Story by
Jackie Messing
This is what I call the most unique real Voodoo,
museum and shop in the entire New Orleans
French quarter. At one time it was also the
home to Chicken Mans Voodoo shop also.
CHICKEN
MAN
Marie Laveau's
House of Voodoo shop is located on the reported
actual site that legendary Voodoo Queen Marie
Laveau II once called home during her lifetime
and adjacent to the St. Ann Street cottage
where Marie Laveau I actually died.
In house Psychic
Readers and shop employees say that the ghost
of Marie Laveau does haunt the actual building,
especially in the reading room. Laveaus' ghost
has been often known to sit in on a tarot
card or palm readings and add her two cents.
Recent visitors
to the shop have stated more often then not,
that they felt her icy dead fingers touch
them on the shoulders from beyond the grave,
as they entered the back room for a psychic
encounter. Others state they have seen her
ghost in the actual back room behind the beaded
curtain. always sitting there in her finery.
And beckoning them to enter,
Still another
of the most real recent most chilling frightening
haunting reports comes from a lone visitor.
She states, that one of the very Tarot Card
readers, "Reese" is none other than
Marie Laveau incarnate herself.
Psychic
Reese
"I
actually saw his face change into that of
a ghostly woman's face before her eyes!"
She further states, that she could hear
him speak in a foreign tongue similar to
French, (Creole French?).
The Haunted
building now houses a small but unique Voodoo
museum and a shop that caters to all manner
of clientele – from the simply curious
to the avid modern practitioner of the ancient
Voodoo and Voudon beliefs. touristy yes but
real none the less. It features an actual
working Voodoo altar.
"Marie Laveau
was what we would define as a Voodoo Mambo,
High Priestess, and the one and only real
last official voodoo Queen of New Orleans",
said Reese. "She left a strange legacy
on the Big Easy, he says, darkly laced with
intrigue and spells, ju-ju gris- gris and
voodoo dolls, Her great black magic voodoo
hex's, that still casts shadowy powers on
visitors to this famous haunted Crescent
City."
"Marie Laveau's
House of Voodoo on Bourbon Street, and nearby
Rev. Zombie's Voodoo Shop on St. Peter Street
for a wide variety of Voodoo supplies."
I also had a tarot card
reading on my visit from the great Reese.
He has over 35 yrs experience as a famous
psychic consultant. Many have traveled the
world just to seek him out. He has read for
many locals and many a famous persona and
movie star, by the way he was wonderful!!!!
Marie Laveaus' House of
Voodoo is a really small shop, but jam to
the rafters and filed with all types of real
voodoo merchandise. It's not just for the
serious practitioner but also geared the novice
explorer and curious.
African, Brazilian, and
New Orleans masks hand carved statues and
fetishes, Voodoo Saints and Catholic Saint
statues, Jewelry and Catholic rosaries, T-
shirts, many blends of incense and hand made
New Orleans voodoo dolls and occult and Hoodoo
voodoo books.
Stories have
it Marie Laveaus' rests in various cemeteries
in the city. Legend also tells she frequently
visits the cemeteries, as well as the French
Quarter, and her old voodoo residences in
which her ghost still haunts.
If you're planning
your visit to New Orleans, or a local looking
for something different to do, here are the
Haunted attractions in and around New Orleans!
New Orleans
handmade Voodoo dolls and gris-gris bags.
These items make great souvenirs for the right
friends, and it's a fun store to visit and
say you've been there done that.
Hours of Operation
Sunday-Thursday: 10am-11: 30pm
Friday, Saturday: 10am-1: 30am
MARIE
LAVEAUS' GHOST
According
to the author of Haunted City (Dickinson
1997, 131): "Tour guides tell of a
Depression-era vagrant who fell asleep atop
a tomb in the cemetery and was awakened
to the sound of drums and chanting. Stumbling
upon the tomb of Marie Laveau, he encountered
the ghosts of dancing, naked men and women,
led by a tall woman wrapped in the coils
of a huge snake."
The Encyclopedia of Ghosts and Spirits asserts:
"One popular legend holds that Marie
I never died, but changed herself into a
huge black crow which still flies over the
cemetery." Indeed, "Both Maries
are said to haunt New Orleans in various
human and animal forms" (Guiley 2000).
" In
addition to her tomb, Marie also allegedly
haunts other sites. For example, according
to Hauck (1996), "Laveau has also been
seen walking down St. Ann Street wearing
a long white dress." Providing a touch
of what literary critics call verisimilitude
(an appearance of truth), Hauck adds, "The
phantom is that of the original Marie, because
it wears her unique tignon, a seven-knotted
handkerchief, around her neck." But
Hauck has erred: Marie in fact "wore
a large white headwrap called a tignon tied
around her head," says her biographer
Gandolfo (1992, 19), which had "seven
points folded into it to represent a crown."
Gandolfo, who is also an artist, has painted
a striking portrait of Marie Laveau wearing
her tignon, which is displayed in the gift
shop of his New Orleans Historic Voodoo
Museum (and reproduced in Gandolfo 1992,
1).
Haunted
Places: The National Directory, Hauck (1996)
writes of Marie: "Her ghost and those
of her followers are said to practice wild
voodoo rituals in her old house. . . ."
But are said to by whom? His list of sources
for the entry on Marie Laveau includes Susy
Smith's Prominent American Ghosts (1967),
his earliest-dated citation. Smith merely
says of Marie, "Her home at 1020 St.
Ann Street was the scene of weird secret
rites involving various primitive groups,"
and she asks, "May not the wild dancing
and pagan practices still continue, invisible,
but frantic as ever?" Apparently this
purely rhetorical question about imaginary
ghosts has been transformed into an "are-said-to"-sourced
assertion about supposedly real ones.
In fact,
the house at 1020 St. Ann Street was never
even occupied by Marie Laveau; it only marks
the approximate site of the home she lived
in until her death (then numbered 152 Rue
St. Ann, as shown by her death certificate).
That cottage, which bore a red-tile roof
and was flanked by banana trees and an herb
garden, was demolished in 1903 (Gandolfo
1992, 14-15, 34).
One alleged
Laveau ghost sighting stands out. Tallant
(1946, 130-131) relates the story of an
African-American named Elmore Lee Banks,
who had an experience near St. Louis Cemetery
No. 1. As Banks recalled, one day in the
mid-1930s "an old woman" came
into the drugstore where he was a customer.
For some reason she frightened the proprietor,
who "ran like a fool into the back
of the store." Laughing, the woman
asked, "Don't you know me?" She
became angry when Banks replied, "No,
ma'am," and slapped him. Banks continued:
"Then she jump[ed] up in the air and
went whizzing out the door and over the
top of the telephone wires. She passed right
over the graveyard wall and disappeared.
Then I passed out cold." He awakened
to whiskey being poured down his throat
by the proprietor who told him, "That
was Marie Laveau."
They have
helped foster the many tales and claims
about Marie Laveau. In addition, according
to the Encyclopedia of African-American
Culture and History (Salzman 1996), "the
legend of Marie Laveau was kept alive by
twentieth-century conjurers who claimed
to use Laveau techniques and it is kept
alive through the continuing practice of
commercialized voodoo in New Orleans"
Reading and
References
Baker, Robert A., and Joe Nickell, 1992.
Missing Pieces: How to Investigate Ghosts,
UFOs, Psychics, and Other Mysteries. Buffalo,
N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 217.
Cook, Samantha. 1999. New Orleans: The Mini
Rough Guide. London: Rough Guides Ltd.,
110, 112.
"Death of Marie Laveau." 1881.
Obituary, Daily Picayune (New Orleans, La.),
n.d. (after June 15), reprinted in Gandolfo
1992, 38-39. Dickinson, Joy. 1997. Haunted
City: An Unauthorized Guide to the Magical,
Magnificent New Orleans of Anne Rice. Secaucus,
N.J.: Citadel Press.
Gandolfo, Charles. 1992. Marie Laveau of
New Orleans. New Orleans, La.: New Orleans
Historic Voodoo Museum.
Guiley, Rosemary Ellen. 2000. The Encyclopedia
of Ghosts and Spirits, second ed. New York:
Checkmark Books, 213-216.
Haskins, Jim. 1990. Voodoo & Hoodoo.
New York: Scarborough House, 59-61.
Hauck, Dennis William. 1996. Haunted Places:
The National Directory. New York: Penguin
Books, 192, 193.
Herczog, Mary. 2000. Frommer's 2001 New
Orleans. New York: IDG Books Worldwide,
158, 186.
Krohn, Diane C. 2000. Personal communication,
December 3.
Klein, Victor. 1999. New Orleans Ghosts
II. Metairie, La.: Lycanthrope Press, 64.
Nickell, Joe. 2001. Voodoo in New Orleans,
Skeptical Inquirer January/February: 26(1).
Salzman, Jack, et al., eds. 1996. Encyclopedia
of African-American Culture and History,
vol. 3. London: Simon & Schuster and
Prentice Hall International, 1581.
Smith, Susy. 1967. Prominent American Ghosts.
Cleveland, Ohio: The World Publishing Co.,
139-140.
Tallant, Robert. 1946. Voodoo in New Orleans,
reprinted Gretna, La.: Pelican Publishing
Co., 1990. (Except as otherwise noted, information
about Marie Laveau and her daughter is taken
from this source.)
