.::The Lalaurie Mansion::. part of the www.DarkNewOrleans.com network

1831	Dr. Louis & Madame Delphine Lalaurie purchase house from Edmond Soniat du Fossat. Madame Lalaurie rises to a position of social prominence.
1833	Rumors spread of Madame Lalaurie's cruelty to her to her slaves. She is seen whipping a slave girl. She is seen chasing her, until she jumps from a window to her death. She is fined and all of her slaves are taken from her and are sold at auction. Her family buys them for her and returns them to her.
April 1834	Fire breaks out at the house. Firemen discover tortured slaves in a room in the attic.
1837-1865	House rebuilt and rumors about ghostly appearances begin. The owner lives in it only about 3 months. The house is rented out; was a bar, a furniture store, and a barbershop for a couple of months.
1842	Delphine Lalaurie dies and her body is rumored to be buried in New Orleans.
1860-1865	Civil War rages.
1865	During Reconstruction, the house becomes a girl's school.
1878	New Orleans school system is segregated, school becomes girl's school for blacks only. Lasts one year.
1882	House becomes music conservatory. Rumors spread about owner of the school and no one attends the planned concert/soir�e. The owner closes the school the next day.
1889	An apartment in the house is occupied by Joseph Edouard Vigne for a little over 3 years. (He was thought to be a pauper)
1892	Vigne found dead upstairs. Upon inspection of the apartment, over $10,000 in cash and family heirlooms stashed throughout were discovered. Entire contents were auctioned.
1920	House becomes tenement for Italian immigrants. After one horrifying ghostly incident, house is vacated by the following morning
1923	House sold to William Warrington who established the Warrington House, a refuge for young delinquents.
1932	House sold to The Grand Consistory of Louisiana.
1942	The Consistory sold the house. It would then become a bar, "The Haunted Saloon", taking advantage of the grisly past of the house's grisly past. The owner knew many of the building's ghost stories, and he kept a log of the strange things his patrons experienced. It then became a furniture store which the owner closed shortly after opening.
1941	A grave marker plate belonging to Delphine Lalaurie was found in St. Louis Cemetery #1, Alley 4. It was unattached to a tomb, exact location of burial place is a mystery.
1969- present	The house was divided into 20 apartments before it was purchased by its current owner, a retired New Orleans physician who has since restored the home to its original state, with a living area in the front and five apartments in the rear of the building. He has stated he hasn't experienced the ghosts since moving into the house. (although I've heard otherwise.)

     Marie Delphine Lalaurie born Marie Delphine, daughter of Louis Barthelemy Chevalier de MacCarthy. Her first husband was Don Ramon de Lopez y Angulo, they were married on June 11, 1800, and he died in Havana, Cuba on March 26, 1804. She married her second husband in 1808, Jean Blanque, who died in 1816. Afterwards, she married her third husband, Leonard Louis Lalaurie on June 12, 1825. How her first and second husbands died is unknown.
      Madame Lalaurie was a well known socialite of her time. She was considered one of the most intelligent and beautiful women in the city. She was also well known for her parties and galas she would frequently host. She was born into society's upper class, was cultivated and her manners were engaging and cordial. This, however, was the outward side of her that everyone knew, for no one was allowed to see the dark, cold cruel and possibly insane side of her.
       There were rumors of her abuse and cruelty to her slaves, and still there were visitors to her house that said she was kind to her servants. It is important to remember at in the Salaries� day, slaves were regarded less than animals, they were considered property, which doesn't excuse cruel treatment of slaves or slavery itself, but to provide an example of how extreme Madame Lalaurie may have been.
        Her neighbors on Royal Street were the first ones to believe that everything was not all right. Maids would come and go without explanation, or the stable boy would disappear, never to be seen again. There is a report of a slave girl who met her end at the Lalaurie mansion.
        The Madame was preparing for one of her parties. A slave girl named Leah was attending to her. Leah was combing the Madame's hair when she pulled a tangle, which enraged the Madame. She began to chase the small girl with a bullwhip. Neighbors heard a scream and witnessed a slave girl run across the courtyard, up the stairs, across the balcony and to the roof with the Madame on her heels. From the roof, Leah slipped, or jumped, to her death. A neighbor later saw the girl being buried in a well under the cypress trees in the courtyard.
        At the time of Madame Lalaurie, there was a law effective in New Orleans that barred cruel treatment of slaves. The slave girl�s death was one of the several incidents where the Madame was brought to court for mistreating her servants. She was fined $300, although eventually her slaves were impounded and sold at auction. She swayed her relatives to purchase them and secretly sell them back to her.
         The story that made the Lalauries notorious took place on April 10, 1834. It is rumored that a seventy-year-old slave woman who was kept restricted and shackled to the oven, tired of the abuse and intent on revenge, started a fire. News of the fire spread through the neighborhood and several people littered the streets of Royal and Governor Nicholls to help the Madame retrieve her valuables. The crowd began to ask where the servants were and why they didn�t help in the efforts to save the valuables. Whispers began to spread through the crowd that the slaves were chained down behind locked doors and if they weren't saved, would unquestionably perish in the blaze. The whispers turned to a roar �� the servants� the servants!!!� Several men from the crowd that had formed outside volunteered to go in to search for the slaves. The brought out two aged women with iron collars on their necks. When the fire was contained, more of the crowd went in to the house to help search some more. Several more slaves were brought out, chained, some crippled due to the manner that the slaves were fastened to the floor.
        Firemen entered through the courtyard and through the kitchen, when they had the fire controlled, the servants directed the firemen's awareness to a locked door on the third floor. Screams and cries were heard coming from within. The firemen had to use a battering ram to open the locked attic room. Upon the door bursting open, veteran firemen fell to their knees and began to vomit at the repugnant terror that was before them. (click here for descriptions of the 3rd floor room)
        Upon hearing of the carnage, a horde started forming on the streets in front of the house the subsequent morning. As the day went on, the mob grew larger. When it was at its most dense and before they could sack the house, a carriage burst from the carriage way. Inside, the Madame, Her husband, two children and one cared for servant, were making an attempt to flee for their lives. The carriage sliced through the crowd, leaving them taken aback and bewildered before they had time to react. The carriage raced through the French Quarter, several other carriages stopped to gape in astonishment. The carriage continued at break-neck speed until it reached Bayou St. John. There, the Madame paid the captain of a schooner docked there a handful of gold and they sailed for Mandeville. The Madame and her family took asylum for ten days near the Claiborne Cottages in Covington. From there it is unidentified to where they went afterward. Some say she stayed in the forest of the North shore of Lake Ponchartrain, and some say that she made her way to Mobile or New York and then to Paris. Her whereabouts after the fire truly have become a mystery. However in 1941 a tomb marker for Delphine Lalaurie was found in St. Louis Cemetery Number One, Alley four. It was unattached to a tomb; the exact place of her burial is unidentified.
         Ghostly activity started as soon as the Lalauries left the house. Screams were heard coming from the house. (This was later proven to not be ghosts during a renovation to the slave quarters, where the owner of the house at the time pulled up old floorboards and found skeletons of humans, apparently the Madame put servants here to either perish or to await her �torture chamber�. So theirs would have been the screams heard after the fire.) It has been said that vagrants who have gone into the house in search of shelter, were never heard from again. Ultimately, the house was empty and fell into ruin. In 1837 the house was put on the market, the man who purchased it only stayed in it for three months. He suffered from strange noises, cries, and groans at night. He tried renting the rooms, but the tenants would only stay a few days. He finally gave up and the house was once again vacant. After the Civil War, during Reconstruction, the house was turned into an integrated high school for girls. Then in 1874, the White League forced the black students to leave the school. Shortly thereafter, the school board wholly altered things, and made the school for black students only, which lasted for one year only. Then in 1882, the mansion became a �conservatory of music and a fashionable dancing school�. Things went well for the school and teacher until a local newspaper reported accusations against the teacher of inappropriate actions with the female students. This took place before a large affair at the school. Guests and students avoided the school due to the accusations and when no one showed for the event, the school closed the next day. A few years after the school closed, Joseph Edouard Vigine was secretly living in the house from the latter 1880�s until his death in 1892. Joseph Vigine was peculiar and a member of an affluent family. His corpse was found in the house on a ragged cot, the mansion was littered with filth. In the other rooms, hidden away, were various antiques and treasure. Near his body, there was a bag found that enclosed quite a few hundred dollars, and upon a more through inspection, several thousand dollars was found hidden in his mattress. The house was unoccupied once again until the later 1890�s, at which time the house was bought for cheap rentals. During this time, there was a great influx of Italian immigrants to New Orleans and there was a great demand for inexpensive boarding. The large house quickly filled with Italian families, and the courtyard with their animals: horses, goats, and chicken. Almost as soon as they moved in to the house, the hauntings began. Men on their way to work would find their horses, and mules butchered, beheaded dogs and cats would be found on stairs, children would be chased by a white woman with a whip, and a woman found another woman, finely dressed, bent over her sleeping infant. On one evening, some men were confronted by a large black man blocking their way on a corridor, he was unclothed and chained, when they reached out to him, he vanished. By the subsequent morning, most of the tenants had gone as well. After word spread of the goings-on in the house, the house fell empty again. The residence was sold in 1923 to William Warrington, and the house became the Warrington House, a house for young delinquents. Then, in 1932, the house was sold to the Grand Consistory of Louisiana (the Freemasons). There are no documented reports of any ghostly activity during these times, but neither lasted in the house. It was sold again in 1942. Eventually it would become a bar. The owner took benefit of the house�s grisly past and named the bar �The Haunted Saloon�. He would document ghostly encounters he, his employees, and his patrons would experience. The bar did well, but did not stay; a furniture store would soon take its place. It, however, did not do as well as the bar. The owner would close the store at night and in the morning, he would open his shop to find some sort of stinking fluid grime covering all of his merchandise. Suspecting vandals, he cleaned the filth and waited the next night with a shotgun to catch the vandals. The following morning, the furniture was once again covered in the foul liquid, the owner closed the store shortly after. In 1969 the house was divided into twenty apartments and then purchased by its current owner, a New Orleans physician. It has been restored to its original status and has five apartments to the rear. The owner denies that any paranormal activity occurs. There was a family interviewed in the Haunted History book, Journey Into Darkness� Ghosts and Vampires of New Orleans, that resided in the house in the 1970�s. They told of accounts of odd noises, furnishings moving, and screams in the courtyard.
       As for myself, this is the only place I've gone that I've had any paranormal experiences. I went to the house in April of 2001 to take pictures. The nearer I got to the house, the heavier the air became and it felt somewhat electric. My camera stopped functioning; it refused to take any pictures. (There have been accounts from the Haunted History Tours where the entire tour group's cameras stopped working only at the house.) I started walking down the street and it [the camera] started working about a block away from the house. I returned to the house, leaving the camera on this time, and I started taking pictures. Then my fianc� started to freak out, �Did you see that!?�, and I asked �See what?� He pointed to a window on the third story and said that the curtains moved while I was shooting the picture. When I looked at the image on my camera, there were orbs around the window where the curtain had moved. This was the only time something has happened to me at the house, I've visited it since and I had also been prior and each time it was okay. Bizarre, I know, but if you have your doubts, I recommend a trip to the house to see for yourself.