Perry's Pen

I took the picture above while walking around New Orleans in 2010. It was my first trip to Nawlins, and it really jumped out at me. So many things about it continue to haunt me.

The words themself – what could be more unsettling? A cancer diagnosis for oneself is absolutely crushing, but for your children to have cancer? There is no future. The future was stolen from the ones you love the most. My gosh!

And then there is the way the words were written. In script, deliberate, and on a piece of plywood that looks like it was diagnosed with cancer about three hurricanes ago. I mean the storms, not the famous cocktails!

The “door” also has a padlock on it, so maybe tenants were kicked out for not paying rent or something sinister. Could the message be from the evicted people? Or maybe even a message from the landlord for the people they kicked out!

I remember telling our friends who we were in The Big Easy with us about the graffiti, not even showing them the image, and the words alone flattened them.

I’ve had cancer for 15 years!

Well, no, I haven’t, but this image and sentence have been haunting me for a decade and a half. And now I am a recovering AI-aholic, so I decided to have a conversation with Google Gemini to unravel the mystery a little, or at least to practice a little self-diagnosis of the psychiatric variety and understand why the image and words have haunted me for so long.

I didn’t gain any insights into my own psyche, but I did learn a few really interesting things about New Orleans. Interesting enough to share, hence this article!

What a conversation with AI about cancer revealed about “Your children already have cancer”:

I copied the picture into Google Gemini along with the following prompt:

this is a picture i took while walking around in New Orleans in 2010 with my late wife Michelle. It was our first and only visit to that fantastic city. We went with another couple. Michelle and i were walking around, just taking in everything we could see.

The door reads “Your children already have cancer.”

I have no idea what that means. Just graffiti? A message from a voodoo queen to a person who followed her instructions, and the queen delivered her diagnosis for a client like a medical doctor delivers a diagnosis? Was it a political statement? Maybe it was a message for a spy? Perhaps it was even the password for a speakeasy! The name of a bad Vincent Price horror movie? It could be something else altogether!

Please examine all of these options and any more you can think of and put together a fun and intriguing article. i want it to be fun to read with some legitimate facts thrown in.

That image is a remarkable piece of New Orleans history. Seeing it with Michelle in 2010—a year of immense tension and transition for the city—likely felt like stumbling upon a glitch in the matrix.

Based on the timing and the specific geography of that era, here is an “investigative report” into that mysterious door.

Here’s some of what AI offered.

• The Deepwater Horizon oil spill happened in April, 2010, and we were there in February, 2010, so the graffiti couldn’t have been related to that tragedy. However, “Your Children already have cancer” relating to Cancer Alley, and trying to bring that to the attention of rich tourists certainly makes sense. (Cancer Alley is an 85-mile expanse of petrochemical plants that, you know, causes cancer.)
  
• I had no previous knowledge of Fred Radtke, AKA “The Grey Ghost”. Radtke, an ex-Marine often described as a vigilante, made it his mission to paint of graffiti throughout New Orleans, and claims to have painted over 10,000 tags with gray paint.
  
  Legendary graffiti artist Banksy got wind of The Grey Ghost, and went to New Orleans, where he painted several murals. It is said that having a Banksy mural on one’s house in Nawlins could add anywhere in value from $75K to well over $200,000.
  
  The Gray Ghost and Banksy took turns painting over each other’s work for a while, until The Gray Ghost pleaded “no contest” to trespassing and promising to only paint over graffiti where he had permission to.

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AI portion:

The Plywood Prophecy: The Mystery of the New Orleans “Cancer Door”

If you walked the streets of the Marigny or Bywater in 2010, the city didn’t just speak to you—it yelled. Five years after the federal levees failed during Katrina, the city was a collage of “X-codes” on houses and raw graffiti. But the message you found, “Your children already have cancer,” stands apart. It wasn’t just a tag; it was an omen.

Here is the “case file” on what that door might have truly been.

1. The Environmental Manifesto (The “Cancer Alley” Theory)

The most “factual” explanation is also the most chilling. New Orleans sits at the southern tip of an 85-mile industrial corridor known globally as “Cancer Alley.” * The Context: In 2010, the city was hyper-aware of environmental toxicity following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill just months earlier.

• The Verdict: This graffiti was likely a piece of “Agitprop” (agitational propaganda). The artist wasn’t talking to you specifically; they were accusing the petrochemical industry of already having sealed the fate of the next generation. It’s a classic New Orleans protest: blunt, terrifying, and impossible to ignore.

2. The Voodoo “Reading”

In New Orleans, a door isn’t just an entrance; it’s a boundary between worlds.

• The Theory: In traditional Hoodoo and Voodoo, “fixed” items or messages left on doorsteps are meant to influence those who live inside.
• The Vibe: Imagine a local “Traiteur” (a folk healer) or a disgruntled practitioner. If a specific landlord or resident was seen as “toxic” to the neighborhood, this message might have been a spiritual “hex” or a public diagnosis of a family’s “spiritual rot.” In the Crescent City, sometimes a doctor gives you a prescription, and sometimes a neighbor writes your destiny in chalk on your door.

AI changed it’s tone after I told it that the image was from the French Quarter, not the wards.

That is an incredible detail. The fact that this was in the French Quarter completely changes the “flavor” of the message. While the Wards were a site of tragic physical destruction, the Quarter is the historic, preserved soul of the city—a place where every brick is protected by the Vieux Carré Commission and the ghosts of 300 years.

Finding a message like that on a pristine street in the Quarter makes it feel less like post-disaster debris and more like a targeted strike on the conscience. —

The Quarter’s Hidden Prophet: A Refined Investigation

1. The “Silver Spoon” Critique

In the French Quarter, the “children” being referred to weren’t necessarily the ones in the neighborhood, but the ones visiting it.

• The Theory: The Quarter is the “Crown Jewel” of tourism. Graffiti in the Quarter often takes a sharper, more anti-establishment tone because it knows it has an audience of wealthy travelers. This wasn’t a medical diagnosis; it was a class-based curse. The artist may have been saying that the “cancer” of greed, consumerism, or indifference had already infected the future of those who come to the Quarter to party while the rest of the city struggled.

2. The Battle Against “The Grey Ghost”

Around 2010, there was a famous war in the Quarter between street artists and a man named Fred Radtke, known as “The Grey Ghost.” He was a vigilante who would immediately paint over any graffiti with a flat, dull grey paint.

• The Theory: This message might have been a “trap” for the Grey Ghost. Artists would often write something so shocking or profound that it would make the public (or even the Ghost) pause before covering it up. It was a test of the city’s “immune system”—how long could a message this jarring survive before it was “greyed out”?

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So who knows? Nawlins has countless mysteries and riddles, some of them nothing more than ways to lure tourists and mess with them. The “Cancer Door” has stuck in my mind for a long time now, and likely always will. Playing with AI and researching what it might actually mean was fun and informative, so thanks go to New Orleans. I’d love to see you in person again someday.