Thaddeus Savoy learned the hard way that it isn’t a good idea. Our tale starts simply; Thaddeus Xavier Savoy was born in Paris, France in the spring of 1775. He was young man of means who was given every pleasure that he could ask for and grew up being a typical Aristocrat, both vain and self-absorbed. In the summer of 1800 his father bought a plantation in New Orleans, wanting to escape family obligations he decided to take a boat over to the plantation and take over the running of it. For the next four in a half (almost five years) things ran smooth. Around the fall of 1806, rumors started going around, bodies showing up but drained of blood, graves dug up but no bodies. Reports claimed a serial killer and gravediggers of the crimes, but the slaves whispered of unnatural things. This is where our truly begins. Late one night, after a night of drinking and debauchery, coming home from the saloon he’s attacked. Awaking alone in an alley behind Dumaine he finds himself both shocked and unharmed. After brushing himself he realizes there is something wrong with him. He feels strange and slightly off, foreign in his own skin. Going to his mistress home, a beautiful woman who is a mix of both her white father and creole mother, he gets rejected. Upon seeing him she starts cursing and casting voodoo spells calling him demon and Abaddon. Casting him out leaving him wandering the streets for a time before returning to his plantation. For the next twenty years he spent learning about what he had becoming. After finally being able to gain an audience with the local Voodoo priestess, He begged for her to change him back, to allow him to be mortal again and once again walk in the sun. For the next five years she did her best, trying every spell and casting runes multiple times. Thaddeus’s patience was wearing thin though, he was angry and distraught, the moonlight was mocking him, telling him he would never again see the sun. To his most grievous error he took his anger out on the Priestess yelling at her accusing her of stringing him along, playing with his emotions and with his well being. The priestess was angered, enflamed that this upstart aristocrat would dare be so rude to a high priestess. “So stringing you along am I? Your curse is one that was passed to you by something that is beyond regular voodoo. So you want to see stringing along do you? From this moment you will see what goes on around you but not be one of this world. I curse you to live for the rest of your existence trapped, never to be able to speak, but see what goes on around you, your curse remains but in this statue you will forever remain, until the day you learn your place a face with no body, a mind with no heart. Let people see and judge you without you judging in return. To hang forever embedded in a statue painting, and then you tell me who is stringing you along. With a flash of light the world disappeared for Thaddeus. He found himself back in his plantation home, trapped on the wall of his home. He couldn’t move couldn’t turn his head, for the next two hundred years he watched his home fall apart around him, watched his family die and his plantation sold, and everything in it. In the spring of 2000 when everything was being renovated his picture was found, His sisters great-great-great granddaughter had sold his family home to be renovated and put on the tour of historic homes. When his picture was found, after looking at it and finding it slightly odd and disturbing she put it up for auction with the rest of the pieces from the home the historic society didn’t want. So it sold, and from there changing multiple times before landing in the hands of a teacher from San Antonio and although the teacher knew not of the history of the picture or the curse that surrounded it, he did feel as if there was something odd about it. Thaddeus wished he could speak, ask or beg for help, but to this day he remains trapped, forever wishing for the day his curse ends. He remains watchful hoping for someone to rescue him, someone who knows the story of his misfortune, his idiocy at angering someone who had more power than him and regretting his selfishness and vanity causing him to anger the one person who tried to help him. So if you ever see the statue of Thaddeus Xavier Savoy, remember the moral of this story, not only never to anger a voodoo priestess, but also that vanity is a root of evil and can be your downfall. No one is truly above a set down and humility is something that everyone should learn. So next time you’re in a museum watched your back, because you never know who is watching you.