The LaLaurie Mansion

THE LALAURIE FAMILY
Delphine LaLaurie was a New Orleans socialite in the early 1800s. Twice widowed before marrying Dr. Louis LaLaurie in 1831, the LaLauries were the social elite of their time. They bought a Creole mansion on Royal Street where they threw lavish dinner parties for some of the most prominent people in New Orleans at that time.   After more than 170 years, the stories about what went on behind the closed doors of the LaLaurie mansion all those years ago as well as the stories of this huge three story mansion's hauntings are among the best known and most frightening tales to come out of the French Quarter.

Madame LaLaurie was the most influential French-Creole woman of New Orleans at that time. Her daughters wore the most fashionable and expensive clothes. Dr. LaLaurie was a very successful physician, with his wife handling all of their business affairs. Their home was decorated with the best of everything and the entire city was in awe. But there was an evil lurking behind the sophistication of the lady of the house that, when discovered, would shock the entire community.

As was the standard of the time, most influential families like the LaLaurie's owned slaves to help them take care of their lavish mansions and the LaLauries were no different. It took a lot of servants to cater to the LaLaurie family as well as their many and frequent guests who were pampered and treated like royalty. But Madame LaLaurie was of the belief that slaves were lower than animals, that they had no human rights, and she treated them horribly. Some terrible stories began to surface about her treatment of her servants and people began to talk. Many wondered why she went through so many, they always seemed to come and go with no plausible explanations offered from the LaLauries.

EVIL DISCOVERIES
One day a neighbor heard screaming coming from the LaLaurie mansion and when she investigated, she saw Madame chasing a young girl with a whip. This young girl was Madame's personal servant and reportedly was brushing Madame LaLaurie's hair and hit a snag, at which point Madame began chasing her. She chased her until the young girl ran up to the roof but, rather than face the whip and whatever other punishment she was guaranteed to receive, she jumped to her death. The neighbor later saw this little girl being buried, although there are two accounts of her burial. One story has her buried in a shallow grave in the LaLaurie's back yard, while another states she was buried in the well behind the mansion. Either way, the neighbors reported the LaLauries to the authorities and, as a result of the laws prohibiting cruel treatment of slaves, all of the LaLauries slaves were taken from them and sold at auction. Unfortunately, Madame LaLaurie was not to be outdone and had her own relatives buy the slaves, who were then placed back in the LaLaurie household. Who would stop them? The judge handling the case was a friend of the LaLaurie's, who were only fined $300.00!

It wasnt long before the stories of her mistreatment resurfaced. The LaLauries slowly and quietly began receiving fewer and fewer invitations, fewer guests came to their home and eventually they were shut out of Creole society. Their former friends began to avoid them because of the stories they had heard whispered about Madame's vicious treatment of her slaves once again. Then, in 1834, during a small dinner party, a fire was started and firemen were called. The facts of the fire differ, some say the cook, who was kept chained to the stove by Madame, set fire to himself to attract attention, then when the authorities came, he directed them to the attic. Other stories claim there were two slaves chained in the kitchen that night who set the fire, which blazed through the house and as the firemen were attempting to put it out they came upon a door to the attic that was barred and locked. Either way, the authorities then broke down the door with a battering ram and were horrified at what they found.

There were more than a dozen disfigured and maimed slaves, both male and female, were either chained to the walls or strapped to makeshift operating tables, some were in pet-size cages.   One man looked like he had undergone some kind of makeshift sex change and one woman had had her arms and legs broken and reset at odd angles so she appeared as if she were a human crab, yet another woman had had her arms and legs removed and her torso had skin removed in a circular motion so that she looked like a caterpillar. Some had their mouths sewn shut and had starved to death.   One woman had animal excrement shoved into her mouth and then it was sewn shut while others had their hands sewn to different parts of their bodies and some of the other women had their entrails wound around their waists or were fastened to the floor by them while the men had fingernails removed, eyeballs poked out and their genitals removed. All of these poor victims were naked, most were dead. Those who werent dead begged to be killed and put out of their misery. Scattered around the attic were body parts on the floor, heads in buckets, whips and chains and other torture devices on shelves next to jars of smaller body parts.

A QUICK ESCAPE
As the authorities were making their grisley discoveries in the attic, word was spreading like wildfire throughout the city of the atrocities that took place in their home. It was believed to be Madame LaLaurie who was responsible for what was found. An angry mob gathered in the street, demanding that she be hung for what she had done. Amidst the crowd, a horse and carriage burst from within the mansion gates and the LaLauries were never seen in New Orleans again. No one knows for sure whatever happened to the LaLauries but it is generally agreed that Delphine LaLaurie died on December 7, 1842, but again, no one knows for sure where she was buried. The general consensus is that her body was snuck back into New Orleans. In the early 1900s, an old cracked plate was discovered in St. Louis cemetery with the inscription: "Madame LaLaurie, nee Marie Delphine Maccarthy, decedee a Paris, le 7 decembre, 1842, a Page de 6--."

THE HAUNTED HOUSE
After the LaLauries snuck out of New Orleans, the mob ramsacked the house, vandalizing and destroying all the things the LaLauries held dear. Almost immediately the people of New Orleans, frightened by they believed to be lurking in the mansion after the atrocities that were discovered there, began circulating numerous reports of screams of agony heard emenating from the house at night, ghostly images of the slaves who died there were seen walking among the grounds and on the balconies of the house. For a short time after the LaLauries abandoned the mansion, it was occupied but only for a very brief period of time before it was abandoned and left vacant until 1837, when it was put on the market and bought by a man who only kept it for three months, claiming he was being haunted by the moans and groans of agony that chased his nights. He tried to sublet the building but tenants only stayed for a few days, then left. Eventually he let the building sit empty, abandoned to all its ghosts.

After the civil war, the building went through many changes. It became an integrated high schools, then a school for only white kids, then for only black kids, then in 1882, it became a music conservatory/dancing school. This was quite successful until rumors of the teachers improprieties with the female students forced it to close a short time later. In the late 1880s, a man by the name of Joseph Edouard Vigne lived in the house. It seemed to suit him well as he was a rather eccentric member of a very wealthy New Orleans family and he lived there until 1892, when he was found dead, laying on a cot surrounded not only by filth, but also surrounded by bags of money, antiques and wealth. The house was rumored after his death to be riddled with hidden ‘treasure’ but few attempted to find it, once again scared off by the wide-spread tales of ghosts and spirits still inhabiting the mansion. One report from a neighbor places a man walking around the upstairs carrying his own head…when no one was living in the mansion at the time.

A few years later, in the late 1890s, the building was converted into small, low rent apartments by landlords hoping to cash in on the influx of immigrants coming in to America. The tales that emerged from these immigrant tenants seem to be the ones that most tell still today. These ghost stories include the following: one tenant was confronted by a naked black man in chains who attacked him, then vanished; animals were mysteriously butchered in the house; children were attacked by a phantom with a whip; strange figures wrapped in shrouds would appear and disappear; and, at night, the house would reverberate with the sounds of screams and cries of agony, as had been reported by every tenant to inhabit the house since the LaLaurie’s departure and subsequent horrific findings in the attic years earlier. Even with the low rent, it was hard for landlords to keep tenants and eventually the building was abandoned.

The mansion’s next owner turned it into, appropriately, the “Haunted Saloon.”   Later, it became a furniture store, which did not last because the owner kept finding all of his furniture ruined inexplicably by a dark, stinking liquid. He thought it was vandals and stayed in the building one night with a shotgun, but when no vandals showed up and he examined his merchandise, it was once again ruined. The building, of course, was once again closed down. Soon, a physician bought the home and restored it to its prior grandeur, turning it into a sitting area in the front and five apartments at the back. He claims never to have experienced anything paranormal while there.

The building in present day has been converted into luxury apartments for wealthy tenants. Apparently the tales of the haunting have slightly faded as the tenants of these apartments seem to stay longer than others have in the past, but no one really knows for sure if the building is still at unrest, although a few years ago, the owners of the mansion were remodeling and found a mass graveyard hidden in the back of the house beneath the wooden floor. Authorities claim the remains are fairly recent, could date back to Madame LaLaurie and is now believed to have been her own private little graveyard for all those slaves that would come and go so mysteriously. Of course, no one will ever know for sure…but the LaLaurie Mansion will always be considered to be the most haunted house in the city.

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