The Ultimate Guide To The LaLaurie Mansion

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Madame LaLaurie’s cruel and unusual practices have been a focal point of New Orleans’s haunted tapestry since the infamous fire of 1834 exposed them to the world. Rumors of torn flesh, broken bones, and mutilations beyond comprehension have stretched the boundaries of even the most depraved imagination for generations. But what’s the real story behind this infamous haunted French Quarter mansion?

Dive into the gruesome atrocities still hiding in the confines of the LaLaurie Mansion with our ultimate guide on the haunted LaLaurie Mansion of the French Quarter. We expose the sick and twisted realities forced upon the enslaved people of New Orleans by this deranged and devious mistress.

Follow the history of the haunted French Quarter mansion from its extravagant beginnings to its time famously owned by Nicholas Cage. For the past two hundred years, pain and suffering have struck anyone who dared own it. Many believe a curse was left behind when the heinous Madame made her fiery departure all those years ago.

Today, the spirits of these tortured souls and even the Madame herself haunt the dark windows and gothic balconies of 1140 Royal Street. The dark energy that permeates the mansion is so strong that many locals refuse to walk on the same side of the street as the cursed building.

Read our ultimate guide to learn why our French Quarter Ghosts and Ghouls Tour makes the LaLaurie Mansion a main stop and what to expect on your next visit to the haunted LaLaurie Mansion of New Orleans.

What Is The Story of the New Orleans LaLaurie Mansion?

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From its beginnings as a city home for the plantation-bound and people-owning LaLaurie family to becoming Nicholas Cage’s famous haunted mansion, the LaLaurie Mansion has been the subject of debate long before American Horror Story: Coven stamped its legacy into the annals of pop culture.

A disastrous fire, a dangerous escape, and the discovery of tortured people in the attic have sparked numerous rumors about the LaLauries and their heinous activities. But the only ones left to tell us the truth are the dead. Ghastly apparitions of little girls, people in chains, and unseen hands choking unsuspecting onlookers tell the story now.

While the mansion remains off-limits to visitors, our Ultimate Guide to the LaLaurie Mansion offers an exclusive opportunity to shed light on one of the darkest situations in New Orleans history.

Hauntings of the New Orleans LaLaurie Mansion

The hauntings at the LaLaurie Mansion are overbearingly present, even to those standing outside. Retold by French Quarter ghost tours night after night, they have become a part of the French Quarter’s singularly deceiving nature.

Its history stretches back two centuries and has seen horrors unimaginable to the minds of any ordinary person. An otherworldly stench infiltrates every section of the house, leaving many locals cautious to walk near the home. Outsiders, on the other hand, flock to its wretched walls to witness the genuinely evil presence lurking within.

It is said that a curse will follow anyone who even dares to touch it.

Documented Hauntings of The LaLaurie Mansion

Phantom smells of rotting flesh
Apparitions of enslaved people in chains
The spirit of the little girl “Lia”
Phantom hands choking people outside the house
A curse that falls upon anyone who owns it

The atrocities against humankind that occurred within its walls were carried out by one woman whose name has been associated with evil and malice ever since. But who was she?

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Who Was Madame Marie Delphine LaLaurie?

Made famous in modern times by Kathy Bates in the 2013 TV show American Horror Story: Coven, Madame Marie Delphine LaLaurie has been etched into our psyche as a crazed, pestilent, and morbid woman with no regard for any human beings other than herself. She tortured, mutilated, and murdered an estimated total of fifty-seven of her slaves in New Orleans during the early 19th century.

Bates’s portrayal and our vision of the mad madam of the French Quarter are not too far off from the truth. She was a vile woman who was run out of town by her peers. Refusing to acknowledge even the slightest wrongdoing in the atrocities she committed, she died, taking her secrets to the grave with her.

Make sure you visit the LaLaurie Mansion with the best tour company in New Orleans and read our Ultimate Guide to the LaLaurie Mansion before your next visit to understand the horrors that took place here.

The Early Life Of Madame LaLaurie

Marie Delphine McCarthy was born on March 19, 1787, on a large plantation in the Upper 9th Ward neighborhood known today as the Bywater.

The McCarthys were a wealthy aristocratic family. Her grandfather, a member of the French Royal Navy, ran this plantation, which produced large amounts of cotton, sugar, and indigo.

Before she became the infamous madame, her first marriage was to a powerful man named Ramon Lopez y Angulo de La Candelaria, the intendant of Louisiana. She was hardly fourteen, and Lopez y Angulo was well into his thirties.

After being fired and returning to Spain for not asking permission from the Spanish courts to marry her, Lopez y, Angulo, and Marie returned to New Orleans in 1802. It was reported that he had died in Havana.

While some believe she murdered him, that seems unlikely. The report stated that their ship “ran aground,” and he died due to complications related to a heart attack.

Marie returned to New Orleans and would remarry two more times, eventually having seven children. She married Jean Blanque, a French merchant and slave trader who ran with the famous pirate Jean Lafitte shortly after Lopez’s death.

Her mother died a few months before their wedding. Marie’s inheritance and subsequent wedding gifts from her father, which included property and slaves, would total over $2 million in today’s money.

After he passed away in 1815, likely from spending too much time at the now-famous and nearby Lafitte’s Blacksmith Bar. She remarried again in 1828 to Leonard Louis Nicholas LaLaurie, a doctor half her age whose name is inseparable from the concepts of torment and death today.

Who Was Dr. Louis LaLaurie?

When Louis LaLaurie came to New Orleans in 1825, he was a medical upstart hoping to make a mark in a city in dire need of medical practice. Specializing in an antiquated form of chiropractic medicine, he set out to make his fortune and was quickly introduced to “Madame Blanque” through her ailing daughter.

Letters from LaLaurie to his family in Villeneuve, France, described treating “Mademoiselle Blanque, the hunchbacked young lady.” Similar letters from LaLaurie’s father encouraged the young doctor, only twenty-three, to nestle himself into the life of the wealthy, established, and nearly forty-year-old Madame Marie Delphine Blanque.

The two fell into a romantic relationship and had their first child, Jean Louis LaLaurie, in August 1827. By January 1828, they were married. The freshly married Louis LaLaurie only had a petty $2000 to his name at the time, a pittance compared to Marie Delphine’s massive wealth.

This relationship was a strange mix that created uneasy tensions for those unfortunate souls living near the unlikely couple.

Jean Boze, a manager for the neighboring Henri de Ste-Gême plantation, wrote his boss a series of letters describing their tumultuous relationship. “They fight, they separate, and then return to each other.” It was a cycle that would be repeated until the bitter end.

In 1831, Madame Marie Delphine Lalaurie purchased two lots on 1140 Royal Street from Edward Dufossat in the French Quarter, on land that used to belong to the Ursuline Nuns.

The haunted mansion on Royal Street, the infamous LaLaurie Mansion, was born. While its notorious reputation had not yet been cemented, rumors of malnourished and disappearing slaves had already tarnished the aging Madame’s reputation.

Madame LaLaurie and Slave Abuse

LaLaurie Legal Troubles

Marie Delphine LaLaurie was brought into court for crimes against her slaves three times before she became almost internationally known for the subject.

Louisiana had followed Code Noir since the first slave ship arrived in 1719. Past the obvious state of imprisonment they were already in, abuse and cruelty towards enslaved people were prohibited. But the madame’s sick inhibitions paid no mind.

The same letters from Jean Boze to Henri de Ste-Gême described an incident in 1828 where authorities “finally” descended on their home and took their slaves away in a bloodied condition.

In 1829, Boze, who, along with de Ste-Gême, was a former pirate in Jean Lafitte’s crew, wrote to his boss about the “indulgent jury” who had deemed LaLaurie not guilty of similar chargers. In 1832, Boze was at it again, describing how the abusive Madame simply paid off her indictment in court.

Records of these court cases have mysteriously vanished, some believe due to the efforts of her descendants to clear her name many decades afterward.

Carolyn Morrow Long, a researcher, historian, and author of Madame LaLaurie: Mistress of The Haunted House, notes that a document dating to 1829 was signed by John Randolph Grimes, LaLaurie’s neighbor and one of the most well-respected lawyers in the New Orleans.

It read, “Received of Madame Lalaurie three hundred dollars for my fee for defending the prosecution of the State against her in the Criminal Court.”

It is the only remaining legal proof of the twisted madame’s brutality.

Louis and Marie filed for a “separation of room and board” in 1832, a small step away from an entire divorce, but the two heated lovers kept up appearances by throwing lavish parties. Despite their sordid reputation, many still coveted an invitation to their palatial home.

The Little Girl Haunting The LaLaurie Mansion (Lia)

One morning in 1833, after one of these fabulous parties, their abusive tendencies were revealed to the neighborhood when an 8-year-old enslaved girl fell from the roof of the LaLaurie mansion to her death. Following closely behind her with a whip was the bullish Madame.

The girl had been combing the madame’s hair, haute and elegant as dictated by the times when she caught a snag. Crack! Enraged, the horrible woman chased the little girl around the house, whipping her with all her might. The chase ended on the roof as the terrified girl plummeted to a thunderous death.

Her horrid crime was reported to the authorities, and her slaves were subsequently taken from her. She was found guilty of abuse to nine of them, but the voraciously violent woman had to satiate her sick appetite. Her slaves were repurchased by family members and returned to the darkness of the house through a series of conniving actions.

Although no official records state this event occurred, there are letters from neighbors and other written documents that give it credence. One woman, unlucky enough to share a wall with the insane murderess, heard the loud thud of a body hitting the ground during their argument. Another saw a grave being dug in the courtyard around the purported time of Lia’s death.

City records also indicate that one of LaLaurie’s teenage slaves, a female, died around this time of “unknown causes.” It was the most shocking display of abuse the LaLaurie household demonstrated yet.

The Fire At The LaLaurie Mansion

Source: Newspapers.com

On the morning of April 10th, 1834, a fire broke out at the Lalaurie mansion on 1140 Royal Street. Neighbors, firefighters, and other French Quarter citizens rushed to assist the LaLauries, carrying valuable and important personal items into the street while the flames were quelled.

Judge Jacques François Canonge, a noted friend of the LaLauries, was among the first to attend to the fire and almost immediately realized the “bondspeople” were still inside.

He demanded that Louise LaLaurie remove his slaves from the fire. Dr. LaLaurie’s response was curt:

“There are those who would be better employed if they would attend to their own affairs instead of officiously intermeddling with the concerns of other people.”

Meanwhile, many noticed that the Madame was becoming increasingly nervous the closer the flames got to their second-story outhouse in the service quarters.

Judge Canonge had no idea what he was about to discover when he called for the aid of any man willing to rescue the enslaved people still inside the house.

Many neighbors knew, or at least were suspicious, that the upper floor was being used as a prison. Some say she would invite special guests to see her torture room during parties. Others claim she beat her daughters if they were caught feeding her victims. But the truth would all be revealed very soon.

What Happened In The LaLaurie Mansion?

There are numerous legends about the mutilated bodies that were pulled out of the conflagration that engulfed the LaLaurie mansion. Stories of a woman bent into the shape of a crab, others with their mouths sewn shut, or, as depicted in AHS: Covern, turned into a Minatour-like monster are all standard on New Orleans haunted tours.

“The most appalling spectacle met their eyes,” the New Orleans Bee and eleven other local newspapers reported that evening, putting things ever so lightly.

A woman chained to the kitchen stove was among the first found in the inferno. Upon being discovered, the elderly woman declared in broken French that she had started the fire as an alternative to being sent to the outhouse.

Behind her in the service wing were seven other mortally wounded people, chained, malnourished, and mutilated. Two bodies were sticking out of the ground beneath the search party.

One man “had a large hole in his head, his body [covered] from head to foot with scars and filled with worms.” Many were chained up with large spiked collars and “suspended by the neck with their limbs stretched and torn from one extremity to the other.” Mutilated corpses were found scattered around them.

Many newspapers refused to elaborate further on the horrors of the Lalaurie mansion. This air of mystery, combined with the fact that Dr. LaLaurie was a practicing doctor with knowledge of human anatomy, led to many imaginative descriptions.

Rumors of the LaLaurie Mansion Victims

A man with a stick shoved into his brain
Women were nailed to the floor through their intestines
Buckets of mutilated genitalia
A woman In a crab-like form

After The Fire

The seven rescued victims were quickly brought to the Cabildo, the city jail, to be treated for their wounds. Over the next two days, large crowds gathered at the Cabildo and the LaLaurie Mansion.

The first formed to witness the horrors they read about in the newspapers, growing to 4,000 heads at one point, while the latter sought to seek justice against those who caused the violence.

These two days passed without any indication the LaLauries would be arrested, and the people grew restless and violent.

Tensions rose to incredible amounts as Madame LaLaurie and four of her children escaped the ruins of their charred home through the carriage entrance.

At the reins of their getaway carriage was LaLaurie’s favorite servant, Bastien. He whisked them past the angry mob, up Bayou Road to Lake Ponchatrain, and from there, they set sail for Mobile, New York, and eventually France.

Bastien was never freed from his servitude for his efforts, and it is widely recognized that he was favored to act as a spy amongst the enslaved people.

This daring escape incited the mob into a full-on riot. By the end of April 12th, all that was left of the LaLaurie mansion was a crumbled pile of bricks. All their expensive personal belongings were smashed to pieces.

Investigations into the home after the fire uncovered multiple graves in the courtyard filled with the bodies of her victims. Later renovations even uncovered skeletons beneath the floorboards.

What Happened To Madame LaLaurie?

What happened to the wicked Madame LaLaurie of New Orleans? After a long illness, she died in Paris on December 7th, 1849, and was interred at the Cemetery of Montmartre. In 1851, her children fulfilled her last wish, exhumed her remains, and returned her to New Orleans.

She is now interred at the St. Louis #1 Cemetery in New Orleans in the Blanque family tomb purchased by her son Paulin Blanque some years prior. Although there is no record of her internment, likely to evade any vandalism upon the tomb, most believe this is where she rests today. The first official record of the tomb being used was for her granddaughter in 1884.

Madame LaLaurie, despite flirting with the idea of returning to New Orleans briefly in 1842, lived the rest of her life lavishly, spending money she didn’t have in Paris. Her son-in-law, Augustin Delassus, squandered her finances for himself, perhaps as revenge for squandering the family name.

A series of letters from Paulin to Delassus shows that she never felt remorse for her cruel deeds and was nearly oblivious to them. Paulin writes, “(Madame LaLaurie) never had any idea concerning the cause of her departure from New Orleans.”

Louis Leonard Nicholas LaLaurie, the infamous doctor, left his family in Paris a few years after they arrived. He died in Havana, Cuba, on October 15th, 1862, and was buried in Montmartre, Paris, carrying with him any of his involvements in the atrocities.

The Haunted Mansion of New Orleans

Englishwoman Henriette Martineau’s 1834-1836 journey to America, documented in the 1838 collection of anecdotes, Retrospect of Western Travel, made the compelling tale of the wicked madame and her abused slaves famous worldwide.

George Washington Cable, one of the most important Southern writers of the 19th century, was the first to refer to the mansion as the “haunted mansion” in his 1881 novelette Madame Delphine.

New Orleans and the haunted LaLaurie Mansion have been synonymous ever since.

Over the years, the house earned a reputation for being both cursed and haunted. It stood in ruin for four years. Many chose to walk on the street’s other side to avoid it. Most still do today!

Since LaLaurie fled town in 1834, it has operated as a private home and various public institutions, including a school, a music conservatory, low-income housing, a furniture store, and even a bar.

None of these stayed in business very long, closing for various reasons, including scandal, theft, and even racism, and thus, the curse of the LaLaurie Mansion was born.

Curse Of The LaLaurie Mansion

Source: Newspapers.com

Neighbors reported hearing terrible moans from the empty mansion’s ruins almost immediately after the fires. Whispers of the tortured spirits residing within began to grow.

Her son-in-law, Placide Forstall, married to her first daughter, Marie-Borja “Borquita” Delphine Lopez y Angulla de la Candelaria, absolved her property in New Orleans shortly after her flight from the city. He sold the ruined mansion and 11 out of her 30 documented slaves in her possession at the time.

What happened to the other 19 remains a horrifying mystery.

Forstall sold the house to Pierre E. Trastour in 1837.

Trastour lived there for only three months, between March and July. Was it the horrendously humid New Orleans summer that chased him out? Or was it the doors and windows constantly opening and closing on their own?

The LaLaurie Mansion As A School

During Reconstruction, it was the Lower Girls High School, one of the first integrated schools in New Orleans. The irony was not lost on the students. The curse reared its ugly head alongside its old counterpart, racism, on September 14th, 1874.

An anti-integration group known as the “White Leaguers” forcibly removed black students from schools across New Orleans through “well-organized violence.” The school at the LaLaurie Mansion was among the first and was part of a larger series of racial riots that engulfed the city.

It reopened as an all-black girls’ school shortly after but only remained open for a year.

In the early 1880s, an English teacher founded a conservatory for music and dancing at the mansion. He was quickly entangled in the curse when a local newspaper revealed his improper conduct with some of his students.

The day after his affair was revealed, the school shuttered due to a lack of students and funding. Whispers of the curse began to filter through the streets of the French Quarter.

The Death of Jules Vignie

One of the strangest victims of the curse was the son of a wealthy French family named Jules Vignie. Vignie, presumed dead by many since the Civil War, oddly began living in the haunted mansion in secrecy for some years after the school closed.

In 1892, when Barthelemy Beoubay owned the home, Vignie was found dead in a tattered cot deep in the mansion’s recesses. He was an avid antique collector, and his expensive treasures filled the home unbeknownst to those walking outside.

A few hundred dollars was found on his body, and ten thousand dollars were hidden in his mattress. Who, or what killed him, was not interested in his money.

Rumors of a hidden treasure waiting within the walls of the LaLaurie Mansion began to circulate, but no one was brave enough to enter.

The First Haunted House in America (The Haunted Saloon)

A wave of Sicilian immigrants moved to New Orleans between the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The French Quarter was transformed into “Little Palermo,” large buildings, including the LaLaurie Mansion, were rebuilt as tenements.

Fortunato Greco bought and remodeled the home in 1893 to provide these newcomers with affordable yet cramped living conditions. But soon, he began noticing the hordes of people crowding the newly painted red doors and windows on the street.

These noisy onlookers weren’t there to see the cheaply renovated forty rooms or gawk at the wreckage of the smashed crystal ball in the window. They were there for the same reason we are today.

Dollar signs lit up in Greco’s eyes, and the intuitive businessman opened the “Haunted Saloon” on the first floor, charging ten cents per entry.

Hoping to entice prospective buyers, Greco began a new set of renovations. But all he managed to do was pull up some of LaLaurie’s skeletons hiding underneath the floorboards. Despite the upgrades, no tenant could live in the converted mansion for more than a few months.

Many awoke in the middle of the night to shocking and ghastly figures. One woman saw a woman dressed in luxurious clothing from the early 1800s menacingly hovering over her child. Two mules and a cat were viciously and mysteriously murdered shortly after a sighting of this woman in white.

Another man was awoken by the sounds of an enslaved person wrapped in chains yelling in his face, and moans were constantly heard coming from the attic.

After a run as the “Haunted Saloon” (1893 to 1916), a furniture store owned by Marcel Krauss (1920-1923) and a shelter for homeless men called The Warrington House (1921-1932), the LaLaurie Mansion stopped being used as a public space.

Who Owns The LaLaurie Mansion?

Over the years, the LaLaurie Mansion has been known by many names: the haunted mansion, the haunted house, and the Warrington House. But who would be bold enough to live in a cursed mansion?

Who owns the LaLaurie Mansion today? Michael Whalen, a Houstonian energy trader and senior US Department of Transportation advisor, bought it in 2010. He is rarely home, opting to come on holidays, and often lets “lucky” friends stay the weekend.

Since he purchased it, it has been closed to the public, although many New Orleans haunted tours try their best to get in.

Since 1932, the LaLaurie Mansion has been owned by:

Catherine Mary Howell Laycock (1942-1946)
Dr. Roy E. Delahousaye (1946-1962)
Frank and Anthony Occhipinti (1964-1969)
Dr. Harry Russell Albright (1969-1999)
Nicholas Cage (2006-2009)
Michael Whalen (2010-2024)

It is worth noting that although many owners, like Dr. Harry Russell Albright, reported no paranormal activity, many seemingly fell under the spell of the curse. Frank Occhpinti, a cousin of the famed New Orleans mob boss Carlos Marcello, was caught up in a federal loans scandal in 1974.

Dr. Harry Ruseell Albright, ever the skeptic, ended up in a coma in January 2005 after a friendly gesture turned into a physical altercation at the renowned French Quarter restaurant Galatoire’s. Albright threw a mint onto the table of 28-year-old Tony Creme, a visiting Texas businessman. This gift was not received well.

Creme followed Albright onto Bourbon Street, where he pushed the 69-year-old retired radiologist. Albright hit his head, went into a coma for three weeks, and needed special medical care for the rest of his life.

Were these simply isolated incidents or part of something larger and more sinister?

Did Nicholas Cage Own The LaLaurie Mansion?

The Ultimate Guide to the most haunted house in New Orleans wouldn’t be complete without a summary of Nicholas Cage’s involvement in the house.

Cage bought the house in 2006 for $3.4 million, along with a home in the Garden District, dinosaur bones, a castle, and even a pygmy skull. The eccentric and ecstatic actor planned to write a movie script inside the house and would often invite visitors to tour its interior.

But the good times were short-lived. By 2009, Cage owed the IRS over $12 million in back taxes. He foreclosed on his New Orleans properties, selling the LaLaurie Mansion to the bank for a mere $2.2 million.

The esteemed actor was forced to accept less-than-desirable roles to pay off his massive sum to the government. His career and personal life began to plummet, and, according to him, he began to have terrifying nightmares after the house was sold.

Desperate, Cage consulted a local medium to end the restless nights and toxic curse that had befallen him. He was told to build a tomb as close to Marie Laveau’s tomb as possible in St. Louis Cemetery #1.

After paying two families several million dollars to move their centuries-old tombs, he built a $61,000, nine-foot-tall pyramid-shaped tomb as close to the infamous Voodoo Queen as possible.

After a few years and 52 films (many straight to DVD or streaming only), his career has rebounded, and he is out of debt. Was it hard work, or was the curse of the LaLaurie Mansion finally lifted?

Hauntings At The LaLaurie Mansion

Ghost tours in New Orleans make the haunted French Quarter home a central part of any tour. The Mansion’s reputation has not waned as it entered the 21st century.

Photos of the LaLaurie Mansion have captured strange faces in the windows and odd orbs floating about the balcony. Many haunted pub crawls in New Orleans encourage their guests to say Lia’s name out loud. She often flickers the street lights at the sound of her name.

Some visitors have felt physically sick outside the home. One woman and her daughter came to New Orleans and took two different ghost tours. The daughter felt sick standing across the street on both occasions.

Michael Whalen had the home renovated by fellow Houstonian and local New Orleanian Katie Stassi-Scott in 2013. She says she felt spooked on the second floor where the torture room was alleged to have been, but neither she nor Whalen ever claimed to have seen anything.

But those who care for the house in Whalen’s absence tell a different story.

Housekeeper Carol Williams has reported body shapes being indented into mattresses that haven’t been slept in for months. She says a faucet on the first floor turns on by itself, and a kitchen door enjoys opening and closing randomly.

One Reddit user recently worked as a house cleaner at the LaLaurie Mansion. She only lasted a month due to the terrible smells of rotting flesh emanating from the second floor. On multiple occasions, she heard chains being dragged across the floor above her.

Then, one day, she heard the sound of a girl screaming and heavy footsteps on the third floor, formerly the roof, above her. She attempted to help what she thought was a person in distress but found no one. The woman quit the next day.

The LaLaurie Mansion And Pop Culture

Madame LaLaurie, her haunted New Orleans mansion, and the things that went on inside became well-known almost instantly. Newspapers in the United States spread her story far and wide. While traveling from New York to Paris, her son noted that none of the passengers on board wanted anything to do with her.

Another of her sons had to drop out of Harvard University due to his mother’s misgivings. No wonder he spent all her money.

In the 19th century, the story was told through the work of George Washington Carver, through his musings on Creole life in New Orleans.

Then, in the modern era, the story got a new facelift. American Horror Story: Coven and Kathy Bates brought her terrifyingly gory deeds to a new generation. Hordes of girls in black skirts and wide-brimmed hats began swarming the streets of the French Quarter to see the famous LaLaurie Mansion.

Interestingly, the TV series never stepped foot inside 1140 Royal Street. Most of the filming of AHS Coven was done at The Gallier House, just two blocks down, and the Herman-Grima House on the other side of the Quarter.

A few years later, in 2019, Jack Osbourne, Katrina Weidman, and the crew of Portals To Hell became the first team to investigate the mansion’s paranormal world. Interest in its dark story peaked yet again.

That same year, Michael Whalen began talks to produce a movie about the wicked Madame in cooperation with Faster Horse, a production company he invested in.

It was to be written about and inside of the house by Chad and Carey Hayes of The Conjuring series. Darren Lynn Bousman, from the Saw movies, was set to direct, but Covid eventually stopped these plans, and talk of the film stopped in 2021. But keep your eyes peeled!

What Will The LaLaurie Mansion Become?

The infamous mansion has a space reserved in the darkestest recesses of our minds. So what will happen to the LaLaurie Mansion?

As of July 5th, 2024, the LaLaurie Mansion is back on the market for a stunning and record-setting $10.25 million! Whalen has given the interior a two-million dollar facelift over the years, and the French Quarter Burlesque-themed playhouse appears to have an out-of-state buyer already.

Many wish to see it reopened with a new purpose, to atone for the atrocities that once took place inside. A museum dedicated to the horrors of slavery, similar to the Whitney Plantation, has been proposed and hoped for in the past. Rather than a playhouse for the elite, why not right the wrongs that have attracted so many to the homes like moths to a flame?

Others hope to be let inside one day to see where the most wicked woman in New Orleans once lived. Dark tourists yearn for the twisted fantasy of walking where men and women once were agonizingly held captive. Will they get their wish?

New Orleans Ghost Tours

Until we find out, the best way to experience the haunted LaLaurie Mansion of the French Quarter is on a walking ghost tour with NOLA Ghosts. This haunted ghost tour through the French Quarter reveals every detail.

Book your spot on our tour today to feel the dark presence of the LaLaurie Mansion in your very soul! Just remember, don’t touch it!

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