Madame Lalaurie

Madame Lalaurie was the owner of what is now the most haunted house in New Orleans. They call it LaLaurie Mansion and it is located at 1140 Royal Street.

In the 1830s, Madame Delphine LaLaurie, a member of the social elite and wife of respected physician Leonard LaLaurie, had a reputation for throwing wonderful parties. But there were rumors that she mistreated her servants.

Her good reputation ended when she was seen chasing a young servant girl and causing the child to fall to her death from the roof of the LaLaurie mansion. Police confiscated all her slaves and she was fined $300 for mistreating them. Her slaves were sold at auction to the higest bidder. Unfortunately, the highest bidders turned out to be members of Madame LaLaurie’s family, who promptly returned the slaves to her.

On April 10, 1834 when a fire broke out in the mansion’s kitchen. When firemen arrived and found a barred door in the mansion’s attic, they entered the room and were horrified by what they saw. Slaves were around the room, some tied down, others hung, and still others put in cages. They were the victims of sickening “medical experiments”.

Their bones were broken and reset at strange angles, some had limbs amputated, and others had skin grafts; any number of grotesqueries. Not long after the fire, the LaLauries barely escaped a lynch mob that set out to kill them. Rumor has it they either moved to northern Louisiana or abroad to France. In any case, they were never seen again.

The story, at horrible as it is, does not end there. In the late 1800s, workmen found several human skeletons hidden under floorboards. Many people have reported various, sometimes terrifying supernatural phenomena as well, including the sounds of beatings.

A century ago, when the mansion was a boarding house, a man enountered a naked and shackled black man–a man that disappeared when touched. Madame LaLaurie herself has been reported peering into a baby’s crib, but this is by far her most benevolent visitation. In the late nineteenth century, a black servant was woken from his sleep, strangled by the transleucent blue spirit of Madame LaLaurie, only to be barely saved by a pair of similarly ghostly African-American hands.

In 2007, actor Nicolas Cage purchased the LaLaurie mansion. “Why?”, you may ask. Probably because he’s a weird kind of guy.