Curse of the Superdome

From The Bourbon Street Journal:

There is intense irony in the Superdome becoming the symbol of the horrors of Hurricane Katrina. In New Orleans lore, it's a haunted building - a cursed structure in this city that lives shoulder to shoulder with its Cities of the Dead. Visitors are familiar with our huge expanses of above-ground tombs in dozens of cemeteries across the city. Coming in from the airport on Interstate 10, the "gateway" to downtown is flanked by sprawling Greenwood Cemetery on the left, and the elite Metairie Cemetery on the right. Downtown, the old St. Louis No. 1 Cemetery is a prime tourist spot, and has appeared in many movies. In the Garden District, diners at Commanders Palace's second floor can look out over Lafayette No. 1, filled with victims of Yellow Fever plagues. But you can't visit the old Girod Cemetery. Abandoned for years, its iron caskets and bones were tossed up by excavation gear in the early 1970s as the crews moved in to build . . . the Superdome. Beneath the now-shredded roof and the fetid stinking mess of excrement and blood where tens of thousands huddled in storm and flood . .. and some died . . . likely lie even more unexcavated bones. And local lore is that the Superdome was cursed . . . a punishment for desecrating this City of the Dead. Exorcists and voodoo priestesses have been here to dispel the curse.