Haunted History of the French Quarter
Posted: 12.16.2024 | Updated: 03.28.2025
The French Quarter is a historical wonder with an eclectic identity, blending French, Spanish, and American influences. Just blocks from the French West Indies-styled Madame John’s Legacy sits the Spanish Colonial Presbytere. A short walk from there, American Samuel Hermann erected his Federalist brick home in 1831.
These varied architectural styles tell the French Quarter’s centuries-long story. However, the timeline is plagued with pockets of missing information.
One must connect with the lost souls linked to the French Quarter’s history to fill these gaps.
New Orleans has an extensive haunted history. Its grounds are saturated in the blood of many. The resulting concentration of spirits trapped within the French Quarter is quite remarkable.
Walk the thin line between our realm and the land of the dead with an authentic French Quarter ghost tour by NOLA Ghosts!
What is the History of the French Quarter In New Orleans?
Jean Baptiste Bienville laid the foundation for the contemporary French Quarter in 1718. The French Canadian naval officer established a grid of 70 squares. Creole culture and urbanism thrived under Bienville’s governorship. But, by the 1760s, the French grip on the quarter slipped due to the Seven Years’ War.
With the signing of the Treaty of Fontainebleau between the French and Spanish, all of the French colonial territories in Louisiana west of the Mississippi River were turned over to Spain.
Among them was the French Quarter. For over 25 years, the Spanish-controlled French Quarter thrived and evolved, adopting many cultural and architectural facets. That is, until a devastating natural force swept through the City of Second Chances.
The Great New Orleans Fire | The French Quarter Burns
That the French Quarter even stands today is what some may consider a miracle. Others attribute it to luck and the perseverance of the Spanish administration overseeing the neighborhood. Whatever force it was, be it man or something more divine, the French Quarter survived through two infernos. Hundreds of buildings were brought to ashes.
The first fire broke out on Good Friday in 1788 at the home of Don Vincente Nunez, a Spanish military treasurer. It’s believed a lit candle in the chapel of the treasurer’s home tipped over. The Resuult was a cataclysmic blaze that claimed the church, the rectory, the town hall, and over 800 homes.
As the smoke cleared, the Spanish focused on rebuilding what was lost. Boys playing in a courtyard started a second fire in 1791. Only a few years after the reconstruction of the French Quarter.
New Orleans’ French Quarter was once again left in ruins. While there’s a rough estimate as to the number of buildings destroyed, the number of lives lost to either fire remains unknown.
Whatever the number, the people of the French Quarter fought back against nature’s assumed desire to level the neighborhood. Spanish administrators improved building codes, requiring new construction to use more brick to prevent the spread of future blazes.
Yellow Fever Fills St. Louis Cemetery No. 1
By the mid-19th century, one could suggest that the French Quarter was cursed. The city suffered significant losses from a spreading epidemic. Even after falling into American hands with the signing of the Louisiana Purchase in 1801.
During the 1800s, yellow fever overwhelmed the United States. Large outbreaks with death tolls in the thousands rattled cities like Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore.
Before long, the infection arrived in New Orleans, and the French Quarter’s growing populous became a conduit for the deadly virus. Bodies piled up throughout the state, earning it the nickname The Necropolis. Thousands of people painfully perished from the outbreak. The agony of their demise anchoring them as restless spirits in our realm.
Marie Laveau | The Voodoo Queen
Staples of historical tours in New Orleans, Marie Laveau and Madame LaLaurie paint two very different pictures of 19th-century life in the French Quarter. One was a spiritual figure known and respected throughout a community. The other was a socialite whose horrors still plague the French Quarter today.
The life of Marie Laveau, the French Quarter’s Vodou queen, reads a little like a fable. Daughter to plantation owner Charles Laveau and his mistress Marguerite Darcantel, she followed the practices of New Orleans Vodou, a direct off-shoot of the Haitian system of beliefs in the Caribbean. All of which were influenced by an African religion from the Dahomey Empire.
Laveau’s powers were revered. She aided the community, using her spiritualism to guide those who came to her with their problems.
As her influence in the French Quarter grew and she became known as a Vodou queen, Laveau performed rituals at three spots throughout New Orleans. Among them was Congo Square, which sits just beyond the northern edge of the French Quarter.
Even more than 140 years after her passing, Laveau’s presence is still felt throughout the neighborhood, particularly at the site of her former home on St. Ann Street and around her tomb in St. Louis Cemetery No. 1.
Madame LaLaurie | Terror Of The French Quarter
Whereas Marie Laveau brought peace and hope to those who respected her and her practices, Marie Delphine LaLaurie brought only pain and suffering to the French Quarter. Often depicted as a vicious monster in movies and television, Madame LaLaurie earned her reputation from the dark stain she left in the historic quarter.
LaLaurie’s life before meeting her third husband, physician Leonard Louis LaLaurie, was fairly unremarkable compared to the later years at her home on Royal Street. Shortly after marrying Dr. LaLaurie, accounts of the Madame’s cruelty spread around the French Quarter.
She was most publicly directly tied to the death of 12-year-old Lia, a young enslaved girl who accidentally pulled at Madame LaLaurie’s hair while brushing it.
The events that led to Lia’s demise remain a mystery, but the young girl fell to her death from the roof of the Royal Street mansion. LaLaurie was fined for the incident and forced to let go of nine slaves, but her cruelty knew no bounds. Displeased with losing property, she had her family purchase the nine slaves and sell them back to her.
Her reign of terror ended in April 1834 when a fire broke out in the mansion. When a group of volunteers rushed in to extinguish the inferno, they glimpsed the atrocities and the mansion’s darkest secrets. Slaves were discovered bearing gruesome, infected wounds, and those who were found alive were on the brink of a slow and agonizing death.
Though the Madame fled the scene to France, where she died in 1849, her darkness never left New Orleans. Some believe she was reinterred at St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, but her lingering spirit, and those of many of the slaves she killed, remain a part of the Royal Street building.
The Most Haunted Buildings of the French Quarter
Madame LaLaurie and the Vodou Queen of the French Quarter and the two haunted buildings they lived in are always part of ghost tours in New Orleans. The vicious socialite’s former residence is a veritable house of horrors, with the heavy presence of the murderous LaLaurie and her victims lingering on Royal Street.
Just off the Mississippi River lies historic Jackson Square, home of the St. Louis Cathedral, the Presbytere, and the Cabildo. The eatery on the corner near the Presbytere, Muriel’s Jackson Square, is a bit more manageable for the curious-minded to explore.
Centuries ago, Pierre Antoine Lepardi Jourdan was involved in rebuilding after the second fire. The spot where Muriel now sits was his most beloved home.
During a high-stakes game of poker, he wagered the home and lost. Rather than give up the very building he built to the utmost of his satisfaction, he killed himself. Now a permanent resident, Jourdan never parted from his treasured home.
The property has since been restored to its 19th-century roots and, in 2001, opened as a popular Creole restaurant. Patrons now gather to enjoy traditional dishes and try to connect with Jourdan’s ghost.
On the corner of Royal and Iberville Streets, just a block from the bustle of Canal, Hotel Monteleone offers visitors premium accommodations in an extravagant space that captures the allure of the old French Quarter.
The 19th-century hotel has seen its fair share of death. An employee named William “Red” Wildemer, who is said to have passed suddenly of natural causes, and children meant to cross into the spirit realm all haunt the hotel.
The Haunted History of New Orleans’ French Quarter
The history of the French Quarter is as rich and vibrant as it is riddled with the ghostly relics of those who laid the foundation for the bustling neighborhood. There’s much to learn about its revered figures, like Marie Laveau, feared fiends, like Madame LaLaurie, and iconic architecture.
While New Orleans guided tours cover the extensive history of the French Quarter, a New Orleans ghost tour puts a spectral spin on the history lesson.
Book a tour with NOLA Ghosts today to combine history and a walk on the fine line between our realm and the land of the dead. Brush up on your haunted New Orleans history on our blog, and follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok to explore even more frights of the Big Easy’s French Quarter.
Sources:
- https://frenchquartercitizens.org/a-history-of-the-french-quarter/
- https://www.frenchquarter.com/brief-history-of-the-french-quarter/
- https://exploringnolatours.com/f/the-day-new-orleans-burned-the-first-time#:~:text=At%20around%201%3A30%20in,military%20treasurer%20to%20the%20province.
- https://nolaghosts.com/the-corpses-of-the-yellow-fever-epidemic/
- https://www.britannica.com/biography/Marie-Laveau
- https://www.historicmysteries.com/major-crimes/madame-lalaurie-female-serial-killer/8581/
- https://muriels.com/about/ghost/
- https://hauntednation.blogspot.com/2016/09/cabildo-museum-new-orleans-la-napoleon.html
- https://www.onlyinyourstate.com/stays/louisiana/haunted-hotel-monteleone-new-orleans-la
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Walk in the footsteps of voodoo queen Marie Laveau while you learn about the most haunted places in New Orleans and discover the spirits of the French Quarter.
