The most famous voodoo queens, mother and daughter, believed to still haunt New Orleans. Marie Laveau participated in huge rites at Lake Ponchartrain. She prayed over a black coffin and sacrificed roosters. She performed with a 20 foot snake. She became the most sought after woman in New Orleans for magickal concoctions and advice. Her house and voodoo headquarters on St. Ann St. in the French Quarter, near Congo Square, was purchased for her by a man whose son she managed to get off on charges of rape. The couple later wed due to her involvement. She also granted the wish of a rich old man who wanted to wed a young girl who had been in love with another. The wedding took place, but that night the groom died and the girl inherited his fortune, enabling her to reunite with her lover. She once caused a storm to occur in an attempt to save two convicted murderers who were meant for execution. Despite this however, the men were killed.
Marie is buried in the family crypt at St. Louis Cemetery No. 1. The tomb is entitled �Marie Philome Glapion, deceased June 11, 1897.� Visitors leave offerings of food, money and flowers and then ask for Marie�s help after turning around three times and marking a cross with red brick on the stone.
Supposedly, Marie turned herself into a huge black crow, which still flies over the cemetery. The crow�s head feathers supposedly stick up in tuffs, after a headdress that Marie used to wear.
The second Marie is buried in the St. Louis Cemetery No. 2, marked �Marie Laveau� and covered with red-brick crosses. It is the �Wishing Vault� for young women seeking husbands. Other stories say that Marie is buried in cemeteries on Girod St., Louisa St., and Holt St.
Both of them are said to haunt New Orleans in human and animal form. They are seen as a crow, an old woman in an long white dress and blue tignon, a snake and a Newfoundland dog. They have been seen floating up and down St. Ann St. On St. John�s Eve, residents of the bayou hear an ethereal singing and see a shadowy figure who looks like a woman clinging to a floating log in Lake Ponchartrain.
The Widow Paris learned her craft from a "voodoo doctor" known variously as Doctor John, John Bayou, and other appellations. Marie could easily help you get a lover, keep a lover or get rid of a lover. She could keep anybody from harming you and she could do anything you wanted done to anybody. She used to say prayers and mix different things to give people to drink, to rub with, to throw over your shoulder, or to throw in the river. She was skillful in the practice of medicine and was acquainted with the valuable healing qualities of indigenous herbs. Her incantations, fetishes and charms were supposed to be without fail, and thousands crowded around her to obtain relief, fortune or revenge. She staged ceremonies in which participants became possessed by loas (voodoo spirits) and danced naked around bonfires. She told fortunes and remained perpetually youthful while living for more than a century or so.
She accepts money, cigars, white rum and candy as offerings. Appeals must be made three times with full concentration. Some people go there and put their hands on her grave and make a wish and their wish is granted. People would knock three times on the slab and ask a favor. One can also draw the X, place your hand over it, rub your foot three times against the bottom, throw some silver coins into the cup, and make your wish. You�re supposed to turn around three times when making your wish, right before marking your X�s. People still claim to be seeing her long after her reported death.
When one person visited the tomb it was littered with markings, including single Xs, an occasional cross, heart, pentagram, etc. and a few inscriptions or other graffiti, sometimes accompanied by initials. The predominant markings were sets of three X�s, suggesting that the folk practice is undergoing transition (the specified number of raps, turns, etc. apparently becoming transferred to the number of X�s.) Although some of the markings were done in black (as from charcoal), most are rendered in a rusty red from bits of crumbling brick. The family who own it have asked that this bogus, destructive tradition should stop, not least because people are taking chunks of brick from other tombs to make the crosses. Voodoo practitioners-responsible for the candles, plastic flowers, beads, and rum bottles surrounding the plot, deplore the practice, too, regarding it as a desecration that chases Laveau's spirit away. Tour books are now advising against the practice.
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. Marie�s ghost and those of her followers are said to practice wild voodoo rituals in her old house.
The house currently residing at 1020 Saint Ann St. was never actually lived in by Laveau, but marks the spot where her cottage used to stand before it was demolished.
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. 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 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 jumped 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."
A newspaper article glorifying Marie and giving no mention of her voodoo practices was published in the Daily Picayune on June 18, 1881, the day after her death. She died just a few days before St. John�s Eve. Another article published in the New Orleans Democrat on June 17, 1881 mourned her passing as a voodoun priestess, which was quickly rebuttled by another article in the same paper on the 18�th stating that Marie Laveau was anything but a saint, as she had been previously portrayed.

St. John�s Eve Ritual presided over by Marie Laveau Glapion 1872
Held at Lake Phonchartrain
Marie built a large fire to heat a cauldron which was filled with water from a beer barrel, salt, black pepper, a black snake cut in three pieces, a cat, a black rooster and various powders. She ordered everyone to undress and sing a repetitive chorus. At midnight they jumped into the lake for half an hour then came out and sang and danced for another hour. Marie preached a sermon, then gave the celebrants permission for a half-hour of sexual intercourse. Afterward, everyone ate and sang some more, until four nude women threw water on the fire, then the contents of the kettle were poured back into the barrel. Marie told everyone to dress again, then she preached another sermon. At daybreak everyone went home.

A Love Spell on Marie Laveau�s Grave
There are many different ways in which this spell can be performed, the simplest being to go to her gravesite and draw three red X�s on the tombstone using chalk and then make a verbal request that Marie grant your wish for love. Such as, �Beautiful Marie Laveau, love queen of New Orleans, please grant my request that so and so love me, or that I find love.� You then make an offering to Marie Laveau by leaving her fruit, flowers or candy.
This can also be done by opening a picture of her gravesite on a word program and using the paint option to draw three X�s on the tomb, make your request and leave the offering in a nearby cemetery, that same day, without saving the document. Or you could, of course, print out the drawing, make the X�s and the request and leave that along with the offerings at the graveyard. Upload picture and link to