Echoes of Ballard House (Simone Doucet Book 3) by E. Denise Billups; Real Life Unsolved New Orleans Mystery Combines with Simone Doucet’s Dark Supernatural World
By Julie Sara Porter
Bookworm Reviews
Spoilers: In the annals of unsolved mysteries, The Axeman of New Orleans is certainly a memorable and terrifying one. Between May 23, 1918-October 27, 1919, a serial killer stalked the streets of New Orleans brandishing their victims with an ax. There were twelve victims, most of them Italian immigrants or Italian-Americans, attributed to the Axeman. On March 13, 1919, a letter reportedly from the Axeman was published in several newspapers which promised more killings but had a unique request. Since the Axeman loved jazz music, on the following Tuesday night, they declared that they would spare any home that had jazz music playing from inside. Jazz musicians were hired and played in hundreds of homes that night. It appeared to work as there were no reported killings during that time. However, three subsequent killings later that year were attributed to the Axeman. The murders apparently stopped for unknown reasons after the final murder on October 27, 1919. The Axeman was never identified and no formal suspicions or arrests were made. To this day, the case remains unsolved.
This eerie New Orleans legend is featured prominently in E. Denise Billups’ third Simone Doucet Supernatural Mystery, Echoes of Ballard House. It effectively combines a real life murder mystery with Simone's dark interior world of ghosts, visions, and demonic forces that trap the unwary and angry.
Simone is house sitting in a spooky manor called Ballard House, for her friends. Gisele and Theo, while researching information on her ancestors, Antoine and Bleu (introduced and featured prominently in the previous book, Wicked Bleu). While looking after the place, she experiences psychic visions of a bloody murder and an angry spirit. Simone studies the history of the house and one previous owner, Jensen who sold the house to her friends under mysterious circumstances. These circumstances are tied to disturbing family secrets and a bloody murder that took place during the Axeman’s reign of terror.
Between the two books in the Simone Doucet Series, Wicked Bleu has the stronger sense of characterization particularly dealing with the life, death, and afterlife of Bleu, a Storyville prostitute who had been victimized by racism, misogyny, and abuse and carried those scars beyond death. Echoes of Ballard House, however, is the better of the two in terms of shocks, scares, and the overall unease that comes with reading a horror book.
The opening reveals that ominous dark psychic energy right away. An unidentified Narrator wanders through the house while jazz is played to appease the Axeman. This figure wanders through Ballard House filled with hate and revenge against their own family members. They want to kill them and frame the serial murderer for it. There are dueling evils within the house as the Axeman takes life for unimaginable cravings to satisfy bloodlust and sadistic pleasure. But there is something just as bad if not worse about the other character who is plotting to do away with their own family members for personal reasons. The Axeman is killing people that they don’t know but this mysterious Narrator is inflicting the same horror on people that they do know and presumably once loved. One, the Axeman is inhuman, someone that most people can’t imagine what that feels like. Another, the Narrator, is all too human, someone that some might be afraid of becoming. One argument too many, one lost temper, one careless display of weaponry, or buried resentment that boils over. That person could be just as, if not far more, dangerous than any serial killer.
Suspense carries over into the present as the first few chapters explore Jensen, the previous Ballard House owner before Gisele and Theo. He inherited the house from his late aunt, but he learns that the house was obtained under false pretenses. Even though Jensen attempts to right this previous conflict and return the house to the rightful heirs, there is a dark undercurrent that will not be silenced, at times literally. Whispers come through the house about the owners and the crimes that occurred. There is also a startling revelation that causes Jensen to withdraw his ownership of Ballard House. It is a genuinely unexpected twist that provides a disturbing mental image for the Reader to mull over for a few days.
By the time Simone house sits, Ballard House is completely festered with spirits that affect her physical and psychological well being. She suffers from vivid nightmares, chronic fatigue, migraines, and dizzy spells. In one harrowing chapter, she passes out and has a visualization in which she witnesses the murders in the prologue first hand. The mindset of a psychic can be a troubling one and this chapter is an example of that.
Simone is on high alert for any dark presences almost to the point of paranoia. She becomes suspicious of the people that surround the house: a pool cleaner, a neighbor and Jensen who befriends the young psychic and may have romantic feelings towards her. Simone’s heightened suspicions also transfer towards Gisele and Theo, long time friends, with whom she never had conflict before. Her visions and fears affect her perceptions so much that she can’t tell friend from enemy.
The supernatural world is a terrifying one as dark almost demonic presences are driven by rage, desire, insanity, and sins past. But what the Simone Doucet Series excels at is showing the real terror are the human beings that we encounter every day. The racist who dehumanizes those around them so they can justify their attacks.The misogynist who longs to own and use women for his sexual pleasure. The killer who murders without conscience. The family member whose anger towards their relatives turns into homicide. Those are the true terrors. Their actions cause the supernatural disruption proving that humans are more monstrous than any ghostly apparition can ever be.
