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| Photo Credits: Wayne Hsieh |
Lalaurie mansion is a house that was built in 1800s and it is famous as one of the most haunted houses in New Orleans. This house and its bloody past will surely remind you of how cruel slavery was back in the day. The house is situated in 1140, Royal street and the owner was Delphine LaLaurie. She was born on 19th March 1787 and she was born to a family of five. Her parents moved to the US from Ireland in 1730s and settled down in New Orleans. When she was four years old the Haitian revolution erupted (1791) and several slaveholders including her uncle was killed by the slaves. That incident lead slaveholders to take extreme measures to discipline their slaves.
In 1800 when she was just 13 years old she married a Spanish royal officer and in 1804 he was called to the Spanish court. On the way to Madrid with his now pregnant wife Delphine, he passed away in Havana suddenly. After a couple of days following his death, Delphine gave birth to her daughter, Marie. She returned to New Orleans and got married to a wealthy lawyer named Jean Blanque in 1808. He purchased a house in 409, Royal street ( later known as Villa Blanque) . Blanque had four children with Delphine; Marie Louise Pauline, Louise Marie Laure, Marie Louise Jeanne and Jean Pierre Paulin Blanque. Sadly Jean Blanque also passed away in 1816. In 1825 Delphine married a physician (Leonard Louis Nicholas Lalaurie) as her third husband and it is said that he is much younger than she was. At that time she bought this property at 1140, Royal Street and she built a 2 story mansion with attached slave quarters. She held a very prominent position in the New Orleans community and she was famous for treating slaves nicely. She has freed 2 slaves and was polite to slaves in public. However the funeral registries says something else. It has 12 documented deaths of slaves within 4 years and cause of deaths are not mentioned either. There were also witnesses of one of the slave girls falling to death from the roof when trying to avoid the whipping of Delphine. This incident lead to an investigation and she was forced to forfeit nine slaves. However she used her relatives to buy the slaves back.
On 10th of April 1834, a fire broke during a party and when fire marshals arrived at the scene they found a 70 years old woman chained in the kitchen. She was the cook and she started the fire in an attempt to suicide. She further said that the slaves taken to the room in the second floor never returned back. In fear of this punishments she attempted to kill herself.
When the fire broke out, bystanders had tried to ensure the safety of the slaves and Lalauries has not permitted anyone to do that either. The neighbours who broke down the doors of the slave quarters in an attempt to save the slaves from the fire, saw something absolutely horrendous. There were seven slaves mutilated, suspended by the neck with limns stretched and torn. There is also an account of a spider woman... whose limbs were detached and rearranged as a spider... She was begging them to kill her and end the suffering. Knowing their fate, Lalauries escaped to France and when the story of the abused slaves was widely known, an angry mob destroyed the house. There are accounts of her death in 1849 that she died from a boar hunting accident in France. But in 1930s a sexton to St. Louis cemetery discovered an old copper plate in the cemetery which had " Madame Lalaurie, born Marie Delphine Maccarthy, died in Paris, December 1842" inscribed.
The Lalaurie mansion was in a ruined state after the mob burned it down and it was rebuilt by Pierre Trastour. It was used as a public school, a conservatory for music, an apartment building, a refuge for young delinquents, a bar and a furniture store. It is said that during the time it was an apartment people heard unexplained moans and groans, scratching noises under floorboards, screams, dragging of chains and they even smelled burning human flesh. There is even an account of a man who saw a large black man bound in chains. He was blocking his way and when he attempted to push the black man his hands went right through him. There are so many people who witnessed these biazzare phenomenon and people started calling it a haunted mansion. In April 2007, Nicolas Cage bought the house and it is no longer open to the public.
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