What happened
Delphine LaLaurie was one of the most influential women in New Orleans society. In 1831 she bought a property on Royal Street and lived there with her third husband and her daughters. On 10 April 1834 a fire broke out in the kitchen. Rescuers found an elderly cook chained to the stove, who admitted she had set the fire in despair because, she said, no one taken to the attic ever came back. When the doors of the slave quarters were broken down, seven imprisoned and maimed people were found. The news provoked fury: a mob ransacked and wrecked the house, and LaLaurie escaped by carriage to the waterfront, then to Mobile and on to Paris, never facing justice. The ruin long stood empty before the house was rebuilt. Since the 19th century people have said that moans and the clank of chains are heard inside at night, and passers-by see figures in the windows. The building was once owned by the actor Nicolas Cage and today is a key stop on New Orleans ghost tours.
Witnesses
Press reports from 1834 (the New Orleans Bee), the writer Harriet Martineau, and later residents, neighbours and ghost-tour guides.
Explanations and hypotheses
LaLaurie's cruelty is documented in the 1834 press and in burial records, but many graphic details were added later by ghost-story writers, notably Jeanne deLavigne (1946) and tour operator Kalila Smith (1998). The current building at 1140 Royal Street is not the same house – the original was destroyed by the mob, and it was rebuilt after 1838. The ghost stories have no independent confirmation; historians stress that it is the victims who should be remembered above all.
Legend A story handed down through generations – it can be neither confirmed nor disproved.
Sources
- Carolyn Morrow Long, Madame Lalaurie, Mistress of the Haunted House (University Press of Florida, 2012)
- Harriet Martineau, Retrospect of Western Travel (Saunders & Otley, 1838)
- George Washington Cable, Strange True Stories of Louisiana (The Century Co., 1888)
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