Posts Tagged ‘BSI’

Rewards offered for ghost sightings

by on Tuesday, November 7th, 2017

Following a sharp rise in reports of local hauntings, a fresh survey of ghostly activity is taking place in New Toulouse Parish.

The Spectral Activity Survey will continue through December 5, so be on the lookout for any haints, spooks, wraiths, phantoms, specters, poltergeists, or other apparitions. Citizens who register 20 ghosts with the Beacon Spiritualist Institute will gain access to gifts organized by the Taloo Boosters Society.

“The ghosts of this parish, among them the oldest inhabitants of the area, have for too long been without a voice,” said Richard Mains, a recently deceased candidate for New Toulouse mayor. “Since many ghosts are housebound, we call upon the living to find us and tell our stories.”

The most recent survey of this type was undertaken in November 1914, when 2,720 spirits were reported in this parish.

To get started finding ghosts, visit the Beacon Spiritualist Institute at 23 Nightingale Street, New Toulouse, and pick up your “Ghost Hunter’s Kit.”


Jack Mondieu, Ace Reporter, is awfully fond of spirits.

Bacon of hope? Group takes aim at bayou woes

by on Friday, June 30th, 2017

A volunteer studies water hyacinths in a display at the Bayou Safety Initiative.


If you’ve ever wanted to turn flowers into bacon, now’s your chance.

No, this isn’t just more of the usual bunkum. We are daily bombarded with fantastical assertions, and now we are weary and jaded. Flowers into bacon, you say? Why, only the other week a traveling man of God—with his very own tent and a parish permit and a not untalented banjoist—promised that if I added whatever coinage I could to his collection plate, my prayers would be heard and addressed. I can report that despite my having put a solid three lindens into the holy kitty, not one of my prayers has been answered, including the one about the trousers. But I digress.

If you have the right kind of flower—Eichhornia crassipes, the water hyacinth—you can indeed exchange it for bacon. Of a certain type. While supplies last.

The Bayou Safety Initiative is kicking off its flagship campaign with help from Perrineau & Co., a local provider of innovative meat solutions. Foreign flowers threaten our domestic waterways—nay, our very way of life. Buying liberty bonds won’t stop flowers. Only hippopotamuses, and you, can help.

Perrineau, near packages of lake cow bacon.


In partnership with the initiative, Perrineau & Co. is offering a free package of hippopotamus bacon in exchange for any living water hyacinth plants. This comes in the aftermath of a recent water hyacinth giveaway, the ill-advised promotional effort of a local grocery.

“Our lake cows already help control the water hyacinth population,” said Perrineau. “They find them delicious—but not as delicious as you’ll find our lake cow bacon!”

(In case you’ve been asleep for the past few years—I’m looking at you, Krewe Van Winkle—a “lake cow” is a hippopotamus, at least in the parlance of Perrineau & Co.)

The Bayou Safety Initiative could use your help. The group has offered to pick up water hyacinths from homes and businesses, but the response to the bacon-for-flowers deal has been overwhelming. To volunteer, go to the BSI office at #8 Rue Bayou, New Toulouse.


Jack Mondieu feels far more threatened by zombies and gators than by any flower.

The View from Mondieu

by on Thursday, October 29th, 2015

1jackmondieuBeing connected directly to the pulsing heart of New Toulouse by virtue of my many contacts, of various states of learnedness, at the myriad delightful watering-holes throughout our fair city (where there is never so much as a slight overcast to the sky, and where beautiful birds untainted by feather-rot warble sweetly from every branch), there have come to me wild rumors, gossip, and outright fabrications of the most upsetting sort.

Dr. Augustus Boffin, recently arrived in this town, is a current subject of such spurious speculation. Some say he is the mayor’s “mind man,” here to assist City Hall in its efforts to keep the locals happy and uninformed. That is, of course, pure poppycock. Dr. Boffin is the Boffin of Boffin Scientific Inc. (BSI), a perfectly benign concern mainly involved in outfitting the amateur science enthusiast. Any bright eight-year-old with a healthy interest in beetle collection or wireless technology knows this.

But some local scandalmongers have even been painting poor Boffin as a sort of mad-scientist figure out of the fevered imagination of H. G. Wells, darkly muttering about the shipment of crates from BSI to City Hall, as though they held parts for some evil mind-control device and not the insect vivaria and radio parts they probably contain in actuality.

Clearly these whisperers and ranters could use a dose of cold, hard reality with a side order of common sense. To this end, I call upon the mayor to stand up and tell the people of New Toulouse why exactly he has been conferring with Dr. Boffin. Mr. Mayor, please find the time to speak and allay our concerns! I will be waiting, pencil in hand, ready to record for the Tattler the substance of your address.


Jack Mondieu, Ace Reporter, exhibits a love of chemistry. His favorite molecule is CH3CH2OH.

Local ghosts tallied

by on Wednesday, November 26th, 2014

haunted-cert1For three weeks in November, parapsychologists, spiritualists, and amateur ghost hunters descended upon New Toulouse in search of ghosts for the Beacon Spiritualist Institute’s registry of Louisiana hauntings. With 2,720 ghosts reported, New Toulouse is the most haunted place in Louisiana by a considerable margin.

Liza Veliz runs a cafe across the street from the project’s headquarters. Asked if she met many out-of-town ghost hunters, she said, “So many, it was unbelievable—a real little invasion.”

Being a ghost herself, Miss Liza acted as the local “spectral liaison” for the project. Did any of the hunters try to hunt her? “Yes, several! They just hugged me and said, ‘I found a ghost!’”

Travelers from as far away as the Wastelands came looking for specters, and local business and community leaders offered rewards.

The Still House saloon saw lots of visitors as well. The tavern’s owner, Blake Palmer, says some of them ceased hunting there and commenced drinking instead. And a few decided to stay in town. “Ms. Fern Barker,” said Palmer, “came here for the ghost hunt, and now she owns the land beside my saloon.”


Gigi Lapin lives on the bayou with her pet crawfish, Jimbo.

Seeking fearless ghost hunters

by on Saturday, November 1st, 2014

hauntedNT512
Everyone knows Louisiana has plenty of ghosts, but a society in Lafayette is out to count them. The Beacon Spiritualist Institute is building a repository of ghost sightings and stories from all over the state.

“Let’s make sure the ghosts of New Toulouse are well represented,” said Miss Yvonne Follet, who is coordinating the local effort, based in the parish land office, where she works as assistant to Mayor Godenot.

Miss Liza Veliz added, “I hope every ghost is treated with respect, by the people who now share their homes and by the visitors seeking their stories.” Being a ghost herself, Miss Veliz has been appointed spectral liaison for the project.

Several local businesses and community members are offering rewards for participation. If you would like to help find ghosts and gather their stories, go to the land office to obtain a ghost hunter’s kit. The Haunted New Toulouse project runs from November 1 to 22.


Jack Mondieu knows spirits.

Fungus threat grows

by on Saturday, November 2nd, 2013

One week since Mayor Godenot’s call for help, glowing mushrooms continue to infest the bayou—and now they may be spreading to the City of New Toulouse.

Overnight, the Tattler received an anonymous tip alerting us to the existence of the mushroom Agaricus toulousica in the city.

We can confirm that there are indeed glowing mushrooms in the park maintained by Mr. Langlinais.

The photograph accompanying the anonymous note

The photograph accompanying the anonymous note


Mr. Langlinais lives in a treehouse in the bayou; perhaps he inadvertantly carried Agaricus toulousica spores over to the city on his shoes.

In addition, a source within City Hall says the Bureau of Scientific Inquiry has sent the mayor another letter. The missive, which can be seen on page 10, contains revised and worrisome instructions for the safe handling of the mushrooms.

We urge every person reading this report to spread the word, and to aid in the effort to eradicate the fungoid menace.


The staff of the New Toulouse Tattler have an unusual craving for shrimp-stuffed mushrooms.

New Toulouse resident practices science

by on Tuesday, October 29th, 2013

Miss Maggie Hawksby strongly cautions residents to heed the warning on their toulousite meteorite specimens.

Miss Hawksby, of New Toulouse, watered her display specimen of toulousite.

The specimen came from a chunk of the main mass of the meteorite that Miss Liza Veliz found on October 26. Miss Veliz was doing her civic duty, energetically searching for the new weird glowing mushrooms, when she literally tripped over the huge meteorite. She sent it to the Bureau of Scientific Inquiry and collected a cash reward. The BSI is convinced that the meteorite is the one reported here in early October. The BSI has been giving trophy specimens of the meteorite as a bounty for collecting the glowing mushrooms that have been popping up all over Bayou. Each specimen has an attractive little plaque saying, “Toulousite: A Nickel-Iron Meteorite, whose fall was observed in the Community of New Toulouse. A thank-you gift from the Bureau of Scientific Inquiry (Keep this sample dry).”
toulousite-specimen
Miss Hawksby, being of a curious mind, undertook her own science experiment. She wanted to answer that ageless question that has plagued mankind since rocks first fell from the sky: “I wonder what what would happen if I watered my meteorite?”

Miss Hawksby knew she had a problem when the mushroom that began growing burst through the ceiling of Mr. Elwood Dowd’s home in New Toulouse Bayou, where she conducted her experiment. She tried cutting it down, but it grew faster than she could cut it back. As it grew, she says, it became strangely warm, even hot. When it began to break through the walls and roof, she called for help.

“Frankly, and I hope he doesn’t read this, but the mayor does not have much of a sense of humor,” Miss Hawksby said. “He yelled at me, kind of rudely, ‘Oh, no, not again! I am not going to fix the house, Miss Hawksby! This is not my problem!’ Fortunately, he also yelled for Mr. Pestana.”

Miss Hawksby thought it would be a good idea to summon the kraken, but Mayor Godenot reportedly said, “You want my sea monster, capable of tossing an entire ship, to eat your radioactive and possibly hallucinogenic fungus? No way. Besides, krakens don’t exist.”

But Pazzo Pestana, said Miss Hawksby, was “cool as a cucumber,” suggesting that zombies could take care of the situation. “So I sprinkled that mushroom with graveyard dust, and Pazzo lured a zombie in. Henri wanted to smear the mushroom with brains, but that was dumb. Where would you get that many human brains at short notice?”

Allegedly undoctored photograph of the residence of Elwood P. Dowd, with large fungus

Allegedly undoctored photograph of the residence of Elwood P. Dowd, with large fungus


According to Miss Hawksby, the graveyard dust attracted numerous zombies, who ate away at the huge mushroom. “Big chunks were falling off and sprouting new mushrooms, and the zombies were swarming over those, too.” The mushroom, she says, continued warming up until it caught fire. Fortunately the house was too damp to attract the blaze.

Today there is no evidence of this incident. The roof of Mr. Dowd’s house appears to have been patched recently, and Mr. Dowd is away on business. Mayor Godenot reportedly contacted the Bureau of Scientific Inquiry, advising them to varnish all future meteorite samples to keep them dry, but this reporter was unable to confirm this.

“Chalk one up for science,” said Miss Hawksby. “At least we know why you shouldn’t water the meteorites. But those glowing mushrooms were pretty neat. I wonder why the mushroom collection instructions said not to put more than twenty of them in a bucket.”


Gigi Lapin resides in New Toulouse Bayou with her pet crawfish, Jimbo.

Mushroom hunters sought

by on Saturday, October 26th, 2013

Mayor Godenot

Mayor Godenot


In an impassioned speech at Laveau Square last evening, Mayor Henri Godenot called upon the good folk of the community to come to his aid.

“Dear citizens of New Toulouse,” he said, “I need your help. While looking for meteorite chunks from last week’s sighting, I found some strange mushrooms. I sent some to a science lab, and they strongly recommended that we remove all of these mushrooms from the area.”

Turning to an assistant, he took a pair of tongs and used them to remove a mushroom from a lidded container. The remarkable specimen had an eerie green glow in the dusk. “Please do your part to help search for these undesirable fungi,” said Godenot. “If every resident finds twenty mushrooms, we should be able to get them all. And in cooperation with the Bureau of Scientific Inquiry and several members of the community, the City is prepared to offer rewards.”

The mayor’s office shared with us the content of a letter from the laboratory, which we reproduce here on page 12.

If you would like to help, go to the Land Office to obtain a fungus hunter’s kit.


Jack Mondieu, Ace Reporter, is a figment of your imagination.