Haunted Cemeteries Read online

  Well, she was wide awake, she figured, so she might as well get up. She stumbled out of bed, wandered over to the blinds, and peered through. The street, stark in the glow of morning, was almost empty. The trash littering the pavement was the only giveaway of the hoopla from the night before.

  Sharon, along with thousands of others, would be spending the next twenty-four hours trying to decompress. Wisely, she had allowed herself another full day in the Crescent City to avoid joining the crush of humanity that would be at the airport that afternoon leaving town.

  Oh, well, she thought; I might as well see a bit of the city. Although most of the regular must-do places had been open throughout Mardi Gras, realistically it had been almost impossible to go sightseeing. Crowds were everywhere. Jackson Square was a madhouse. Trying to duck in and out of the little boutiques on Bourbon Street had been a nightmare. Now maybe she could get a chance to see the French Quarter the way travelers do the other three hundred-some-odd days of the year.

  She pulled on some clothes and wandered out. First up, a breakfast at Brennan’s on Royal Street. (Could she be any more touristy?) Next, Sharon wandered over to St. Louis Cathedral. A quick glance inside was enough. She wasn’t really a church person, and besides, the interior was rather plain. But she made a mental note to return to the square later in the day when street artists and merchants would be there performing and hawking their wares.

  That would give her time to walk over to the one place she absolutely had to investigate, a place she definitely wanted to see during the daylight hours: the oldest surviving graveyard in New Orleans, St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, just eight blocks from Jackson Square.

  For the first three years of the city’s existence, most bodies had been buried on the riverbank, though some were interred within the parish church. Then, in 1721, an official graveyard was established on St. Peter Street (at Burgundy Street). The burials there were underground, but it was sometimes difficult to keep the remains in the graves. Because the site was below the water table, rotted coffins and body parts had a nasty habit of popping up through the saturated soil.

  After an outbreak of disease in 1787 and 1788, authorities decided to build a new cemetery outside the city to replace the old contagion-ridden and overcrowded burial plot. On August 14, 1789, St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 was established by Spanish royal decree. (It was during the period from 1763 to 1801, when the French territories along the Gulf of Mexico were controlled by Spain.) The St. Peter Street Cemetery was closed and its property sold off. As the city grew, more graveyards were needed, so St. Louis Cemeteries No. 2 and No. 3 were laid out in 1823 and 1854, respectively. In between, Lafayette Cemetery was opened in 1833.

  But it was St. Louis No. 1 that attracted the most attention. Originally twice its current size, the cemetery accommodated people from all economic strata and faiths. The poor and indigent were usually buried belowground, despite the risks, but people of means opted for aboveground tombs to keep their loved ones’ remains safe. Row upon row of family mausoleums and funereal sculptures line the graveyard’s pathways.

  But the crypt that Sharon wanted to see belonged to the cemetery’s most famous resident: the voodoo queen, Marie Laveau.

  Marie is thought to have been born around 1801, the daughter of Charles Laveau, a well-to-do French planter, and his wife, a free Creole. Marie married in 1819, but after her husband, Jacques (or possibly Santiago) Paris, died the next year, she began working as a hairdresser for white society women. She became lovers with Christophe Glapion and lived with him as a common-law wife; they had fifteen children before his death in 1835. Laveau herself passed over on June 15, 1881.

  But not before she had acquired the reputation for being proficient in voodoo. Louisiana voodoo is a descendant of a West African ancestral spirit worship known as voudon. The religion made its way to New Orleans by way of Santo Domingo, where it flourished throughout the nineteenth century. It was widely believed that practitioners could cast spells, create potions and amulets, heal, and foretell the future. Not only was Laveau adept at all of these, she was also a formidable physical presence. A tall and full-figured woman with hair wrapped up within a large turban, she was known to walk about with her pet snake, Zombi, wrapped around her.

  During Marie’s childhood, voodoo ceremonies were held on Congo Square (now Beauregard Square) on North Rampart Street. In 1817 a law was passed to forbid such gatherings, so many celebrants moved their rituals to Bayou St. John and the shores of Lake Pontchartrain. Laveau kept a house (which she called the Maison Blanche) on the lake to practice her religion far from inquisitive eyes.

  There were many who aspired to the position, but through a combination of skill, charisma, and intimidation, Laveau became the acknowledged voodoo queen of New Orleans. Soon she was leading dances in Congo Square—blacks and Creoles were allowed to congregate on Sunday—as well as performing the summer solstice rites held each year on the bayou on St. John’s Eve (the night of June 23–24).

  Her standing was such that when a young Creole man was accused of rape in the 1830s, he turned to Laveau for help. The night before his trial, she hand-delivered gris-gris bags (small pouches containing talismans, bones, feathers, and other magical paraphernalia) to folks all over the city. It’s unknown whether jurors feared being cursed, but the man was acquitted. To thank Laveau, the man’s father gave her a house on St. Ann Street (today numbered 1020).

  Disbelievers in the occult say that Marie’s powers were far from supernatural, that her success, especially in fortune- telling, was the result of having inside information that she gleaned while working in the households of the hoity-toity or by people confiding in her when they came for assistance. Whatever her methods, Laveau was apparently a master, so much so that her name has lived on for more than a century after her death. It didn’t hurt that Laveau’s namesake, look-alike daughter took over her practice when the elder Marie retired from the public eye around 1875. Marie mère had looked preternaturally young, so when the transition between mother and daughter took place, some people either never took notice or convinced themselves that the two women were one and the same.

  Sharon passed through the Basin Street entrance to St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 and walked straight forward for about fifty feet. She turned left after the third mausoleum, then walked another fifty feet down a wide corridor. There to her immediate left stood the plain white sepulcher of Laveau.

  The Greek Revival vault was about fifteen feet long by six feet wide and maybe ten to twelve feet high. It was made of bricks, some of which were clearly visible where the whitewashed plaster covering them had fallen off. Though it was shut tight, Sharon knew that inside there were three individual crypts, one atop the other, along with a repository below for the remains of those displaced by later burials. Visitors had scrawled graffiti all over the outside of the tomb, including many sets of Xs. (According to folklore, anyone who writes three Xs or crosses on the tomb and requests a favor will have the wish granted.) Long-dead flowers from past admirers were strewn on the ground in front of the vault. A few devotees had left small gifts such as beads, candles, or coins. A Glapion family nameplate was embedded in the sidewalk in front of the structure, and a brass plaque on the front wall identified it as the “reputed burial place” of the “notorious ‘voodoo queen.’”

  The marker says “reputed” because some people believe Laveau is actually buried in St. Louis No. 2 or perhaps one of the other cemeteries in the city. It’s also unclear where her daughter is laid to rest. But tradition has it that the original Queen of Voodoo lies within the mausoleum in St. Louis No. 1.

  That is, when she stays there.

  After Laveau’s death, her followers swore that Marie’s spirit occasionally materialized in her old home on St. Ann Street. Her ghost, looking solidly corporeal, was also frequently observed strolling down St. Ann, dressed in a long white gown and sporting her trademark seven-knotted ban-dana. At least one person said Laveau’s phantom slapped his face in a drugstore in
the Vieux Carré, after which Marie’s spectre floated to the ceiling and disappeared.

  The apparition doesn’t always stick to the French Quarter. Marie’s ghost has also been seen on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain. And her disembodied voice has often been heard, singing and chanting away, during the clandestine June rituals still held on Bayou St. John.

  Standing there in the cemetery, Sharon shivered unconsciously. It was unseasonably cool, and standing so long without moving had allowed her body to chill.

  Suddenly, out of nowhere, a large black bird flew down and perched on the tympanum over the front wall of Laveau’s tomb. A crow. How appropriate, Sharon thought. Crows, ravens, and magpies have figured in superstitions for thousands of years, usually as a death omen. Seeing one in a graveyard was supposed to be particularly unlucky.

  It seemed like a good time to leave. Besides, the guided tours would be pouring into the cemetery at any minute. Whatever encounter with the voodoo queen she might have hoped for would have to wait for her next visit to the Big Easy.

  Or would it? Laveau doesn’t materialize in a recognizable human form in the graveyard, but legend has it she often appears near her tomb as a humongous black dog or, yes, a giant black crow.

  Sigmund Freud famously said, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” And maybe the crow Sharon saw that day was just a crow. Or maybe, just maybe . . . it was something more.

  Chapter 14

  The Storyville Madam

  In 1911, an amazing event took place in Metairie Cemetery on the outskirts of New Orleans. A tomb seemed to burst into flames, even though it was built with marble. A few years later, the beatific statue out front of the mausoleum came to life. Who was the crypt’s inhabitant?

  Prostitution in and of itself wasn’t the problem: It had long been an accepted practice in nineteenth-century New Orleans, though never discussed in polite company. But both citizens and merchants considered the more disrepu-table brothels to be a public nuisance. Crime was on the rise, and property values were falling. They insisted that police and the city council find a way to control the situation.

  The solution came from a city alderman, Sidney Story, who wrote the 1897 legislation that set up a legal red-light district in the Big Easy to mirror the ones in Amsterdam and other European port towns. The plan allowed police to regulate the World’s Oldest Profession and gave the city a way to tax it!

  Storyville, as the area just two blocks west of the French Quarter became known (much to Alderman Story’s displeasure), had strict boundaries encompassing about twenty blocks: St. Louis Street to the north, Basin Street to the east, Iberville Street to the south, and North Robertson to the west. (Today the area is the site of the Bienville Basin Apartments.) Its bawdy houses were soon catering to every need and pocketbook. The houses of negotiable affection operated without interference from January 1, 1898, until 1917, when the federal government shut them down for being too close to its new military base on the Gulf.

  During its heyday, the District, as it was nicknamed, became somewhat of a tourist attraction. It had its own guide, the so-called Blue Book—over the years, there were five editions—which described the various houses of ill repute and detailed how many girls worked in each, what special services they provided, and the prices. Fees ranged from fifty cents a throw in the déclassé institutions to, by the end of the 1910s, around ten dollars in the high-class establishments.

  The better Storyville brothels were by no means tawdry. In fact, some of the buildings could best be described as mansions. The interiors were lavishly decorated with fine artwork, Tiffany glass, and crystal chandeliers. Clients included the rich, powerful, and well-connected, from bankers, doctors, and lawyers to police and politicians. Guests enjoyed fine wines, food, and cigars. And everywhere there was jazz.

  Although the uniquely American music wasn’t invented in Storyville, as some have suggested, it certainly permeated the atmosphere. Such giants as Jelly Roll Morton and Joe “King” Oliver got their start playing in the parlors of the bordellos. Oliver would later act as a mentor to young Louis Armstrong, who no doubt heard the new sounds while delivering coal to the District as a boy.

  Some of the more flamboyant madams became as well known as the dens of iniquity they oversaw, such as Hilma Burt and her Mirror Ballroom on North Basin Street. Lulu White ran one of the most extravagant brothels of all: Mahogany Hall. It had five parlors, fifteen bedrooms, and forty girls of horizontal entertainment. All its ladies were octoroons—light-skinned African Americans of mixed race.

  Perhaps the grandest bordello of all was the one owned by Josie Arlington. And years later, it was her tomb that became haunted in Metairie Cemetery.

  Born Mary Deubler in the Big Easy in 1864, Arlington went by various names throughout her career: Josie Alton, Josie Lobrano, and Lobrano d’Arlington. She became a lady of easy virtue in 1881—yes, at seventeen. But she was clever as well as pretty and an excellent, though short-tempered, businesswoman to boot. By 1895 the feisty brunette had saved enough money to start up her own bordello on Customhouse Street, and she was one of the first to move to Storyville, to 225 North Basin Street, when the District was created.

  Her ornate, four-story house of ill repute, the pretentiously named Chateau Lobrano d’Arlington, was more commonly called simply the Arlington. It had a distinctive onion-shaped dome, large bay windows, several fireplaces, and expensive artwork. According to its Blue Book listing, it was “the most decorative and costly fitted-out sporting palace ever placed before the American public.”

  About a dozen girls, dressed in the finest French lingerie and advertised as “amiable foreign girls,” were on call at any time. It cost patrons about five dollars to have their stress relieved, and for a few dollars more they could watch a live sex “circus” (one of the brothel’s feature attractions). Just about any kinky fetish could be catered to if the price was right. (Her girls were talented and experienced; it was common knowledge that Arlington would never hire anyone who was still a virgin.)

  In 1905, a fire forced Arlington to temporarily relocate her business to the rooms above a saloon run by Tom Anderson, and for a time she became his lover. Anderson, a savvy local political boss, was quite a character. He had gotten his start delivering both legal and illicit drugs to the Storyville bawdy houses. He opened a restaurant on North Rampart in 1880, then seven years later bought the Fair Play Saloon at Basin and Iberville. While Josie and her girls were there, he called the upstairs pleasure palace the “Arlington Annex.”

  Anderson took it upon himself to promote the District; as a result, he sometimes, if informally, was referred to as “the Mayor of Storyville.” He was the one who bankrolled the Blue Books, and in 1904 he began the first of two terms as a state legislator, which allowed him to look out for his interests from Baton Rouge. Anderson ignored the federal order that closed Storyville and moved his operations underground. Despite his best backroom maneuvers, he was eventually arrested and put on trial in 1920, but the case ended in a mistrial. He died in 1931 and left a Depression-era estate of more than a hundred thousand dollars.

  But back to Josie Arlington. She closed up shop in 1909, sold much of her property and business holdings to Anderson, and retired to a private life of ease on her Esplanada Street estate. She had all the money she needed for a very comfortable life, but what she craved—and the one thing she couldn’t buy—was respectability.

  Not accepted by society, she was publicly shunned on the streets by the very men who had utilized her services. She took her revenge by building her mausoleum in the most prominent graveyard in all New Orleans, the Metairie Cemetery.

  The burial ground was originally Metairie Race Course, which was founded in 1838. During the Civil War, horse racing was suspended and the land used as a Confederate campground. It was transformed into a cemetery in 1872, but the oval shape of the original racetrack is evident to this day.

  Metairie Cemetery soon became the most prestigious memorial park in all New Orleans
, with some of the most opulent mausoleums and funereal statuary in the city. It became so fashionable that several families had their tombs moved from St. Louis Cemeteries No. 1 and No. 2 to the spacious, impeccably groomed grounds of the Metairie graveyard. In addition to the other notable people buried there, it was the temporary resting place of Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, before his body was moved to Richmond, Virginia.

  In 1911 Josie Arlington bought a small but very visible plot on top of a slight rise in the graveyard. She erected a tall, reddish marble tomb, its roof topped by two carved flaming braziers. Large brass doors were set within the front wall. And on the front steps was the pièce de résistance: a life-size bronze statue of a young woman, designed by famed architect and sculptor Albert Weiblen. Nicknamed “the Maiden,” the figure has her right hand on the door to the crypt, as if seeking entrance, and flowers are cradled in the crook of her left arm. It’s believed she represents innocence and purity.

  The tomb was completed long before Arlington’s death, which occurred in her home on February 14, 1914. She was only fifty years old. But even before Josie was buried, there were reports of strange goings-on at her crypt. By the end of 1911, stories surfaced that sometimes, without warning, the mausoleum would become enveloped in a reddish blaze. The fire would completely cover all four walls, its serpentine trails licking and winding their way around the exterior. The sepulcher was never consumed because it was made entirely of marble and brass. But to frightened witnesses, the conflagration appeared to be some kind of demonic hellfire.

  Once word got out, believers and unbelievers alike stormed the cemetery to see the phenomenon for themselves.

  Even on nights the mausoleum didn’t break out into flames, it was said that the walls of the tomb would glow a bright red. Skeptics later pointed out that the anomaly was most likely caused by the light of a swaying, nearby street lamp falling on the mausoleum, but this explanation was far too literal-minded for the superstitious crowds to accept.