Episode 9: Blood in NOLA: Madame LaLaurie & The Casket Girls

Bienvenue, mes amis! Welcome, friends! The subject of this episode originates near our neck of the woods, New Orleans, LA! And it is an awful, disgusting plague of a topic...naturally. It is the story of the infamous Marie "Delphine" LaLaurie and the atrocities she committed in her lavish home, the LaLaurie Mansion. Joining us today is Jeremy's boss babe of a wife, Brittiny, who will give us some in-depth details about this whole shebang. Also...how did vampires come to NOLA? Get ready for this guys...yeesh.
Trigger warning: this episode details graphic mistreatment of people of color. Listener discretion is advised.

STOP! INSIDE JOKES AHEAD! If you haven’t gotten to listen to the episode yet, spoiler alert! This post contains lots of stuff that will make waaay more sense if you listen to the episode before or while reading. So if you haven’t already, pump the brakes and listen to the episode or just click above to play so that you can be in on all the shenanigans to follow!

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Produced by Peter Woodward

LISTENER STORY ALERT!!

Welcome back, Jeremy Arp! This is part 2 of his listener story about his personal experiences with the mall movie theater ghosts…only this time, it’s not the friendly ghost he encounters…

Marie Delphine Maccarthy LaLaurie

So…in this episode, we discuss this waste of perfectly good space and oxygen, Madame LaLaurie. Her legend is one of cruelty and shame at a time when cruelty and shame were fairly commonplace in the treatment of enslaved persons. You had to do a lot to stand out…and stand out she did!

You know, getting that prenup, making money moves, and enacting torturous treatment upon vulnerable, disenfranchised individuals in the cozy confines of her mansion: that old trope.

LaLaurie Mansion, 1140 Royal Street, New Orleans, LA

The house itself was originally a two-story structure. The third story was later added. It has gone through multiple different incarnations as both a residential and commercial site. It’s been used for apartments, single family residences, public outreach, schools, and shops. But as Brittiny detailed, it rarely retained one function or owner for very long. Famously, actor Nicholas Cage was an owner post-Hurricane Katrina, but he had to dip out for financial reasons.

As far as haunts…

This house has a long and legendary history of lots of paranormal activity. Some theorize this as the reason for such impermanence in its different occupations over the years. Numerous troubling and downright creep-tastic reports exist in the years following the LaLauries’ abandonment of the house. Neighbors reported hearing sounds like shrieking, moaning, and groaning at all hours; their children reported sounds of dragging, screaming, and scratching on the floorboards as well as smelling burning human flesh and visions of slave ghosts. There are also numerous reported sightings of a female ghost that walks the house and surrounding street. It is thought to be the spirit of Madame LaLaurie. This ghost was also reported to inflict bruises and scratches on the young African-American girls that attended the all-girls’ school that once existed there.

Currently, the exterior of the home can be viewed by the public as part of multiple NOLA tours, but there is no access to the interior as it is now a private residence.

Discussions of feature films about LaLaurie have been repeatedly started and stopped, hopefully due to the tasteless and horrific subject matter not needing to be glorified on the big screen; however, the character of Delphine LaLaurie was portrayed by Kathy Bates in American Horror Story: Coven in 2011.

LOTS of YouTube videos about this topic exist, but here are some references and links if you want to read more about this sicko.

https://www.thoughtco.com/delphine-lalaurie-4684656

https://uniquenola.com/blog/top-5-myths-lalaurie-house-new-orleans/

https://lasc.libguides.com/c.php?g=254608&p=16

https://nolaghosts.com/lalaurie-mansion/

https://usghostadventures.com/haunted-stories/terrors-at-lalaurie-mansion/

Meanwhile just down the road...

Vampires: how did they get to NOLA?

So…the Ursuline Convent and the Casket Girls that made it famous

In fake news: King Louis sent women with boxes of the undead to NOLA in the 1700s. Whoa, Jeremy!

In real news, the Ursuline Convent was constructed as part of a holy mission from Normandy, France to provide education to young women and girls through a school and convent, and medical care through an infirmary.

We discussed “casket girls” a bit in this week’s episode. These were young ladies specifically requested from the French government by the governor of LA for the specific purpose of being married off to the hoards of local men in order to increase the population in the new colony. With them they packed their entire lives in their lil luggage cases/cassettes/caskets, which were only about the size of a small carry-on bag and were vaguely coffin-shaped. This is what started the name “casket girls”.

So between 1719-1721, about 250 girls made the journey with the LA government and colonists in high hopes for this arrangement. However, several factors then came into play upon the ladies’ arrival to NOLA. First, the boat journey was rough and the girls were exposed to illnesses like sea sickness, tuberculosis (TB), and yellow fever en route to their destination; as a result, many of them showed up looking pale, thin, and haggard. Secondly, most of them were sourced from poor houses, prisons, and orphanages rather than the creme de la creme of French society, so they did not immediately appeal to the men. Thirdly, for whatever reason, there was a spike in the mortality rate in the area following the girls’ arrival. Many of them did not find husbands and consequently, found themselves in the care of the Ursuline nuns at the convent.

These ladies were housed on the third floor of the convent, but were eventually kicked out, leaving behind their coffin-shaped cases. Why? Mysterious occurrences and bouts of bad fortune in the area caused the nuns and surrounding townspeople to believe that the arrival of these “casket girls” had brought with them some type of evil. The suspicion immediately became that they were or had carried with them…yep…vampires. You ‘member? Cause they looked so pale and thin when they got there? And the lil cases shaped like coffins? Anyway…

The windows of the convent’s third floor were reportedly sealed with blessed silver nails to keep the evil inside and remain sealed to this day. Blessed by…you guessed it…the Pope.

That’s how the Ursuline nuns and convent got looped in with New Orleans’ vampire lore. It also is reported to be thoroughly and completely haunted AF, specifically by ghosts of little kids. Apparently the laughter of children is widely reported day and night on the grounds. This may be due to the giant amount of infant and child bones that were unearthed from the walls of the convent during a restoration. In our resource links below, there is a link to the actual pages of a report of finding of a priest’s bones buried in the floor in 1920! What are them nuns up to over there??

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Ursuline_Convent,_New_Orleans

https://www.verylocal.com/ursuline-convent-casket-girls/20209/

https://wams.nyhistory.org/settler-colonialism-and-revolution/settler-colonialism/casket-girls/

https://folklorethursday.com/halloween/the-casket-girls-and-vampires-of-new-orleans/

https://www.royaltoursneworleans.com/the-ursuline-convent

https://louisianadigitallibrary.org/islandora/search/mods_subject_topic_ms%3A%22Ursuline%5C%20Convent%5C%20%5C%28New%5C%20Orleans%2C%5C%20La.%5C%29%22

Jacques St. Germaine

This guy is apparently the Vampire of New Orleans. Known for his inescapable charm and wit, seemingly endless knowledge about other time periods, and gift for alchemy, this fellow earned a reputation for being something other-worldly when he lived in NOLA during the 1700s. His date of death was listed as 1784, but there have apparently been sightings of him as recently as 1970!

Learn more!

https://pelicanstateofmind.com/louisiana-love/jacques-st-germain-louisiana-vampire/

A what?

A Grunch Road Monster apparently. How have we never heard of this thing before? Apparently its origin was also in the 1700s when famous Voodoo priestess Marie LaVeau cut off the testicles of the Devil Baby to keep him from reproducing and from his two severed testicles came a male and female grunch. They say it looks like a reptilian chupacabra, has glowing eyes, howls loudly, smells horrible, and drinks blood. Ugh.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winchester_Mystery_Househttps://cryptidz.fandom.com/wiki/Grunch_Road_Monster

Honey Island Swamp Monster

This guy is essentially Louisiana’s version of Bigfoot. His name come from the belief that he inhabits Honey Island in St. Tammany Parish. We talked about the Rou-Ga-Rou in a previous episode [Episode 3: There’s Something About Gallup (Probably Skinwalkers)], which is very similar.

Oh, and there’s a documentary out there. Cool.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honey_Island_Swamp_monster

https://www.nola.com/curious_louisiana/article_c3ff7ad8-f7da-11ec-ad38-cb074e0fc868.html

Another one down! Does your brain feel bigger? As per usual, we are left with both new facts to ponder and new questions to answer. To recap:

We have to be there to help Jonathan dodge that sneaky D.

Drive-through blessings…are a thing.

Is our very own Brittiny a vampire from France? Does the sheer volume of garlic butter in Jeremy’s mustache keep him safe from her? Hmmm..

Is/was Madame LaLaurie a vampire as well as a heinous devil woman? There is legend that she liked blood…

Well, be sure to keep your garlic and holy water nearby just in case. Also stakes…you know…on the off chance you pass by anything coffin-shaped that holds a member of the undead inside it and you need to…