First of all, let me tell you about one of my favourite attractions in New Orleans - The Museum of Death - yes you heard me correctly, so if this freaks you out a little bit, what are you still doing here!!!! I thought I would slot this in first as it’s like pulling off a Band-aid, if you can get through this, the rest ain’t so bad.

Now I might make it sound all lighthearted and tame in my description but trust me, the Death Museum is not for the faint hearted. If you have a weak stomach or are the type of person that can’t make it through a slasher horror movie, maybe give it a miss. Everything in this museum is 100% real, not something fabricated by the special effects department, so don’t say you’ve not been warned - it is gruesome. Personally I found it fascinating and informative, and I really enjoyed my hour there, and would love to visit again.

The Voodoo Queen

One name you might hear pop up on a few History tours and in stories is Marie Laveau, the Creole Voodoo Queen of New Orleans. If you do a bit of research on her life, it seems to be shrouded in mystery, as one would expect from a Voodoo Priestess. She was born in The French Quarter around 1801. Her mother was a freed slave, her father was a wealthy businessman of European decent. After her birth, she was abandoned, and subsequently raised by her maternal grandmother. The mysteries that surround Marie Laveau’s life started about 20 years later with the unexplainable disappearance of both her young daughters, and her husband. She later went on to enter a relationship with a French man, and had 7 children with him.

Another interesting fact about Laveau is that she was a devote and practicing Catholic her whole life, and for her, this did not interfere with her voodoo practices. Voodoo, or Vodou is in fact a religion that combines the beliefs of Catholicism and native African religions. Unfortunately, popular culture has taught us to believe that Voodoo is an evil practice associated with devil worship and magic, which is far from the truth.

Laveau became a hairdresser, and worked from her home on St Anne’s Street in The French Quarter. Many of her clients were black women who worked as house servants, and it was through these women she got to learn the gossip and personal information on all her wealthy white clients. So in turn, she used this information in her favour to give advice to the wealthy, along with spiritual protection against any evil that may have been cursed upon them, in exchange for payment.

Within a few years, Laveau took the position of Voodoo Queen in New Orleans, and was well respected, and well known for her spiritual practices and public rituals. People would flock to her for advice on many issues from finance, health, and for luck, and she would supply them with many spiritual objects and concoctions to convey the protection they sought.

Laveau passed away in 1881, and was entombed in St Louis Cemetery no. 1, although her legacy lives on through the hundreds of tourists who flock to her tomb each year. A popular tradition if you want Marie Laveau to grant you a wish, is to scratch an X onto her tomb, knock on the tomb and shout out the wish, If the wish is granted, you must return to leave her an offering of a personal possession. Although this practice is extremely frowned upon due to the fragility of the tomb walls.

Last year I took a guided tour of the cemetery which I found informative, and gave a compelling insight into the history of New Orleans, although the tour guide quickly brushed over the Nic Cage fiasco!

People in the Streets - literally!

As I was saying earlier, you can’t walk a few feet in The French Quarter without crossing someone’s resting place. This I learned on one of the walking tours and it’s not something that they tend to publish all over the guide books. Do they think it would freak people out? Not me, I immediately got on the aul Google to find out more. Get ready for a quick history lesson…

Contrary to popular belief that St. Louis no. 1 is the oldest cemetery in New Orleans, it’s actually the oldest above ground burial site but what the tourists aren’t told, is that there are many graves beneath The French Quarter in the large areas of Burgundy and Rampart. New Orleans was founded in the year 1718 and was a port city to the Mississippi River at the area we know as The French Quarter today, and as you can imagine, it was a whole lot smaller back then. The city was then surrounded by a moat, and just outside the moat was a Cemetery founded by the Catholic Church. As it was a French Catholic Colony, if you lived there, you had to be Catholic. So everyone who died, white, enslaved, freed enslaved, it didn’t matter, you were Catholic and buried in that cemetery. Now I’m not talking a few hundred bodies like you might think, in the 19th Century the city struggled with both Cholera and Yellow Fever epidemics, the Yellow Fever alone taking over 40,000 lives. Years passed, and the city began to grow, and as no one was going to dig up the bones of those who were buried, they built streets and buildings over the cemetery, dug another moat, and started another cemetery. Didn’t anyone think at the time that they were going to run into the same problem again? I guess not because years later, yet another cemetery had to be built over!

In the recent past there have been countless occasions when people doing renovations on their homes and gardens, or on public streets and buildings, have accidentally unearthed coffins that have been resting in the ground for up to 300 years! What do you do? Of course these poor souls were, and are respectfully reburied elsewhere.