Haunted Places in Louisiana: 10 Sites With Real History

This article contains affiliate links. If you buy through them, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.

The most documented haunted places in Louisiana sit in New Orleans, and several of them rest on history that is darker than the ghost story: an April 1834 fire on Royal Street that exposed abuse of enslaved people, a cemetery founded in 1789, and a hotel that began as a convent school. Below are 10 haunted places in Louisiana, each split into what the record supports and what is only told as legend. Some of these haunted places in Louisiana are open to visitors, and a few are private homes you should only view from the street.

Quick answer if you're short on time: Of the haunted places in Louisiana here, the Myrtles Plantation, Destrehan Plantation, and the Old Ursuline Convent are the best-documented you can enter, St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 is open only on guided tours, and the LaLaurie Mansion is a private home.

1. LaLaurie Mansion (French Quarter, New Orleans)

On April 10, 1834, a fire broke out at the Royal Street home of Delphine LaLaurie. The New Orleans Bee reported that rescuers found seven people, “more or less horribly mutilated,” in the slave quarters, and that a cook said she started the fire as a suicide attempt. A mob wrecked the house, and LaLaurie fled by schooner to Mobile and on to Paris; she was never prosecuted. French archives point to her death on December 7, 1849, not the 1842 date on a copper plate found in 1941. That is the documented core. Much of the gruesome detail in modern ghost tours was added later: historians note that 20th-century writers, including Jeanne deLavigne in 1946, added specifics without citing primary sources, and funeral registers record 12 deaths of enslaved people at the household between 1830 and 1834, not the dozens or hundreds often claimed. The present house is also a later rebuild after 1838. Among haunted places in Louisiana, this is the one where the real suffering of enslaved people should be kept separate from the ghost lore.

Can you visit: No. It is a privately owned residence, and it has changed hands and been renovated in recent years. View it from Royal Street on a walking tour and respect the neighbors.

2. St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 (Tremé, New Orleans)

Opened in 1789 near Basin Street, St. Louis No. 1 is the oldest of the city's Catholic cemeteries and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Its above-ground tombs hold figures like Homer Plessy and chess champion Paul Morphy. It is also the cemetery most tied to Marie Laveau, a Louisiana Creole herbalist, midwife, and Voodoo practitioner. The record shows she was born September 10, 1801, married Jacques Paris in 1819, and died June 15, 1881, and that she was a practicing Catholic. Tradition and some records place her in a tomb here, though the exact attribution is debated. Voodoo is a living religion, and the tourist-trade image of curses and zombies is not how its practitioners describe it. Stories that Laveau's spirit walks the cemetery are folklore, and the tomb has been vandalized by visitors who left marks on it. See our guides on hoodoo and American conjure folklore and books about Vodou.

Can you visit: Only with a licensed guide. The Archdiocese closed the cemetery to the general public in 2015 after vandalism, and entry is by booked tour.

3. Hotel Monteleone (French Quarter, New Orleans)

Antonio Monteleone, a Sicilian cobbler, bought a small hotel at Royal and Iberville in 1886, and the family still runs the property. It earned a literary-landmark designation in 1999, with Hemingway, Tennessee Williams, and Faulkner among its guests, and its Carousel Bar has revolved since 1949. Ghost stories center on elevators that stop on a floor on their own, children seen in the corridors, and a ghost often named in guides. These are retold by tour operators and hotel lore, and we found no independent record of the underlying deaths. It is one of the haunted places in Louisiana you can experience simply by booking a room or ordering a drink.

Can you visit: Yes. It is a working hotel with a public bar and restaurant.

4. Bourbon Orleans Hotel (French Quarter, New Orleans)

The building began as the Orleans Theatre and ballroom. By 1881 the Sisters of the Holy Family, an order of Black women founded in the 1840s by Henriette DeLille, had acquired it for a school and convent, and the ballroom became their chapel. The sisters ran an orphanage and the first Catholic school for Black girls in the city there until 1964. The property opened as the Bourbon Orleans Hotel in 1966. Ghost stories mention nuns, children who died in yellow fever outbreaks, and a ballroom dancer. Those tales are repeated by hotel and tour sources; the sisters' history is the documented part. Among haunted places in Louisiana, it is a good example of how a real charitable history becomes ghost material.

Can you visit: Yes, as a guest or for the public areas, which are managed by the hotel.

5. Old Ursuline Convent (French Quarter, New Orleans)

The convent building was constructed between 1748 and 1752 and is described as the finest surviving example of French colonial public architecture in the country. It became the Archbishop's Palace in 1824 and is a National Historic Landmark (1960). A popular legend says vampire “casket girls” were locked in the third floor with windows nailed shut. The history does not support it: the 1728 filles à la cassette were young women sent to marry colonists, their trunks held clothing, and the current convent was not finished until the early 1750s, decades after they arrived. The shuttered windows are a story, not a record. This is a case where the best-known tale among haunted places in Louisiana is also one that historians have taken apart.

Can you visit: Yes. It operates as a museum with scheduled tours; check hours before you go.

6. Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop Bar (French Quarter, New Orleans)

The structure at 941 Bourbon Street was built between the 1720s and 1770s depending on the source, in the French Louisiana briquette-entre-poteaux style, and is among the oldest surviving buildings in New Orleans. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1970. Its first recorded use as a bar dates only from 1933. The popular claim that privateer Jean Lafitte and his brother Pierre ran a smuggling base here is a local tradition with no documentation in the sources we checked. Ghost reports are mostly bar and tour lore.

Can you visit: Yes. It is a working bar open to adults.

7. Gardette-LePrêtre House, "the Sultan's Palace" (Faubourg Marigny, New Orleans)

The house at 716 Dauphine Street was built in 1836 for Joseph Coulon Gardette, with Frederick Roy as architect, and was bought in 1839 by Jean Baptiste LePrêtre. The famous legend says a mysterious Turkish sultan's brother and his entourage were massacred there in the 1870s. No record supports it, and the house existed for decades before the supposed event. The story leans on Orientalist caricature, which is part of why historians consider it a hoax. It remains a staple of New Orleans ghost tours, so it belongs on any list of haunted places in Louisiana as an example of legend without history.

Can you visit: No. It is a private home. View it from the street only.

8. Beauregard-Keyes House (French Quarter, New Orleans)

Built in 1826 and designed by François Correjolles for auctioneer Joseph LeCarpentier, the house at 1113 Chartres Street is on the National Register of Historic Places (1975). Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard lived there for a time, and author Frances Parkinson Keyes took it as a winter home from the 1940s. It now operates as a historic house museum. Ghost stories, such as Civil War soldiers and phantom pets, appear on ghost-tour sites; the museum's own history pages do not document them. Visiting means learning about its residents, and the haunted places in Louisiana that double as museums are the easiest to see in daylight.

Can you visit: Yes. It operates as a museum with scheduled tours and a garden; confirm hours.

9. The Myrtles Plantation (St. Francisville)

David Bradford built the house in 1796. Its fame rests on Chloe, said to have been an enslaved woman who poisoned the Woodruff family with oleander. Historians have found no record of a woman named Chloe in the household, and the Woodruffs' deaths are attributed to yellow fever. The legend appears to date from the mid-20th century, when the house was opened to tours. The one documented murder at the property is that of William Winter in 1871, shot at the door; tour lore says his ghost climbs the stairs and stops on the 17th step. The Myrtles appeared on Unsolved Mysteries in 2001 and Ghost Hunters in 2005. Of all the haunted places in Louisiana, this plantation may carry the biggest gap between its reputation and its paper trail. It also stands on land worked by enslaved people, whose lives are part of the real history there.

Can you visit: Yes. The Myrtles is a bed-and-breakfast offering daytime historical tours and evening “mystery” tours; check current times.

10. Destrehan Plantation (Destrehan)

Built between 1787 and 1790 for Robert Antoine Robin de Logny, the house was later owned by Jean-Noël Destréhan, who served briefly as the first U.S. senator from Louisiana in 1812. After the 1811 German Coast uprising, a tribunal was held at the plantation, and executions of rebels followed; sources differ on whether any took place on the property itself. A nonprofit has run it since 1971 as a museum interpreting free and enslaved residents, and its haunted-history night tour is run with a local ghost-tour company. Reported ghosts include a teenage girl named Lydia who died of yellow fever and a rocking horse that moves, but these are local news accounts of visitor and staff experiences, not verified events. Among haunted places in Louisiana, this one has the clearest museum framing of the people whose history sits under the legend.

Can you visit: Yes. Daytime tours and seasonal night tours run through the museum; verify the schedule.

What's Actually Verifiable

Across all 10 of these haunted places in Louisiana, the dates, fires, landmark designations, and institutions are documented. The most famous ghost stories are not: the LaLaurie details were embellished long after 1834, the casket girls could not have lived in a convent that was not yet built, the Myrtles poisoning has no records, and the Sultan's Palace massacre is unsupported.

Visiting Haunted Places in Louisiana Responsibly

Haunted places in Louisiana run from museums with ticket desks to private French Quarter homes and a cemetery open only with a guide. Book official tours, stay on public streets, and never enter closed property or leave marks on tombs; trespassing is illegal and the vandalism of graves is a real harm to families and to a living religious tradition. Louisiana's own supernatural folklore is richer than its ghost tours, so also read our piece on the Rougarou, the Cajun werewolf and our guide to haunted places in the United States.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the most haunted place in Louisiana?

There is no objective ranking of haunted places in Louisiana. The LaLaurie Mansion, the Myrtles Plantation, and St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 are the most often named. The ghosts are unproven, but each place has a documented history, and the LaLaurie and Myrtles legends have both been questioned by historians.

Is the LaLaurie Mansion really haunted?

No haunting has been verified. What is documented is the April 1834 fire, the report of mistreated enslaved people, and the mob. Many of the grisly details in ghost tours were added in the 20th century without primary sources. The house is private and its current form dates from a rebuild after 1838.

Can you visit St. Louis Cemetery No. 1?

Only with a licensed guide. The Archdiocese of New Orleans restricted entry after vandalism, and visitors book a guided tour, usually starting from the Basin Street visitor center. Tomb owners and families can request special passes. Never mark or touch the tombs.

Is the Myrtles Plantation story about Chloe true?

There is no record that a woman named Chloe lived in the Woodruff household, and the family's deaths are attributed to yellow fever, not poison. The story appears to date from the mid-20th century. The plantation's one documented murder is that of William Winter in 1871.

Were the casket girls really vampires?

No. The filles à la cassette arrived in 1728 as young women sent to marry colonists, and their small trunks held clothing. The Ursuline Convent was not completed until the early 1750s, so the attic-vampire story has no basis in the historical record.

Is Voodoo the same as the ghost stories in New Orleans?

No. Voodoo is a living religion with Catholic and West African roots, and Marie Laveau was a documented, practicing Catholic. Ghost-tour lore often exaggerates it. Treat the cemetery as sacred ground and avoid leaving offerings or marks unless a practitioner or guide invites you to.