CHICKEN MAN

Witnesses Claim The Ghost 0f The Chicken Man The True King Of New Orleans Voodoo Is haunting The French Quarter.

It began to surface slowly, as people came back in twos and threes to live in the French Quarter, the beating heart of a city that had been abandoned to the ravages of Hurricane Katrina; and it was not among the locals that the talk began.

“Oh, I just saw the most realistic voodoo man!” said the FEMA worker to a group of her other friends inside Pat O’Brien’s main bar. These days it isn’t uncommon to see New Orleans bars brimming with FEMA and other recovery and reconstruction personnel. With the lack of tourists, these have been the main customers in the once busy bars and clubs that are bringing the Quarter back to life

“I saw him down there,” she said, pointing over her shoulder in the direction of Bourbon Street. “He came over to me,” she chuckled when they chided her for hooking up with a colorful local stranger. “He walked over to me and stopped me. He said he knew what I needed and he gave me this green bag.”

With that she pulled out a little green mojo bag and all her friends recoiled in horror, not because they recognized anything about the bag immediately, but mostly at the sight of the gnarled, black chicken claw tied around it.

“Ewww!” said one of the group. “That’s disgusting!” said another.

As the women stood by laughing at the little bag they were overheard by one of Pat’s longtime doormen. He came over and said, quietly, “Say, where’d you get that mojo bag, ma’am?” And when he heard the woman’s story, that she had got it from a voodoo man on Bourbon Street, and when he asked her to describe what the man looked like, Nathan the doorman just about fell down.

“That’s The Chicken Man!” he said, eyes wide and staring. He handled the little bag gingerly. “You just met up with The Chicken Man!”

At this the women all laughed again. “Chicken Man!” said the woman with the mojo bag. “You’d figure the only voodoo man I meet and he’s called Chicken Man!”

But as they slowly became aware of the blood draining from the curious doorman’s face, they fell quiet again. “What about Chicken Man?” cackled one of the women.

“Well,” the doorman replied, “it can’t be Chicken Man you saw! Chicken Man’s been dead now for years! Ain’t nobody like him on Bourbon Street nowadays. If he gave you that mojo bag, I’d make sure I NEVER lose that thing!”

He called himself “Prince Ke’eyama” and he was acknowledged far and wide as the One True King of New Orleans Voodoo, but most locals knew him only as “The Chicken Man.”

As a young man, Prince traveled widely, visiting communities in other states where the ancient voodoo beliefs were practiced. He also returned to Haiti several times where his powers were increased and his reputation similarly grew.

During the turbulent years of the early 1970’s, Prince Ke’eyama returned to New Orleans and settled there. He observed the chaos all around him and immediately knew the cause: so many around him were in trouble with drugs, he realized he had found his calling and began to use all his powers to help these desperate individuals.

Prince Ke’eyama determined that the best way to gain their trust and attract their attention was to create a sensation of himself: this is when The Chicken Man was born.

After gaining fame with his admittedly strange nightclub act, Prince was able to open a venue of his own. Called “Chicken Man’s House of Voodoo,” the shop was located in the 700 block of Bourbon Street where it immediately became a landmark among the local voodoo community. When Prince Ke’eyama married, his wife Bobby Ke’eyama, known as The Chicken Woman, would manage the shop leaving The Chicken Man free to seek out and help those who needed him among the French Quarter crowds.

He soon became a familiar figure around the Quarter selling his gris-gris bags and incense, doing readings for next to nothing or sometimes free, if the person he chose to read had no cash on them. To Prince, this was his ministry and the streets were full of his congregation. And in those days you had to be blind to miss him: broad smile, dread hair, feathers and ribbons and braids hanging, sometimes wearing his signature straw hat, always carrying his powerful staff.

Chicken Man seemed to instinctively read a person, even from a distance, and by the time he zeroed in on someone, he had already decided upon just the right “prescription” in his mind. That’s how most people met the Chicken Man; he singled them out, rather than the other way around.

As often happens with people of great goodwill and power, a huge following grew up around The Chicken Man in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Although he was practically worshipped by many and was accepted as a truly powerful voodoo priest by those practicing “true” voodoo – most prominently Lady Bianca – the “popular” voodoo practitioners treated him as an outsider.

Prince Ke’eyama, The Chicken Man, died in December 1998.

“Well, he was always around when we needed him,” says Lance, a bartender at a popular Bourbon Street nightclub. “It makes sense to me, at least, that he’d be around now, when the city is on its knees.”

Lance, whose occupation keeps him out late into the night, is another who has sighted The Chicken Man.

“I was on my way home, and I have to walk down Bourbon then I cross over to Royal and follow it home,” he said. “I saw him from a distance, standing just past the shadows of the [street]lights on St. Ann. He looked just like he always did, with the straw hat and that staff he always carried, and it looked like he was wearing an overcoat, or something big around him. He looked right at me when I was coming up on him, but then he turned away and I looked to cross the street. When I got to where he should have been, he was gone.”

One local hairstylist will cherish a small relic she claims to have obtained from an encounter with the Chicken Man.

“He just glowed,” she said. “It was strange, you know, but it was like he was looking at me and through me at the same time. I was feeling really depressed – I had just broken up with my boyfriend who wouldn’t move back here with me after the storm – and it was just miserable down here those first weeks back. The night I saw the Chicken Man I was on my way back home and he was standing against the wall at the back of the [Marie Laveau’s] House of Voodoo. He held out his hand and I was about to run to the other side of the street. But he had this little bag.” She pulled out a pink gris-gris bag; attached to it was a holy card image of St. Helena, the patron saint of lost loves.

“He just smiled at me and nodded,” she went on. “He seemed so nice, I just took the bag and thanked him.”

Within two weeks her boyfriend had experienced a change of heart. He has since reunited with her and made a permanent move to New Orleans.

The Chicken Man was encountered by a group of recovery workers out enjoying a night on Bourbon just as Hurricane Rita was about to become a threat to western Louisiana. This time four people saw him and his demeanor was different than previous sightings. He appeared to be worried or preoccupied and he stood silently, leaning on his staff and contemplating the night sky. The group even had to walk around him to pass down the street. They found this funny until, several blocks on, one of them looked back and the Chicken Man had disappeared.

New Orleans was spared a hit by Hurricane Rita and many people who are beginning to believe the stories of the Chicken Man sightings believe that he has returned to intercede for the city, now that Katrina has done her damage.

“I personally don’t believe that we’ll have another hit like Katrina,” says Deborah, a local police officer whose beat is the French Quarter, “not as long as people are seeing the Chicken Man.”

Deborah’s mother was a firm believer in the power of this King of New Orleans Voodoo and she can recall her often consulting him about important events in the family over the years. “I think he’s come back to protect us, and as long as we’re seeing him, New Orleans will be OK.”

That’s the feeling of Armando, perhaps the most devoted of Chicken Man’s present day followers and the leader of a secret voodoo society based around Chicken Man’s practices. He greets the reports of the growing number of Chicken Man sightings with a broad smile, gold teeth flickering.

“Oh, I believe it! I believe it!” he says, holding up his hands. “It’s not the first time, you know,