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True Blood Travel Guide: Digging Deep For Voodoo Culture

You've heard of Christmas in July, but we're about to get all Halloween in June this week as we prepare for the debut of the second season of HBO's TrueBlood. Any juicy suggestions or questions? Let us know.

There is more to Louisiana than just New Orleans' French Quarter and southern cooking, and if you look to the Louisiana of True Blood, that means visits to spooky cemeteries in the middle of the night.

If vampire Bill Compton isn't sleeping beneath your feet in the local graveyard, then Tara is undergoing some voodoo rituals in the back corner. A perfect setting for all this is Oakland Cemetery in Shreveport, founded in 1847, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and boasts of a fine creepy history all its own.

Just outside of downtown Shreveport, in Oakland's earth rests the town's old notorious madam, Masons, nephews of Confederate president Jefferson Davis, and a whole patch of victims of the yellow fever epidemics. Almost no new graves have been added in the last seventy years and it is believed that "there are nearly as many unmarked graves here as marked ones." On the ones that do still stand, voodoo rituals are not uncommon and visitors will often gifts, like little necklaces, strewn about the area. A question to any potential grave robbers: do you really want stuff associated with voodoo?

Related Stories:
· Oakland Cemetery [Official Site]
· Oakland Cemetery [Haunted LA]
· Louisiana Travel Coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: cybertoad]