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 Queens of the Night in New Orleans

This is the My Dark Path podcast.

The Crescent City, the Big Easy, the "City that care forgot."  No matter what you call it, there’s no city like New Orleans. If you’ve ever visited, you probably took away memories of its unique architecture, its world-renowned Mardi Gras celebration, and its celebrated cuisine, a delicious representation of the unique blend of cultures which developed here. It’s a rich history you can see, hear, smell, and literally taste.

I've traveled to this amazing city many times, and every time I discover something new. It’s also an irresistible place for the kind of history we explore on this show; a deeper and darker tale often clouded by the carnival atmosphere. And it starts with the very land on which this city sits. The earliest parts of New Orleans are now called either the French Quarter or the Vieux Carré, which is French for “Old Square”. They were built on land above sea level, but as the population grew in the later 1800's, city engineers began to drain the bordering swamp land via a large pump system. Countless neighborhoods and businesses moved in, with the result that half the city occupies land below sea level.

These engineers didn’t anticipate the catastrophic after-effects of changing the landscape this drastically. Their pumping system could be used to protect citizens against flooding; but as they drew water from the ground beneath them, it created air pockets in the soil, causing it to gradually sink even further below sea level. It also removed sediment which would historically be replenished during seasonal flooding by the Mississippi River. A series of dams and levees would now trap the sediment, and prevent that natural flooding process.

A naturalist and swamp tour guide told me that the marshlands that once sat between the swamps and the Mississippi River were natural barriers to hurricanes; we didn’t recognize its role in the ecosystem, and with those marshlands gone, the danger of mass tragedy from storms and hurricanes increased exponentially; culminating in one of the defining events of its modern history, the devastating Hurricane Katrina. In 2005, it left most of this historic city underwater, and many of those families who lost their homes were never able to return.

As we have found when we explore places that are cultural melting pots, places with long histories, and notorious cases of death stemming from short-sightedness and greed, New Orleans is a city rich with supernatural lore. We couldn’t even begin, in a single episode, to catalog the many ghost stories and haunted buildings that fill the landscape. One of my most poignant memories of New Orleans was walking by an office building in the central business district.  Three quarters of the way up the building, a single window was brightly lit.  I have always wondered why, in the midst of the darkness, what was happening in that room.  You can see the picture on our website. This is a town that welcomes many tourists, and which knows how to put on a sensational show; so it caters to our eternal fascination with all things unearthly.

Our own staff writer, Anna Sahlstrom, once had a paranormal experience while visiting New Orleans with her mother. I’ll let her tell it.

“I was staying at the Dauphine Orleans Hotel, which is famously haunted. One night, I woke up from a deep sleep from the sound of children chanting. I’ll never forget the words: "When we pass the month of June, swing we all around the moon, the moon." But I couldn’t see anywhere that the sound could be coming from.”

The hotel will tell you that there are two haunted rooms, plus a ghost who haunts the bar. The bar ghost, they say, is a man in a white suit, who plays pranks like knocking books off of their shelves. In suite 110, a ghost has been described that tears covers off the bed, yanks the curtains open, or makes the lights go out while the cleaning staff is working. And in Suite 111, a spirit is said to make objects float, and sometimes lock the door from the inside. They say this ghost is that of a black man, and he’s referred to as George.

That has a historical relevance. Many black men in the early 20th century worked as Pullman porters on trains, handling luggage and other needs for travelers, often working punishing hours. These porters, no matter their real name, would often be called “George” by white travelers, and learned to answer to the name. Maybe this ghost is waiting for someone to call him by his real name.

It’s so often the case when we delve into a ghost story that there’s a deep historical wound under it. But when it comes to New Orleans, there’s another element which underpins most of its legends; I’m talking about voodoo, one of the most misunderstood religions in America. 

As we walk the dark path through old superstitions, and share with you a couple of the most notorious figures connected to voodoo in New Orleans, remember that we’re not in the souvenir shops of Bourbon Street anymore. We’re going to talk about death and injustice, tragedy and slander. And we’re going to talk about the Queen of New Orleans folklore, Madame Marie Laveau. She really existed, but her true story teaches us as much about this city as any tall tale of dark magic ever will.

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Hi, I’m MF Thomas and welcome to Season Two of the My Dark Path podcast. In every episode, we explore the fringes of history, science and the paranormal. So, if you geek out over these subjects, you’re among friends here at My Dark Path. We hope you’ll check us out on Instagram, sign up for our newsletter at mydarkpath.com, or just send an email to us at explore@mydarkpath.com. And now in 2022 we’re launching our Patreon, where subscribers will have access to exclusive full episodes starting with our special miniseries, a My Dark Path tour of history, science, and the paranormal in Cold War Moscow.  We’re calling it secrets of the Soviets.  Also, I hope you’ll listen to the end of the episode for an introduction to one of my favorite podcasts, the Conspirators.

Finally, thank you for listening and choosing to walk the Dark Paths of the world with me. Let’s get started with Episode 35: Queens of the Night in New Orleans

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PART ONE

We often think of the European presence in North America as starting with Columbus in the Caribbean islands, or the colonists of New England in the Northeast. But New Orleans has a story completely separate from those. It begins in 1699, with the founding of the Louisiana colony. It was named for the famous French King Louis XIV, often called “The Sun King”.

The site which became the City saw its first European settlers in the French brothers Pierre Le Moyne and Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville. They were also involved with the French colony of Acadia in modern-day maritime Canada, the ancestral home of what are now called Cajuns.

They arrived in Louisiana having sailed from the Caribbean. Since it was the eve of Fat Tuesday, the final day before Catholic Lent, they named the place after the French name for Fat Tuesday – Mardi Gras. When New Orleans became a legally-recognized territory in 1718, De Bienville became its first governor. To this day, there’s a statue of himself and his brother in the middle of an intersection leading out of the French Quarter.

From the beginning, the colony was plagued with recurring outbreaks of yellow fever, cholera, and malaria, not to mention the oppressive heat and humidity. The outbreaks carried on for almost two centuries throughout Louisiana; only abating when water treatment plants were finally established in 1905. The toll of these repeated plagues was terrible; in just one year 8,000 people died in New Orleans alone from these water-borne diseases. The citizens were in the habit of keeping their drinking water in standing cisterns, and it wasn’t yet common scientific knowledge that this could lead to the breeding of mosquitos.

On top of this, the regular floods often brought rats and poisonous snakes into the city. The first levees built in New Orleans were meant to address this problem.

Life could be rough and hazardous here; not just because of Mother Nature, but because the city leaders recruited prisoners from France, who could leave jail in exchange for labor in the colonies. There was a great gender imbalance in the population; a massive shortage of women. Prostitutes were actively recruited to set up shop in the city; later, a more polished class of women were invited, potential suitable brides for local men with the means to establish families. 

This led to an active effort to bring the city some kind of moral order. In 1727, the Order of the Ursuline Sisters, founded in Italy by Saint Angela Merici, set up a chapter in New Orleans to found schools, open a hospital, baptize enslaved people, and care for local orphans. The guiding mission of the Ursuline Sisters is to honor the dignity and importance of women through lives of contemplative prayer and service; a powerful contrast to the city’s more libertine reputation. They were aided in these construction efforts by priests and Capuchin monks, who built cemeteries, churches, and monasteries.

All this labor was making New Orleans a more expensive place than France had bargained for. The Louisiana Territory was almost entirely uncolonized, populated only by Native Americans and fur trappers; the city of New Orleans itself, and its access to the Mississippi River, was the only thing the French considered valuable. But they had just lost the 7 Years War to England; they were no longer willing to shoulder the costs or the hassles of managing faraway, disease-ridden Louisiana, but they didn’t want the British to take it either, so in 1762, they secretly transferred possession of it to Spain.

And it was during this time of Spanish rule that a massive fire devastated the city in 1788. The Capuchin monks saw the fire but refused to sound the alarm bells, because it was Good Friday. Most of the city’s buildings were made of wood, and didn’t survive - the biggest exception was the Convent of the Ursuline Sisters, which they had built with brick and plaster. It’s still standing today, by the way.

A wealthy Spanish nobleman named Don Andres Almonaster y Roxas donated money and supplies to rebuild the City. This included a hospital, a new Capuchin monastery, a new government building called the Spanish Cabildo, St. Louis Cathedral, and the world-famous Jackson Square. This is why, in a city so well-defined by the blend of Cajun and Creole cultures, that Spanish-style architecture has such a unique presence. And this time, they followed the example of the Ursuline Sisters, and built with brick and plaster. Construction was completed in 1795, and building details like overhanging balconies, courtyards, and iron work became an inseparable trademark of the city’s visual identity.

In 1800, the Spanish returned control of the city to France, but it didn’t stay there long. It was part of the massive land sale to the United States known as the Louisiana Purchase. Everyone in New Orleans was suddenly an American - whether they liked it or not; and now they were facing a massive influx of English-speaking Protestants.

The volatile attempt at integration was going so poorly that it took an act of Congress to make the various sides get along. The city was divided, not to the extremes of, say, Berlin in the Cold War, but there was a distinctly American half and a Creole half, with the area which became Canal Street serving as the neutral territory between them.

Let’s talk for a minute about what we mean when we say Creole. These days, Creole often refers to the French-speaking black descendants of enslaved or emancipated black people. But at the time, the culture of New Orleans used Creole to describe any children born in New Orleans, rather than in Europe or Africa. They were looked down on by the immigrants born in their ancestral countries. Creole was its own identity that crossed color lines, but that doesn’t mean that white Creole and black Creole were on a level playing field. Far from it.

This matters a lot when we talk about Marie Laveau. From what we can tell, she was what’s known as a gens de coleur libre - a free person of color. She was mixed race, part of a large population in New Orleans that lived in the margins between slavery and full freedom. They could own property, manage companies, even build wealth - but there was a ceiling to what they could achieve. They still faced discrimination, the patronizing belief that they weren’t fully civilized; and under the laws that allowed segregation, they were always considered Black. 

Like we mentioned regarding New Orleans’ history evolving separately from the traditional American colonies in New England, New Orleans has its own history regarding slavery. In 1727 they adopted the Code Noir - a set of rules for the proper treatment of enslaved people. At this time some 7,000 kidnapped and enslaved Africans were brought to New Orleans alone, and with its easy access to the Caribbean, the city became the largest port for receiving enslaved people in North America, and stayed so for nearly a century.

As just one example of the dehumanizing treatment afforded to black people, even free ones or mixed race ones like Marie Laveau, we can look at a tradition which has been long whispered about; but never officially recorded or confirmed by historians. These rumored events in high society were known as “Quadroon Balls”. Quadroon was the label for people who were considered, genetically, one quarter black. Even if you were free of enslavement, your position in society could be determined by how much so-called “black blood” you had. 

According to rumors, a “Quadroon Ball” was an event where the mixed-race daughters of wealthy families would compete to become the mistresses of fully-white Creole men. The men wore masks; for them, it was a fun diversion to be competed over. For the women, it was tragic and humiliating, to know that the best station they could ever hope for was as a mistress, never allowed independence or legal equality.

Like I said, we can’t confirm events like this happened, but there is ample record of Creole men having mistresses of mixed race, to whom they would provide money and property. Sometimes the mistresses even lived right next door to the men’s legal families. How they met, how these arrangements came about, Quadroon Balls are just one guess that we have.

We often think of the history of slavery in America as somewhat binary - there was slavery, then a Civil War, then there was emancipation. The truth is far, far more complex. In New Orleans, between the years of 1840 and 1860, historians have estimated that over 7,500 free black people and other minorities were legally allowed to own property and receive a fair trial. It was one of the most diverse cities, legally and culturally, in America – it even had our country’s first opera houses, where seating was segregated but everyone was welcome to attend. Those hard-won rights ended in 1860, when Louisiana seceded from the United States to join the Confederacy.

During the War, the Union captured New Orleans, and Major General Benjamin Butler took over administration. He was notoriously corrupt, disdainful of laws, and fanatical in punishing disloyalty to the Union. His second-in-command was Admiral David Farragut, and after an incident in which a local woman dumped the contents of her chamber pot on the Admiral’s head, Governor Butler responded to this embarrassment by passing General Order #28, which decreed that any woman who insulted the Union troops would be considered a prostitute. He also ordered the execution of a man for tearing an American flag off the U.S. Mint Building.

On the other side, though, his strict regulations and quarantine procedures put a stop to the City’s regular epidemics of yellow fever, saving thousands of lives. And since Butler decreed all plantation owners to be disloyal to the Union, he ruthlessly confiscated cotton from them using any dubious legal technique he could, offered housing and food to people escaping slavery, and organized the first African-American battalion in the history of the U.S. Army. In his memoirs, he writes with pride and admiration at what good soldiers they made. 

It’s easy to see, though, that while actions like these may have had virtuous outcomes, they didn’t exactly arise from virtuous motivations. Butler’s obsession with humiliating and defeating the Confederacy using any means available seems to have been the decisive factor, not any new-found recognition of the dignities and inalienable rights of black people. Their freedoms were still subject to his whims.

This ever-evolving gray area regarding the status of black and mixed-race residents is key to understanding the story of Marie Laveau - both the history and the legend. And it starts in another place which serves as an evocative, haunting, and distinct part of the character of this city - its cemeteries. Because the real Marie Laveau is buried in one - and in a most-unusual exception to tradition, she has a spot inside the family tomb of her common-law husband, Charles Glapion. That in itself identifies her as remarkable. But there’s so much more to tell about the woman with the most-visited tomb in New Orleans.

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PART TWO

Groups of tourists flock to Marie Laveau's grave practically every day. They leave offerings - sometimes crosses, coins, flowers, bones, or much stranger things. Some tour guides will suggest that they should mark an X on her grave; ignoring the fact that defacing a grave, especially a family monument still in use, is horribly disrespectful. But people have the strongest compulsion to do something when confronting Marie Laveau - why? Once, a man painted the grave pink with latex paint, forcing the cemetery to undertake expensive repairs. What did he believe it would accomplish?

One urban legend says that if you want to receive favor from Marie  Laveau, you must walk backwards from the tomb, mark three X's on it, circle three times, spit in three different directions, leave a handful of pennies, and then exit the cemetery backwards. Even if Marie Laveau had an influence which reached beyond the grave because of voodoo, we have to point out that absolutely none of these little rituals has any basis in actual voodoo. More on that later.

The cemetery where we now find ourselves, St. Louis Cemetery #1 is the oldest surviving cemetery in New Orleans.  And so,s it’s worth taking some time to discuss the city’s unique customs with the dead; traditions that are heavily informed both by the ever-clashing cultures of the area, and the precarious landscape on which the whole town sits. However wide or narrow your morbid streak might be, I don’t think you should let a visit to New Orleans go without visiting one of these captivating spots; when you walk through one, it’s easy to see why life here always feels like it’s bordering on the supernatural. 

These cemeteries look like literal cities of the dead, tightly-packed with above-ground mausoleums rising up like buildings. As we’ve seen, life has always been precarious here - whether from storms or disease. There’s always a need to bury more bodies. 

Early on, city authorities tried to dispose of the dead in the familiar way, in the soil of the high ground next to the Mississippi River. This idea  turned out to be a catastrophic mistake. When the river would flood, the waters would carry the caskets of the recent dead right back into the heart of town. These floods happened so regularly that there are no grave markers left from the colonial era, and the city lost track of enormous numbers of bodies when they abandoned burial sites they had filled up. Finally, the decision was made to leave old customs behind, and determine what would work in this particular environment. Hence, the above-ground tombs, bricked in with a concrete slab over them, or family crypts two caskets high.

The first official cemetery in New Orleans was St. Peter Cemetery, built by the Capuchins monks in 1725. They built it outside the city because they believed the noxious fumes of the dead would infect the residents. Only the wealthy and the clergy were allowed to be interred there; but, once it was full to capacity, land was at such a premium that they simply built over it.  

St. Louis Cemetery #1 was the answer for a city which needed much more cemetery space. It was built in 1789, and surrounded by a massive wall. But once again, the wealthy got seniority when it came to securing a spot. The elite families built ever-more elaborate family crypts. There were even bidding contracts for burial dirt. Meanwhile, up into the 1850’s, the poor had to settle for unmarked graves, and even fight to secure them.

Graves were dug by chain gangs. Countless people were buried on top of each other. It’s easy to imagine New Orleans as a place that could create restless spirits.

In Louisiana, parents are legally required to leave their estate to their children, including the family tomb. Private tombs are an immensely valuable form of real estate, and in high demand. Traditionally, there are two burial vaults, with the top vault used first. As family members die, the caskets are moved steadily downward until both vaults are full. Beneath the foundation of the tomb is the space called the caveau; and that is where the oldest ancestors are sent to make room, going deeper underground the further they get from the memories of the living. Where your tomb sits in the cemetery matters, too - the tombs near the inner walls are known as oven vaults, where the intense, damp heat of the bayou climate causes bodies to deteriorate more quickly. 

St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 has several celebrity residents, including Homer Plessy, the mixed-race Creole Defendant in the infamous Plessy Vs. Ferguson court case that made segregation legal in the South, and Ernest "Dutch" Morial, the first black mayor of New Orleans. But it’s Marie Laveau that always draws crowds, as inevitably as the Mona Lisa in the Louvre.

As we mentioned before, many people believe that Marie Laveau was a powerful voodoo queen who still haunts the city of New Orleans. So let’s tell you that version first - the legend of the woman who commanded dark magic, and could contact the spirits of the dead.

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While there are many versions of this story, let’s stitch a narrative together from some of the most widely-shared details. Marie Laveau, it’s said, became a voodoo priestess in 1826, at a time when it was a feared religion, practiced out of sight of society because of its supposed dark influence. By day, though, she is said to have had a much more innocuous occupation - she was a hairdresser, so skilled that her client list included the most wealthy and influential citizens of New Orleans. Some claim that she was simply a crafty listener, who used the gossip she overheard to give herself the appearance of clairvoyance. 

Clients came to trust her to provide spells and charms to help them get what they wanted out of life, whether good or evil. That she would help them fight diseases by providing gris-gris bags. A gris-gris is a traditional talisman, with its origins in West Africa. This version of the story doesn’t conclude whether she had any powers or not, simply that she made a handsome profit off of the fears and insecurities of her wealthy clients - using their belief about her supposed unnatural qualities against them.

We’ll hit pause for a second with a note of real history - no census records have recorded any occupation for Marie Laveau; so while provocative, this narrative of her selling curses and cures to the gullible rich should be taken for entertainment only.

Unconfirmable stories abound of Maz’melle Laveau’s great generosity, as well as the lengths to which she’d go to help those in her favor. In one legend, a young man is falsely accused of several crimes, and his father begs Laveau for help. On the day of his trial, she puts three peppers in her mouth, and goes to pray at St. Louis Cathedral. From there, she goes to the Cabildo, the local government building where the trial is to take place. With only the judge able to see her, Marie Laveau puts the three peppers from her mouth under his chair; so he and only he would know that she had power over him. The story ends with the judge finding the young man not guilty, and the grateful father giving her a cottage at 1020 St. Ann St.

Records do confirm that the real Marie Laveau lived there, but how she acquired the property cannot be confirmed by any records. And if a judge ever changed their decision based on fear of a voodoo curse, they didn’t put that in any records, either.

Another legend tells of the city’s attempt to close Congo Square, which nowadays is called Armstrong Park in the Tremé neighborhood. Congo Square was a traditional community gathering space for enslaved people, and under the Code Noir and heavy presence of Catholicism in the city which we mentioned earlier, they actually had Sundays off to socialize and practice their religion.

But in this story, city authorities felt that even this was too much freedom, and tried to deny access to Congo Square by erecting a gated iron fence around it. There was an outcry from the black community, and according to legend, Marie Laveau used her powers to hypnotize the guards, leaving them defenseless, and barking like dogs. And then she led a party of community members dancing into the Square to reclaim it. She took off her shoes, knelt down, and tapped the ground three times.

The crowd fell into a rhythm with her, chanting the sign of the cross and the three high virtues of hope, love, and charity. Then, she opened a box, producing an enormous snake, wrapping it around her and dancing with it as the crowd watched in fear and fascination. Musicians began to play, and local women began to imitate her undulating dance. There was a frenzy of drumming, played with hands, feet, and cow bones. And gradually, the whole performance evolved into a rendition of the traditional song "Calinda," with its mesmerizing chorus: "Danse Calinda, boudoum, boudoum! Danse Calinda, boudoum, boudoum!"

Not to spoil the power of that image, but we have to do the responsible thing and state, once again, that there is no record of any of this, or of Marie demonstrating the powers of hypnosis. But we see this time and again in the folklore of oppressed people, outsized tales of a hero leading them to a breakthrough of freedom and celebration. 

In other stories, Marie Laveau and her daughter, also named Marie, renounce all practices of voodoo, and live as devout Catholics. In this version, she’s not a hairdresser or a revolutionary leader, simply a popular herbalist and folk healer that the community trusted. This version is decidedly less magical, but it’s still more conjecture than history.

One of the most important days of celebration in voodoo is June 23rd, St. John’s Eve, and there are many locals who believe that on this day, Marie Laveau returns to lead voodoo ceremonies throughout the area. Observers describe seeing a ghostly figure wearing her signature headwrap, known as a tignon. 

Her spirit is a well-traveled one, since people will also claim that she haunts her old home, as well as another house on Chartres Street, where people have claimed to see her figure hovering above the fireplace.

My personal favorite legend seems to fully capture New Orleans and its earnest, but humorous relationship with its supernatural side. The incident, they say, happened in the 1930’s. A man was shopping in a drug store near St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, when a woman wearing white clothes and a blue tignon suddenly entered and stood next to him. The druggist, terrified, ran into the back room, but the man did nothing. The woman laughed at the druggist’s reaction, and the customer decided she was simply a local eccentric. Then she asked if he knew who she was. And he shrugged his shoulders “no”. So she slapped him across the face and then vanished over the wall of the cemetery. The man then passed out cold from horror.

When he came to, the druggist helped revive him with a sniff of whiskey. He told the man that the specter he saw was Marie Laveau. "Son,” he said, “you been slapped by the Queen of Voodoo!"  

Like I said, it’s great for a laugh, but in the end, it’s about as truthful as those "voodoo dolls" they sell on Bourbon Street. They represent a real woman who has been turned into something she never was.

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PART THREE

Now...the real story.  Or at least what we can actually confirm. This story will be much more threadbare, and not as exciting. Her legend is a stew of gossip, oral storytelling, and sensationalist newspaper articles. For her reality - we don’t even know when she was born, if she ever had an occupation, or whether she had any real association with voodoo. The simple fact is that hardly any historical records even reference her; though it must be said that for any black or mixed-race citizen of New Orleans at the time, especially a woman, to survive as more than a name in a register somewhere, is practically a miracle.

There’s evidence to suggest she was born in Haiti, in either 1794 or 1801. We’ve talked about the association of Haiti with voodoo-like religions in our episode on the stories of the horrible Parsley Massacre. There are strong indications that her father was white and her mother a free mixed-race woman. This would make Marie a Quadroon, as we mentioned earlier - considered by a crude parody of genetics to be one-quarter black.

History tells us that there were massive, violent slave rebellions in Haiti in 1791 and 1804, which prompted many plantation owners on the island to flee to New Orleans with the people they had enslaved. This is likely when Marie left Haiti. These rebellions terrified Southern plantation owners; and it also undermined their claims that enslaved people were genetically inferior, lacking the strength or intelligence to win their freedom and manage their own affairs.

There’s nothing following this until a record of her marriage in 1819, to a free black man named Jacques Paris. Jacques would have been a rare individual in New Orleans - the vast majority of black men were enslaved, and legally forbidden to marry free women of any color. 

One sad story supported by evidence is that Marie and Jacques had two daughters that did not survive childhood - tragedies that were all too common before modern medicine.

Jacques Paris died in 1826, just seven years after their marriage. We don’t know how he died, but Marie Laveau was legally a widow for the rest of her life. She wasn’t without company, though. She became mistress to a white Creole named Charles Glapion. They couldn’t legally marry, but in 1827 they had a daughter - the younger Marie that we mentioned earlier. They didn’t stop there; the records are vague but she definitely gave birth to more children. The number could even be as high as fifteen, though depending on how you interpret the records, fifteen could also be the combined number of children and grandchildren. 

She outlived this arrangement as well - Charles Glapion died in 1855. Marie was left in such severe debt that she had to sell her home; though it seems that the new owner allowed her to stay living in it until 1881. Her death was one that would never belong in any of the voodoo legends told about her - in a city notorious for poor hygienic conditions, Marie Laveau died from diarrhea.

One of the few clues we have to her achieving any notoriety or station in her community is this - her funeral apparently drew a massive crowd. What was it she did that she mattered so much to the people of the city?

A modern-day voodoo priest made the point that, had she been a real voodoo queen, she would not have been permitted to rest on Catholic grounds. Rules about this were very strict; so that’s a major strike against the myths about her. And, in spite of wild stories about female apparitions rising from the cemetery grounds to lead ceremonies, dance with snakes, and drive their worshippers in a frenzy, nothing of the sort has ever been documented.

Her house at 1021 St. Ann St. was real, but it has since been torn down. People still visit the site to leave offerings - money, hair ties, other small, personal tokens. Giving honor to ancestors is a major element in voodoo practice - not the pop culture version of voodoo mixed up in her story; but real voodoo, an exuberant and transcendent religion. Real voodoo practitioners - Cajuns, Creoles both black and white, and even secular people throughout Louisiana who simply enjoy the tradition, will use the Feast of All Saints, also called La Toussaint in French, as a holy day to set up altars and visit tombs to honor ancestors. Think of it as their Día de los Muertos. 

About that rumor of her being a hairdresser. Like we said, with no occupation listed in census records, she was probably a housewife, managing her household and the raising of her many children. This is certainly a responsibility of critical importance. We think this legend may have come from a novel, written by George Washington Cable, featuring a protagonist who doubled as a hairdresser and a voodoo priestess. Descriptions of the fictional book claiming that the character was inspired by Marie Laveau may have been muddled with reality.

There’s also the matter of some legal records that mention her in the 1850’s. Marie filed a complaint, against local priests, whom she claimed confiscated a statue of some kind, believed to have religious value. The long-standing local newspaper, the New Orleans Times-Picayune, jumped to the conclusion, seemingly without evidence, that the statue was a voodoo idol. Then, in 1859, she was called to testify in court about some sort of fight that erupted in her neighborhood. Once again, the Times-Picayune put its prejudice into ink, identifying the incident as a voodoo orgy. Reporter Robert Talent described voodoo as a demonic cult in which members murder cats and drink blood. It’s not so different from the paranoid anti-Semitism we’ve described in other episodes. Women like Marie Laveau may not have been legally enslaved, but their status in society was so low that they had no power to fight back against these slanders.

We’ve talked a lot about what voodoo is not - it’s not about human sacrifice, or drinking blood, or worship of evil spirits, or sticking pins into dolls; let’s talk more about what it is, because I think that’s far more interesting, and wonderful.

Like when we discussed voudou on the island of Hispañola, we cannot talk about voodoo without talking about slavery. The best estimate of history is that 20 million West African people were kidnapped from their homelands and enslaved. They were immersed in the Catholic literature and traditions of their slavemasters.

Faith is a powerful force, especially for those trying to survive unimaginable trials and tortures. Of those 20 million stolen Africans, at least two million died just on their journey to the West - expiring from disease, exposure, suicide, or murder. Voudou, voodoo, more variations on these new religious systems, they’re part of the larger story of the African diaspora - faiths forged by the circumstances of the people who created them, rooted in the practices of their lost homeland, but interpreted through their new surroundings and education. Practicing a pure African religion, really any religion that didn’t seem sufficiently Christian, could see an enslaved person severely punished, even killed. Think back to what we said earlier about the importance of Congo Square, of having one safe place where, even for a few hours, oppressed people could practice their faith, and draw strength from it. 

The word “vodou” means both a “pure light” and a “spirit”; and this is the essence of a lot of African diaspora beliefs. The practice of voodoo involves venerating guardian spirits - called Iwa in Haitian Voodoo, or Orishas in West African Voodoo. There are patron saints, like in Catholicism. Congo Square, for example, is bordered by the Bayou St. John - and a modern voodoo practitioner will tell you that the spirit who watches over this bayou is Oshun, a spirit of love, the patron spirit of music, especially jazz.

There’s a tree known as the Eggun, the Ancestor Tree, where people go to pray for help and leave offerings, little things like pennies, pumpkin seeds, oranges. If any seeds sprout near the tree, any food that grows is to be given to the homeless. So when you think about voodoo, start thinking about how there’s a spirit of charity even among the most powerless.

Another important spirit you’ll hear about in New Orleans Voodoo is Yamiya, the spirit of the ocean. She represents love, fertility, and forgiveness. Forgiveness is an enormously important virtue; it is necessary to make peace with one’s past, because, as we said, real voodoo involves venerating our ancestors - in fact, the only way to reach Heaven in their beliefs is through one’s ancestors.

Voodoo priests and priestesses are known as ougans, they conduct ceremonies and offer blessings for whatever their community needs. They purify spaces of negativity and evil using a pungent mixture of alcohol and secret herbs. Traditionally, they open a ceremony by invoking the spirit called Papa Legba. He’s the gatekeeper to the spirit world, the one who can allow mortals and spirits to connect. Papa Legba loves children, keeping an eye on them while adults worship - he’s even known to sneak candy to them.

Spirits are called forth by drawing a symbol on the ground, known as a “veve” - cornmeal or coffee grounds are often used. Each veve is specific to the spirit you are trying to call, and there’s also a color and symbol specific to the one who’s invoking the spirit.

In our recent episodes about Amityville and the self-proclaimed demonologists the Warrens, we touched on a very Christian view of possession. Voodoo practitioners also believe in possession. They believe that, when spirits are called forth in a voodoo ritual, they may choose to possess people, using them temporarily as an Earthly vessel. The person possessed will go into a kind of trance; filled with a healing energy of a force far beyond them. 

As we said, there isn’t even enough history to establish whether or not Marie Laveau practiced voodoo. But knowing that this would be the culture she was immersed in, the value system of her community; makes us think long and hard about what we do when, even for innocuous entertainment, we associate her name with darkness and fear.

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PART FOUR

I mentioned earlier that folklore about Maz’melle Laveau can have complicated purposes and meanings. To people struggling to attain freedom, dignity, and human rights, it can be empowering to believe in a mighty folk hero who stood up to their oppressors. These hero narratives almost inevitably find a way to stake a claim to being based in reality. The legendary actress Angela Bassett, who has built a career out of playing African-American icons from history and entertainment, played Marie Laveau in the popular TV series “American Horror Story”. That show borrowed the idea of her being a hairdresser with influential connections in the community - but in this portrayal, she is granted immortality by Papa Legba with a horrific price - she must sacrifice a newborn baby every year to stay alive. 

Now that show is intended to terrify, but it points out the contradictions we continue to encounter in her story and stories of voodoo in general; the ways that fear, and prejudice, and ancient slanders get perpetuated. 

There’s another woman you might learn about when following the dark path through Louisiana and legends about voodoo. Her name was Julia Brown - born in 1845 and married to a man named Celestin. She lived in Frenier, an isolated town near Lake Ponchartrain, near the Manchac wetlands.

The economy of Frenier was based on timber and cabbage, and they were dependent on the railroad to link them to their customers in New Orleans. Julia was a folk healer, what they called a traiteur - and the only person in the small town who provided medical care. When her husband passed in 1914, she inherited his property. Stories say that she would sing on her front porch, and townspeople would gather around, because the songs she sang seemed to contain premonitions. Then one day, according to legend, she sang out that she was going to die, and take the entire town with her. 

And on September 29th, 1915, a massive hurricane brought winds up to 125 miles per hour to Frenier. The townspeople had almost no warning, and between 275 and 300 people died. Supposedly, it was the exact day of Julia Brown’s funeral; but whether that’s true or not, the town was nearly wiped off the map, and never fully recovered. Rumors abound that, over 100 years later, her spirit can still be heard cackling in the wetlands.

As I look back on all of this, the catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina doesn’t seem like such an isolated event anymore. Many more people died during those awful days; and traumatizingly, it happened while we all helplessly watched. But it seems to be just another chapter in a very long story about New Orleans - about the fragile barrier between life and death. About those with the means to flee the city, versus those who were trapped in the rising waters, forced to shelter at the New Orleans Superdome, a modern space where communities gather on Sundays. About the dark history of the founders who tried to wall off the waters and build a city in defiance of nature, then stole lives from far away to build fortunes in defiance of human dignity.

I come out of this trip believing that there’s still value in telling stories about Marie Laveau and voodoo - even stories that take the leap beyond history and into the fantastical. But I think we need to imagine that, as we tell stories, we’re writing them in a book - the collective book of our culture. What do we want that book to be - a collection of terrors about people we see as different, or a book about celebrating and uplifting people who have survived countless trials, about recognizing what makes us the same? If the real nature of voodoo is to forgive and venerate those who came before,  the second choice sounds like the better one.

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Thank you for listening to My Dark Path. I’m MF Thomas, creator and host. I produce the show with Courtney and Eli Butler; assistant producer is Eliza Shedlov and our creative director is Dom Purdie. This story was prepared for us by Anna Sahlstrom. Our Senior Story Editor is Nicholas Thurkettle, and our fact-checker Nicholas Abraham; big thank yous to them and the entire My Dark Path team.

Please take a moment and give My Dark Path a rating and review wherever you’re listening. It really helps the show, and we love to hear from you. 

Again, thanks for walking the dark paths of history, science and the paranormal with me. Until next time, good night.

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