Marie Laveau

Marie Laveau was a real woman, and the record of her life is more interesting than most of the legend. She was born in New Orleans on 10 September 1801, a free woman of color, though popular books often give 1794. She married Jacques Paris in 1819; he vanishes from city records within a few years, and she was afterwards called the “Widow Paris.” For decades she lived with Christophe Glapion, with whom she had children. Historians describe her as a hairdresser, nurse and midwife who built a following as a Voudou priestess and also remained a devout Catholic. She is said to have nursed the sick during the 1878 yellow fever epidemic and visited prisoners awaiting execution.

She died at home on 15 June 1881, a few months short of eighty, and the New Orleans press noted her passing. Cemetery records place her in the Widow Paris family tomb in St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, though some writers dispute it. The ghost stories begin almost at once: oral tradition says that people claimed to see her after she died.

Today’s tellings describe a misty woman in a red-and-white turban who walks the cemetery paths and vanishes if followed, who has been seen stepping out of her tomb, who mutters in a voice that can be heard beyond the walls, or who strolls the French Quarter street where she lived. Some versions add a black cat or a snake guarding the tomb, and a few say that visitors who mock her are pinched or pushed. No individual witnesses are named in the popular accounts consulted; they speak of “some” and “many.”

The record also corrects a good deal of the legend. Far from the rich queen of the story, she lived modestly: apart from a vacant lot her father gave her, she owned no real estate, and the St. Ann Street house belonged to Glapion. Her reputation as a sinister figure grew mostly in the twentieth century, and a daughter succeeding her as “Marie II” is unlikely on the records, since her elder daughter died in 1862 and her younger daughter was a Catholic with no known Voudou ties. For visitors, remember that Voudou is a living religion, and that her tomb is a place of genuine devotion for many people; the cemetery is entered only with a licensed guide.

Reports of a turbaned woman who appears and vanishes in the cemetery and the French Quarter; voices and shoves said to be inflicted on those who disrespect her. Mostly anonymous.

St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 at her tomb, and the French Quarter near the street where she lived. Tours enter the cemetery by appointment only.

Marie Laveau appears in countless New Orleans guidebooks, novels, songs and television dramas, in ghost tours and in scholarship by historians such as Carolyn Morrow Long. Visitors have traditionally marked the tomb with three Xs and left offerings.