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What’s the connection to Jacques? Well, according to longstanding rumors in the gay community, Jacques was used as a temporary morgue for the victim’s bodies. The club’s permitted capacity was only 460. By the time the fire ended 492 people were dead, making it the second most deadly nightclub fire in the United States. Other exits had been locked earlier that night by the management to prevent people from sneaking in, while still other doors only opened inwards and were blocked as people fell against them. The flames spread quickly as they ignited flammable decorations, and the main exit became blocked as patrons tried to escaped through the club’s revolving doors. On Novemthe bar was filled with an estimated 1,000 people when a fire broke out. The Cocoanut Grove was a popular Boston nightclub located near Jacques on Piedmont Street. According to a rumor that has circulated for many years, the bar may also be haunted by victims of the infamous and tragic Cocoanut Grove fire. I don’t believe that Sidney died in a particularly traumatic way, but her ghost may not be the only one haunting Jacques. Oh, and a really dirty story about Nat King Cole.
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Be warned: they’re full of toilet humor, sex jokes, racial slurs, and nose-picking. If you’re feeling brave but don’t want to summon Sidney’s ghost, you can watch one of her performances on YouTube.
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Sidney died in 1998 at the age of 68, so perhaps her ghost still wants another moment in the spotlight. A drag pioneer known as the “Bitch of Boston,” Sidney eschewed the gentle femininity most early drag performers cultivated and instead indulged in crude humor. One night, going down the basement stairs he felt a strange energy and thought he saw someone out of the corner of his eye… according to Peter Muise in New England Folklore Īfter Lauletta said the energy felt like it had a “bit of an attitude,” Jacques’s manager suggested it might be the ghost of Sylvia Sidney, the bar’s most famous performer. In Sam Baltrusis‘s 2012 book Ghosts of Boston, comic Jim Lauletta claims that he encountered something unusual while performing at the club in 2010. In the 60s and early 70s it was a lesbian hangout, but at some point it started featuring drag shows, as it does today.
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It was opened as a standard bar but two years later, in 1940, Jacque’s became a gay bar. So, apparently, Boston has a haunted gay bar: Jacque’s Cabaret in Bay Village.