Backwater town plays host to ghosts of New Orleans Thousands of corpses will be given numbers in a small Louisiana town, Jacqui Goddard reports. The lucky ones will get names.

(From South China Morning Post)

They are expecting guests in the tiny Louisiana town of St Gabriel, at least 10,000 expected to arrive by the truckload.

Each will be assigned an escort to oversee their stay; the touch of a stranger who cares. But they will not see what the locals see - the whispering fields of green sugar cane, the sun casting its glow over the Mississippi River that runs past the end of the street. Instead, they will lay silently in rows, their bodies broken and bloated.

This is the place where the dead of New Orleans will be given numbers - and the lucky ones names. In a warehouse tucked behind St Gabriel's town hall, teams of …