason was accused of killing the bank president in a robbery. Problem with that story is Jason was in New Iberia when the incident occurred; close enough to New Orleans to be involved, but the timeline showed he wasn’t.

The people who actually committed the crime were related to people who were related to other people. Therefore, they managed to walk away, but someone had to be charged for the murder. Since Jason had had a loud argument with the bank president a couple of weeks before, he became the patsy for the crime.

Jason ran. He hid out in the house for three weeks while they searched for him. Finally, someone saw a light, briefly, in the house and reported it to the constable. To put an end to the situation, the constable and a couple of others broke into the house while Jason slept. Rather than listen to him, or take him to the magistrate, one of the men attached a rope to an exposed rafter, and they hung Jason right there. They left him hanging.

The next day they went back and discovered the murderer— dead. The house was completely empty except for Jason hanging from the rope, a spent candle, and an old ship’s lantern.

By now I was questioning myself as to why I kept searching the history of the house. And by this point, it had almost become an obsession with me. I did promise myself that I’d only spend three more months on the project. That would be the end of the year. I determined I’d start the new year moving forward and no longer looking backward.

In mid-November I found it. This one was the worst and the saddest.

A young couple had purchased the house. They fit into the neighborhood comfortably. What neighbors there were, liked them and tried to make them feel welcome.

The first few weeks went well for the couple. Then the arguments started. At first, the arguments were just normal, new marriage disagreements. But they quickly escalated to full-fledged screaming matches, then fists started flying.

People in the neighborhood tried to ignore the fights and noise, but it soon became impossible to do so. There was an elderly lady in the neighborhood who everyone called granny. She had healed many children and sat with numerous people suffering through whatever sickness or disease was currently running rampant in the city.

She tried numerous times to meet with the couple. They wouldn’t let her in. They refused to talk with her. They quit answering the door when she or anyone showed up.

The couple rarely left the house, but when one of them did venture out, everyone could see the bruises and signs of violence. They no longer looked or acted like the sweet couple that moved in just a few weeks before.

Then one night it was the worst. Abruptly the argument stopped. The fighting stopped. The lights went out. An eerie calm settled over the house.

The next morning, the front door of the house wasn’t quite closed. The old lady, granny, went in and found the house completely empty except for a kicked over box that the lady had stood on to hang herself.

The husband was never found.

And I was done. I no longer wanted to know anything more about that house.

About four years or so after I quit researching some of us from the old neighborhood got together for a sort of reunion. We had a great time reliving school, other friends, games we played, and our ideas concerning that house.

A few of us went back to see if it was still there. It was. Empty. Derelict. To our surprise, John decided to face what had scared him all those years ago. We entered the next-door yard and John climbed the fence. He walked all the way around the house. He saw the back door was slightly ajar, so he went up the steps to the back porch. He crossed the porch, reached out his hand to the doorknob, the door opened, John screamed!

Fortunately, we were still young enough and limber enough that all of us climbed over that fence. John was standing on the back porch, his hand reaching out, and staring into the house.

We crowded around him; our childhood warnings of “Danger: Do not enter” became very real.

We all stepped back, unable to believe what we were seeing.

There was the overturned box, a spent candle, a ship’s lantern, and a human skeleton swaying gently with that noose around its neck.