 The Ottoman Empire lasted from 1299 to 1922. In 1453, the capital of the Ottoman Empire was moved to Constantinople. We've talked a lot about Constantinople as it was before that, a town called Byzantium. After the dissolvement of the Ottoman Empire, after World War I, Constantinople became known as Istanbul, as it's still known to this day. Now like any great empire of centuries gone by, the Ottoman Empire has a lot of legend, folklore, and stories. For a lot of people, especially for Westerners, stories that come from the Middle East around cultures that are very different from our own can be quite mysterious. And believe it or not, a particular house in New Orleans carries a legend that has to do with the culture from the Ottoman Empire. But before we go any further, you know what to do. Please hit that subscribe button and give us a like. As always, such a very, very special thank you to all of our producers and our patrons on this channel. We truly, truly could not do this without each of you. If you would like to join our Patreon, there is a link down in the description box below. Welcome to Esoteric Atlanta, my name is Bryce, and today we are going to be talking about the Sultan of New Orleans. The Gardet Le Pret Mansion was built in 1836. This was a luxurious Greek home that was built at 716 Delphine Street at the corner of Delphine Street in Orleans Avenue in the French Quarter. Now, the story goes that the person who owned this house originally also had other houses out in the country known as plantations. This was common in this time period. This also was true with the McCarty family from Delphine Lollerie, who we covered last week. These people would live in their plantations for part of the year where most of their income was generated, and then they would go into the city to their city home for another part of the year. Well, in 1860, at the very beginning of the American Civil War, the landscape and socioeconomic standards for a lot of the people living in the south changed. Even though New Orleans surrendered quite quickly to the Union troops, there obviously was quite a crunch on the pocketbook of most of the residents. Around this time, this is when we believe that the person who originally owned the mansion in the French Quarter looked for a tenant to rent his city home out to in order to generate more income. The story goes that one night, the owner of this house ran into a sultan in New Orleans. The sultan had come from the then Ottoman Empire. Now, sultan is an Arabic word that means strength, authority, or rulership. Sultan is used in Muslim countries, whereas the word king would be a more secular term for a general ruler. We all know the story of sultans with their harams and their many, many, many wives and their beautiful, beautiful and expensive gold and jewelry. Now, again, many people believe with this story that the sultan rented the house, whereas others will tell you that the sultan flat out bought the house. I believe that the sultan rented the house, and I'll tell you why in a little bit. But nonetheless, once all the credentials seemed to check out, the owner of this house handed over the keys to this sultan. The sultan then moved in his many, many wives and his haram and all of his jewels and bedazzlement to his new residence in New Orleans. Once the sultan was moved in, the locals in the neighborhood noticed that chains were put on the gates and heavy, heavy locks were placed on all the doors, and they also noticed that the sultan decided to hang heavy drapes in all of the windows, so a pastor by could not quite see inside the mansion. Knowing that the sultan was from a different culture than the dominant culture of New Orleans, most people probably just shrugged their shoulders and went about their business. However, looking back on the story, we now know why he put up chains and curtains. The sultan's mansion was known to throw quite scandalous, loud parties at night. People would hear the music playing, the laughter, and could kind of see the lights dancing through the cracks in the curtains. These parties weren't just scandalous. I mean, most people in the town knew that these parties consisted of, shall we say, bodily pleasures. Sounds a little bit like the party's Delphine Lalere's mother was notorious for throwing as well. Well, on one particular night, the people in the neighborhood noticed that no sound was coming from the sultan's mansion. Although the story goes that some people were quite relieved to get a reprise for a night where there was going to be silence, other people found it quite odd. I know for myself, living right in the middle of a city, I find comfort in the noises of a city when I'm visiting places that are really out in the country. Sometimes the dead silence of the country bothers me because I'm so used to hearing the noise of a city. I can understand that might have been some of the neighbors to the sultan's house hearing the parties every night. They might have become used to it. And so therefore, the one night where there was no party might have been a little bit eerie to them. And there was a good reason for them feeling eerie about the idea that there was no music, no party, and going on whatsoever from this sultan's mansion. Because the next morning, a man was out walking and he noticed something really, really creepy. As he was walking by the door of the sultan's mansion, he noticed oozing out from underneath the door. Now of course, this is concerning. So the man went to the police and brought the police down to the mansion where they proceeded to break in. Once they got inside, they saw a very, very gruesome sight. Needless to say, a bunch of the people that lived in the house, the wives, the harems, everything, and they had all been viciously removed from the earth plane. As our friend Janine says, since we can't say the M word, it appears that arms and legs were thrown about the house. It wasn't as if someone just came and took them all out. They really wanted to make a point. And from what it seemed, the removing of these people from the earth plane was pretty, pretty painful. It was definitely what we could call... Now, interesting. Outside in the courtyard, there was a hand reaching up out of the ground, almost like this weird, what we would call like modern art statue today, of just this hand coming right up out of the ground like it was reaching for life. Legends state that this was indeed the sultan himself. However, come to find out, the man who rented the house in the French Quarter wasn't a sultan at all. He was the brother of a sultan, and it seems that he had run off from the Ottoman Empire with all of his brother's wives, his brother's wealth, and his brother's harem of women. This is why all of the doors and the gates had chains and locks on them, and why this quote-unquote pseudo sultan, the brother of the sultan, had heavy drapes over the windows. He was hiding from his brother and his henchmen. However, obviously, his henchmen eventually found him and exacted their revenge. Now, the real interesting part of the story is that there's no record of the story ever happening. The owner of the house passed away in 1878, and it wasn't until 1922 around the time where the Ottoman Empire was dissolved, and Constantinople became Istanbul, that the story of the sultan got started around New Orleans. No one talked about it openly as a legend until that moment. Now, frankly, this is why I believe if the story is true about the sultan, that he rented the house because we have no paperwork of any transactions of deeds moving from the original owner to this mysterious man from the Ottoman Empire. Today, the sultan's mansion is still a residence, although it has been divided up into apartment buildings, and the people who live at these apartment buildings, as well as the owner of the property, claim that weird paranormal activity happens. Keys go missing, and quite often they see a lady with long dark hair roaming the halls. Now, this could be any lady, white ladies have long dark hair, but we know that women from the Ottoman Empire typically have long thick dark hair. They also see the apparition of a civil war soldier. Now, I told you that New Orleans surrendered to the Union troops before any battles could ensue in the city. I watched a tour guide from New Orleans tell this story, and he brought up a very interesting perspective on this ghost of this soldier. Again, we don't have factual paperwork to prove that a sultan ever lived there. This rumor, the story of the sultan's mansion only got started in 1922, again after the Ottoman Empire was dissolved. But this tour guide from New Orleans said, you know, a lot of times when people hang around, when they hang around after their body's physical passing, they'll go to particular places for particular reasons. Sometimes it's because they had a scary experience, sometimes it's because they're hanging out in their homes or trying to reconnect with loved ones. Well, this soldier from the Americans of War would have been around the time of the sultan's mansion if the mansion story is correct. And we know that in New Orleans itself there were a lot of hospitals or businesses and homes turned into hospitals for the soldiers. Could it be, could it actually be, that a soldier returned to this house because he had had a wonderful night of partying at the sultan's mansion? I would love to hear all of your opinions down in the comment section below. Now as always, some of these stories that I find I think are just interesting or creepy are just something that is legendary and folklore towards a particular area. But my thought with the sultan's story is that it's quite odd that at the time that the Ottoman Empire dissolved is when this legend started. And it's also quite odd that so many people know the story. Like the story doesn't vary. I listen to actually a lot of people tell this story. The story doesn't vary. In fact, this story varies less than the retelling of Delphine Lollerie's story, again that we covered last week, where we know for sure because of paperwork and documents that something happened at the Lollerie mansion. So why? Why is there no paperwork? And why did people only feel free to start speaking about this catastrophe, we'll just say, after the Ottoman Empire itself dissolved? And why hasn't anybody tried to dig up the courtyard to see for sure if perhaps there's a grave back there? And if they're hiding this story from us since there's no paperwork, then what other stories are they hiding from us? Again, guys, please give me your opinions down in the comment section below. I will be out of town next week, but I have videos already waiting to go to be dropped for you guys. So you'll have some content to watch. The only thing that I will not be doing next week is typically I'm on David Zublick's show on Tuesdays and then on Prime Show on Fridays and of course other shows here and there. I do Aquarius Rising Africa every other week and I do Beyond Mystics. Now I think we're trying to do maybe every other week we'll see going forward, but none of those shows will happen this week because I will be with my sister down in Gulf Shores. I am going to try possibly to get into New Orleans for a day. We'll see. I covered this in another video that will be dropped last week because of the forced break I had from YouTube. Some of my videos are now, some are airing before others because I had to reschedule some stuff, but it all depends on what's going on in New Orleans during that time. I might not be able to get into the city and if I am able to get into the city, it might not be worth it because things might be closed down. So we'll just see how it goes. I do want to go to New Orleans eventually though and film some of the stuff that we've talked about, especially trying to figure out where the laylines are that we spoke about with Janine a few weeks back. So anyway, I just wanted to give you guys the heads up. Thank you so, so, so much you guys for all the support and you love that you gave us last week. A couple of my videos did drop while I was on the forced break because they were prescheduled to drop. So I guess that's kind of the loophole in that. If you run a channel, just get some videos that are prescheduled to drop in your queue so that if that happens to you, you already have material ready to go. I also have opened up another platform up on Rumble where I am starting to put some of my videos that were too scandalous. We'll say scandalous for this particular platform. So the link to that channel is down in the description box as well. So if you want to go over there and go ahead and subscribe to that platform in case anything happens here, you'll find me there as well. And you can catch up on some videos that you haven't been able to watch here on this platform. Alright, thank you so much to Josh McKay for doing our music. If you would like to purchase the full song, there's a link down in the description box below. And thank you again to Todd Roderick for helping me get this video out to you all today. I am not the cleverest when it comes to technology. And without Todd, I would literally not have a channel. So thank you so much to Todd. If you want to subscribe to his band, The Flying Mystics, they play very spiritual music. A link is down in the description box below. Alright, guys, lots of love to all of you. You guys are stronger than you think you are. You're stronger than you know you are. We are... Sometimes it feels like we're at a snail's pace headed for change. But in the grand scheme of things, I think we're moving pretty rapidly into a new timeline. So that's super exciting. Just hold the line. Do what you gotta do to keep going. If you start to feel overwhelmed, just unplug for a couple hours. Take a walk out in nature. Go for a run. Play some music and dance. Do whatever you need to do. That brings joy into your life while we're waiting for the flip to occur. God's got this. You've were put here for a reason. Alright, guys, I'll talk to you soon. Bye.