Free previewStop 5 of Haunted French Quarter Walking Tour
The Pirate Who May Never Drank Here
You're on Bourbon Street at the corner of St. Philip, at the far, quieter end of the Quarter. Look at the low, weathered building on the corner. Where the plaster has worn away, you can see soft old brick set between heavy wooden posts. That's the clue to this whole story.
That building is Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop, and the name sells a legend. The story goes that Jean Lafitte, the pirate, privateer and smuggler of the Gulf of Mexico, owned a business here in the early 1800s. Behind the forge, the story says, the Lafitte brothers plotted illegal seizures and sold contraband. Ghost tours add that his treasure lies in tunnels underneath, and that his spirit still lingers inside.
Now the record. There's no documentation that Jean Lafitte owned a business here. None. There's no historical record of buried treasure, either. With the Lafittes, paperwork is famously thin.
That's the opening. The rest plays at stop 5 of Haunted French Quarter Walking Tour (3 min in all). Unlock the tour to hear it all, or try stop 1 free first.
