October 15, 2012 • 40 mins
In 1834 a fire broke out at the Lalaurie house in New Orleans. Firefighters found mistreated slaves inside, and the family was banished. Wild rumors spread afterward, and now it's known as the most haunted house in America -- but are the rumors true?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from house
stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast
Actively in Chalk Reporting and I'm Scared Out and Sarah
and Kristen recently talked about the history of Halloween and
one of the most well known traditions associated with it,
(00:22):
that's trick or treating, But of course there are some
other traditions that also go hand in hand with Halloween. Legends,
ghost stories, and haunted houses were the ones that I
had in mind in particular, so essentially the tradition of
scaring the poop out of ourselves. And I'm the biggest
whimp personally when it comes to scary stuff. I don't
(00:42):
know why, but we all seem to kind of enjoy that,
even I do once in a while, even though I'm
a really big whimp about scary stuff. I mean, I
can't even watch those commercials for scary movies. I can't
even know that they're on. If I know that they're on,
then I'll scar leave the room. If you if you
have a scary movie, I mean, if you hear the
noise or something, I mean, your imagination just starts working,
(01:03):
I guess, and and scares you to death. But even
I have enjoyed a good haunted house or ghost story
or two. How about you. It's been a while since
I've been to one of those real haunted houses, but yeah,
they're fun. You know, everybody has traumatic memories of being
chased by the guy with the chainsaw or something. Would
you have a strategy, a strategy for for escape? Yeah,
(01:26):
you have to have a strategy when you go into
these things, Sarah, move past those people quickly, they'll move
on to the people in line behind you. The run
straight through is definitely a strategy. There's also the hold
on tight whoever's around you, like trying to get in
the middle. There's also the throw your friend at the
scary thing and then run a sess. That's one of
my favorites. Yeah, okay, note to self, don't go to
(01:47):
a haunted house with DUBLINO. Then. But these haunted houses
that are set up to entertain people around Halloween, commercial
haunted houses, I guess are sometimes based around spooky legends
or stories, usually fake ones. But the the house we're
going to talk about in today's podcast, which is often
called the most haunted house in America, has a story
behind it with characters and at least some events that
(02:09):
were very, very real. And the woman at the center
of this tale is named Murray Delphine la Louri, and
often she's simply known as Madame La Louri or even
mad Madame La Louri, which is a little hard to
say quickly. But if you've ever taken one of those
Haunted New Orleans tours, which I have not. I've been
to New Orleans a few times, but I haven't haven't
(02:31):
gotten to go on one of these yet, you've probably
heard her name. I mean, we've heard, We've heard so
many suggestions from listeners who have taken tours like that,
and that's really saying something if you think about it,
because it is, after all, New Orleans we're talking about.
There are so many famous people associated with that city, right,
and it's all been considered one of the most haunted
(02:52):
cities in America, if not the most haunted city in America.
But geography aside, it's tough to ignore a story like
Delphine la LOI use. It involves the distinct torture, cold
blooded murder, botched medical experiments, hauntings, and even a curse.
Like a lot of stories we tell, though it's tough
to tell fact from myth, and this one, the story
(03:13):
that's generally circulated today in two thousand twelve, isn't exactly
one verifiable, and many details have changed since the years
directly following the events which took place in the mid
eighteen hundreds or so, suggesting that the tale has been
exaggerated and embellished upon along the way. But we're not
going to start by debunking everything. I mean, what kind
(03:36):
of Halloween podcast would this be if we didn't try to,
at least at the beginning, speaking out a little bit.
So to that end, let us begin with a legend,
that of mad Madame Lo Louri. It begins, for our purposes,
at least in the early eighteen thirties, in New Orleans,
a prominent and beautiful Creole woman named Marie Delphine la
(03:59):
Lorrie and her husband, a French physician named Louis Lallery,
by a home at eleven forty Royal Street in the
French Quarter and move in with her daughters from a
previous marriage. Now a couple of things to know about Delphine.
She had grown up in a wealthy and influential Creole family,
and Louis had recently immigrated to New Orleans after earning
his medical degree. Delphine had also actually been married twice before,
(04:23):
and her husbands were said to have died or disappeared
under unknown or mysterious circumstances. So this new couple her
her third marriage. They start decking out their home with
the finest art, the finest furniture. After all, they and
Delphine especially are really the toast of high society in town.
They entertained constantly. They throw these opulent parties at their
(04:46):
home several times a week, and all things being equal,
a couple like this might seem really irreproachable, uh, kind
of an unstoppable social force. Everybody would want to attend
the fabulous parties. But around eighteen thirty two, some pretty
nasty rumors started circling about them. The slaves who work
(05:09):
in their household seem very thin, they seem malnourished, and
it said that they also seem afraid of Delphine, and
she's been seen speaking quite harshly to them. So people
start talking, what what exactly is going on in this
lovely home? Right? Well, speaking harshly to your slaves is
one thing in this time, but Some of the rumors
(05:30):
are even worse than that. A neighbor, for instance, claims
that the Latarees have slaves changed in their attic. Some
people also supposedly link the lo lorries to notorious voodoo
queen and former podcast subject Marie Lavaux, who would have
been a contemporary Marie or Marie too if I remember, Yeah, exactly,
(05:50):
it's pretty those two. But this is just the legend
part after all. So for the most part, though, people
do seem to find reasons to dismiss all these rumors,
probably because they wanted to. They wanted to socialize with
this couple, and Delphine was after also beautiful, so charming. Uh.
Some people found it hard to believe that she could
(06:10):
be so cruel, But there was also some contradictory pieces
of evidence that made everything seem okay on the surface.
For one thing, at parties, Delphine, when she would have
just a little bit of wine left over in her glass,
she would often be seen offering that and saying a
few kind words as well to a slave who was
standing near her, so giving the backsplash of her wine.
(06:34):
That was seen as a nice that way, but it
would have seemed nice to other attendees at her parties,
and I think the other the other point is a
little stronger than that too. It's that, with all these
rumors about her malnourished slaves, her black coachman always looked
very healthy. He looked sleek and well dressed. And surely
(06:55):
it seemed a woman who abused her slaves wouldn't have
a coachman who looked uh so so fit and proper.
The rumors were often dismissed as lies spread by Americans.
Just an aside here. This was not too too long
after the Louisiana purchase, and there were tensions between the
Anglo Americans who had arrived in the city since then
(07:16):
and the Creoles, who were native to the area. Americans
were gaining power in the public arena, but Creoles still
dominated in terms of social cloud. So here's a vignette
associated with this legend here, just to give you an
idea of people's suspicions and how they kind of played out.
An American lawyer in the neighborhood heard the rumors about
(07:37):
the lollaries and sent his Creole employee over to check
things out. He thought that the Creol employee would be
a little better received. Maybe this information would be better
taken from someone um just of the same background, And
so he sent this employee over to remind Delphine about
the local laws regarding proper treatment of slaves. Just another
little side note here for you. You couldn't just treat
(07:59):
your slave however you wanted to. At this time in
New Orleans there was something in effect in Louisiana called
the Code Noir. So this meant that you couldn't just torture, mutilate,
or sexually abuse your slaves. You couldn't do maybe like
the worst things to them. I think people sort of
imagine slavery. If you're anything goes you could kill your
(08:19):
slaves if you wanted to, and I guess in some
places you probably could. But here there there was a
rule of some sort. But at least officially, you couldn't
do these terrible things. Yes, And according to Victoria Love
and Laura Lei Shannon's book Mad Madam Lallery, New Orleans
Most Famous Murderous revealed, you could dole out quote ordinary
punishments like confinement, chaining, and whipping, but that was about it.
(08:44):
Already sounds pretty terrible with just those, but apparently there
were limits there. Delphine apparently charmed the pants off of
this lawyer's assistant who came by to talk to her,
and he returned singing her praises and expressing an utter
disbelief that she could even be capable of abusing anyone.
So it's almost like a H. A. Tolmes thing going
on here. I know, we talked a lot during the H.
(09:06):
Holmes podcast about how he got away with or won
a lot of people over because he was so charming
through off their suspicions exactly. So yeah, the the creole
man who's sent to investigator, he thinks, no way this
lady could be breaking the the code noir. So then
in eight thirty three, though, there was an incident that
(09:27):
cast the beautiful Delphine in a very different light, So
nobody's personal testimonies are going to cut it anymore. Delphine
was seen chasing a young slave girl around the house
with a bull whip, and apparently the girl had hit
a tangle while combing Delphine's hair and the woman just
became completely unhinged at this. The little girl ended up
(09:49):
on the rooftop during the chase and was finally seen
plummeting into the courtyard, landing with this bone chilling thud,
and the fall which killed her seemed to get no
reaction out of Delphine, which which was the added creepy
touch on this story. Delphine was said to have looked
(10:10):
down at her coldly and then just went back inside.
So some of the other servants after this supposedly quietly
came out, collected the body, buried the little girl later
that night next to the well in the courtyard. But
neighbors had witnessed this too, and so the authorities were
called in and Delphine was punished for for breaking this code.
(10:34):
She was find three hundred dollars, several slaves were taken
away from her. It seemed like a turning point in
this in this story of or the rumor surrounding this woman.
But remember who she is. Delphine is well connected, her
family is very well connected, and she got a relative
to secretly by the slaves back for her. Not that
(10:55):
it remained much of a secret at all. I mean,
she continued to entertain regularly, so people knew that she
kept slaves in the house, and rumors of abuse continued
to kind of whirl around her. Then on April tenth,
eighteen thirty four, everything started to come to a head.
The Lollery mansion cut on fire and the flames started
(11:15):
to spread really quickly throughout the main house, so friends
and neighbors they quickly showed up to help. At this time,
Louis and Delphine seemed especially worried about their valuables. Antiques
are flying, furniture, and they try to enlist all these
people who have come out to help them to get
the stuff out of the house. Yeah, but where. It
also quickly spread among the helpers that the fire was
(11:39):
started by this old woman who was chained to the
stove in the kitchen. And in some sources that you'll
see for this story, the old woman is actually said
to be the grandmother of the little girl who died
in the fall. Her motive in uh starting this fire
perhaps would have been revenge, of course, or maybe desperation.
But people started to ask, okay, well, where are the
(12:00):
other slaves in the household, because we know that they
are here. Delphine supposedly said things like, never mind them,
save the valuables. Louis told everybody just essentially mind your
own business, save our stuff. In our house please. Finally, though,
the fireman who had shown up on the scene, UH,
here a rumor that there are slaves in the attic,
(12:21):
and so they rush up there, only to find the
doors sealed off with these giant padlocks, And because Delphine
and Louis aren't offering up the key, they have to
break down the doors. And when they open those doors,
they're hit by an odor that causes them to gag
and wretch immediately, but it gets much worse when they
can actually see what that stench is coming from. There
(12:44):
are several slaves chained in there, some close to death,
others probably wishing that they were because they've been mutilated
as if part of some sadistic experiment. Some examples of
what the rescuers saw UH laves covered in honey, with
ants and other bugs crawling all over them. A woman
(13:05):
with her skin peeled and a spiral around her body
so that she looked kind of caterpillar like almost Also
a man and a woman who had been part of
some crude sex change operation. Basically their genitals had been
removed and swapped. They also saw a man with a
hole drilled in his head, and a woman whose bones
(13:25):
had been broken and reset at all these odd angles,
so that she was forced to move like a crab.
And she was so frightened when the fireman did burst
into the room that she stuttled into a corner and
just proceeded to shriek every time somebody tried to get
near her. So aside from these horrors, these living horrors
in the room, there were also buckets of random body
(13:48):
parts everywhere, and of course blood all over the place,
all over the floors, this horrible stench. So the slaves
were removed from the premises and taken to a nearby
slave whole holding area to to try to see if
they if they could receive treatment and survive. Most of
them did not. Meanwhile, though the fire had been brought
(14:09):
under control of the some degree. In about six pm,
Delphine's coachman brought the carriage up to the home side door.
It was time for her regular evening ride, you know,
just pretending nothing out of the ordinary had happened that day.
But by this time, of course, the crowd that had
gathered to watch help out with the fire has heard
about what's in the attic, and they've become an angry mob.
(14:33):
Once they realize what happened to the slaves, and Delphine
actually has the goal at this point to wave at
them as she hops into her carriage for her evening ride.
As that carriage drives off, they start to chase her.
They don't want to let her get away, so the
mob follows her all the way to buy a St. John,
but they weren't fast enough to catch her. Delphine hops
(14:55):
on a boat that takes her across Lake poncha train,
and according to legend, she was never seen in the
area again. So rumor how that that after this carriage
flight out of town, Delphine either went to Mobile, Alabama
or New York City, and from there went on to France,
where she lived out the rest of her days on
the run. Some say she was even killed by a
(15:17):
boar while hunting in France in eighteen forty two. There
are others, though, who think that she never left Louisiana
at all, and then other people still who think that
she did return, although after her death her body was
secretly returned secretly buried in St. Louis Cemetery Number one.
Uh So, lots of lots of ideas about what happened
(15:38):
to you yes, According to a nineteen forty one article
in the Times Pecune, a plaque was found there in St.
Louis Cemetery number one four or five years before this
particular article is written, so I guess the mid nineteen
thirties or so, by a man who used to work
as a sexton for the cemetery. The plaque had Delphine's
name and that in eighteen forty two death date on it,
(15:59):
though it wasn't attached to a tomb, so it's not
like anyone could exhume a body and make sure that
it was her or anything like that. But people did
assume that the theory was correct, that her body had
been sent back after she was killed. So one last
element to to the story you're likely to hear in
New Orleans too, and that's of course haunting stories of
hauntings at her former home on Royal Street began almost
(16:23):
immediately after this incident, and again according to legend, authorities
who tried to secure the property directly after the fire
reported hearing all these strange sounds, even people crying out
in some unknown language. But for almost two hundred years,
visitors and residents of the house have continued to hear
(16:45):
strange sounds, unearthly sounds, and even seen figures operations, including
that of a little girl, maybe the one that fell
off the roof, perhaps a handsome gentleman, perhaps uh Monsieur Louis,
and even a woman who was thought to be Madame
Lo Louri. In the nineteen seventies, when the home was
(17:06):
being renovated and the floorboards were torn up, human bones
were supposedly found underneath some of the floors. As the
story goes, this, at last, was the explanation for those
strange sounds that the authorities heard after the fire. Delphine
had apparently essentially buried slaves alive under her floors too,
(17:27):
and the strange dialect that was heard was supposed to
be maybe an African dialect of some sort. So that
is our story, spooky legend. Yes, that version of events,
maybe with some differing or additional details, is pretty much
what you'll hear on any tour of Haunted New Orleans,
and what you'll find in a lot of written accounts
(17:49):
of Delphine la Lorie, including one in Strange True Stories
of Louisiana by George Washington Cable. Though some of the
weirder mutilations of victims aren't in the secure count. He
really tried to stick to documented sources, I think, and
Ghostly Cries from Dixie by Pat fitz Hugh is another one.
Jean del Avine's Six Ghost Stories of Old New Orleans
(18:13):
is another online NOLA dot com has an account of
this legend and also includes some newspaper articles from the
time that corroborate some of the details included in that legend.
A very few, though, like historian Victoria Love, whose book
we mentioned earlier in the show. I've really tried to
separate fact from fiction in this story, and Love tried
(18:34):
to piece together the story using only official documents archive,
So of course we had to look at her work
and try to get to the bottom of what is
definitely true about this legends what we do so Delphine,
the main character in the story, from what we can tell,
she seems to be in many respects, you know, as
(18:55):
she is portrayed in the legend that she was born
into an elite family. That's certainly the case. She was
born in about seventeen seventy five into a prominent New
Orleans family. Her father was Louis de McCarty, and she
had relatives who were very influential and held high profile
positions in the Louisiana government. And since her family was
so well to do, she probably would have been taught
(19:16):
to read and write, but a lot of her education
probably had more to do with etiquette, entertaining running a household.
We've talked before about even the art of conversation, which
clearly would have been something that would contribute to her
being so charming. But one thing Love points out as
a little strange for for Delphine's early life, considering her
social standing and her reputed beauty, is that if the
(19:39):
year of her birth as we know it is correct,
she didn't get married for the first time until age
twenty four, which still sounds pretty young, but it was
more common for women like her to get married by
about sixteen or seventeen years old. Love also uncovered some
some different information about those two previous husbands she did,
(20:00):
as you remember, have two previous marriages prior to Dr.
La Louri. One was to the Spanish don Ramon Lopez Angulo,
who became an intendant of Louisiana. The second was to
a Frenchman, Jean Pierre Polon Blanc, who was a bit
of a shady character. He was involved in New Orleans politics,
(20:22):
but also mixed up in slave trading, mixed up in piracy.
This reminded me a little bit of our our last
episode on Jim Booie. Yeah. I think he also had
some Jean Lafitte connections there. And this is where we
find the first biggest discrepancy in Delphine's life story. As
you mentioned, it said that her first two husbands died
under mysterious circumstances, which sort of suggests that she had
(20:45):
something to do with their death. Strongly suggested, strongly suggests
that and adds to the myth that has grown up
around her and makes her into a scarier character, I guess.
But according to Love's book and the Times Pick article
that we mentioned earlier, it seems that historians generally believe
that Lopez died of heart failure, either in Havana, Cuba,
(21:06):
or en route to Louisiana from Spain. And Love points
out that it makes sense that Blanc's death was undocumented
because of the as you mentioned, the shadiness of his lifestyle.
Kind of a pirate, right, he just disappeared. But there's
really no proof that Delphine had anything to do with it,
or that she would have even had motive to do so.
I mean, sure she stood to gain some wealth from
(21:28):
her husband's deaths, but as Love points out, she was
already very wealthy. Another discrepancy here is the number of
children Delphine had from these previous marriages. The legend usually
has her with two daughters from one of these previous marriages.
In reality, she had a daughter with Lopez and four
kids with Blanc rather than just the two daughters. So
(21:50):
catching up though with this third marriage, Delphine married Louis
Nicola La Laurie on January and he had He was
a pretty recent arrival to New Orleans from France. He
had only gotten there about three years before that. Love's
book describes him as a pretty mediocre medical student who
ended up graduating from dental school and immigrating immediately after that.
(22:14):
When he arrived in New Orleans, so he he tried
to establish a medical practice for himself and advertised himself
as someone who could cure a specific deformity, in this
case hunches. So this might be where the whole storyline
of him doing medical experiments came from. If he was
really advertising himself as this experimental doctor. Delphine and Louis
(22:37):
had one son together, who was named Jean Louis, and
they had him soon after they were married. In eighteen
thirty two. They bought that mansion at eleven forty Royal Street,
and they started throwing those lavish parties that we talked about,
and Louis probably worked from home, although it didn't seem
as though his practice exactly flourished. They found, I think
Love found receipts that mentioned him cre eating a potion
(23:00):
or two for this person or that person, but nothing
that really proved a consistent medical practice. So catching up though,
with the root of this story, what really happened in
that house to those slaves, And according to Love and Shannon,
terrible crimes did occur in the house, but they weren't
quite as maccab as legend might suggest. There were rumors
(23:23):
of slave abuse circulating about the couple in eighteen thirty two,
but there were also some facts that seemed to contradict
certain aspects of the rumors, or at least seem a
little bit out of sync with the character of the
legendary mad Madame. For one thing, in eighteen thirty two,
the La Lois apparently petition the court to free one
(23:44):
of their slaves. The slave was ultimately freed in eighteen
thirty three, which was a few months before they were
run out of town for their treatment of slaves, and
according to Love, this was the second time Delphine had
petition to free a slave. She had done the same
thing back in eighteen nine teen, so it seemed a
little unusual for somebody who hated slaves, who tortured and
(24:05):
mutilated them to do this. Delphine also loaned money to
a free woman of color named Sarah Lee in eighteen
thirty three. Later she sued her for the repayment of
that loan. But still, the fact that she gave this
woman alone in the first place again doesn't really fit
with that reputation of pure cruelty. I mean, we don't
(24:25):
know the circumstances, but it just seems a little off.
One thing from the legend that couldn't be confirmed by Love,
which makes the build up to the fire a teeny
bit less dramatic is the story about the little girl
who fell or jumped, perhaps from the roof of the house.
Love says that there's no documentation of this nothing to
confirm that complaints were actually filed against Delphine afterward, and
(24:50):
nothing that shows that a trial actually took place or
that any legal action was taken against the Lalaies. There
also wasn't any mention of the incident in any of
the newspaper articles after the fire, which is strange because
it's not like these newspapers were pulling any punches when
it came to coverage of Delphine and her mistreatment of slaves.
You think that they would jump all over another detail
(25:11):
like that. Also, when authorities dug up and searched the courtyard,
no human bodies were found there. Okay, though there are
some legal documents hanging around that do suggest some new
things about the lot Lores. Though. One are some documents
that show Delphine sued Louis for legal separation, saying that
(25:31):
he beat her. The beating was supposedly the same day
they petitioned to free the slave. Not sure what the
connection there would have been. Maybe they fought about the
slave about freeing him, who know. Ultimately, Delphine did not
go forward with the domestic abuse case. Another very true thing,
and one that's very important to the legend, is that
(25:54):
a fire did break out at the home on April tenth,
four and slaves were found locked away in the upper
galleries of the mansion. But then more gruesome descriptions of
how the slaves looked when they were found, you know,
covered in honey bone, set like a crab. There aren't
really any official records of this, and Love suggests that
(26:14):
these descriptions, for the most part, didn't appear until Delavine's
book that we mentioned that came out in nineteen so
a long stretch of time there before these very freak
show sort of details appear, right, So the conclusion that
we can draw here is that the details were introduced
into the record later. An official statement by a judge
(26:37):
in eighteen thirty four suggests that only seven slaves were
rescued from the fire. They were chained, they were beaten, starved,
and we're going to be left to die in a
fire after all. So all of this is horrible enough,
but there's nothing to suggest in the record. That there's
nothing in the record I should say to suggest that, uh,
these the more atrocious medical experiments that are mentioned in
(26:57):
the legend actually took place. Love of It admits that
police records in New Orleans don't go back that far,
so there is that, But she points out that newspaper
illustrations probably would have attempted to depict these atrocities. They
probably would have tried to draw a picture of the
crab woman had there actually been one, pretty easy to imagine.
So it's clear that something terrible did happen, maybe as
(27:20):
a result of Delphine's direct actions, but she probably at
least knew what was going on, even if she wasn't
super directly involved. The fact that Louis had been accused
of violence before also indicates that he might have played
a pretty prominent role, maybe a more prominent role than
he does in the legend, even though Delphine gets most
(27:41):
of the credit. So as a legend goes, nobody has
any idea what happened to the Lollries after that fire.
But Love's research shows us that actually it's pretty clear
what happened to them. Delphine and Louis went to France
and lived there for several years. There are a bunch
of family letters at the archive of the Missouri Historical
Society that helped to prove this. Delphine and her family
(28:05):
members weren't shy about correspondence, and she wasn't exactly trying
to lay low while she was over there. According to Love,
she she really didn't have to because she couldn't be
punished over there for her New Orleans crimes. Yeah, and
she kept a hand in New Orleans too, for sure.
She gave a relative power of attorney over her Louisiana
property so that she didn't lose everything. She corresponded with
(28:26):
him regularly. She also corresponded with her children, even though
some of them did live with her for a while
in France, some of them were back in Louisiana. Initially,
she and Louis lived together for a little while at
his family's estate back in France, but they separated at
some point, and louis last recorded correspondence is from Cuba
(28:46):
in eighteen forty two. As for Delphine, she did not
get killed in France by a wild boar. According to Love,
she did return to New Orleans in eighteen forty two,
not dead, settled in the Faubourg Marnie, and probably live
there until her death sometime between eighteen fifty five and
eighteen fifty eight. Yeah, and we should point out that
(29:08):
the Marianie is very it's like right next to the
French Quarter, so she was probably yeah. Letters show that
she was set on returning when she was in France,
though relatives tried to discourage her from doing so. There
was there's a letter in Love's book from one of
her sons to another relative saying, I I don't think
she should come, but she wants to please try to
(29:29):
discourage her from doing this. I mean, they realized after
what had happened, what it would mean for her to
come back, for her and the rest of the family,
but she almost didn't realize or didn't care. Receipts show
that she was having the home in Marnie renovated in
the early eighteen forties and pain bills on it, so
there's some evidence there to support this. Love also cites
(29:50):
a documented story that tells of someone called n. L.
Lallerie and two of her daughters living in New Orleans
until the mid to late eighteen fifties. Also, certain aspects
of Delphine's estate weren't settled until eighteen fifty eight, and well,
I guess it's possible that it really took that long
to settle her estate. It's maybe unlikely. Okay, So what
(30:12):
about the plaque, the plaque that was discovered in Well,
though Love still thinks it's possible that she's buried in
Cemetery number one St. Louis Cemetery number one or number two,
she thinks that the plaque is probably a hoax because
of this other evidence that she's found. Okay, so something
that tied into the legend more than what had happened
(30:33):
in real life. Alright. As for the house we did
mention in the beginning, this is considered one of the
most haunted houses in New Orleans. It's changed hands many
times over the year, and it's been used for all
sorts of things a residence, a private residence, apartments, a school,
a home for wayward boys, businesses ranging from a bar
(30:54):
to a furniture store. But there is a curse associated
with it. Supposedly bad luck comes to anyone who owns
it in any business that's in it fail. The most
recent owner was Nicolas Cage, the Actor, until he lost
it due to delinquent taxes, so seemingly confirming this curse.
(31:15):
As we mentioned, tales of haunting started almost immediately after
the fire. In the eighteen hundreds, police and firemen who
secured the building after the fire heard strange noises, but
after the search they couldn't find anything. That's supposedly when
those haunted rumors began. We told you about that when
we were recounting the legend. So some weird stuff that's
happened there over the years. In the eighteen seventies, the
(31:37):
home becomes a gambling house and people report seeing strange
lights and shadows and different apartments. In the nineteen twenties,
it becomes a tenement home and many of the residents
their report ghost sightings. One tenant saw a man walking
carrying his head on his arm, another saw a black
(31:58):
man wrapped in chain, and still another a young mother
who lived there she saw basically the ghost of a
wealthy white woman bending over her sleeping baby. In some stories,
some sources where you see this recounted the ghost is
actually trying to suffocate the baby, so this is supposed
to be healthy. And then the most recent one, in
(32:21):
the nineteen fifties, the the home became a furniture store
and the owner was suspecting vandalism because every morning he
found that his merchandise had been ruined. It was covered
in some strange, stinky, unidentifiable liquid. So one night he
decides to camp out with a shotgun see who the
perpetrator is, who is sneaking into his store and and
(32:43):
ruining everything, And all night he waits and he doesn't
see anybody. But in the morning his furniture is still ruined,
just like always, and soon after that he closes the
store for good. So all kinds of things ranging from
ghost sighting to just playing bad lots and to be
associated with this home. Just to bring it full circle
(33:05):
from those first suspicions of haunting, that story about bodies
being found under the floorboards during a renovation in the seventies,
Love doubts the story is at all true. She couldn't
find any documentation of it, and points out that had
a bunch of remains of this nature been found in
such a way, it probably would have been big news
(33:26):
at that time, But nobody seems to have covered it
at all. And I mean especially because this is such
a huge story still. I mean you might think, at first, oh, well,
it happened a long long time ago. It's just kind
of an archaeological footnote or something. But because this is
this huge tourist legends sort of thing in New Orleans.
It would get some craft right, But the haunted house
(33:50):
isn't the only aspect of the story that's creepy. This
legend has kind of grown and kind of infected other arts,
other areas. Put it in other words, there is a
haunted painting associated with this legend. It was painted by
New Orleans artist Ricardo Postiano, originally in for a man
(34:11):
who used to live in an apartment in the Lollery House.
He wanted it as a connection to the building's past.
And it's a painting of Delphine that's similar to a
portrait of her that ran in the times of Quan four.
And this painting is the image that comes up a
lot of her. If you google Delphine Lollerie, this is
what you'll see. So the owner seemed to be into
(34:34):
the homes haunted past. Obviously he wanted this paint painting
to commemorate it. I mean, to even live there knowing
that it was a haunted house, I mean, I would
never be able to do it. Props to him, But
so you would think that this wouldn't really scare him,
but the painting eventually really did. It would apparently rock
on the wall during seances, so he would have I mean,
(34:57):
he's into this kind of Yeah. Well, I think he
started having to anounces and maybe he had them before,
but I think he had them specifically because it was painting,
because he thought it was a little fishy. Something weird
is going on with this. So during these seances, it
would rock on the wall sometimes fall down. He said,
objects in his apartment would have been moved around by
some unseen for so he's sufficiently creeped out, and he
(35:20):
gives a painting to another tenant in the mansion. She
soon started having trouble with it too. She would hear footsteps,
weird sounds, and she said that the portraits eyes would
follow her across the room and I mean, this is
what really just like gives me the chills. She started
hearing it whispered to her, the eyes gets to me
(35:41):
more that it's the classic like cheesy horror movie or something,
but the paintings. I So she eventually needed to get
rid of it too. It was creeping her out too much,
so the second owner eventually returned it to the painter.
He seems to have been pretty pleased to gotten it back,
though he said quote, it's great publicity to paint a
(36:03):
haunted portrait. Um indeed, yeah, and I think this particular
artist has other haunted paintings, but this isn't the only one. Man. Yeah,
so well, we all know what'd say it, Debilina for Christmas. No, don't.
I couldn't take it. I would have to run away.
I would immediately give the painting to someone, Sarah, back
(36:24):
to the artists. It's a good business. Yeah right. Well,
I don't know if our listeners are creeped out, but
I really am so I think so. Today we have
two more postcards from world Travelers. We always love those.
These in particular have to do with people who visited
(36:45):
a museum after listening to one of our podcasts a
related museum. The first one is from Jessonin and she says,
Dear Sarah, Debilina, one of my favorite podcasts ever was
your two parter on Frit Jeff Nansen and from so.
When I had the chanced to visit the from Museum
in Oslo, I seized it. It's really cool seeing the
ship in person, and the museum shows items from Nonson
(37:07):
and Almondson's famous polar voyages on the ship. Plus you
can go on board. That's really cool. The Contiki Museum
and Vikingship Museum are both nearby. To round up an
awesome ship themed day. That does sound like a pretty
cool day. I want to go now. Sometimes I will
talk about these museums or places to visit on the show,
(37:27):
but it's when I year back from you guys that
I actually want to go visit this place. Yeah. Well,
the thing that's awesome about that is just actually being
able to go on the ship. I mean, you think
about museums and you're usually not allowed to touch anything,
or if you are, it's very limited. But to be
able to go on board when you're thinking and learning
about these voyages is pretty cool, very cool. Thanks for
writing in so Our other postcard is from listener Tasha.
(37:50):
She sent a beautiful portrait of Empress Specy and wrote
to a High sar In de Luna and guests, who
I bought this postcard from the CC museum you mentioned
in your podcast on the Empress of Austria. I was
on the train from Munich to Vienna, having just visited
one of the reminders of a low second. When I
(38:11):
heard about the museum, I had to go it was
really interesting and involved a tour of the Royal Apartment.
Thanks for bringing history to life all the best. So
another one where you really get to kind of see
the the inside story tour tour CC's apartments. That sounds
pretty cool. So thank you guys so much for for
(38:32):
sending us postcards, probably making us add to the list
of places we want to go in the loan. It's
a long list. It is a long list, but it's
always good to have that keep growing. And if you
want to share any of your travels with us or
help us come up with ideas for our own future travels,
or if you've been to New Orleans and done the
(38:52):
Haunted House tour that includes information about the Lolla Reeves
and you have a vignette that we didn't mention that
you want to share, or maybe you have some other
haunted house strategies you'd like to share with Sarah since
apparently she's very unprepared and don't have any of her own. Uh,
please write to us. We're at History Podcast at Discovery
dot com or you can look us up on Twitter
(39:13):
at this in History, and we're also on Facebook and
we do have an article on Haunted houses don't we
we do. I think it's called top ten Real Life
Haunted Houses. I wouldn't be surprised if this one's on there.
We also have How Haunted Houses Work. I think. Okay, well,
so that's what I need to start with, yes, because
I don't know if it has strategies in there. Maybe
I should add a page or something. All I know
(39:34):
now is not to go with Deblina. So you can
check that out. It's called How Haunted Houses Work, and
you can find it by searching on our homepage at www.
Dot how stuff works dot com For more on this
and thousands of other topics. Is that how stuff works
dot Com to do
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from house
stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast
Actively in Chalk Reporting and I'm Scared Out and Sarah
and Kristen recently talked about the history of Halloween and
one of the most well known traditions associated with it,
(00:22):
that's trick or treating, But of course there are some
other traditions that also go hand in hand with Halloween. Legends,
ghost stories, and haunted houses were the ones that I
had in mind in particular, so essentially the tradition of
scaring the poop out of ourselves. And I'm the biggest
whimp personally when it comes to scary stuff. I don't
(00:42):
know why, but we all seem to kind of enjoy that,
even I do once in a while, even though I'm
a really big whimp about scary stuff. I mean, I
can't even watch those commercials for scary movies. I can't
even know that they're on. If I know that they're on,
then I'll scar leave the room. If you if you
have a scary movie, I mean, if you hear the
noise or something, I mean, your imagination just starts working,
(01:03):
I guess, and and scares you to death. But even
I have enjoyed a good haunted house or ghost story
or two. How about you. It's been a while since
I've been to one of those real haunted houses, but yeah,
they're fun. You know, everybody has traumatic memories of being
chased by the guy with the chainsaw or something. Would
you have a strategy, a strategy for for escape? Yeah,
(01:26):
you have to have a strategy when you go into
these things, Sarah, move past those people quickly, they'll move
on to the people in line behind you. The run
straight through is definitely a strategy. There's also the hold
on tight whoever's around you, like trying to get in
the middle. There's also the throw your friend at the
scary thing and then run a sess. That's one of
my favorites. Yeah, okay, note to self, don't go to
(01:47):
a haunted house with DUBLINO. Then. But these haunted houses
that are set up to entertain people around Halloween, commercial
haunted houses, I guess are sometimes based around spooky legends
or stories, usually fake ones. But the the house we're
going to talk about in today's podcast, which is often
called the most haunted house in America, has a story
behind it with characters and at least some events that
(02:09):
were very, very real. And the woman at the center
of this tale is named Murray Delphine la Louri, and
often she's simply known as Madame La Louri or even
mad Madame La Louri, which is a little hard to
say quickly. But if you've ever taken one of those
Haunted New Orleans tours, which I have not. I've been
to New Orleans a few times, but I haven't haven't
(02:31):
gotten to go on one of these yet, you've probably
heard her name. I mean, we've heard, We've heard so
many suggestions from listeners who have taken tours like that,
and that's really saying something if you think about it,
because it is, after all, New Orleans we're talking about.
There are so many famous people associated with that city, right,
and it's all been considered one of the most haunted
(02:52):
cities in America, if not the most haunted city in America.
But geography aside, it's tough to ignore a story like
Delphine la LOI use. It involves the distinct torture, cold
blooded murder, botched medical experiments, hauntings, and even a curse.
Like a lot of stories we tell, though it's tough
to tell fact from myth, and this one, the story
(03:13):
that's generally circulated today in two thousand twelve, isn't exactly
one verifiable, and many details have changed since the years
directly following the events which took place in the mid
eighteen hundreds or so, suggesting that the tale has been
exaggerated and embellished upon along the way. But we're not
going to start by debunking everything. I mean, what kind
(03:36):
of Halloween podcast would this be if we didn't try to,
at least at the beginning, speaking out a little bit.
So to that end, let us begin with a legend,
that of mad Madame Lo Louri. It begins, for our purposes,
at least in the early eighteen thirties, in New Orleans,
a prominent and beautiful Creole woman named Marie Delphine la
(03:59):
Lorrie and her husband, a French physician named Louis Lallery,
by a home at eleven forty Royal Street in the
French Quarter and move in with her daughters from a
previous marriage. Now a couple of things to know about Delphine.
She had grown up in a wealthy and influential Creole family,
and Louis had recently immigrated to New Orleans after earning
his medical degree. Delphine had also actually been married twice before,
(04:23):
and her husbands were said to have died or disappeared
under unknown or mysterious circumstances. So this new couple her
her third marriage. They start decking out their home with
the finest art, the finest furniture. After all, they and
Delphine especially are really the toast of high society in town.
They entertained constantly. They throw these opulent parties at their
(04:46):
home several times a week, and all things being equal,
a couple like this might seem really irreproachable, uh, kind
of an unstoppable social force. Everybody would want to attend
the fabulous parties. But around eighteen thirty two, some pretty
nasty rumors started circling about them. The slaves who work
(05:09):
in their household seem very thin, they seem malnourished, and
it said that they also seem afraid of Delphine, and
she's been seen speaking quite harshly to them. So people
start talking, what what exactly is going on in this
lovely home? Right? Well, speaking harshly to your slaves is
one thing in this time, but Some of the rumors
(05:30):
are even worse than that. A neighbor, for instance, claims
that the Latarees have slaves changed in their attic. Some
people also supposedly link the lo lorries to notorious voodoo
queen and former podcast subject Marie Lavaux, who would have
been a contemporary Marie or Marie too if I remember, Yeah, exactly,
(05:50):
it's pretty those two. But this is just the legend
part after all. So for the most part, though, people
do seem to find reasons to dismiss all these rumors,
probably because they wanted to. They wanted to socialize with
this couple, and Delphine was after also beautiful, so charming. Uh.
Some people found it hard to believe that she could
(06:10):
be so cruel, But there was also some contradictory pieces
of evidence that made everything seem okay on the surface.
For one thing, at parties, Delphine, when she would have
just a little bit of wine left over in her glass,
she would often be seen offering that and saying a
few kind words as well to a slave who was
standing near her, so giving the backsplash of her wine.
(06:34):
That was seen as a nice that way, but it
would have seemed nice to other attendees at her parties,
and I think the other the other point is a
little stronger than that too. It's that, with all these
rumors about her malnourished slaves, her black coachman always looked
very healthy. He looked sleek and well dressed. And surely
(06:55):
it seemed a woman who abused her slaves wouldn't have
a coachman who looked uh so so fit and proper.
The rumors were often dismissed as lies spread by Americans.
Just an aside here. This was not too too long
after the Louisiana purchase, and there were tensions between the
Anglo Americans who had arrived in the city since then
(07:16):
and the Creoles, who were native to the area. Americans
were gaining power in the public arena, but Creoles still
dominated in terms of social cloud. So here's a vignette
associated with this legend here, just to give you an
idea of people's suspicions and how they kind of played out.
An American lawyer in the neighborhood heard the rumors about
(07:37):
the lollaries and sent his Creole employee over to check
things out. He thought that the Creol employee would be
a little better received. Maybe this information would be better
taken from someone um just of the same background, And
so he sent this employee over to remind Delphine about
the local laws regarding proper treatment of slaves. Just another
little side note here for you. You couldn't just treat
(07:59):
your slave however you wanted to. At this time in
New Orleans there was something in effect in Louisiana called
the Code Noir. So this meant that you couldn't just torture, mutilate,
or sexually abuse your slaves. You couldn't do maybe like
the worst things to them. I think people sort of
imagine slavery. If you're anything goes you could kill your
(08:19):
slaves if you wanted to, and I guess in some
places you probably could. But here there there was a
rule of some sort. But at least officially, you couldn't
do these terrible things. Yes, And according to Victoria Love
and Laura Lei Shannon's book Mad Madam Lallery, New Orleans
Most Famous Murderous revealed, you could dole out quote ordinary
punishments like confinement, chaining, and whipping, but that was about it.
(08:44):
Already sounds pretty terrible with just those, but apparently there
were limits there. Delphine apparently charmed the pants off of
this lawyer's assistant who came by to talk to her,
and he returned singing her praises and expressing an utter
disbelief that she could even be capable of abusing anyone.
So it's almost like a H. A. Tolmes thing going
on here. I know, we talked a lot during the H.
(09:06):
Holmes podcast about how he got away with or won
a lot of people over because he was so charming
through off their suspicions exactly. So yeah, the the creole
man who's sent to investigator, he thinks, no way this
lady could be breaking the the code noir. So then
in eight thirty three, though, there was an incident that
(09:27):
cast the beautiful Delphine in a very different light, So
nobody's personal testimonies are going to cut it anymore. Delphine
was seen chasing a young slave girl around the house
with a bull whip, and apparently the girl had hit
a tangle while combing Delphine's hair and the woman just
became completely unhinged at this. The little girl ended up
(09:49):
on the rooftop during the chase and was finally seen
plummeting into the courtyard, landing with this bone chilling thud,
and the fall which killed her seemed to get no
reaction out of Delphine, which which was the added creepy
touch on this story. Delphine was said to have looked
(10:10):
down at her coldly and then just went back inside.
So some of the other servants after this supposedly quietly
came out, collected the body, buried the little girl later
that night next to the well in the courtyard. But
neighbors had witnessed this too, and so the authorities were
called in and Delphine was punished for for breaking this code.
(10:34):
She was find three hundred dollars, several slaves were taken
away from her. It seemed like a turning point in
this in this story of or the rumor surrounding this woman.
But remember who she is. Delphine is well connected, her
family is very well connected, and she got a relative
to secretly by the slaves back for her. Not that
(10:55):
it remained much of a secret at all. I mean,
she continued to entertain regularly, so people knew that she
kept slaves in the house, and rumors of abuse continued
to kind of whirl around her. Then on April tenth,
eighteen thirty four, everything started to come to a head.
The Lollery mansion cut on fire and the flames started
(11:15):
to spread really quickly throughout the main house, so friends
and neighbors they quickly showed up to help. At this time,
Louis and Delphine seemed especially worried about their valuables. Antiques
are flying, furniture, and they try to enlist all these
people who have come out to help them to get
the stuff out of the house. Yeah, but where. It
also quickly spread among the helpers that the fire was
(11:39):
started by this old woman who was chained to the
stove in the kitchen. And in some sources that you'll
see for this story, the old woman is actually said
to be the grandmother of the little girl who died
in the fall. Her motive in uh starting this fire
perhaps would have been revenge, of course, or maybe desperation.
But people started to ask, okay, well, where are the
(12:00):
other slaves in the household, because we know that they
are here. Delphine supposedly said things like, never mind them,
save the valuables. Louis told everybody just essentially mind your
own business, save our stuff. In our house please. Finally, though,
the fireman who had shown up on the scene, UH,
here a rumor that there are slaves in the attic,
(12:21):
and so they rush up there, only to find the
doors sealed off with these giant padlocks, And because Delphine
and Louis aren't offering up the key, they have to
break down the doors. And when they open those doors,
they're hit by an odor that causes them to gag
and wretch immediately, but it gets much worse when they
can actually see what that stench is coming from. There
(12:44):
are several slaves chained in there, some close to death,
others probably wishing that they were because they've been mutilated
as if part of some sadistic experiment. Some examples of
what the rescuers saw UH laves covered in honey, with
ants and other bugs crawling all over them. A woman
(13:05):
with her skin peeled and a spiral around her body
so that she looked kind of caterpillar like almost Also
a man and a woman who had been part of
some crude sex change operation. Basically their genitals had been
removed and swapped. They also saw a man with a
hole drilled in his head, and a woman whose bones
(13:25):
had been broken and reset at all these odd angles,
so that she was forced to move like a crab.
And she was so frightened when the fireman did burst
into the room that she stuttled into a corner and
just proceeded to shriek every time somebody tried to get
near her. So aside from these horrors, these living horrors
in the room, there were also buckets of random body
(13:48):
parts everywhere, and of course blood all over the place,
all over the floors, this horrible stench. So the slaves
were removed from the premises and taken to a nearby
slave whole holding area to to try to see if
they if they could receive treatment and survive. Most of
them did not. Meanwhile, though the fire had been brought
(14:09):
under control of the some degree. In about six pm,
Delphine's coachman brought the carriage up to the home side door.
It was time for her regular evening ride, you know,
just pretending nothing out of the ordinary had happened that day.
But by this time, of course, the crowd that had
gathered to watch help out with the fire has heard
about what's in the attic, and they've become an angry mob.
(14:33):
Once they realize what happened to the slaves, and Delphine
actually has the goal at this point to wave at
them as she hops into her carriage for her evening ride.
As that carriage drives off, they start to chase her.
They don't want to let her get away, so the
mob follows her all the way to buy a St. John,
but they weren't fast enough to catch her. Delphine hops
(14:55):
on a boat that takes her across Lake poncha train,
and according to legend, she was never seen in the
area again. So rumor how that that after this carriage
flight out of town, Delphine either went to Mobile, Alabama
or New York City, and from there went on to France,
where she lived out the rest of her days on
the run. Some say she was even killed by a
(15:17):
boar while hunting in France in eighteen forty two. There
are others, though, who think that she never left Louisiana
at all, and then other people still who think that
she did return, although after her death her body was
secretly returned secretly buried in St. Louis Cemetery Number one.
Uh So, lots of lots of ideas about what happened
(15:38):
to you yes, According to a nineteen forty one article
in the Times Pecune, a plaque was found there in St.
Louis Cemetery number one four or five years before this
particular article is written, so I guess the mid nineteen
thirties or so, by a man who used to work
as a sexton for the cemetery. The plaque had Delphine's
name and that in eighteen forty two death date on it,
(15:59):
though it wasn't attached to a tomb, so it's not
like anyone could exhume a body and make sure that
it was her or anything like that. But people did
assume that the theory was correct, that her body had
been sent back after she was killed. So one last
element to to the story you're likely to hear in
New Orleans too, and that's of course haunting stories of
hauntings at her former home on Royal Street began almost
(16:23):
immediately after this incident, and again according to legend, authorities
who tried to secure the property directly after the fire
reported hearing all these strange sounds, even people crying out
in some unknown language. But for almost two hundred years,
visitors and residents of the house have continued to hear
(16:45):
strange sounds, unearthly sounds, and even seen figures operations, including
that of a little girl, maybe the one that fell
off the roof, perhaps a handsome gentleman, perhaps uh Monsieur Louis,
and even a woman who was thought to be Madame
Lo Louri. In the nineteen seventies, when the home was
(17:06):
being renovated and the floorboards were torn up, human bones
were supposedly found underneath some of the floors. As the
story goes, this, at last, was the explanation for those
strange sounds that the authorities heard after the fire. Delphine
had apparently essentially buried slaves alive under her floors too,
(17:27):
and the strange dialect that was heard was supposed to
be maybe an African dialect of some sort. So that
is our story, spooky legend. Yes, that version of events,
maybe with some differing or additional details, is pretty much
what you'll hear on any tour of Haunted New Orleans,
and what you'll find in a lot of written accounts
(17:49):
of Delphine la Lorie, including one in Strange True Stories
of Louisiana by George Washington Cable. Though some of the
weirder mutilations of victims aren't in the secure count. He
really tried to stick to documented sources, I think, and
Ghostly Cries from Dixie by Pat fitz Hugh is another one.
Jean del Avine's Six Ghost Stories of Old New Orleans
(18:13):
is another online NOLA dot com has an account of
this legend and also includes some newspaper articles from the
time that corroborate some of the details included in that legend.
A very few, though, like historian Victoria Love, whose book
we mentioned earlier in the show. I've really tried to
separate fact from fiction in this story, and Love tried
(18:34):
to piece together the story using only official documents archive,
So of course we had to look at her work
and try to get to the bottom of what is
definitely true about this legends what we do so Delphine,
the main character in the story, from what we can tell,
she seems to be in many respects, you know, as
(18:55):
she is portrayed in the legend that she was born
into an elite family. That's certainly the case. She was
born in about seventeen seventy five into a prominent New
Orleans family. Her father was Louis de McCarty, and she
had relatives who were very influential and held high profile
positions in the Louisiana government. And since her family was
so well to do, she probably would have been taught
(19:16):
to read and write, but a lot of her education
probably had more to do with etiquette, entertaining running a household.
We've talked before about even the art of conversation, which
clearly would have been something that would contribute to her
being so charming. But one thing Love points out as
a little strange for for Delphine's early life, considering her
social standing and her reputed beauty, is that if the
(19:39):
year of her birth as we know it is correct,
she didn't get married for the first time until age
twenty four, which still sounds pretty young, but it was
more common for women like her to get married by
about sixteen or seventeen years old. Love also uncovered some
some different information about those two previous husbands she did,
(20:00):
as you remember, have two previous marriages prior to Dr.
La Louri. One was to the Spanish don Ramon Lopez Angulo,
who became an intendant of Louisiana. The second was to
a Frenchman, Jean Pierre Polon Blanc, who was a bit
of a shady character. He was involved in New Orleans politics,
(20:22):
but also mixed up in slave trading, mixed up in piracy.
This reminded me a little bit of our our last
episode on Jim Booie. Yeah. I think he also had
some Jean Lafitte connections there. And this is where we
find the first biggest discrepancy in Delphine's life story. As
you mentioned, it said that her first two husbands died
under mysterious circumstances, which sort of suggests that she had
(20:45):
something to do with their death. Strongly suggested, strongly suggests
that and adds to the myth that has grown up
around her and makes her into a scarier character, I guess.
But according to Love's book and the Times Pick article
that we mentioned earlier, it seems that historians generally believe
that Lopez died of heart failure, either in Havana, Cuba,
(21:06):
or en route to Louisiana from Spain. And Love points
out that it makes sense that Blanc's death was undocumented
because of the as you mentioned, the shadiness of his lifestyle.
Kind of a pirate, right, he just disappeared. But there's
really no proof that Delphine had anything to do with it,
or that she would have even had motive to do so.
I mean, sure she stood to gain some wealth from
(21:28):
her husband's deaths, but as Love points out, she was
already very wealthy. Another discrepancy here is the number of
children Delphine had from these previous marriages. The legend usually
has her with two daughters from one of these previous marriages.
In reality, she had a daughter with Lopez and four
kids with Blanc rather than just the two daughters. So
(21:50):
catching up though with this third marriage, Delphine married Louis
Nicola La Laurie on January and he had He was
a pretty recent arrival to New Orleans from France. He
had only gotten there about three years before that. Love's
book describes him as a pretty mediocre medical student who
ended up graduating from dental school and immigrating immediately after that.
(22:14):
When he arrived in New Orleans, so he he tried
to establish a medical practice for himself and advertised himself
as someone who could cure a specific deformity, in this
case hunches. So this might be where the whole storyline
of him doing medical experiments came from. If he was
really advertising himself as this experimental doctor. Delphine and Louis
(22:37):
had one son together, who was named Jean Louis, and
they had him soon after they were married. In eighteen
thirty two. They bought that mansion at eleven forty Royal Street,
and they started throwing those lavish parties that we talked about,
and Louis probably worked from home, although it didn't seem
as though his practice exactly flourished. They found, I think
Love found receipts that mentioned him cre eating a potion
(23:00):
or two for this person or that person, but nothing
that really proved a consistent medical practice. So catching up though,
with the root of this story, what really happened in
that house to those slaves, And according to Love and Shannon,
terrible crimes did occur in the house, but they weren't
quite as maccab as legend might suggest. There were rumors
(23:23):
of slave abuse circulating about the couple in eighteen thirty two,
but there were also some facts that seemed to contradict
certain aspects of the rumors, or at least seem a
little bit out of sync with the character of the
legendary mad Madame. For one thing, in eighteen thirty two,
the La Lois apparently petition the court to free one
(23:44):
of their slaves. The slave was ultimately freed in eighteen
thirty three, which was a few months before they were
run out of town for their treatment of slaves, and
according to Love, this was the second time Delphine had
petition to free a slave. She had done the same
thing back in eighteen nine teen, so it seemed a
little unusual for somebody who hated slaves, who tortured and
(24:05):
mutilated them to do this. Delphine also loaned money to
a free woman of color named Sarah Lee in eighteen
thirty three. Later she sued her for the repayment of
that loan. But still, the fact that she gave this
woman alone in the first place again doesn't really fit
with that reputation of pure cruelty. I mean, we don't
(24:25):
know the circumstances, but it just seems a little off.
One thing from the legend that couldn't be confirmed by Love,
which makes the build up to the fire a teeny
bit less dramatic is the story about the little girl
who fell or jumped, perhaps from the roof of the house.
Love says that there's no documentation of this nothing to
confirm that complaints were actually filed against Delphine afterward, and
(24:50):
nothing that shows that a trial actually took place or
that any legal action was taken against the Lalaies. There
also wasn't any mention of the incident in any of
the newspaper articles after the fire, which is strange because
it's not like these newspapers were pulling any punches when
it came to coverage of Delphine and her mistreatment of slaves.
You think that they would jump all over another detail
(25:11):
like that. Also, when authorities dug up and searched the courtyard,
no human bodies were found there. Okay, though there are
some legal documents hanging around that do suggest some new
things about the lot Lores. Though. One are some documents
that show Delphine sued Louis for legal separation, saying that
(25:31):
he beat her. The beating was supposedly the same day
they petitioned to free the slave. Not sure what the
connection there would have been. Maybe they fought about the
slave about freeing him, who know. Ultimately, Delphine did not
go forward with the domestic abuse case. Another very true thing,
and one that's very important to the legend, is that
(25:54):
a fire did break out at the home on April tenth,
four and slaves were found locked away in the upper
galleries of the mansion. But then more gruesome descriptions of
how the slaves looked when they were found, you know,
covered in honey bone, set like a crab. There aren't
really any official records of this, and Love suggests that
(26:14):
these descriptions, for the most part, didn't appear until Delavine's
book that we mentioned that came out in nineteen so
a long stretch of time there before these very freak
show sort of details appear, right, So the conclusion that
we can draw here is that the details were introduced
into the record later. An official statement by a judge
(26:37):
in eighteen thirty four suggests that only seven slaves were
rescued from the fire. They were chained, they were beaten, starved,
and we're going to be left to die in a
fire after all. So all of this is horrible enough,
but there's nothing to suggest in the record. That there's
nothing in the record I should say to suggest that, uh,
these the more atrocious medical experiments that are mentioned in
(26:57):
the legend actually took place. Love of It admits that
police records in New Orleans don't go back that far,
so there is that, But she points out that newspaper
illustrations probably would have attempted to depict these atrocities. They
probably would have tried to draw a picture of the
crab woman had there actually been one, pretty easy to imagine.
So it's clear that something terrible did happen, maybe as
(27:20):
a result of Delphine's direct actions, but she probably at
least knew what was going on, even if she wasn't
super directly involved. The fact that Louis had been accused
of violence before also indicates that he might have played
a pretty prominent role, maybe a more prominent role than
he does in the legend, even though Delphine gets most
(27:41):
of the credit. So as a legend goes, nobody has
any idea what happened to the Lollries after that fire.
But Love's research shows us that actually it's pretty clear
what happened to them. Delphine and Louis went to France
and lived there for several years. There are a bunch
of family letters at the archive of the Missouri Historical
Society that helped to prove this. Delphine and her family
(28:05):
members weren't shy about correspondence, and she wasn't exactly trying
to lay low while she was over there. According to Love,
she she really didn't have to because she couldn't be
punished over there for her New Orleans crimes. Yeah, and
she kept a hand in New Orleans too, for sure.
She gave a relative power of attorney over her Louisiana
property so that she didn't lose everything. She corresponded with
(28:26):
him regularly. She also corresponded with her children, even though
some of them did live with her for a while
in France, some of them were back in Louisiana. Initially,
she and Louis lived together for a little while at
his family's estate back in France, but they separated at
some point, and louis last recorded correspondence is from Cuba
(28:46):
in eighteen forty two. As for Delphine, she did not
get killed in France by a wild boar. According to Love,
she did return to New Orleans in eighteen forty two,
not dead, settled in the Faubourg Marnie, and probably live
there until her death sometime between eighteen fifty five and
eighteen fifty eight. Yeah, and we should point out that
(29:08):
the Marianie is very it's like right next to the
French Quarter, so she was probably yeah. Letters show that
she was set on returning when she was in France,
though relatives tried to discourage her from doing so. There
was there's a letter in Love's book from one of
her sons to another relative saying, I I don't think
she should come, but she wants to please try to
(29:29):
discourage her from doing this. I mean, they realized after
what had happened, what it would mean for her to
come back, for her and the rest of the family,
but she almost didn't realize or didn't care. Receipts show
that she was having the home in Marnie renovated in
the early eighteen forties and pain bills on it, so
there's some evidence there to support this. Love also cites
(29:50):
a documented story that tells of someone called n. L.
Lallerie and two of her daughters living in New Orleans
until the mid to late eighteen fifties. Also, certain aspects
of Delphine's estate weren't settled until eighteen fifty eight, and well,
I guess it's possible that it really took that long
to settle her estate. It's maybe unlikely. Okay, So what
(30:12):
about the plaque, the plaque that was discovered in Well,
though Love still thinks it's possible that she's buried in
Cemetery number one St. Louis Cemetery number one or number two,
she thinks that the plaque is probably a hoax because
of this other evidence that she's found. Okay, so something
that tied into the legend more than what had happened
(30:33):
in real life. Alright. As for the house we did
mention in the beginning, this is considered one of the
most haunted houses in New Orleans. It's changed hands many
times over the year, and it's been used for all
sorts of things a residence, a private residence, apartments, a school,
a home for wayward boys, businesses ranging from a bar
(30:54):
to a furniture store. But there is a curse associated
with it. Supposedly bad luck comes to anyone who owns
it in any business that's in it fail. The most
recent owner was Nicolas Cage, the Actor, until he lost
it due to delinquent taxes, so seemingly confirming this curse.
(31:15):
As we mentioned, tales of haunting started almost immediately after
the fire. In the eighteen hundreds, police and firemen who
secured the building after the fire heard strange noises, but
after the search they couldn't find anything. That's supposedly when
those haunted rumors began. We told you about that when
we were recounting the legend. So some weird stuff that's
happened there over the years. In the eighteen seventies, the
(31:37):
home becomes a gambling house and people report seeing strange
lights and shadows and different apartments. In the nineteen twenties,
it becomes a tenement home and many of the residents
their report ghost sightings. One tenant saw a man walking
carrying his head on his arm, another saw a black
(31:58):
man wrapped in chain, and still another a young mother
who lived there she saw basically the ghost of a
wealthy white woman bending over her sleeping baby. In some stories,
some sources where you see this recounted the ghost is
actually trying to suffocate the baby, so this is supposed
to be healthy. And then the most recent one, in
(32:21):
the nineteen fifties, the the home became a furniture store
and the owner was suspecting vandalism because every morning he
found that his merchandise had been ruined. It was covered
in some strange, stinky, unidentifiable liquid. So one night he
decides to camp out with a shotgun see who the
perpetrator is, who is sneaking into his store and and
(32:43):
ruining everything, And all night he waits and he doesn't
see anybody. But in the morning his furniture is still ruined,
just like always, and soon after that he closes the
store for good. So all kinds of things ranging from
ghost sighting to just playing bad lots and to be
associated with this home. Just to bring it full circle
(33:05):
from those first suspicions of haunting, that story about bodies
being found under the floorboards during a renovation in the seventies,
Love doubts the story is at all true. She couldn't
find any documentation of it, and points out that had
a bunch of remains of this nature been found in
such a way, it probably would have been big news
(33:26):
at that time, But nobody seems to have covered it
at all. And I mean especially because this is such
a huge story still. I mean you might think, at first, oh, well,
it happened a long long time ago. It's just kind
of an archaeological footnote or something. But because this is
this huge tourist legends sort of thing in New Orleans.
It would get some craft right, But the haunted house
(33:50):
isn't the only aspect of the story that's creepy. This
legend has kind of grown and kind of infected other arts,
other areas. Put it in other words, there is a
haunted painting associated with this legend. It was painted by
New Orleans artist Ricardo Postiano, originally in for a man
(34:11):
who used to live in an apartment in the Lollery House.
He wanted it as a connection to the building's past.
And it's a painting of Delphine that's similar to a
portrait of her that ran in the times of Quan four.
And this painting is the image that comes up a
lot of her. If you google Delphine Lollerie, this is
what you'll see. So the owner seemed to be into
(34:34):
the homes haunted past. Obviously he wanted this paint painting
to commemorate it. I mean, to even live there knowing
that it was a haunted house, I mean, I would
never be able to do it. Props to him, But
so you would think that this wouldn't really scare him,
but the painting eventually really did. It would apparently rock
on the wall during seances, so he would have I mean,
(34:57):
he's into this kind of Yeah. Well, I think he
started having to anounces and maybe he had them before,
but I think he had them specifically because it was painting,
because he thought it was a little fishy. Something weird
is going on with this. So during these seances, it
would rock on the wall sometimes fall down. He said,
objects in his apartment would have been moved around by
some unseen for so he's sufficiently creeped out, and he
(35:20):
gives a painting to another tenant in the mansion. She
soon started having trouble with it too. She would hear footsteps,
weird sounds, and she said that the portraits eyes would
follow her across the room and I mean, this is
what really just like gives me the chills. She started
hearing it whispered to her, the eyes gets to me
(35:41):
more that it's the classic like cheesy horror movie or something,
but the paintings. I So she eventually needed to get
rid of it too. It was creeping her out too much,
so the second owner eventually returned it to the painter.
He seems to have been pretty pleased to gotten it back,
though he said quote, it's great publicity to paint a
(36:03):
haunted portrait. Um indeed, yeah, and I think this particular
artist has other haunted paintings, but this isn't the only one. Man. Yeah,
so well, we all know what'd say it, Debilina for Christmas. No, don't.
I couldn't take it. I would have to run away.
I would immediately give the painting to someone, Sarah, back
(36:24):
to the artists. It's a good business. Yeah right. Well,
I don't know if our listeners are creeped out, but
I really am so I think so. Today we have
two more postcards from world Travelers. We always love those.
These in particular have to do with people who visited
(36:45):
a museum after listening to one of our podcasts a
related museum. The first one is from Jessonin and she says,
Dear Sarah, Debilina, one of my favorite podcasts ever was
your two parter on Frit Jeff Nansen and from so.
When I had the chanced to visit the from Museum
in Oslo, I seized it. It's really cool seeing the
ship in person, and the museum shows items from Nonson
(37:07):
and Almondson's famous polar voyages on the ship. Plus you
can go on board. That's really cool. The Contiki Museum
and Vikingship Museum are both nearby. To round up an
awesome ship themed day. That does sound like a pretty
cool day. I want to go now. Sometimes I will
talk about these museums or places to visit on the show,
(37:27):
but it's when I year back from you guys that
I actually want to go visit this place. Yeah. Well,
the thing that's awesome about that is just actually being
able to go on the ship. I mean, you think
about museums and you're usually not allowed to touch anything,
or if you are, it's very limited. But to be
able to go on board when you're thinking and learning
about these voyages is pretty cool, very cool. Thanks for
writing in so Our other postcard is from listener Tasha.
(37:50):
She sent a beautiful portrait of Empress Specy and wrote
to a High sar In de Luna and guests, who
I bought this postcard from the CC museum you mentioned
in your podcast on the Empress of Austria. I was
on the train from Munich to Vienna, having just visited
one of the reminders of a low second. When I
(38:11):
heard about the museum, I had to go it was
really interesting and involved a tour of the Royal Apartment.
Thanks for bringing history to life all the best. So
another one where you really get to kind of see
the the inside story tour tour CC's apartments. That sounds
pretty cool. So thank you guys so much for for
(38:32):
sending us postcards, probably making us add to the list
of places we want to go in the loan. It's
a long list. It is a long list, but it's
always good to have that keep growing. And if you
want to share any of your travels with us or
help us come up with ideas for our own future travels,
or if you've been to New Orleans and done the
(38:52):
Haunted House tour that includes information about the Lolla Reeves
and you have a vignette that we didn't mention that
you want to share, or maybe you have some other
haunted house strategies you'd like to share with Sarah since
apparently she's very unprepared and don't have any of her own. Uh,
please write to us. We're at History Podcast at Discovery
dot com or you can look us up on Twitter
(39:13):
at this in History, and we're also on Facebook and
we do have an article on Haunted houses don't we
we do. I think it's called top ten Real Life
Haunted Houses. I wouldn't be surprised if this one's on there.
We also have How Haunted Houses Work. I think. Okay, well,
so that's what I need to start with, yes, because
I don't know if it has strategies in there. Maybe
I should add a page or something. All I know
(39:34):
now is not to go with Deblina. So you can
check that out. It's called How Haunted Houses Work, and
you can find it by searching on our homepage at www.
Dot how stuff works dot com For more on this
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