Haunted Book Loft

To get there, go to Bienville Books on Dauphin St, all the way to the back of the store--and up the steps. The Haunted Bookloft was opened by owner Russ Adams about a year ago.
"I supposed you'd call it a mad scientists lab look to it a little bit," says Adams. He says he got the idea to open the loft to pay homage to another book store--the Haunted Book Shop, which closed in 1991.
"They'd been downtown for 50 years," says Adams. "It was an institution and one of the reasons I think I've done as well as I have is because that bookstore was downtown and people remembered it being here and appreciated another bookstore coming downtown again."
The Book Loft is filled with old and new books in many genres covering horror, science fiction, the occult and everything in between. There is also a helty selection of local authors, both current and past, from Carolyn Haines to Rich Bragg and Eugene Walter, who incidentally used to work at the Haunted Book Shop.
"Eugene Walter did work there full time and he put bloody handprints on one of the backrooms and pretended there was a ghost." Adams says.
He says he gets a lot of visits from tourists because of his proximity to downtown hotels. But the Haunted Book Loft is still somewhat of a secret for local folks--until now.