Episode #4: Legends & Hauntings of Louisiana

Tonight’s trip takes us into the city that really never sleeps. No matter what you call it, NOLA, the Crescent City, the Big Easy…we all know about the secrets and legends that New Orleans holds. It’s a city full of diversity, vast cultural experiences, and a lurid history that takes us back almost to our beginnings as a nation. The city is known for its lavish parades during Mardi Gras and its countless Voodoo shops and ghost tours, its creole and Cajun ancestry, the food and the music. Just going to the city is an experience itself, but all of that is surface level beauty that houses a dark past: a history of murder, strong magics, vampires, and plenty of spirits to haunt the city and beyond.

BONUS: Can you figure out where I effed up royally in this episode? Besides tripping over my words and talking to fast :P

The Occult Archives theme song by JunkFood2121, background music by Purple Planet Music (www.purple-planet.com)

New Orleans Informational Links:

'Voodoo City,' Episode 6: The blood-soaked history of Jackson Square
Louisiana's hidden history: The former slave who became an executioner
Vampires in New Orleans? Here’s one theory behind the folklore
The Casket Girls
History of the Casket Girls of New Orleans
Marie Laveau, the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans
Madame LaLaurie’s Most Sickening Acts Of Torture And Murder

Transcript

I want to give a little content warning to this episode before we get started tonight. Quite a few of these stories involve events of an extremely graphic nature. The history of New Orleans is full of violence and, as it tends to go with ghost stories, this episode has no shortage. A lot of the violence revolves around slaves in the early years of the American South, so if you are a sensitive or if anything of this nature bothers you, please be forewarned and maybe sit this one out.

Aaaaaalso, since we are traveling to New Orleans, there are going to be a LOT of French names that I am going to butcher. French doesn’t sound like it’s spelled and even with trying to get them all right by looking them up, I took Spanish in school so I really have no idea what I’m doing.

Enjoy!

Storytime.

Tonight’s trip takes us into the city that really never sleeps. No matter what you call it, NOLA, the Crescent City, the Big Easy…we all know about the secrets and legends that New Orleans holds. It’s a city full of diversity, vast cultural experiences, and a lurid history that takes us back almost to our beginnings as a nation. The city is known for its lavish parades during Mardi Gras and its countless Voodoo shops and ghost tours, its creole and Cajun ancestry, the food and the music. Just going to the city is an experience itself, but all of that is surface level beauty that houses a dark past: a history of murder, strong magics, vampires, and plenty of spirits to haunt the city and beyond. When I use the term “haunted” in regards to New Orleans, I’m not just talking about the ghosts that live there. The city is haunted by many stories and legends; folklore passed down through generations and recorded in historical documents and evidence. From tales of voodoo queens to questionable legends about vampires, the city of New Orleans has no shortage in hauntings, whatever they may be.

New Orleans was “founded” (and I put that in quotation marks) in the spring of 1718 by the French Mississippi Company under the direction of Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville on land that was already inhabited and belonged to the(CHIT-i-me-shah) Chitimacha tribe. The city-parish was named after Philippe II, Duke of Orleans who happened to be a Regent of the Kingdom of France at the time. In the Treaty of Paris in 1763, the French colony of Louisiana was ceded to the Spanish Empire, following France’s defeat by Great Britain in the Seven Years’ War. But during the America Revolutionary War, New Orleans was an important port for smuggling aid to the American revolutionaries and transporting military equipment and supplies up the Mississippi River. Nueva Orleans, the name it was given in Spanish, remained under Spanish control until 1803 when it reverted briefly back to French rule. Nearly all of the surviving 18th century architecture of the French Quarter, one of the most famous places in the city, dates from the Spanish period of rule, except for the Old Ursuline Convent.

As a French colony, Louisiana faced intense conflict with numerous Native American tribes in the surrounding southern area, one of which was the Natchez in southern Mississippi. Troubled started to brew in the 1720s between the French and the Natchez and would be called the Natchez War or the Natchez Revolt. Approximately 230 French colonists were killed and the young colony was razed by fire and burnt to the ground. To summarize what happened, a French lieutenant that was a little too big for his britches decided that the Natchez should just give up their cultivated crop lands and their town of White Apple to the French. The Natchez pretended to surrender and actually worked for the French in the hunting game, but as soon as the tribe was weaponized, they fought back and killed several men, resulting in colonists who fled to New Orleans, seeking protections out of fear that there might be a colony-wide raid by the tribe. The Natchez, however, didn’t continue after their surprise attack, leaving them sadly vulnerable enough for the new appointed governor, Bienville, to reclaim the settlement. Bad relations with the Louisiana’s native people remained a concern for some time over several successive governors. There were vast economic issues in the colony which resulted in many raids by the native tribes in the area who were taking advantage of French weakness. In 1747 and 48, the Chickasaw raided along the east bank of the Mississippi River all the way south to Baton Rouge. These raids forced residents of French Louisiana to seek refuge in New Orleans.

From here, the colonist’s inability to find labor become a pressing issue, and they turned to African slaves to make their investments on the land profitable…In the late 1710s the transatlantic slave trade brought enslaved Africans into the colony. This led to the biggest “shipment” in 1716 where several trading ships appeared with slaves as “cargo” to the residents in a one-year span. And of course, by 1724, the large number of Africans in the state of Louisiana prompted the institutionalizing of laws that governed slavery within the colony. They required that the slaves be baptized in the Roman Catholic faith, be married in the church, and gave slaves NO legal rights. This slave law was known as the Code Noir, which would eventually bleed into the antebellum period of the American South. But Louisiana slave culture had its own distinct Afro-Creole society that called on its past cultures and the situation for slaves in the states. Afro-Creole was present in religious beliefs as well as the Louisiana Creole dialect, most notably that of Voodoo.

New Orleans is a melting pot, not just of cultures and ethnicities, but of sinister acts, war, and inhumane practices. The lives lost on that land are innumerous and many, leaving a trail of terrifying and macabre legends and stories in its wake that now hover over the Crescent City. There are so many stories in fact, that I’m not even sure where to start because we would probably be here till after the new year if I tried to tell them all, so I will pick just a few and leave the rest up to you…

Jackson Square is located in the French quarter and is probably one of the most prominent and most visited places in New Orleans. Nestled by the banks of the river, it has been home to many artists and eclectics over the years, being the famous gathering of many a painter and other artists and creatives since the 1920’s. It became a big place for business regarding New Age and pagan devotees in the 1960’s and 70’s where they set up to tell fortunes and read palms or tarot cards.

But before it was this eclectic hub of beauty it is now, its streets ran red with blood. In its early days, Jackson Square was a military parade ground known as the Place de Arms which literally meant weapons square, home to the rebuilt St. Louis Church and the town hall. But it was also a prominent site for public executions…

The Place d’ Armes was the site for public executions of criminals and rebellious slaves starting in the 18th century and extending to the early part of the 19th. The state of Louisiana constantly found itself embroiled in problems and issues between indentured servants and convicted criminals, those taken from Africa as slaves, as well as Native Americans who were abducted from their tribes and forced into slave labor.  And as the population continued to grow in numbers, the residents of the colony found themselves constantly struggling with food shortages and lack of provisions. As a result, many died from sickness or starvation. Meanwhile, the French and Spanish were at odds in a battle over Mobile and Pensacola, many soldiers abandoning their posts and moving into the settlement. The people were desperate and in turn this caused unrest which led to the rise of petty crimes, attempted mutinies, and coordinated efforts to escape their fate. Louisiana was rife with misfortune, some say even cursed. Historian Gwendolyn Midlo Hill wrote in her book “Africans in Colonial Louisiana: The Development of Afro-Creole Culture in the Eighteenth Century: “In French Louisiana, there was a long period of chaos and violence. Almost constant warfare and frequent famine subjected acquired beliefs and standards of behavior to enormous stress.”

Tragically, the man that carried out these public executions was a former slave by the name of Louis (Lew-ee) Congo, who accepted the position in exchange for his freedom. He arrived in Louisiana with his wife in April of 1721 and the two were quickly taken as property by the Company of the Indies rather than be sold to individual slave owners. On top of that, the company tore his wife away from him, forcing the couple to separate because married slave couples were not allowed to be housed together. Louis was left alone in a terrifying new world. He worked hard for his employer from 1721 to 1725 and was assumed to be a literate man since that region of the Congo was previously Christianized by the Portuguese and were taught to read and write in the language.

But due to the melting pot that was the colony, it had a social hierarchy that surpassed nationality and race. Not all people of color were enslaved and just because your skin was white, didn’t automatically grant you power and status over others. The French Code Noir, or “Black Code", was adopted in 1685 and protected the rights of freed slaves, which were more or less the same as those who were white. But there was no order or official legal system in place at the time. The colony was chaotic and seemingly without justice or discipline. Because of this, crime continued to rise with no instituted punishment for those crimes and the Superior Council felt obligated to have a regular executioner on hand. They set their eyes on Louis Congo because of his intelligence, fortitude, and obvious strength. Supposedly, an anonymous member of the administration stated, “We will have to start over again every day if we are not assured of a man who is always ready to carry out the decrees of the Council. Fear of punishment is the only thing which can control the evil ones.”

Congo drove a hard bargain when approached by the Council and demanded not only his freedom, but that of his wife, a full ration of wine, compensation for his work, and a parcel of land on the outskirts of the city. Eventually the attorney general gave in, with the exception of total freedom for his wife, though they were now allowed to live with one another. What drove the man to become so hardened seems to be a mystery for some, but with what we know of history, it seems fairly obvious: his love for his wife outweighed care for his fellow man after so many years trapped by slavery. Congo was given complete and total control over how punishments were carried out, not only to fellow Africans, but also to white settlers, native slaves, and other European deportees. His name quickly spread across the colony, but his newfound role didn’t afford him any perks. He was feared and shunned by others, becoming nothing more than a pariah to them. These feelings caused trouble for Congo in the coming year after being appointed. He was brutally attacked in the middle of the night by three Native Americans who were considered fugitives. Eleven years later he was ambushed and severely beaten by two black slaves while out hunting. He knew that his luck was running out and approached the attorney general at the time with concerns for his safety. The second incident was thought to be retribution for a punishment Congo had carried out on a slave named Guala, whose ears were cut off from “chronic marooning” as it was put, which meant that he had repeatedly attempted to escape. The attorney general was so concerned about his perfect killing machine that he appealed to the Superior Court for punishment to the fullest extent of the law as, “the life of said Congo would not be secure if such murderous thugs were tolerated.”  Congo was then given the ability to impose capital punishment on his own attackers. One supposed attacker was a Native American slave named Bontemps, who had been previously convicted of desertion and robbery, and had been a suspect in the first attack on Congo. 

Congo carried out Bontemp’s sentencing in a most brutal and heartless way. He brought the native man to the scaffold where he would be hanged, a small crowd encircling the stage like vultures waiting for the kill. Bontemp faced the crowd in traditional native breed cloth instead of his issued European clothes and covered his face in ceremonial war paint; clearly defiant and ready to meet his fate. But the native man would not be afforded a quick death, as Conge draped the rope around his neck after he guided him up the ladder. He pushed Bontemps from the ladder and watched as he dangled in front of the crowd, desperately struggling to breath. For TEN MINUTES Bontemps struggled to somehow free himself, but eventually his body went limp, washed in purple, dead for all to see. He was left dangling like this in Jackson Square for several days to serve as a warning to those who might plan retaliation against the horrid execution.

For twelve years, Congo served as the sole executioner for the common folk: he hanged numerous people, placed countless Africans on the wheel for petty crimes, and brought a number of enslaved natives to supposed justice. There are no surviving records of just how many punishments Congo doled out, but it is surmised that it’s in the hundreds, if not thousands, including numerous punishments that resulted in death. It’s not known whether Congo met an untimely death or whether he retired…but for him, he was never truly free because of the horrendous acts that he carried out for his supposed freedom.

That tragic tale alone is enough to create a hotbed of spiritual activity within the city. There have been reports of agonizing screams coming from behind the locked gates at night, apparitions of ghostly figures, floating lights, and the occasional smells of life from the other side. Some of the spirits here are even said to be victims of the yellow fever epidemic that ravaged the city. And maybe even some are long dwelling inhabitants of St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 which is our next stop on this tour.

St. Louis Cemetery is just one of three Catholic cemeteries with the same name in New Orleans. As with the majority of cemeteries and graveyards in the city, most graves are above grounds in vaults that were built around the 18th and 19th centuries. Out of the three, number 1 is the oldest and the most famous. It was opened in 1789 as a replacement for the city’s older St. Peter Cemetery which no longer exists, as a main burial ground after a fire in 1788. The cemetery houses many prominent figures of New Orleans over the centuries including Homer Plessy, the plaintiff from the landmark 1896 Plessy vs. Ferguson Supreme Court decision on Civil Rights and Ernest N. “Dutch” Morial, the first ever African-American mayor of New Orleans, though he was eventually moved to a new family tomb in St. Louis No. 3.

But probably the most famous resident of the cemetery, and the reason why most people visit here, is the renowned Voodoo Priestess, Marie Laveau. 

Marie Catherine Laveau was born on September 10th 1801 in what is known today as the French Quarter. Her father was biracial and her mother multiracial, meaning that Marie was a FREE woman of color of African, Native American, and French descent and the first to be born free in her family. In her younger years, she married a man named Jacques Paris (the most French name EVER), another free man of color who had fled as a refugee from the Haitian Revolution; their marriage certificate is still preserved and resides in the St. Louis Cathedral. The couple had two daughters, Felicite in 1817 and Angele in 1820, but both disappeared from the records in the 1820’s. The death of Jacques was also recorded in 1820, the same year of Angele’s birth, but there was no official documentation of his death. Following the death of her husband, she entered a domestic partnership with Christophe Dominick Duminy de Glapion, who was a nobleman of French descent. She lived with him until his death in 1855 and reportedly had FIFTEEN children by him, though it is unclear if this counted children and grandchildren, but only seven were recorded through birth and baptismal records, two of which were her daughters from her precious marriage. The only two children to survive to adulthood, however, were Marie Eucharist Eloise Laveau and Marie Philomene Glapion, who would eventually take up the mantle of Marie II. Three Marie’s can make historical accounts sort of…fuzzy on some things.

In 1831, Marie’s grandmother, Catherine, passed away and a creditor quickly claimed that Catherine was indebted her home and an additional lumps sum, despite her death. Her cottage on St. Ann was put up for auction, but Glapion saved the day by purchasing the home and Marie, Glapion, and their entire family lived there till the end of the 19th century. 

Marie, the first, was a dedicated practitioner of Voodoo, as well as a renowned healer and herbalist. She started a beauty parlor and became a hair-dresser for the wealthier white families of New Orleans. For whatever reason, these women felt comfortable confessing their darkest fears and secrets to Marie Laveau. Here is where history gets a bit fuzzy again, because some researchers claim that it was actually her daughter, Marie II, who held the hairdresser profession because the Widow Paris was much more likely to spend her time in service to others. She was a devout Catholic and known to use her magic to help those in need.  Marie attended mass religiously and filled her home with images of saints, creating a safe haven for anyone and everyone that visited her. She even ministered to prisoners locked up inside the Cabildo and offered guidance to redemption and forgiveness through Jesus Christ. She was a highly compassionate and empathetic woman with a very strong religious faith with the clear intention of helping as many as she could in her community. 

Though, a local writer named John Kendall who claimed to be an expert on Marie Laveau, wrote, “After dark, you might see carriages roll up to Marie’s door, and veiled ladies, elegantly attired, descend and hurry to buy what the old witch had for sale. An errant fraud, no doubt, but money poured into her lap down to the last day of her evil life.”

Clearly, Mr. Kendall thought what a lot of people think—that Voodoo is somehow inherently evil because it is magic even when the magic of New Orleans Voodoo centers around protection. New Orleans Voodoo is the only Afro-Catholic religion to emerge in North America and comes with a lot of misconceptions and ignorance from those on the outside.

There is much speculation on how Marie rose to her title of Voodoo Queen of New Orleans. One theory says that she was trained under the tutelage of Sanité Dédé and Marie Saloppé. Another exciting theory is that she was a student of the famous Dr. John Montanee, who is considered the father of New Orleans Voodoo. The most rational assumption is that Marie would have been raised with a combination of Catholicism and Voodoo by her mother and grandmother, both of whom were practitioners of the Catholic faith. But there could be a grain of truth to all of these stories.

You could practically take any cemetery tour in New Orleans and hear stories about Marie Laveau’s followers and her gatherings at Congo Square that were shrouded in mystery. The square was just a short walk from the Laveau-Glapion house on St. Ann’s. In the 1800’s, Code Noir gave Sundays and holidays to the New Orleans slaves as “free time”. They would spend this time in their community, fishing, working the gardens and other things that would give them goods to trade and sell. Many would spend Sunday worship at St. Augustine’s Church and then walk over to Congo Square with their wares to set up shop. By the mid 1800’s, Congo Square had become more than just a market: it was a community center for the people of color in New Orleans.

Marie, most likely the II, would routinely attend these gatherings in the square on Sundays and sell her gris-gris bags, offer advice and services to her community, and partake in the celebration. It is here that legends speak of her singing and performing her spiritual celebrations, conjuring the Great Serpent Spirit and becoming filled with the spirit of the Loa, sporting her Voodoo Queen crown quite proudly. These celebrations went on weekly, but there was one night a year that was particularly sacred to Creoles who practiced Voodoo, known as St. John’s Eve. Also known as the Eve of the Fest of St. John the Baptiste, it is observed on the summer solstice, or Midsummer’s Eve. This holiday is recognized across many cultures and religions, including the Celtics, Druids, and European Pagans as well as the lot of us who discovered witchcraft in the last 70 years. For the New Orleans community, it meant gathering together for ritual bathing in sacred waters and communing around bonfires. And just like the Sunday celebrations, the St. John’s Eve rituals were most likely lead by Marie Laveau II. Of course fiction and Hollywood just love to paint any sort of non-Christian rituals as full of debauchery and sex, with some 19th century journalists even reporting supposed “savage and immoral” acts that took place at these rituals. 

In July of 1869, a local news column reported, “June is the time devoted by the Voodoo worshippers to the celebration of their most sacred and therefore most revolting rites.” This writer goes on to describe “midnight dances, bathing, and eating, together with less…innocent pleasures. In the same article, he also refers to the retirement of Laveau and refers to her reign as “The Voodoo Queen for a quarter of a century.” Today the celebration of St. John’s Eve still takes place and is alive and well on Bayou St. John in New Orleans, continuing to bring together the Voodoo community.

Marie II wore her status with pride, sporting a rather fancy tignon to signal her status, gold jewelry and a proud walk that announced that she was a born free Creole woman of New Orleans. There are tales of the supposed secret switch that the Widow Paris and her daughter concocted. Marie the first was aging and with her daughter’s uncanny likeness to her, they would lead the people of New Orleans to believe that Marie Laveau wasn’t aging. Her daughter would don her mother’s clothes and carry her mother’s professional air, convincing everyone that Marie’s powers were so incredibly strong, that she could stay young forever. What’s strange is that the Widow Paris was seen, well into her old age, attending mass and continuing to minister to prisoners, but as you know how the story goes with things of this nature, the gossip and embellishments about their lives led to the creation of legends where the facts are hard to verify. But the one thing that seems to have carried on through the years is that Marie II was more “wicked” than her mother. My assumption is because of how she held herself so confidently, a proud woman of color who knew her worth, an entrepreneur. The rumors of her using the secrets of the affluent white women who came to her salon to concoct money making schemes disguised as supernatural abilities was just another way to vilify an independent woman, let alone a free woman of color.

In actuality, history doesn’t really know who Marie II actually was. Speculations abound, but there is not a lot of hard, concrete evidence. On June 15th, 1881, Marie Laveau died peacefully in her cottage just a few months shy of her 80th birthday. The New Orleans Cemetery records prove that she was interred in the “Widow Paris” tomb in St. Louis No. 1 Cemetery. Her tomb is the most visited tomb in all of New Orleans’ Cemeteries. Disappointingly, not all visitors to her grave are respectful. There have been countless acts of violence and vandalism regarding her tomb over the years, including an instance where the entirety of her mausoleum was painted PINK. A legend revolving around her gravesite is the act of carving or penning X’s on the outside of the tomb to have wishes granted by Marie Laveau. The belief is that one must break off a piece of brick from another tomb, spin around three times, scrape three x’s on the tomb, and then knock on the outside. If an offering is left at the grave after this, it is said that your wish will be granted. Regardless, if the legend is true or not, this is an act of vandalism on historic property, and the Archdiocese and New Orleans Catholic Cemeteries no longer allow tourists to enter St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 without a licensed and permitted tour guide to keep any further acts of vandalism from happening.  It is also said that her ghost still haunts her cottage on St. Ann and has even been sighted at her tomb. Numerous songs have been written about her and she has inspired movies and stories, most notably the semi-fictitious version of her played by Angela Bassett on American Horror Story Coven. She’s become more than just a notorious historical figure, but a pop-culture icon, over a hundred years after her death. But when it comes down to it, the Widow Paris, Marie the first, will always be a respected figure of the city, known for her compassion, philanthropy, and her ability to heal the community with her magic.

https://ghostcitytours.com/new-orleans/marie-laveau/

You literally can’t turn a corner in the Big Easy and NOT run into a ghost or some sort of chilling tale surrounding the city. Considering just the few stories I have already spoken about, you can see the rich, and often torrid, history of French New Orleans. Everyone knows that the streets and buildings are rife with ghostly history, of people long gone returned as spectres, but what about the citizens that have been in the city for centuries that…haven’t died? 

If you’ve ever been a fan of Anne Rice, or the Sukie Stackhouse series, or even the Originals and Vampire diaries, you know how synonymous the term vampire is within the city of New Orleans. But why? There is speculation that before Anne Rice ever penned a thing in regards to vampiric folklore in the states, that the presence of infectious diseases fueled the city’s fear and perpetuated superstitions and folklore…including the existence of vampires. Vampires as we know them now became popular in the late 19th century due to Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and that carried its way over to the states. Curator and docent, Owen Ever, of the New Orleans Pharmacy Museum stated that the supernatural folklore surrounding vampires was linked to syphilis and tuberculosis, the latter being referred to as “consumption”.  Both of these diseases were sadly quite common at the time in both the South and New England areas. Ever says, “For many people struggling with all of this bizarre, terrifying sickness, it became a supernatural experience.” He also states that cases of tuberculosis were what actually influenced Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel. Stoker’s description of what the vampires looked like and the effects of vampirism on the body were taken directly from the accounts of how consumption ravaged its victims. A diagnosis for consumption at the time was also a diagnosis for vampirism. To keep the dreaded disease at bay, folkloric methods were employed for the disease like the use of garlic, since the community had no real reliable course of action. As far as the more sensual, nocturnal aspects of the vampire, those traits were most likely linked to the spread of syphilis, most notably that of congenital syphilis, where the disease is passed from mother to baby during pregnancy. Physical traits of congenital syphilis were elongated fingers, a gaunt and narrow face, and pointy teeth, making them akin to depictions of Nosferatu. With this disease, one of the primary treatments was DAILY mercury injections prior to the discovery of penicillin. I wonder if this is where the idea of silver harming vampires came from, as silver also harms werewolves, but it has been speculated that it is not actually silver, but quicksilver that affects werewolves, possibly the same being for vampires as well. But because of the lack of knowledge in regards to these diseases at the time, it left the medical community to often rely on superstitions.

The story of the Casket girls is one such tale that morphed from something completely innocent, to something almost dark and sinister just by word of mouth and the pen of writers. The Casket Girls, or filles à la cassette (Women with suitcases) were women that were sent to French colonies in America as domestic partners for colonial men. Since most of the early explorers were men without wives, the future of Christian evangelism in the French territory was at risk. Originally, they turned to bishops and mayors of French port cities who gladly agreed to empty their jails and brothels for them. When this first round of women arrived in the city, it was quickly discovered that they did not make fitting domestic partners for the religious men of the South. Because of this, the priests sought an alternative path and were able to receive assistance from King Louis the IV. He tasked the Bishop of Quebec to appeal to convents and orphanages in France; they sought out young women who they could contract to come to the colonies. The bishop’s expectation was virtuous women from the convent to be good candidates for marriage…which makes no sense considering that nuns are ONLY married to the Lord, and not some man in the New World. However, the Casket Girls were the women contracted to be wives of men in the colonies. In New Orleans, the Ursuline nuns arrived while the Crescent City was still in its infancy, their mission to educate the women of the colony and evangelize the natives. These nuns took charge of the Casket Girls once they arrived in New Orleans, the women living with them in the convent until they were married off to men in the colony. The women would come to be known as the “mothers” of the city, or the founding matriarchs.

 These women entered the New World with a trunk, or cassette, that contained all of their clothing and belongings. Over the years, the word cassette morphed into casquette which translated into casket. These suitcases were actually relatively small so that the women could carry them without assistance, but over the years, their shape and size morphed into elongated trunks that appeared to be large enough to carry a body. By the time that storytellers told the tale of these Casket Girls, their suitcases had taken on a new perspective. Why did these young French women need to bring caskets into the New World? Were they possibly carrying more than just petticoats and other things inside those large trunks? Was it because they weren’t actually carrying a suitcase, but their own coffin to rest in when the sun rose high above? Most of the vampire themed stories surrounding the Casket Girls seem to focus on two things: the caskets and the Ursuline Convent.

It is most likely that the women taking the long trip across the Atlantic endured many hardships and often sickness. They may have arrived pale and gaunt from lack of nutrition while on their journey, traveling below-deck most of the time. Some may have been deathly ill if they contracted a rather nasty case of tuberculosis, which was prevalent at the time. It could cause a person to cough up blood on top of the body wasting away, which could very much appear like the beginnings of vampirism. 

After they were moved to the convent, the legend starts to unfold. Supposedly, the nuns moved the women’s cassettes to the convent’s third floor attic. A little over a day later, someone discovered that these caskets were…empty. As it often happened at the time, the fear of something supernatural being afoot was real, so the nuns bolted the attic door shut and used nails that were supposedly blessed by the pope, to seal the attic windows, which were mysteriously shuttered, unlike most windows in the French Quarter. But one of those windows had a strange habit of opening in the middle of the night…

In 1978, a couple of paranormal investigators or reporters, the details are hazy, ventured to the convent, looking for answers. Of course they were not permitted in the convent, being turned away by the nuns. Even still, they decided to spend the night illegally on the grounds, some say even scaling the convent building itself, hoping to catch evidence of the shutters opening and closing. Whether or not there is any evidence of this, it is reported that the decapitated bodies of these investigators were found on the doorsteps of the convent the next morning, torn apart and drained of almost 80% of their blood. I can’t exactly verify this, but such stories seem to go that way. 

Of course New Orleans is also known for its vampire nightlife filled with individuals that self-identify as a vampire, whether psychic or sanguine, although that is not quite the same as the immortal, religiously adverse, inhumanly strong creatures of the night where the folklore originated. Either way, maybe it’s best to carry a crucifix while you walk the streets of New Orleans and maybe not go out after dark if you aren’t going to stay in well-lit places. 

Our final tale on this short little journey to the Crescent City takes us to an infamous mansion that housed an even more infamous serial killer: Madame Delphine LaLaurie. She was a New Orleans Creole socialite who was born on March 19th of 1787. Her father, Louis Barthelemy de McCarty and her mother, Marie-Jeannne L'Érable, were both prominent in the town’s European Creole community. Her uncle by marriage was governor of the Spanish American provinces of Louisiana and Florida from 1785 to 1791 and her cousin was mayor of New Orleans from 1815 to 1820. Delphine was only five years old when the Haitian Revolution erupted in 1791, an event that made slaveholders in the South and Caribbean very afraid of resistance and rebellion among slaves. Her uncle was killed in 1771 by his own slaves and this revolution inspired the Mina Conspiracy in 1791, the Pointe Coupée Conspiracy in 1794, and the German Coast uprising in 1811, all of which caused many slaveholders to discipline their slaves more harshly out of fear of insurrection. This is apparently a fear that Delphine LaLaurie remembered well from her experiences growing up.

By 1825, Delphine had had three marriages: June 11th 1800 to Don Ramón de Lopez y Angulo who died in Havana while enroute to Madrid; she also had a daughter by him, June1808 to Jean Blanque who was a well-rounded man; Delphine had four children with him and he died in 1816, and then lastly she was wed to physician Leonard Louis Nicolas LaLaurie on June 25h, 1825. He was much younger than her and eventually the two separated due to the way he supposedly treated her. During their time together, Delphine purchased the property at 1140 Royal Street, which she managed in her own name, and eventually had a 2 story mansion built there, complete with attached slave quarters.

Delphine LaLaurie sounded like your average, rich socialite of the time, a fairly decent person, despite the fact that she owned slaves, but she hid an extremely sinister secret from the citizens of New Orleans for years.

Accounts of Delphine LaLaurie’s  treatment of her slaves between 1831 and 1834 are mixed. Harriet Martineau, a British social theorist of the time, wrote in 1838 about the tales that were recounted to her by other New Orleans residents while she visited the city in 1836. They claimed that LaLaurie’s slaves were observed to be “singularly haggard and wretched”, however while making public appearances; Delphine was seen to be generally polite to people of color and attentive to her slave’s health.

Well, of course she was.

Registered funerals between 1830 and 1834 document the deaths of TWELVE slaves at the LaLaurie Royal Street mansion. Although the cause of death is not listed for these people, it could have been chalked up to infectious diseases because of the prevalence at the time. These deaths included Bonne, a cook and laundress and her four children, Juliette, Florence, Jules, and Leontine. Bonne had previously belonged to a refugee from Saint Domingue and was described in her sale as a “chronic runaway”. Because of the influx of white and free people of color as Saint Dominguen refugees and their slaves, the fear of slaves from that area and their rebellious ways lingered in Louisiana.

Despite the fact that Delphine apparently freed two slaves named Jean Louis and Devince, Martineau wrote that public rumors about LaLaurie’s mistreatment of her slaves was so widespread that a local lawyer was dispatched to her home to remind her of the laws regarding the “upkeep” of slaves. However, during this visit, the lawyer found no evidence of wrongdoing or mistreatment of her slaves. 

Despite that, a subsequent story recounted by Martineau, tells of a neighbor of the LaLaurie’s who witnessed a slave, a girl of about 8 years; fall to her death from atop the Royal Street mansion while trying to avoid punishment from a whip-wielding LaLaurie.  The body was said to be buried somewhere on the grounds. Later elaborations on this story state that the girl was actually twelve years of age and her name was Lia. According to this story, it was said that Lia had been brushing Madame LaLaurie’s hair when she hit a snarl, causing Delphine to lose her mind, grab a whip, and chase the girl down. This incident led to an investigation at the LaLaurie’s, in which they were found guilty of illegal cruelty and were forced to forfeit nine slaves. Sadly, these nine slaves were later bought back for the LaLauries through an intermediary relative and delivered right back to the mansion on Royal Street. There are stories that LaLaurie kept her cook chained to the kitchen stove and beat her daughters when they attempted to feed other slaves.

All of the rumors culminated on April 10th of 1834 when a fire broke out at the mansion, starting in the kitchen. When police arrived, they found a seventy year old woman, the cook, chained by her ankle to the stove. She later confessed that she had originally set the fire to attempt suicide since she feared being punished by LaLaurie. She claimed that slaves taken to the uppermost room of the mansion never came back down…

On April 11th, 1834, bystanders that were responding to the fire attempted to enter the slave’s quarters to make sure that everyone was evacuated, but they were refused the keys by the LaLauries. The bystanders weren’t going to stand for that and forcibly broke down the doors to the slaves quarters and found no less than seven slaves, more or less horribly mutilated…suspended by the neck, with their limbs apparently stretched and torn from one extremity to the other”. Those alive claimed to have been imprisoned there for months. A Judge Jean-Francois Canonge deposed to having found in the mansion, a woman wearing an iron collar and another older woman who had received a very deep wound on her head, too weak to walk. Others tales recounted later state that the slaves were emaciated, showed signs of being flayed with a whip, were bound in restrictive postures, and wore spiked iron collars which kept their heads in a static position. When Canonge  questioned LaLaurie’s husband about the slaves, he was told in a rather disrespectful way that, “Some people had better stay at home, rather than come to others’ houses to dictate laws and meddle with other people’s business.”

When the discovery of the abuse of the slaves by the hand of LaLaurie started to widely circulate throughout the city, a mob of local citizens attacked the mansion and “demolished and destroyed everything upon which they could lay their hands.” By the time the sheriff was called to disperse the crowd, they had practically razed the property to the ground, with “scarcely any thing remaining but the walls”. The remaining slaves were taken to the local jail where they would be available for public viewing. By April 12th, up to 4,000 people attended to view the slaves “to convince themselves of their sufferings.”

Several weeks after the evacuation of the abused slaves in the LaLaurie mansion, it was claimed that two of the slaves found there had since died after their rescue. It was written in the Pittsfield Sun that “We understand…that digging in the yard, bodies have been disinterred, and the condemned well in the grounds of the mansion, having been uncovered, others, particularly a child, were found. The total number of bodies found was only likely two, one of which being the body Lia.

Supposedly, LaLaurie fled the city of New Orleans during the mob violence that followed the fire, taking a carriage to the waterfront and travelling by schooner to Mobile, Alabama and then to Paris. The circumstances surrounding her death are unclear. One account said she was killed in a boar-hunting accident while another claimed to have discovered a cracked, copper plate in Alley 4 of St. Louis Cemetery No.1 with an inscription in French that read, “Madame LaLaurie, born Marie Delphine McCarthy, died in Paris December 7th, 1842 at the age of sixty something; the exact age not legible. However, according to the French archives of Paris, LaLaurie died on December 7th 1849 at the age of 62.

Legends surrounding the horrific story were reprinted in collections of stories based on contemporary reports in newspapers about the killings, such as the New Orleans Bee and the Advertiser, adding a bit of their own speculation and dialogue to what had really happened. After 1945, accounts of the LaLaurie slaves become much more explicit and detailed. Jeanne DeLavigne, writing in Ghost Stories of Old New Orleans, alleges that LaLaurie had a “sadistic appetite that seemed never appeased until she had inflicted on one or more of her black servitors some hideous form of torture”. He also claimed that those who responded to the 1834 fire had found “male slaves, stark naked, chained to the wall, their eyes gouged out, their fingernails pulled off by the roots; others had their joints skinned and festering, great holes in their buttocks where the flesh had been sliced away, their ears hanging by shreds, their lips sewn together…intestines pulled out and knotted around naked waists. There were holes in skulls, where a rough stick had been inserted to stir the brains.” 

There are absolutely no cited sources for these claims, and other authors go on to embellish further,  but if you have ever seen American Horror Story Coven, you can see that this tale was obviously a heavy influence to how they portrayed the atrocities that happened in Delphine LaLaurie’s mansion by her own hand.

Since the fire so many years ago, the mansion has been turned into many things: an all-girl’s school, an apartment building, a private residence, a homeless shelter. It was even owned by Nicholas Cage at one point who had hoped to write a horror novel within its walls, but he eventually sold it when he fell on hard times. Despite everything that it was and how many times it changed hands, the one constant is the spirits within its walls. It is said that wails of agony from spirits who met a tragic and violent end can be heard in its rooms at night. There’s the typical door slamming, furniture moving, and apparitions of slaves moving about the property…some even in chains. Although the house belonged to Madame LaLaurie herself, it seems as if the spirits there have banished her from the property, and rightfully so. Her spirit has been reported at the nearby St. Louis cemetery though, where she once worshipped. 

If you are interested in what the inside of the mansion looks like or the spirit activity there, as I most certainly was, Travel channel has a paranormal show called Portals to Hell with lead investigators Katrina Weidman (formerly of Paranormal State) and Jack Osbourne. They recently did a paranormal investigation inside the house, the first to be allowed in there to film for television.

         I know there are many more stories from the French city that I didn’t cover, but if you are interested in the history, folklore, or culture of New Orleans, check out the websites NewOrleans.com and NOLA.com among all the other handy search tools that the interwebs has to offer. There will also be a few links in the show notes pertaining to some of the sources I used if you’d like to learn more.

         I would also like to acknowledge our newest benefactor to the Archives, Jessica Power. A big thank you and all my goblin love to them and everyone else that supports the podcast on Patreon. That is an ever shifting platform for me as I try and navigate the digital world and figure out the best benefits for my library geeks, so more giant thank yous to you all for bearing with me as I amble along.

Alas, that’s all for this evening’s spooky trip to the Big Easy. I bid you all adieu and until our next visit, lock your doors, salt your windows, and remember… it’s ok to sleep with the lights on.