Despite not being one for horror movies, spooky stories or ouiji boards, I decided to put on my big girl pants and spend the morning with the ghosts and graveyards of New Orleans. Lying alongside the Mississippi River, the city has long been prone to flooding and the locals soon realised that when they buried their dead in the ground, the floods would wash the bodies back up to the surface. To counteract this, the many cemetaries in New Orleans became filled with mausoleums - large marble or cement (depending of finances) tombs to house the bodies. In the old days, funerals were followed by a funeral procession where the congregation would walk the hearse to the cemetary singing melancholy gospel tunes.
The St Louis Cemetary is the most famous of the many cemetaries in New Orleans and is a mixture of decrepid mausoleums and extravagant dedications to the dead. The tombs stand gaurded by wrought iron bars and crucifixes, with a few still remembered by collections of fading or wilting flowers.
Moving from site to site was a little spooky - I'll admit - and it felt like at any minute a gangly dead hand was going to shoot out of the ground and grab my unexpecting feet. St Louis Cemetary 1 (as there are two within a short walk of each other) is also now home to Marie Laveau, New Orleans anointed 'voodoo queen' (just to make things a little creepier). Marie was believed to have special voodoo powers and many people still come to her tomb in search of her wisdom and blessings. The belief is that after asking Marie's guidance or wisdom, hopefuls must leave a donation at her grave site. When their need is fulfilled, they must return to her grave and mark three x's (XXX) in honour of her help. Hence why, her cement crypt is covered in what appears to be grafitti.
Moving from site to site was a little spooky - I'll admit - and it felt like at any minute a gangly dead hand was going to shoot out of the ground and grab my unexpecting feet. St Louis Cemetary 1 (as there are two within a short walk of each other) is also now home to Marie Laveau, New Orleans anointed 'voodoo queen' (just to make things a little creepier). Marie was believed to have special voodoo powers and many people still come to her tomb in search of her wisdom and blessings. The belief is that after asking Marie's guidance or wisdom, hopefuls must leave a donation at her grave site. When their need is fulfilled, they must return to her grave and mark three x's (XXX) in honour of her help. Hence why, her cement crypt is covered in what appears to be grafitti.
There are plenty of tours which visit the tombs (day tours, night tours, full moon tours, ghost tours, scandelous cocktail tours) which I'm sure indulge in the spooks of the city. But walking around the cemetary in the middle of the day, was all the creep I needed.
Ciao for now. xo
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