Live Ghost Hunting at the Haunted Bourbon Orleans Hotel: The Good, the Bad, and the Very Quiet Ghosts

What happens when you take a paranormal investigation and broadcast the whole thing live?

No editing. No cutting out the boring parts. No dramatic music telling you when you're supposed to be scared. If something happens, everyone watching gets to see it happen at roughly the same time I do.

That sounds perfect for a skeptical ghost hunter.

There is, however, one small problem.

Live ghost hunting is messy.

I recently tried it at the supposedly haunted Bourbon Orleans Hotel in New Orleans, and although our ghosts were apparently taking the night off, the experiment taught me quite a bit about the advantages—and disadvantages—of investigating the paranormal live.

And, yes, there were a few things I would definitely do differently next time.

Ghost Hunting at the Bourbon Orleans Hotel

If you're going to experiment with live paranormal investigating, the Bourbon Orleans Hotel is certainly an atmospheric place to try it.

Located in the French Quarter, the property has a history stretching back more than two centuries.

The original Théâtre d'Orléans opened in 1815 before being destroyed by fire the following year. In 1817, John Davis rebuilt the theater and added the Orleans Ballroom. The theater became an important center for opera, masquerade balls, carnival celebrations, and Creole society in nineteenth-century New Orleans.

The theater was destroyed by another fire in 1866, although the ballroom survived.

Then the building began a very different chapter.

In 1881, the Sisters of the Holy Family purchased the property. The religious order used it as a convent and operated St. Mary's Academy for African American girls. They also built an orphanage called St. John Berchman's Asylum for Negro Girls on the property.

The Sisters remained there until 1964, when the property was sold for development into the Bourbon Orleans Hotel. The hotel officially opened in 1966.

That's the documented history.

Then we have the ghost stories.

And there are plenty of those.

The Ghost Children of the Sixth Floor

One of the Bourbon Orleans' best-known hauntings involves children.

Guests and employees have reportedly heard children's footsteps and laughter in the hallways, particularly around the sixth floor. There are also stories of a little girl seen rolling or chasing a ball through the corridor.

The hotel itself connects these stories with the period when the Sisters of the Holy Family operated a school and orphanage on the property.

During our livestream, we happened to be staying on the sixth floor.

So naturally, I invited any children who might be there to tell us their names.

They declined.

Ghost children apparently have excellent internet privacy policies.

The Confederate Soldier

Another reported apparition is usually called "The Man."

He has reportedly been seen around the third and sixth floors and is commonly described as a Confederate soldier. Some versions of the story describe him as wounded or limping.

The Bourbon Orleans itself includes the Confederate soldier among the hotel's traditional ghost stories.

Since we were already on the sixth floor, I asked whether the soldier was present and if he could give us his name.

Again, nothing I would consider a clear response.

The Ghostly Ballroom Dancer

My favorite Bourbon Orleans ghost story may be the woman said to haunt the Orleans Ballroom.

Guests have reported seeing a woman dancing alone beneath the ballroom's crystal chandelier. There are also stories of draperies rustling or someone appearing to hide behind them when no person is actually there.

Considering the ballroom really did host elaborate nineteenth-century social events, this is exactly the kind of ghost story that feels as though it belongs in New Orleans.

It's romantic, creepy, and wonderfully Gothic.

It is also still a ghost story.

The historical ballroom is real. Its grand parties are real. The reports of a supernatural dancer are claims that haven't been demonstrated scientifically.

Unfortunately, we weren't investigating inside the ballroom during the livestream, so our lonely dancer didn't get an opportunity to join us.

What About Room 644?

Room 644 is frequently called the most haunted room at the Bourbon Orleans.

The popular story claims that a nun died by suicide there and that guests have since heard screaming or seen the apparition of a woman dressed as a nun beside the bed.

There is an important problem with that story.

I haven't found solid historical documentation establishing that the alleged suicide actually happened.

Even sources that tell the haunting describe the suicide as a rumor or legend, rather than a verified event. The official Bourbon Orleans history discusses apparitions of nuns and children but does not document a suicide in Room 644.

That's an important difference for me.

A ghost story can still be fascinating without pretending every part of it has been historically proven.

During the livestream, we walked down the sixth-floor hallway to Room 644. We couldn't investigate inside because we weren't staying in the room, but I wanted viewers to see the location connected with the legend.

It looked like a hotel room door.

No ominous fog.

No screaming nun.

No blood running beneath the door.

Very inconsiderate.

Our Live Ghost-Hunting Setup

Back in our room, we turned off the lights and set up several pieces of equipment.

We had an EMF meter, a REM-style pod/cat pod, environmental meters measuring things such as temperature and CO2, a compass, particle monitoring equipment, and even a PAR meter that measures light useful for photosynthesis.

Why measure something as weird as that?

Because we don't know what a ghost is.

If we're genuinely looking for something unknown, I would rather measure too many environmental variables than decide beforehand that ghosts conveniently interact with whatever gadget the paranormal industry happens to be selling this year.

We also used a spirit box.

And this produced one of the most interesting parts of the experiment.

Testing the Spirit Box With a Faraday Cage

At first, we were hearing the normal fragments of radio broadcasts coming through the spirit box.

That isn't surprising.

A spirit box is a radio.

Hearing voices coming from a radio isn't evidence of ghosts unless you can first eliminate the extremely obvious explanation that you're hearing…radio.

So we placed the spirit box inside our Faraday enclosure.

And the radio reception disappeared almost immediately.

That was actually useful.

The experiment demonstrated that what we had been hearing before putting the radio inside the enclosure was consistent with ordinary broadcast interference.

After that, I asked anyone supposedly present to try communicating through the spirit box again.

Nothing clearly happened.

And here's something I would phrase differently after doing the livestream.

I said that if a voice came through once the spirit box was inside the Faraday cage, we would know it was a ghost.

That's too strong.

It would certainly be more interesting.

It would not automatically prove a ghost.

You would still need to consider RF leakage, electrical interference generated by the device itself, audio artifacts, equipment malfunction, accidental contamination and good old-fashioned auditory pareidolia.

But eliminating normal radio reception is still a better experiment than simply turning on a spirit box and treating every half-word that sounds vaguely like "Martha" as somebody's dead grandmother.

The Best Thing About Live Ghost Hunting: Transparency

This may be the biggest advantage of doing paranormal investigations live.

You can't hide much.

Viewers get to watch the boring stretches.

They see me move the equipment.

They see my husband walk near the cat ball.

They hear hotel guests.

They see us put the spirit box inside the Faraday cage.

They can watch an experiment develop instead of seeing only ten spooky seconds extracted from several hours of footage.

That's important because paranormal videos are extremely easy to manipulate through editing—even unintentionally.

Imagine investigating for four hours and getting one strange noise.

In the edited video, you might see:

Question.

Five-second pause.

BANG!

That looks incredible.

What you don't see is the other three hours and fifty-nine minutes when absolutely nothing happened.

A livestream provides context.

And context is very important when you're trying to decide whether something is actually unusual.

Viewers Can Participate in the Investigation

Another fun advantage was letting viewers suggest questions.

Instead of everything being scripted beforehand, people watching could type questions they wanted me to ask.

That changes the experience from simply watching a ghost hunt to participating in one.

If you're investigating a location with a specific legend, viewers may even think of historical questions you didn't consider.

There's also something wonderfully strange about standing in a dark hotel room asking an alleged nineteenth-century ghost questions suggested by someone watching you on a smartphone hundreds of miles away.

Technology is weird.

Live Ghost Hunting Makes Cherry-Picking Harder

This may be my favorite advantage.

One major problem in paranormal investigation is confirmation bias.

You expect something strange to happen.

Eventually something strange happens.

Your brain connects the two.

Livestreaming doesn't eliminate confirmation bias, but it does make it harder to present only the moments supporting your expectations.

At the Bourbon Orleans, the truth was very simple.

Not much happened.

Our REM pod didn't repeatedly activate.

We didn't get meaningful EMF spikes.

The spirit box didn't suddenly produce clear responses after being shielded from radio.

We didn't hear children running through the hallway.

No Confederate soldier wandered into the room.

And our equipment didn't begin flying dramatically across the room.

It was quiet.

That's not a disappointing result.

That's a result.

If we're actually investigating instead of producing a haunted-house reality show, "nothing happened" has to be an acceptable conclusion.

The Biggest Problem With Live Ghost Hunting: Your Phone

Here's something I want to address more carefully on future livestreams.

To livestream, I obviously need a phone.

That phone is actively communicating with cellular towers, Wi-Fi networks or another device providing the internet connection.

Now think about some of the paranormal equipment commonly used during ghost hunts.

EMF meters.

REM pods.

Proximity sensors.

Various homemade paranormal gadgets.

Many of these devices are specifically intended to respond to electromagnetic fields or disturbances.

And I'm standing beside them with a tiny radio transmitter connected to the internet.

Oops.

During the livestream we actually saw the cat ball activate when my husband was nearby, which I immediately pointed out rather than pretending a ghost had touched it.

But the larger issue applies to the entire livestream.

The livestreaming equipment itself becomes an environmental variable.

That doesn't make live ghost hunting useless.

It means you have to design around it.

On future live investigations, I want much greater physical separation between the streaming phone and EMF-sensitive equipment. Ideally, I would also test every device beforehand with the phone close, far away, transmitting, and in airplane mode.

Then we know what the phone can trigger before blaming the dead.

You Can't Review Evidence While You're Live

This was another major problem.

During a normal paranormal investigation, I can concentrate on what I'm doing and review everything later.

During a livestream I'm:

• talking to viewers,
• watching comments,
• carrying equipment,
• watching where I'm walking in the dark,
• checking the connection,
• asking questions,
• monitoring paranormal equipment,
• making sure I don't accidentally livestream some innocent hotel guest stumbling toward the elevator in pajamas.

That's a lot.

Meanwhile, tiny sounds that might be interesting later can easily pass unnoticed.

This is especially important for EVP work.

A livestream should never replace recording the investigation independently at full quality.

Streaming platforms compress audio and video, and the livestream itself is designed for broadcasting—not necessarily for forensic examination of tiny noises.

My ideal setup would be to livestream for audience participation while simultaneously running independent static recorders and cameras that can be examined afterward.

Other Hotel Guests Are a Huge Problem

We encountered this almost immediately when we stepped into the hallway.

There was a wedding taking place in the hotel, and another guest walked through the area while we were live.

Obviously, she hadn't volunteered to appear in my paranormal investigation.

So we waited.

This is another difference between investigating a private haunted location and investigating a functioning hotel.

People open doors.

Elevators ding.

Guests talk.

Housekeeping carts move.

Weddings happen.

Drunk people return from Bourbon Street.

In New Orleans, possibly all of those things happen simultaneously.

Every unexplained footstep in a haunted hotel does not automatically belong to a nineteenth-century orphan.

Live investigation makes controlling those variables even harder because you can't simply edit around people afterward.

Live Streaming Can Encourage You to Keep Things Moving

Ghost hunting is mostly waiting.

That's not especially entertaining television.

When you're live, there's pressure to keep talking, move somewhere else, try another device, ask another question or create something for viewers to watch.

But constantly changing the experiment isn't necessarily good investigation.

Sometimes the better experiment is:

Put the equipment down.

Don't touch it.

Stop talking.

Wait twenty minutes.

That may produce scientifically cleaner data.

It may also produce a livestream consisting primarily of darkness and me breathing.

YouTube sensation!

Finding the balance between entertainment and investigation may be one of the hardest parts of doing paranormal research live.

What Did We Actually Find at the Bourbon Orleans?

During this particular livestream?

Nothing that convinced me we encountered paranormal activity.

We heard normal radio contamination through the spirit box until we shielded it.

The Faraday enclosure dramatically reduced that reception.

We didn't receive clear communication afterward.

Our other equipment remained mostly quiet.

The cat pod had activated earlier, but we didn't establish a repeatable paranormal cause for it.

We didn't experience dramatic unexplained EMF changes.

And although we walked through the allegedly haunted sixth floor and visited the hallway outside Room 644, nothing unusual happened while we were there.

That doesn't prove the Bourbon Orleans isn't haunted.

It also doesn't give me evidence that it is.

And that's exactly where I'm comfortable leaving it.

So, Is Live Ghost Hunting Worth Doing?

I think it is.

But perhaps not for the reason people expect.

Live ghost hunting isn't necessarily better for finding ghosts.

It may be better for showing people what paranormal investigation actually looks like.

There are technical problems.

There are long stretches where nothing happens.

Equipment behaves strangely for completely ordinary reasons.

Radio stations sneak into spirit boxes.

Guests walk through hallways.

Internet connections misbehave.

Someone forgets a room key.

Your husband sets off the cat ball.

And sometimes you spend the night in one of New Orleans' most famously haunted hotels and the ghosts completely ignore you.

That's real ghost hunting.

And I think there is value in showing that side of it.

If something genuinely extraordinary ever does happen during one of these investigations, I want to have eliminated as many ordinary explanations as possible first.

Until then, I'll keep experimenting.

The Bourbon Orleans ghosts may have been quiet this time.

But there are plenty more haunted hotels waiting.

Stay spooky, cats.