Ghost Hunter's Guide to New Orleans

By Jeff Dwyer

It’s not hard to find restless spirits in the Big Easy. Let the popular paranormal investigator guide you through its winding streets and history.

Newly revised and updated, this installment in the much-acclaimed Ghost Hunter’s Guide Series is designed for locals, new residents, and travelers seeking the haunted history of the Crescent City and nearby locations. Detailed descriptions and historical background for more than two hundred locations guide readers to sites where they might encounter ghostly apparitions.

Sites and spirits in the Garden District and French Quarter include the ghosts of voodoo priestesses, victims of yellow-fever epidemics, several well-known French Quarter restaurants, and the famous Lalaurie Mansion, thought to be the most haunted house in New Orleans. A section on City Park, the Faubourg Marigny, and nearby Chalmette, the site of the Battle of New Orleans, is also provided. A chapter dedicated to day trips suggests the paranormal possibilities awaiting travelers destined for the famous River Road plantations and Baton Rouge.

Praise for Jeff Dwyer’s Ghost Hunter’s Guide to the San Francisco Bay Area

“While sometimes scary, [the ghost stories] more often serve as reminders of the sometimes quirky, and oftentimes tragically haunting, history of the people of California.” —The Reporter (Vacaville, CA)

“I thought I knew everything about the wine country, but I apparently overlooked the protoplasmic ‘walk by night’ world.” —Mick Winter, author of The Napa Valley Book

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Sep 15, 2016
• ISBN: 9781455621590

Jeff Dwyer

"Dwyer takes his ghost hunting deadly serious."—Santa Rosa (CA) Press Democrat Jeff Dwyer is a third-generation Californian, born in the heart of the Bay Area. Before pursuing medical sciences at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Southern California, he was a commercial diver and researcher of underwater performance, funded by the Office of Naval Research and the U.S. Navy Experimental Diving Unit. After earning two master of science degrees in kinesiology and physical therapy and a doctorate in exercise physiology, he taught at the University of Hawaii's medical school, Duke University School of Medicine, and the University of Southern California Wrigley Marine Science Center and medical school. He works as a clinical specialist in cardiology, conducting a cardiac rehabilitation program and supervising diagnostic laboratories focused on heart disease. Fascinated by ghost lore since boyhood, Dwyer rekindled his interest in writing about paranormal phenomena after many years of clinical practice involving work with dying patients and their families as well as hospital staff, many of whom claimed witness to paranormal events. Numerous experiences with ghosts in hospitals, cemeteries, and historic sites around the Bay Area led to extensive research that culminated in his first book, Ghost Hunter's Guide to the San Francisco Bay Area. While working at Duke University School of Medicine and with the U.S. Navy Experimental Diving Unit, Dwyer was able to explore every southern state. He examined antebellum mansions, battlefields, and cemeteries in addition to scuba diving on several shipwrecks. During his visits to New Orleans, he became fascinated with the city's history, culture, and people and conducted investigations of paranormal activity at several sites. Dwyer has been a frequent in-studio, on-air guest at San Francisco Bay Area radio stations.

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Introduction

New Orleans is recognized world-wide as a unique cultural region known for its eclectic mix of food, music, literature, folklore, style of speech, traditions, celebrations, and living history. Its style is a mesmerizing blend of flavorful beignets and jambalaya, lively funeral marches and soulful jazz, Spanish architecture and French street signs, foggy nights and sweltering days, and busy public squares and quiet courtyards. The city fills the senses with delightful sights, sounds, and fragrances and presents endless opportunities for adventure. This is especially true in the oldest part of the city, the renowned Vieux Carré, more frequently referred to as the French Quarter. Here, three hundred years of history linger in the air and add dimensions to the experience that many describe as supernatural.

New Orleans is, in every way, an important modern city of renowned institutions of higher learning and research and a vital center for energy industries and agriculture. But it is also a very old city that has found a way to preserve its heritage and share ancient secrets, historical legacies, and sights and sounds of past eras with travelers from all over the world. History, architecture, and culinary experiences can be found everywhere in the Crescent City. Ghosts can be found there too.

Within the American paranormal community, New Orleans is believed to be the most haunted place in the United States. Indeed, New Orleans and its nearby communities have all the ingredients necessary to sustain a legacy of ghosts, hauntings, and bizarre encounters with the paranormal. For some people, the very word ghost immediately brings to mind visions of ancient European castles, foggy moors, and dark, wind-swept ramparts where brave knights battled enemies of the crown. But the truth is that ghosts are everywhere. A history based in antiquity and covered with a veil of sorrow and pain from cultural upheaval is not essential, yet these elements are quite common in New Orleans.

To understand why ghosts haunt this fascinating city, we must know something of its history and traditions and look for clues in the tantalizing rumors and folklore that add a hint of romance, whispers of intrigue, and a thrill of adventure to our quest. Natural disasters, the fusion of cultures, wars, hurricanes, fires, and epidemics have all left indelible marks on the land, buildings, and people of the city. Ghosts seem to be attracted to places where the human experience was charged with great energy arising from pain, misery, and despair but also happiness, triumph, and great elation. If you visit those special places in New Orleans where these human experiences played out, you will find the ghosts of an amazing people who lived the history of a fascinating city.

In 1699, when French explorers arrived at the site that would become the Crescent City, they found an inhospitable land comprised of swamps, clouds of insects, brutal heat and high humidity, and frequent floods rising from the Mississippi River. Situated on what appeared to be high ground between Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi River, the place showed great promise as a commercial center because of its easy access to waterborne transportation. It was another 20 years, however, before the town of La Nouvelle-Orléans was founded and the construction of levees, streets, and plantations began.

At first, only a small community settled in the swampland. The settlers quickly realized that in order to meet the population goals set by Europeans who had invested in the settlement, it would be necessary to recruit artisans and workers from France and her colonies. Apparently, the place had already gained a reputation throughout Europe and the Caribbean for its harsh climate and other hardships, so few volunteered. The only viable solution was to recruit workers from French prisons by offering them freedom if they would immigrate to the new city on the Mississippi. The initial wave of these immigrants was, naturally, predominantly men of rough character and this created obvious difficulties. It was reported that so few young women were available in La Nouvelle-Orléans that the male residents often ran into the woods searching for Native American girls. This behavior may have been the initial venture into what would become a common trait of blending ethnicities, but it threatened peaceful relations with local tribes. The quickest solution was to offer incarcerated prostitutes in France the same opportunity that had been given the men: immigrate to the new colony or remain in jail.

While the town’s population grew, civility was rare and the place became a wild frontier town ripe with crime and debauchery. Noting sharp distinctions between the small community of aristocrats and the growing population of uncouth laborers, Governor Bienville invited the Ursuline sisters to relocate from France to establish a convent and facilities for education and medical care. By 1727, the first Ursulines arrived and made an immediate positive impact on the city’s lower classes which, in turn, attracted more investors as well as educated and middle-class immigrants. The Old Ursuline Convent still stands in the French Quarter.

By the late 1750s, conflicts with local Native Americans had been quelled and the colony’s population and economy were stable, yet investors in France looked upon the New Orleans colony as a failure. Anticipating an economic disaster at home, in 1762, France relinquished ownership of the colony to Spain in the secret Treaty of Fontainebleau. On the day news of the treaty reached La Nouvelle-Orléans, 7,000 French colonists awoke to find that they had become subjects of the Spanish crown. The loyal French citizens were indignant, and the animosity that arose between the local French and Spanish would lead to a failed revolution and years of harsh martial law.

Throughout 40 years of Spanish rule, New Orleans fulfilled its promise of economic prosperity, developing a large, cultured upper class and military importance. But in 1800, the people awoke once again to find that the city had been deeded back to France by yet another secret treaty. Celebrations were widespread and residents began to describe their city as the Paris of the West, but in 1803, New Orleans changed hands once again. The Louisiana Purchase, ratified in the Cabildo, the seat of the colony’s colonial government, transferred New Orleans to the United States. Despite attempts by the British to invade the city in 1814 and capture the lower Mississippi River region, New Orleans would never again be ruled by a European power.

Through these many transitional periods, the influx of diverse immigrants changed the character of the city and Louisiana. The most distinctive groups associated with Louisiana emerged during its colonial period. The descendants of the wealthy and educated French immigrants who arrived after the Ursulines became known as Creoles and comprised the preeminent social class in the city. Later another ethnic group composed of Catholics of mixed race began to use the descriptor.

The second group unique to Louisiana would become known as the Cajuns. Cajuns of southern Louisiana are descendants of French immigrants who originally settled in Canada’s Maritime provinces between 1710 and 1750. On Giovanni da Verrazzano’s 16th-century map of the Atlantic coast, the region was labeled Arcadia from the Greek meaning refuge. A century later, maps were prepared in which the r was omitted, altering the name of the place to Acadia. Those who settled there became known as Acadians. The term Cajun evolved from the French pronunciation of the word "Acadian."

During the Seven Years’ War (1755-1763), the allegiance of Acadians to France and their civilian opposition to British military campaigns created grave concern that their militias might add significantly to the power of the French army. In order to reduce that threat, Acadians were deported to various countries, including the 13 American colonies and the French colony of Louisiana, during the Great Expulsion. In this period, more than 11,000 Acadians were deported. After the war, the Treaty of Paris (1763) granted an 18-month period of unrestricted immigration for all who wished to leave the newly captured British territory. Many chose to immigrate to Louisiana, only to find that the colony had recently become a Spanish province. Still, the predominant culture of the region was French and many anticipated easy assimilation. Owing to their settlement in unclaimed lands thick with forests, bayous, and mosquito-infested swamps, many Acadian settlements were isolated. Their strange dialect, later known as Cajun-French, poverty, and illiteracy further set them apart from French people already established in Louisiana. Isolation of Cajun communities continued until the Civil War, but a few decades were sufficient to create a unique culture of language, food, music, and literature that flourishes throughout the state today.

French culture was not alone in influencing the cultural growth of New Orleans and Louisiana. From the arrival of the first slaves in 1719 to the end of slave importation in 1808, Africans became vital to the economic development of the region and expansion of cultural diversity. By 1731, more than 7,000 slaves had been imported into the city, creating a heinous enterprise that would lead the nation into a civil war. Not all Africans in New Orleans were slaves, however. Many, described as free persons of color, owned businesses and were accorded a citizen’s rights in the courts.

Like many fast-growing towns and cities of the 18th and 19th centuries, New Orleans suffered catastrophic fires that wiped out decades of development. On March 21, 1788, a fire started in the home of Don Vicente Nunez, the treasurer of the colony, at 619 Chartres Street. Within five hours, 856 structures were destroyed, leaving only 250 still standing. The devastated area comprised nearly 18 square blocks. The Old Ursuline Convent escaped destruction due to its tile roof and stone and stucco exterior. A death toll was never published, but it is likely that many residents succumbed to the flames and smoke. The catastrophe spurred civic leaders to specify a building code comprised of thick walls of brick and stone, stucco exteriors, tile roofs, and wrought-iron balconies and gates, giving the French Quarter its signature architecture. Among the structures built after the fire that remain standing today are Jackson Square landmarks including the St. Louis Cathedral, the Cabildo, and the Presbytère. Despite the new construction policy, fire struck New Orleans again on December 8, 1794. This fire raged from Burgundy Street to Chartres Street and destroyed 212 structures. A death toll was not compiled but some historians believe as many as 100 people died in that blaze, and some insist that their spirits still frequent the sites of their demise.

Large conflagrations are a thing of the past, but small fires occur often in and around New Orleans, creating fatalities that have led to paranormal activity. On June 24, 1973, 32 people died in a fire that swept through a second-floor bar at 141 Chartres Street. On the coldest night of the year, December 28, 2010, eight homeless people died when their campfire burned out of control and consumed the small Ninth Ward warehouse in which they had taken shelter. The deaths of these people have added to the belief that the Ninth Ward neighborhood is crowded with ghosts.

Due to its location in a region of swamps, shallow bays, ponds, and bayous, New Orleans has always been targeted by mosquitoes. The earliest settlers recorded in their journals that massive clouds of insects would sweep through the town, almost blocking out the sun. The result of those swarms of mosquitoes was yellow fever. A viral illness contracted by mosquito bites, this disease had a devastating effect on the city from 1817 to 1905. During those years, more than 41,000 people died of yellow fever. Major epidemics in which more than 2,000 people died occurred nine different times throughout the century. The greatest disaster occurred in 1853 when 7,849 people died of the virus. Many historians believe the virus took so many lives in New Orleans due to the practice of capturing drinking water in open cisterns, perfect breeding grounds for the disease-carrying mosquito.

A less deadly disease, cholera caused 129 deaths in 1853. The majority of deaths occurred among poor, newly arrived immigrants who had no access to clean drinking water. Particularly hard hit were free black people who had no recourse but to reside in cramped and filthy shacks. Cholera outbreaks were minimized when doctors recognized the role that drinking water played in the infection.

No records can be found for deaths attributed to malaria, but it is known that in the 19th century this parasitic disease led to thousands of deaths throughout southern Louisiana. In 1883, the New York Times ran a front page article entitled New Orleans Full of Malaria. One source estimates that at least 100 people died each year between 1800 and 1900 from malaria.

The worldwide Spanish flu epidemic of 1918 caused more deaths in New Orleans than in any other American city besides Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Sick crew members aboard an oil tanker that arrived in the city on September 16, 1918, are believed to have been the source of the city’s infection. Within two weeks, the first death was recorded, and the disease spread rapidly. By October 7, there were at least 7,000 active cases in New Orleans. In the following weeks, all of the city’s hospitals were filled to capacity and doctors reported more than 12,000 medical visits to the board of health. In the six months following the first reported infection, the New Orleans area recorded a staggering 54,089 cases of the Spanish flu. Of these, 3,489 souls perished. In many of the city’s cemeteries, victims of the Spanish flu are buried in clusters. Some markers indicate that entire families occupy a single grave. Their tragic demise seems to have created spirits who have yet to let go and move on.

Not only did disease and pestilence carve its way through the population of New Orleans, armed insurrection and war also took the lives of many and helped to fill the cemeteries. When it was finally revealed that France had ceded ownership of New Orleans to Spain in 1762, panic swept through the streets. French colonists could not bear the thought of governance by the hated crown of Spain. Immediately, plans for a rebellion were hatched. It was not until November of 1768, however, that the Spanish governor, Don Antonio de Ulloa, was driven from the colony. Spain responded by sending a fleet of 24 ships to New Orleans under the command of Don Alejandro O’Reilly, an Irishman in service to Spain. O’Reilly arrested the leaders of the rebellion and executed them. To instill fear into the residents of the town, he ordered that the bodies of the rebels be left in the sun to rot. A legend linked to these men is recounted later in this book.

Early in the American period, war with England broke out once again, and in December of 1814, the colonists were gripped with fear as 8,000 British troops, supported by a large fleet of ships, advanced on the city. General Andrew Jackson assembled an eclectic force of backwoodsmen, pirates, militia, and regular army to repel the invasion at Chalmette, just downriver from New Orleans. The British suffered 2,459 casualties while Jackson’s army lost only 55 killed in action.

The Civil War brought much misery to New Orleans although no major battles were fought there, sparing the city the destruction suffered throughout the South. Controlled throughout most of the war by occupying Federal troops, many rebels were incarcerated in the Cabildo, the Old U.S. Mint, and other buildings around town, where many people are believed to have died of disease or been executed. In June of 1862, William Mumford was hanged in the courtyard of the Cabildo by order of Major General Benjamin Butler. Butler, nicknamed the Beast by locals, cruelly treated captured rebels and sympathetic civilians while he ruled the city with an iron fist.

While the trauma of war is now behind the city, it still struggles with the consequences of its geography. The history of floods in New Orleans is long and distressing but that is not surprising when we consider that the city sits between Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi River and its average elevation is six feet below sea level. In 1708, one of the first Frenchmen to survey the area reported, Last summer I examined better than I had yet done all the lands in the vicinity of this river. I did not find any at all that are not flooded in the spring. I do not see how settlers can be placed on this river. Ten years later, slaves were put to work building drainage ditches and the first levees to which New Orleans would owe its survival. Spring and summer floods continued, however, despite timber and earth embankments that reached 12 miles south of the city and as far as 30 miles north. In 1816 and again in 1828, month-long floods brought mud, snakes, rates, and disease into the city. In 1849, a massive breach of the levee north of the town filled the streets with muddy water for an unprecedented 48 days. The flood of 1882 lasted 91 days.

In the early 20th century, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began extensive work on the entire lower Mississippi River levee system using modern construction methods and data from numerous hydrology experts. Floods brought on by hurricanes, however, easily overwhelmed the system. In 1965, Hurricane Betsy sent water into four parishes, killing more than 40 people. In April of 1973, heavy winter and spring rains caused the Mississippi River to swell beyond the capacity of the levees, and 24 people died in the worst flood to hit New Orleans since the Great Flood of 1927, which had been the catalyst for the government-maintained levee system.

By 2001, the Army Corps of Engineers had completed 90 percent of its planned levee and canal improvements, and city leaders declared that New Orleans was well prepared to withstand a Category 3 hurricane. They did not imagine the power of a storm like Katrina. Originating over the Bahamas on August 23, 2005, as a tropical depression, Katrina intensified over a five-day period, striking fear into the hearts of people who lived in the storm’s path. Delivering a glancing blow to the tip of Florida on August 25, the storm achieved hurricane status and moved across the Gulf of Mexico, heading toward the coasts of Mississippi and Louisiana. When it made landfall in Louisiana on August 29, the hurricane stretched four hundred miles across with winds reaching 145 miles per hour. Even before the winds struck New Orleans, the potential power of the storm prompted calls to evacuate the city or seek shelter in the Superdome. Despite hurried preparations and a chaotic evacuation, more than 800 people died in New Orleans as at least 50 levees failed or were overtopped and the storm surge flooded 80 percent of the city. Thousands were trapped in the attics of flooded homes and high-rise buildings, sweating and starving for days before rescuers could carry them to safety in boats or helicopters. During this time, it was common to see bodies floating in the swirling waters, mixing with debris from structures crushed by the hurricane.

Katrina’s floodwaters filled the city for weeks, adding to the destruction of roads and infrastructure and to the misery of those who remained in their homes during the storm. The Ninth Ward, east of the French Quarter, was one of the hardest hit areas. Most of the homes there were swept away or completely inundated, leaving a wasteland that was unchanged eight months later, when I toured the area. A few structures that withstood the storm were marked with the number of bodies found within. In one of these house, I spotted the hole in the ceiling and roof that residents used to escape the rising water. Those who could make it onto a roof sometimes stayed there for days awaiting rescue.

Katrina’s death toll eventually reached more than 1,500 in southern Louisiana and changed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in the New Orleans area. The disaster was the costliest in U.S. history, with more than $110 billion in property damage and an inestimable cost in terms of human suffering.

The widespread devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina added more spirits to the Crescent City’s ghostly legacy and powerful emotions that left haunting imprints on the town and neighboring communities. After the hurricane struck, rescue workers reported lights in buildings that had no electricity. While they conducted their searches, footsteps and moving doors were reportedly heard in buildings found to be deserted. Today, locations throughout the city and its suburbs are haunted by the ghost of Katrina’s victims.

All of these dramatic events have left powerful emotional imprints created by the dearly departed who felt a need to stay on. In many cases, these lost souls met violent or unexpected deaths, often at an early age. Unfortunate soldiers who died during the War of 1812 and the Civil War, enslaved laborers, firefighters, passengers on riverboats, and the thousands who died of rampant epidemics all passed with great emotional anguish, leaving their souls with an inextinguishable desire to achieve their life’s objectives or with a sense of obligation to offer protection to a particular place or loved one. Some ghosts remain in New Orleans for revenge or to provide guidance for descendants still alive. Many of those who came to the Crescent City to make their fortunes in the cotton and sugar industries, to obtain free land, or to find employment in the bars, restaurants, and inns of the booming French Quarter were caught up in their dreams but met only frustration and failure before dying alone and in poverty.

So it is no wonder that so many of the city’s old hotels and restaurants, plantation mansions, slave quarters, neighborhoods, forts, barrooms, and churches are inhabited by ghosts that are frequently perceived by residents and visitors. Their restless spirits still roam the River Road and old neighborhoods of New Orleans and contribute to the widely held impression that New Orleans is the most haunted city in America.

ABOUT THIS BOOK

The first edition of Ghost Hunter’s Guide to New Orleans was published in 2007. It represents information I gathered over the preceding 20 years from research and my personal paranormal investigations in New Orleans, its famous French Quarter, and nearby towns along the Mississippi River that have become well known for ghostly activity. Since 2007, I have received hundreds of reports of continuing and new ghostly activity in southern Louisiana. So much new information accumulated in a short period of time that I decided to write a revised edition of this popular book. Many of the haunted places described in the first edition were retained in this new edition because recent investigations indicated that paranormal phenomena have persisted.

Chapter 1 of this book will help you, the ghost hunter, to research and organize your own ghost hunt. Chapters 2 through 6 describe several locations at which ghostly activity has been reported in the greater New Orleans area and Mississippi River towns. Unlike other collections of ghost stories and descriptions of haunted places, this book emphasizes access. Private homes and other buildings not open to visitors are not included. Addresses of each haunted site are provided along with information to assist you in finding and entering the location. Several appendixes offer organizational material for your ghost hunts, including a Sighting Report Form to document your adventures, lists of suggested reading and videos, and Internet resources.

WHO BELIEVES IN GHOSTS?

People from every religion, culture, and generation believe that ghosts exist. The popularity of ghosts and haunted places in books, television programs, and movies reflects a belief held by many people that other dimensions and spiritual entities do exist.

In 2000, a Gallup poll discovered a significant increase in the number of Americans who believe in ghosts since the question was first asked in 1978. Thirty-one percent of respondents said they believe ghosts exist. Less than a year later, in 2001, Gallup found that 42 percent of the public believed a house could be haunted, but only 28 percent believed that we can hear from or mentally communicate with someone who has died. According to a Harris poll conducted in 2003, an astounding 51 percent of Americans believe in ghosts. In 2005, a CBS News poll reported similar findings. Twenty-two percent of the respondents admitted they had personally seen or felt the presence of a ghost. In this same year, Gallup pollsters reported that 75 percent of Americans believe in at least one paranormal phenomenon, including ESP, reincarnation, spirit channeling, ghosts, and clairvoyance. More recently, a HuffPost/YouGov poll conducted in 2013 revealed that 45 percent of Americans believe in ghosts or believe that the spirits of dead people can visit the living. A Pew Research Center poll, also reported in 2013, indicated that 18 percent of adult Americans believe they have seen