State file · LA
Haunted places in Louisiana
What are the most haunted places in Louisiana? The best-known are LaLaurie Mansion, Myrtles Plantation, St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 and Hotel Monteleone.
Few places on Earth are as closely identified with ghosts as New Orleans. Its French Quarter tours stop nightly at the LaLaurie Mansion and the tombs of St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, its grand hotels advertise their resident spirits, and up the river in St. Francisville the Myrtles Plantation has been billed for decades as “America’s most haunted house.” Ghost tourism is a major industry here, woven into the city’s music, food and Carnival culture.
- 4 hauntings
- 12 recorded sightings
- 1 news story
Haunted places in Louisiana
LaLaurie Mansion
An 1834 fire at Delphine LaLaurie’s New Orleans home exposed her torture of enslaved people. Ghost tours stop nightly; much of the gore is later invention. Widely reported
Myrtles Plantation
Billed as America’s most haunted house, this plantation is famous for “Chloe,” an enslaved woman the records show never lived there. One murder is real. Widely reported
St. Louis Cemetery No. 1
New Orleans’ oldest surviving cemetery, a maze of whitewashed tombs from 1789, holds Marie Laveau – whose spirit, tradition says, never left the city. Widely reported
Hotel Monteleone
A family-run French Quarter hotel since 1886, famed for its revolving bar, literary guests and a cast of ghosts said to include a little boy named Maurice. Widely reportedThe ghost lore of Louisiana
The history underneath is both rich and painful. Three centuries of French, Spanish and American rule, yellow fever epidemics that killed thousands in a single summer, the above-ground “cities of the dead,” and the living religion of Voodoo all feed the stories. So does slavery: Louisiana’s sugar and cotton fortunes were built on enslaved labour, and some of its most famous ghost stories – Chloe at the Myrtles, the exaggerated tortures told of the LaLaurie house – either invent enslaved characters or turn real victims into spectacle. Separating the record from the legend is part of honouring the people involved.
Visitors can choose from dozens of licensed walking tours in New Orleans, stay overnight at the Myrtles or the French Quarter’s historic hotels, and tour River Road plantations that now centre the lives of the enslaved. St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 can be entered only with a licensed guide, and private homes such as the LaLaurie Mansion are seen from the sidewalk only.
Ghost-hunting hotspots
- French Quarter
The old city of New Orleans, where nearly every block has a ghost story and walking tours run every night of the year.
- Garden District and Lafayette Cemetery No. 1
Antebellum mansions and an 1833 cemetery of above-ground tombs, a favourite of novelists and ghost-tour guides.
- St. Francisville
A historic river town in West Feliciana Parish, home of the Myrtles and other plantation houses with long-told legends.
- River Road
The plantation corridor between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, where sites such as the Whitney Plantation interpret the history of slavery.
- Baton Rouge
The state capital, with the Old State Capitol and a downtown full of nineteenth-century ghost lore.
Timeline
- 1886Antonio Monteleone buys the Hotel Victor Hotel Monteleone
The Sicilian shoemaker buys a small hotel on Royal Street, beginning a family business that continues today.
- 1908Rebuilt and renamed Hotel Monteleone
A major rebuilding adds a Beaux-Arts façade and 220 rooms; the hotel takes the Monteleone name the following year.
- 1946The legend is embellished LaLaurie Mansion
Jeanne deLavigne’s Ghost Stories of Old New Orleans adds lurid, unsourced tortures that are still repeated on tours today.
- 1949The Carousel Bar opens Hotel Monteleone
The hotel installs its famous revolving bar, now a New Orleans institution.
- November 1980LIFE spreads the poison-cake story Myrtles Plantation
National press coverage popularises the Chloe legend, and the Myrtles is soon marketed as one of America’s most haunted houses.
- 1992The “Chloe” photograph Myrtles Plantation
Owner Teeta Moss takes a photograph said to show a figure between two buildings; it becomes the plantation’s most famous image.
- 2002Unsolved Mysteries episode Myrtles Plantation
The house appears on Unsolved Mysteries, followed by Ghost Hunters (2005), Ghost Adventures and other programmes.
- March 2003Paranormal investigation Hotel Monteleone
The International Society for Paranormal Research spends several days at the hotel and reports contact with more than a dozen spirits, among them a child it names Maurice Begere.
- April 2007Nicolas Cage buys the house LaLaurie Mansion
The actor purchases the mansion for $3.45 million, bringing it back into the headlines; it is lost to foreclosure in 2009.
- 2013American Horror Story: Coven LaLaurie Mansion
Kathy Bates wins an Emmy playing a heavily fictionalised LaLaurie, introducing the story to a new generation – and new myths.
- December 2013Laveau’s tomb vandalised St. Louis Cemetery No. 1
The tomb is painted with pink latex paint, prompting a debate about preservation and a major restoration the following year.
- 1 March 2015Cemetery closed to unaccompanied visitors St. Louis Cemetery No. 1
Citing vandalism, the Archdiocese of New Orleans restricts entry to licensed tour groups and tomb owners.
Our reporting
Field reports from Louisiana
HBO’s ‘Pet Cemetery Murders’ and the ghost said to reopen a case
HBO revisits a 1985 killing in St. Bernard Parish, Louisiana, where witnesses said the victim’s ghost urged them to talk. Here is what the record shows.
The Myrtles Plantation’s ‘Chloe’: the legend against the record
Louisiana’s Myrtles owes much of its haunted fame to the ghost of an enslaved woman named Chloe. The historical record tells a very different story.From other news sites
