Royal Street's Immortal Whisper

A bricked window on Royal Street. Bottles that looked like wine but weren’t. A host who threw lavish parties and never took a bite. We head to New Orleans and pull at the threads of the Jacques Saint‑Germain legend, lining up tour lore with city directories, chains of title, and passenger lists to see how much of this story sits on solid ground—and where it slips into shadow.

We walk through the famous balcony incident and the police’s fateful delay, then test the tale against public records that refuse to give us a tidy answer. Along the way, locals share an unsettling wrinkle: a figure in a long coat and a short top hat who appears at pivotal moments, shoves a victim toward survival, and disappears before anyone catches a face. That same silhouette reappears in other cities and decades—from subways to Halloween streets—raising a bigger question about patterns that persist when names fade and witnesses don’t compare notes.

This conversation lives where skepticism and wonder meet. We respect the archives and resist easy conclusions, yet we don’t ignore consistent accounts that echo across time and place. Whether Jacques Saint‑Germain was an immortal raconteur, a clever fraud, or a stand‑in for the fears New Orleans refuses to bury, the story keeps breathing because the city keeps listening. If folklore, paranormal history, and hard research are your lane, you’ll feel right at home as we map the myth against the map of the Quarter.

If this exploration grabbed you, follow the show, share it with a friend who loves ghost stories with receipts, and leave a quick review so more curious minds can find us.

Chapters

• 0:00 Birthday, Chaos, and Copyright Rant
• 5:58 Setting the Stage: New Orleans Lore
• 9:46 The Legend of Jacques Saint‑Germain
• 16:20 The Balcony Escape and Blood Wine
• 21:45 Chasing Records and Dead Ends

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:02

Hey everybody, it's Dr. G, Spirit Tales and Magic. It's about 10 o'clock in the morning in Phoenix. It's Cassandra's birthday, so if you see her out there in the world today, wish her a happy birthday. Before we get into the episode, there's a couple of things that, with your permission, of course, I need to vent about. We go out last night to celebrate Cassandra's birthday. Those of you who don't know Cassandra personally, she is probably the hardest working woman and one of the only women I've ever met who has no contempt for any living thing on the planet. She's an empath. She's great. So while we're out, two guys with a trailer load of trash, a pool behind trailer and a truck, fill our alley full of garbage. We don't know that's going on. We're not here at the time. We come home to a police incident, which you heard about on the podcast last night. Or at least you heard there was one. We won't go into details about that. And then this morning, Spotify sends me a note that they had taken one of the podcasts down because I mentioned the Great Ghost, and it could be an infringement on some guy's book. Okay, so I usually don't do this, but here we go. Several things are called the Gray Ghost. USS Lexington, uh, The Queen Mary, the Flying Dutchman. Um if you want to go further than that, look it up. There's a ton of public information, public record, gray ghost, gray ghost, gray ghost. Just because you, whoever you are, because of course they can't mention names, writes a book and uses the words gray ghost in it, you think you own those two words, and you do not. I'm 50 plus years in dealing with copyrights and mostly from the magic business, but sometimes from the podcast. Once something crosses into public domain, and and let's let's back up. When I do one of those stories, I read the story, I research it, I put it in my own words, in my own words, and I put it out on the internet under this podcast. If it is a story that someone sent me, their original ghost story, then I present it. They are the authors, but you know that when you go in. If I don't say that, that means I am the author. So there's a bot that these jackasses have that you know goes through and reads things, and you know, I'm probably gonna get on a list for saying that. You know, we should all come together somehow and stand against this foolishness. Many years ago, I did an illusion. Beautiful illusion, really. I wrote it. I picked the song that was going to be the background song for it. The piece of illusion equipment itself was publicly sold. It's very expensive, and I purchased one, which comes with the rights to perform it. I got the permission from the singer of the song to use the song in the background. She actually thought it was pretty cool that I was going to do that. A year later, I see a famous illusionist doing the exact same trick to the exact same music. Did I call him and bitch about it? No, I didn't. Why? Because there is no new magic. You bought a trick from a purveyor of illusions, and you picked a song because you liked it, and you thought it went with the trick. Now, the two patterns, if you will, or the things that happened in the illusion were not exactly the same. There were some similarities, but I didn't get aggravated about it. I thought it was pretty cool that that person came up with one of the same tricks. Flash forward. Ten years later, I'm doing a charity show for Gold Star Mothers in a sold-out theater of 2,800 people, standing room only, and I open with that illusion. Five people in the audience. That's so-and-so's thing. No, it's not. This is the same thing. If all this is true and the woke or whatever you want to call the society we're living in right now, can do that, then hey, every pastor in the free world, I'm sorry, you can't talk about Jesus Christ. It's copyrighted. Let's see. You can't say let's roll because that happened in 9-11. We need to get back to worrying about the things that we should worry about in the world. I'm in 25 countries and 187 cities as of today, and I go way out of my way to make sure that I don't offend anyone. But there is a breaking point. So it's a constant gnashing of teeth where I am, controlled by a bunch of bureaucratic idiots who have never worked in the real world. And I'll be done with that now. We're gonna talk about New Orleans, or Nollens, if you will. You'll recall in the beginning of the podcast that in the beginning of Doctober, I should say. Oh, and you know, if somebody else has come that's a doctor has come up with the word Doctober, gee, sorry about your lot. I've had this for 27 years. So in New Orleans in the French Quarter, there's a rather stately home. We've gone through possibly 50 or 60 ghost tours there, and this home is always a stop on the ghost tours. So, according to local legend, it was once the residence of an immortal vampire. In the early 20th century, this charismatic figure entertained high society while feeding the city's citizens. Some say he was a famed count of Saint Germain, who had charmed courts in Europe and even in centuries past. So the legend goes something like this. In the early 1900s, like it's like 1902, 1904, somewhere around there, depending on the source that you read, a wealthy middle-aged man by the name of Jacques Saint-Germain moved into New Orleans from France. He took up a residence in a house on Royal Street, and he began throwing lavish parties for the city's elite. He treated his guests to fine meals, but curiously, never would he partake of any food himself. This mysterious host was only ever seen drinking what everyone assumed to be red wine. Now Germain's former house, according to legend, has been the subjects of ghost stories and dark rumors, whispers of things paranormal.

unknown: 8:16

St.

SPEAKER_00: 8:17

Germain also regaled his guests with stories of ancient times, and they were so detailed it was like he had actually been there himself. Many of his guests commented that he was such a masterful storyteller in the way that he told a story, you would have thought that he actually hadn't been involved in it. He claimed to be a descendant of the Count of Saint Germain, who was a famed eighteenth century adventurer, musician, and alchemist, among other things. Guests noticed the physical resemblance between their host and portraits of the Count. Some began to wonder if he was in fact the same man as the Count Germain known in history. Jacques Saint Germain's charm and enigmatic nature gained him quite a reputation in the city. However, everything was going to change one November evening when an injured woman was found in the street in front of Saint Germain's house. Now a version of this story is told on about half of the ghost stories that ghost tours that we've taken in the city. At first, people assumed that she had fallen from the second floor balcony. Now there's a piece of this we're going to skip till the end. However, it quickly became apparent that she had jumped. Of course, the police were summoned, and before being taken to the hospital, the woman shared what she thought was a very shocking tale. Saint Germain had apparently invited the woman into his home. Some believe that she may have been a prostitute, while others say she was looking over objects on his mantle. Opinions vary as to who she was and why she was there. All of a sudden, Saint Germain allegedly lunges at her and begins to bite her neck. As he was attacking her, a knocking at the front door momentarily distracted him. This gave her an opportunity to escape, and then it's alleged that she jumped from the balcony to the street below. Keep that in mind. After hearing this accusation, the police spoke to Germain. He assured them that no such thing has happened. Why would he make an attack on some random woman? Given the late hour, they agreed that Saint Germain could visit the station the next morning to give his formal statement. After all, he was an upstanding citizen of the city, and there should be no cause for alarm. And the officers apparently really didn't even believe the woman's account. They were more inclined to trust Germain due to his wealth and his standing in the community. This decision, however, would turn out to be a mistake. The next day, Saint Germain did not appear at the station. The police returned to his house to retrieve him for questioning, but nobody answered the door. After watching the house, they eventually had to break in. They were shocked. Most of Saint Germain's belongings were gone. He had apparently departed the previous night right after the incident. As the police looked around, they saw bloodstains on tablecloths and carpets. No food, no dinnerware, or utensils of any kind were in the house. They did find a number of corked wine bottles. However, upon opening some, they realized the bottles were filled with a mixture of wine and blood. No one knows where Jacques Saint Germain fled to, but the police were never able to find him. Today, passers by noticed that one of the second floor windows is bricked up. I didn't see that when I took the last tour. It's said that the woman made her escape through the window, and that's what saved her life. Keep that in mind. Now, given the legend includes some specific details. So we've got the alleged name of the alleged vampire, we have his address, we have years that it occurred potentially. So I get curious about stuff like that. But I couldn't find anything in the early 20th century newspapers. Now, my search may not have been exhaustive, but it's fairly intense. I'm usually pretty good at digging up things. So I thought, why don't I turn my attention to public records? Wondered if maybe I could place anybody with the name of Jacques Saint Germain in the house on Oral Street, somewhere in that time period. Now, Seward's New Orleans City Directory for 1895, public record, does not have an entry for anybody named Jacques Saint Germain. Now it lists his occupation as a laborer, and it has him living on North Rampart Street. This suggests to me that we're not talking about the same guy. Now there's a passenger list and its accompanying index that shows a Jacques Germain arriving in New Orleans in around 1890. I believe it was on the SS Californian. According to those documents, they claim he was 54 years old. His nationality was French, and he was an engineer. Some of those details do roughly kind of line up like the nationality, but you know what? Others don't. And the date actually would be what 10 years earlier than the legend states. Although dates can certainly shift with retellings. We refer all the time to the game that some of us played when we were very young, kindergarten, first grade, where you sit in a circle on the floor and I whisper into somebody's ear, either on my right or the left, wherever I was directed to whisper. And by the time it comes back to your opposite ear, the story's not the one you told. So human nature. It was 1039 and I believe to 1041 Royal Street. It's got two street numbers because it was originally designed as a commercial building. So if you went on the first floor through corner doors, that was the business, and then there was a side door with stairs that led up to the residence. Kind of the same spot that Cassandra and I are looking for today. According to records, the house was built in around 1884. And that's according to the chain of title, also public record. But none of the owners were named Saint Germain. The owners during the late 19th century and early 20th centuries actually owned a number of properties in New Orleans. So that makes me think it's entirely possible that Germain or whoever this person was actually rented the house. And really, I can't find anything that makes it clearer who was living there in 1902. So that's kind of where the trail ends. I was unable to find an actual period account of the incident, and I couldn't place an aerostatic Jacques Saint-Germain in New Orleans during the time. But the house was likely rented out, and I'm certainly unaware of who was occupying it. Record keeping back then was not like it was today, of course, we all know that. I did find some interesting things along the way. So anytime that Cassander and I get an excuse to go to Nolans for any reason, we're there. So much to see. You gotta kind of watch yourself these days because it's a little different than it used to be. But go down there, see all the shops, the music, and the food. The food is amazing. Take the Natchez, take a ride down the river, have dinner on it. And no, none of this is advertising because we don't accept advertising on the podcast. So we're down there talking to a lot of folks that give ghost tours. And, you know, do you know anybody that might know anything or know someone that knew anything about this incident? We'd be interested in hearing about it. Now we did find a couple of people who claim to be related to the woman that the police found in the street. They claimed that she was not a sex worker. They claim that she was invited there to look at some antiques for a possible purchase for a voodoo store not far from where the incident occurred. She does claim, allegedly, that he did attack her and all of those things that she told the police. Here's the exception, and here's why we can't put this down very easily. She was running for the window when a man in a long coat and a short top hat shoved her so violently that she broke the door latch on the double doors, which is what they're also referring to as the window, and went over the balcony, landing in the street. They claimed that she claimed that she looked for that man all over the city to thank him for saving her life, even though he almost killed her in the process. The man was never found. Long overcoat, top hat, pushes this woman through the window and over the balcony. Description of the same man in one of the first podcasts we did about Abraham Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth's sons, when one of them was, according to legend, pushed in front of a subway train, even though the podcast says they fell, by a man in a long coat wearing a bowler hat or a short top hat. More recently, in the subway systems of New York, people were pushed in front of trains and lost their lives by a man in a long coat and a bowler hat or a short top hat. We did a seance last Halloween in Salem. Yes, that Salem. I was a paramedic for years and have been in service to the public for a very long time, either in the public sector or the private sector, or the kind of secretive sector. We'll let that go at that. But I am one of those guys that runs at the fire or toward the gunfire. It's just ingrained in my soul. I can't help it. So Salem in in Halloween times, you gotta do it at least once. You have to see it. There's a lot of people. So Cassandra and I stopped. This lovely young lady who was dressed as Alice in Wonderland had fallen. She had blood on her white leggings, and we just stopped to check her out and talk to her for a minute. They actually did bring actual uniform paramedics in to look at her. Didn't think much of it then. Honey, what happened? This idiot in a top hat and a long coat shoved me down the tried to shove me down the stairs. I hit the first stair, but I caught myself on the rail, and then I walked down here, and my leg hurt so bad I had to sit down in the street. People were walking around me. Finally, someone stopped to help and called the medics who are on their way, and then you came. Man in a top hat and a long coat. Now, every time that this guy, this thing, whatever you want to call it, has been seen and has been seen by many, many people, including myself and 15 others, two of which were police officers, in a roller rink in Wheeling, West Virginia, which has since burnt to the ground. You never get a description of this guy's face. The only thing that's memorable about him is the long coat that's out of place. And either a bowler hat or a top hat. When we saw him, it was a short top hat. There are somewhere in West Virginia and Wheeling police officers' statements to back that up. Now we talk about things like cryptids, and we talk about portals and the alleged ability of beings to move through time and space. And I'm not saying that I endorse that. And I will take both sides of the fence here. There's no proof that that exists. Okay, there's no proof that it does not. You can't have one without the other. You know, it's that old adage: you can't have up without down, you can't have good without evil, you can't have someone you call God without having the devil. You know, in belief systems, if you believe in part A, the part B that goes with it must be true to make part C or all of its PS. This is over hundreds of years that this thing's been seen. The descriptions are the same. Now, we know in urban legends people like to repeat them, letting Mary, all that stuff. We remember our friend the Mothman, he's been seen all over the place, and last night we talked about the Bigfoot and all the variations of him. But you have to find it at least curious that people in all walks of life in many, many places see this guy or this thing. It's always the same description, and like they said in one of the things that we podcast, it's like his face is on a pivot. When you look at it, it automatically turns to the side, and you never get a good view of him. Sometimes I feel like I'm in an episode of the Night Stalker, and should just call me Kol Shack. But it's interesting. I find all of that very interesting. Like we always say, there is indeed a world unseen, a world that exists all around us all the time. And every now and then we catch a glimpse of it. And the dead get in. Or maybe just people in long coats and short top hats. Thank you, my friends, for listening to the podcast. Give us a like, give us a share, give us a follow, support the podcast if you can. Send us your stories, and hey, tell a paranormal story. Even if it's about a guy in a top hat, it's good for ya. Good morning from Phoenix. We'll talk again soon.