The UpStairs Lounge
Dead men do tell tales
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We peer into the gloom. I can tell that the narrow, steeply winding staircase ahead of me was once red. Some of the bright paint still clings to the steps in odd places. At first I assume it’s simply age that has stripped the paint from the wood. With a chill, I realize that the stairs are, in fact, charred and blackened from the fire, scrubbed to an obsidian shine by the footsteps of workmen and bar employees in the ensuing three and a half decades. The day after the holocaust, the New Orleans Times-Picayune noted that “a mass of bodies” was found here, in this cramped, tomb-like corridor we must now enter single-file.
The last time Kalila investigated this location, she reminds us, the door at the top of the stairs, the door into the former site of the UpStairs Lounge itself, was locked. That was okay with Kalila, though, as she had no desire at that time to enter. The psychic imprint on the place made her so ill, she relates, that she was forced to leave after only a few moments of investigating the stairwell. On that occasion, in the midst of her psychic episode, Kalila had seen a vision of a man, arms outstretched in Christ-like supplication, his figure ablaze.
“Well,” Phillip announces with mock cheeriness as he tries the door, “it’s open now!” Phillip stands at the head of our small, single-file posse, at the top of the stairs, and opens the door a crack. Jimmy gave Kalila permission to access the stairwell, not the storage room and office beyond, but we interpret the unlocked door as an invitation – or is that a sign? – and the two psychics steel themselves to enter, like divers sucking down a series hearty, regular breaths just before plunging into unknown waters.
Before he enters, Phillip turns awkwardly in the cramped space, extends his left hand, palm down and bids each of us in turn hold a hand parallel to his. I can tell he thinks I’ll feel something. I am not a believer in such things, but what the heck, I’m game. I bring my right hand close to his, very close. Phillip holds his palm stiffly, flexing it flat with a will, as if he’s fighting the impulse to smack my hand.
When our palms are only a couple centimeters apart, when my fingers can detect the heat of Phillip’s skin, something happens. I feel the blood of my hand rush upward to the palm, drawn to Phillip’s hand as if it’s somehow magnetized. The sensation lasts only a split-second, but in that instant I feel as if each and every red blood cell in my fingers is an insect, seeking Phillip’s light and heat.
We wordlessly agree to keep the lights switched off as we enter the room. I can dimly make out two refrigerators against one wall. Metal shelving holds cans and cans of foodstuffs, bottles and bottles of cleaning chemicals. The only illumination comes from the small flashlight I’m poking into darkened corners, from the streetlights below and, at irregular intervals, headlight beams from the Quarter slicing across the walls at odd angles. I can hear party noise from outside, from below, from down the block… another Tuesday night in New Orleans.
Phillip is already getting something. He strides around the dusky room, commencing with a psychically powered monologue. “There…was a lot of love in this room,” he begins, wistfully. I start to walk towards a darkened room off to the side of this storage area before Phillip’s icy voice stops me short: “I wouldn’t do that!” I suddenly realize that the energy in the room changes, the further from the center I wander. It’s as if there is some sort of electricity in the air, moving in a ring around our little party of investigators, its epicenter spiraling between us, the storeroom’s corporeal visitors. It’s the palm of Phillip’s hand, magnified.
“They had a purpose,” Phillip states. “Were they trying to organize something? Were they trying to organize a … civil rights kinda march, or… something?” In his near trance state, Phillip toggles so rapidly between addressing questions and statements to us, and to the supernatural presences he’s sensing, that it quickly grows difficult to keep track.
Kalila says she is starting to feel ill like last time, but Phillip is focused on something else. “This is what matters,” he states, indicating the far wall with the two refrigerators. “This wall is what matters. ’Cause you know what? He stood here. He stood here. He preached from here.”
A particularly loud burst of revelry rises up from the Jimani below, as if in agreement. I know, from my own research, that church services were held here in this room. The New Orleans branch of the Universal Fellowship Metropolitan Community Church, a gay-friendly ministry, did meet here at the UpStairs, on occasion. The night of the fire was a party night, not a church event, but the UFMCC lost ten members, a devastating blow to a congregation that numbered only 35.