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LaLaurie Mansion
New Orleans · 10 places

Haunted places in New Orleans: 10 legends, and what the record shows

The best-known haunted places in New Orleans are the LaLaurie Mansion at 1140 Royal Street, the Hotel Monteleone and Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop, all in the French Quarter. Here are 10, the legend told at each, what the record shows, and whether you can go inside.

The most famous come first. Eight are in the French Quarter, within about a mile of each other; the last two are in the Garden District. Each one has a page of its own with the whole story. Where the legend and the paperwork part ways, we say so.

By the Stories team at Winding Labs · Checked · Sources

Haunted places in New Orleans, in order

  1. LaLaurie Mansion
    Photo: Reading Tom, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

    LaLaurie Mansion

    Private home, built in 1832, rebuilt after the fire · 1140 Royal Street

    The legend. Every ghost tour in the city stops at this corner. The rumor is that the house is haunted and nobody can stand to live in it.

    What the record shows. Delphine LaLaurie had the mansion built in 1832. Funeral registers record twelve enslaved people dying at this address between 1830 and 1834, among them a cook named Bonne and her four children. On April 10, 1834, a fire broke out in the kitchen, where a 70-year-old woman was chained; she later said she set it herself. Rescuers found people bound in the attic. A mob sacked the house, LaLaurie fled to France, and what stands here was rebuilt after she left.

    Can you visit? No. It's a private home, and the owner doesn't let tours in. You see it from the corner of Royal and Governor Nicholls, where every tour stands.

    Stop 6 of Haunted French Quarter Walking Tour

  2. Hotel Monteleone
    Photo: ajay_suresh, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

    Hotel Monteleone

    Hotel, in the family since 1886 · 214 Royal Street

    The legend. Staff and guests tell of elevators that act on their own, and of a little boy, Maurice, said to have died of a fever in the 1890s and to turn up on the 14th floor. Historic Hotels of America put it on its 2023 list of the most haunted hotels.

    What the record shows. Antonio Monteleone, a cobbler from Sicily, bought a small hotel on this corner in 1886, and it took the name Hotel Monteleone in 1908. The original building came down in 1954, and floors and a roof terrace were added in 1964, so the tower is younger than most of its ghosts. Truman Capote claimed on The Tonight Show that he was born here.

    Can you visit? Yes, without a room: the Carousel Bar off the lobby, from 1949, is open daily from 11 a.m. to midnight (21 and over after 6 p.m.). Its 25 seats turn once every 15 minutes.

    Stop 1 of Haunted French Quarter Walking Tour

  3. Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop
    Photo: ajay_suresh, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

    Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop

    Bar, built in the 1770s · 941 Bourbon Street

    The legend. Jean Lafitte, the pirate, ran a blacksmith shop here as a front for his smuggling, the legend goes, hid treasure in tunnels underneath, and still stands in the dark corners, staring until someone notices him.

    What the record shows. No document shows Jean Lafitte owned a business here, and no record backs the treasure. His older brother Pierre was a blacksmith, which may be where the name came from. The building is the real find: most likely built as a house in the 1770s, when Spain ruled the city, with soft brick set between wooden posts, a style called briquette-entre-poteaux. It became a National Historic Landmark in 1970.

    Can you visit? Yes. It's a working bar (21 and over) at Bourbon and St. Philip, at the quiet end of Bourbon Street.

    Stop 5 of Haunted French Quarter Walking Tour

  4. Old Ursuline Convent
    Photo: Infrogmation of New Orleans, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

    Old Ursuline Convent

    Convent, finished by 1753 · 1100 Chartres Street

    The legend. The casket girls: young French brides who came over with their things in small chests, which the nuns kept in the attic. Something else came in those chests, people say, and the city's vampires started up there. Visitors still stand on tiptoe at the wall, watching the attic's little dormer windows.

    What the record shows. Ursuline nuns came from Rouen in 1727 to run a convent, a hospital and a school for the colony's girls. This building was finished by 1753 and is often called the oldest in the Mississippi River Valley. Historians Joan Martin and Marcia Zug found little or no evidence that the casket girls existed as the legend tells it, and the Ursuline order has denied chaperoning them.

    Can you visit? Yes, as a self-guided museum, Tuesday to Saturday from 10 a.m. into the early afternoon, from about $10. Check the closing time before you go.

    Stop 7 of Haunted French Quarter Walking Tour

  5. St. Louis Cathedral
    Photo: No machine-readable author provided. Krakers assumed (based on copyright claims). (Corrected by User:StAn), CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

    St. Louis Cathedral

    Cathedral, mostly from 1850 · 721 Chartres Street

    The legend. Père Antoine, the friar who ran this church for decades, is the ghost tours' most-spotted spirit: near the altar, on the balconies, and in the alley beside the cathedral that now carries his name, above all around the holidays.

    What the record shows. Antonio de Sedella arrived in 1774 as an official of the Spanish Inquisition. He baptized Marie Laveau, presided at her wedding in 1819, and was the cathedral's rector until he died in 1829; he was buried inside. Little of his church survives. The central tower collapsed in 1850 during the rebuilding, and today's cathedral dates mostly from that year.

    Can you visit? Yes, and it's free. It's a working church, open to visitors during the day except during Masses and services.

    Stop 4 of Haunted French Quarter Walking Tour

  6. New Orleans Pharmacy Museum
    Photo: Miguel Tremblay (CC0), via Wikimedia Commons

    New Orleans Pharmacy Museum

    Museum, in an 1823 townhouse · 514 Chartres Street

    The legend. Ghost walks say a doctor named James Dupas ran experiments on enslaved people upstairs, murdered hundreds, and that their suffering still hangs over the house.

    What the record shows. There's little to no proof any of it happened. What is on paper: Louis J. Dufilho Jr., licensed in 1816 and remembered as America's first licensed pharmacist, lived and worked here until 1855. Dupas moved in later. Sale records show he enslaved two people, a man and a woman whose names weren't written down, and he died at 60 of acute diarrhea.

    Can you visit? Yes: self-guided, Tuesday to Saturday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., $10 for adults. Guided tours ($20) run at 10 a.m. Thursday to Sunday from September to May; book those online.

    Stop 2 of Haunted French Quarter Walking Tour

  7. The Cabildo
    Photo: Infrogmation of New Orleans, CC BY 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons

    The Cabildo

    Spanish city hall, 1795 to 1799 · 701 Chartres Street

    The legend. Ghost tours linger here for odd sounds and uneasy feelings, which storytellers pin on the old jail that once stood next door.

    What the record shows. No record backs the ghosts; the history inside is heavier. Spain built the Cabildo between 1795 and 1799, after the Great Fire of 1788. The Louisiana Purchase was handed over here in 1803. From 1868 to 1910 it was the seat of the Louisiana Supreme Court, and Plessy v. Ferguson was heard in the upstairs room. A fire on May 11, 1988, destroyed the cupola and the top floor; it reopened in 1994.

    Can you visit? Yes, every day from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. (last ticket at 3:30), $15 for adults. It's part of the Louisiana State Museum.

    Stop 3 of Haunted French Quarter Walking Tour

  8. Beauregard-Keyes House
    Photo: ajay_suresh, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

    Beauregard-Keyes House

    House museum, built in 1826 · 1113 Chartres Street

    The legend. Frances Parkinson Keyes wrote that the general's ghost pokes around at night looking for his boots, and ghost tours go further: whole scenes from the Battle of Shiloh, horses and mules included.

    What the record shows. The house went up in 1826 for an auctioneer, Joseph LeCarpentier. P. G. T. Beauregard, who commanded the guns that fired on Fort Sumter, never owned it: he spent a short honeymoon here as a tenant in 1860 and rented rooms for about two years from 1866. Local women saved it from demolition in 1925, and Keyes restored it after the Second World War and set her 1962 novel Madame Castel's Lodger in it.

    Can you visit? Yes, on 45-minute guided tours at 10 and 11 a.m. and from 1 to 3 p.m., every day but Wednesday and Sunday; $15 for adults.

    Stop 8 of Haunted French Quarter Walking Tour

  9. Lafayette Cemetery No. 1
    Photo: MusikAnimal, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

    Lafayette Cemetery No. 1

    Cemetery, founded in 1833 · 1400 Washington Avenue

    The legend. This is Anne Rice country. Interview with the Vampire was filmed among these tombs, and the story goes that Rice once rode through the gates in a coffin and climbed out.

    What the record shows. It was founded in 1833 in the City of Lafayette, which New Orleans annexed in 1852, and laid out in a cross so funeral processions could pass down the middle: the city's first planned cemetery. About 7,000 people lie in some 1,100 family tombs on one block. One of them is John Howard Ferguson, the judge in Plessy v. Ferguson.

    Can you visit? Only on a guided tour. The city closed it in 2019 and reopened it on October 1, 2026, for booked groups of 16 or fewer, through the Preservation Resource Center; no walk-ups.

    Stop 1 of Garden District Walking Tour: Mansions and Lafayette Cemetery

  10. Buckner Mansion
    Photo: APK, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

    Buckner Mansion

    Mansion, finished in 1856 · 1410 Jackson Avenue

    The legend. Television made it Miss Robichaux's Academy, the witches' school in American Horror Story: Coven. Ghost tours tell of Josephine, a free woman of color who worked in the house and, they say, still turns the lights on and off.

    What the record shows. Henry Sullivan Buckner, a cotton merchant and slave-owner, built it to be bigger and grander than anything owned by Frederick Stanton, his former business partner. Lewis E. Reynolds designed it, and it was finished in 1856.

    Can you visit? From the sidewalk. It's a private home on Jackson Avenue, sold in 2024 to an owner who plans to restore it. Our Garden District walk ends in front of it.

    Stop 8 of Garden District Walking Tour: Mansions and Lafayette Cemetery

The map

The numbers are the list's. Colored pins have a page of their own with the full story; open the map to zoom into the streets.

Walk them with Dot

8 of the 10 places on this list are stops on our Haunted French Quarter Walking Tour (8 stops, 55 min). Dot, the green dot on your map, takes you from one to the next and plays each story when you get there. Stop 1, Hotel Monteleone, is free: hear it before you go.

2 of the 10 places on this list are stops on our Garden District Walking Tour: Mansions and Lafayette Cemetery (8 stops, 54 min). Stop 1, Lafayette Cemetery No. 1, is free: hear it before you go.

Haunted places in New Orleans: questions people ask

What is the most haunted house in New Orleans?

The LaLaurie Mansion, at 1140 Royal Street in the French Quarter. In 1834 a kitchen fire led rescuers to enslaved people bound in Delphine LaLaurie's attic; a mob wrecked the house and she fled to France. What stands today was rebuilt after she left, and it's a private home.

Why can't you go inside the LaLaurie Mansion?

Because it's a private home and the owner doesn't open it to tours. You see it from the sidewalk at Royal and Governor Nicholls streets, which is where the ghost tours stop.

Does Nicolas Cage still own the LaLaurie Mansion?

No. Cage bought it in 2007 for $3.45 million and lost it to foreclosure in 2009. It has been privately owned since 2010.

Is the Haunted Mansion set in New Orleans?

Disneyland's Haunted Mansion stands in its New Orleans Square, an antebellum-style house its designers based partly on New Orleans and old plantations. It opened in August 1969. The ride is Disney's; the haunted houses on this page are real addresses.

What is the most haunted hotel in New Orleans?

The Hotel Monteleone on Royal Street is the one most lists name: Historic Hotels of America put it among its 25 most haunted hotels in 2023. You can see it without staying there, at the revolving Carousel Bar off the lobby.

Can you see the haunted places in New Orleans on your own?

Yes. Eight of the ten on this list sit within about a mile of each other in the French Quarter, and most are seen from the street or open as museums, bars and churches. Our Haunted French Quarter walk links eight of them in about 55 minutes, and its first stop is free.

Where these facts come from

The record for each place is what our fact-check matched to a source in its story (the place's page lists them), or a page we read on the day below. Hours and prices change: check the official site before you go.

Checked November 2026. More in town: New Orleans.