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Creepy and haunted spots in New Orleans, mapped

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New Orleans is a haunted city 365 days out of the year—but in October, it wears its spooky mantle of fog, Spanish moss, and vermin especially effectively.

With that Halloween spirit in mind, here are some legitimately creepy places around New Orleans. Are they haunted? Who knows. Hair-raising? Definitely. From an abandoned amusement park in New Orleans East to the scene of a murder-suicide in the French Quarter, these sites are all chilling in their own way. They speak to the bloody, violent, and downright disturbing history of New Orleans—and the United States itself.

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Old Six Flags Of New Orleans

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One day an amusement park, the next a flooded wonderland. An urban explorer's dream, Six Flags has been abandoned since Katrina and is entirely creepy in its "time stood still" way.

The Mortuary

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This cemetery-adjacent property was built as a home in 1872. By the 1930s, it was converted into a full-service funeral home. The funeral home operated until Hurricane Katrina in 2005. After the flood, the building survived but was left unkept. In 2007, the mansion was converted into a haunted house.

A large white building with columns. In front of the building is a sign with words that read: Zombie Warning Infestation Site.
This haunted house attraction may be legitimately haunted.
Photo by Eric Craig

St. Roch Chapel

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The chapel's small side room in the St. Roch Cemetery is packed with prosthetics, braces, private notes, anatomical casts, creepy dolls, grimy stuffed animals, and even locks of hair pinned to the wall — all left as tokens of thanks or offerings to St. Roch, the patron saint of healing.

A decayed wall with various doll body parts and braces hanging on it.
The vibe at this chapel is uplifting yet disturbing.

Lalaurie Mansion

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An 1834 house fire led to the discovery of enslaved people chained up in Madame Lalaurie's torture chamber. Haunted or not, the creep level is high. The current owners admit to some weird events: body imprints in the bed, doors swinging shut, and faucets suddenly turning on. This intersection has become a popular stop on ghost tours, thanks to the home’s prominent feature in American Horror Story: Coven.

A large grey mansion.
Nicolas Cage has been among the list of owners of this mansion.
Flickr Vision

The Sultan's Palace

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As the story goes, the Gardette-LaPrete mansion was rented out by a rich young Turk who moved in with his harem, throwing wild parties. Then a crazy mass slaying (was it pirates?!) occurred and the bodies were discovered after blood was seen trickling out from under the door. "The Sultan" was allegedly buried alive in the backyard.

A large building on the corner of a city block. The building is yellow. The top of the building has a fence near the roof.
Every French Quarter building has a story...some grislier than the others.

St. Louis Cemetery No. 1

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Whether you believe in ghosts or not, the oldest cemetery in the city is straight-up electric. It's like winding through a maze of jumbled, crumbling above-ground tombs and crypts. Voodoo queen Marie Laveau's remains are here—as is the future tomb of actor Nicolas Cage.

A cemetery with above ground mausoleums. All of the mausoleums are decayed.
These oven-like tombs reduce a body to bone and dust within a year.

Jackson Square

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Jackson Square is so charming and picturesque, it’s easy to forget it was a site for public executions in the 18th and 19th centuries. More than 100 enslaved people were executed and decapitated here following the 1811 German Coast Uprising, known as the country’s largest slave revolt. Their bodies were left to rot, and their heads were placed on the city gates.

“Their Heads, which decorate our Levee, all the way up the coast… look like crows sitting on long poles,” wrote one traveler, according to The Daily Beast.

Omni Royal Orleans

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Built on the site of a former slave market, the hotel is rumored to be haunted (as is just about every place in the Quarter).

New Orleans Pharmacy Museum

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America's first licensed pharmacist practiced here and took joy in performing exploratory surgeries, especially on women. If the antique medical instruments aren't freaky enough, the pharmacist’s ghost is said to haunt the third floor. Employees say groans can be heard.

Charity Hospital

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A million square feet of space in the middle of downtown shuttered since Hurricane Katrina, with no solid plans in place for its future. Scary. But at least the festering biomedical waste has been removed.

The UpStairs Lounge

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On June 24, 1973, an unknown arsonist set a fire in the stairwell leading to this gay bar. The old dry wood and flammable carpeting went up like a tinderbox, trapping dozens of men and women inside. Bars across the windows prevented them from leaping to safety. Thirty-two souls lost their lives in the devastating blaze, which remained the largest mass killing of LGBTQ people until the Pulse nightclub shooting in 2016.

Though the Upstairs Lounge never reopened, the bar on the building’s first floor, The Jimani, is still in business.

The exterior of a decayed building.
Bars on the windows prevented victims from escaping.
Bettmann Archive

Memorial Medical Center

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Memorial Medical Center, now Ochsner Baptist Medical Center, was home to great suffering in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.. Surrounded by filthy water, with no sanitation, no electricity and indoor temperatures of up to 110 degrees, Memorial Medical Center became a hellish scene—particularly on the seventh floor, where the most critically ill patients were housed. Dr. Anna Pou and nurses administered fatal doses of morphine, midazolam (Versed), and/or Lorazepam in what investigators believed were up to two dozen patient deaths. On Sept. 11, 2005, 12 days after Katrina made landfall, authorities recovered 45 decaying corpses from the hospital.

A building with an above ground pedestrian tunnel. There is a sign on the tunnel that reads: Memorial.
A doctor and two nurses who worked through the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina were arrested and accused of euthanizing desperately ill patients trapped in the flooded-out hospital.
Getty Images

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Old Six Flags Of New Orleans

One day an amusement park, the next a flooded wonderland. An urban explorer's dream, Six Flags has been abandoned since Katrina and is entirely creepy in its "time stood still" way.

The Mortuary

This cemetery-adjacent property was built as a home in 1872. By the 1930s, it was converted into a full-service funeral home. The funeral home operated until Hurricane Katrina in 2005. After the flood, the building survived but was left unkept. In 2007, the mansion was converted into a haunted house.

A large white building with columns. In front of the building is a sign with words that read: Zombie Warning Infestation Site.
This haunted house attraction may be legitimately haunted.
Photo by Eric Craig

St. Roch Chapel

The chapel's small side room in the St. Roch Cemetery is packed with prosthetics, braces, private notes, anatomical casts, creepy dolls, grimy stuffed animals, and even locks of hair pinned to the wall — all left as tokens of thanks or offerings to St. Roch, the patron saint of healing.

A decayed wall with various doll body parts and braces hanging on it.
The vibe at this chapel is uplifting yet disturbing.

Lalaurie Mansion

An 1834 house fire led to the discovery of enslaved people chained up in Madame Lalaurie's torture chamber. Haunted or not, the creep level is high. The current owners admit to some weird events: body imprints in the bed, doors swinging shut, and faucets suddenly turning on. This intersection has become a popular stop on ghost tours, thanks to the home’s prominent feature in American Horror Story: Coven.

A large grey mansion.
Nicolas Cage has been among the list of owners of this mansion.
Flickr Vision

The Sultan's Palace

As the story goes, the Gardette-LaPrete mansion was rented out by a rich young Turk who moved in with his harem, throwing wild parties. Then a crazy mass slaying (was it pirates?!) occurred and the bodies were discovered after blood was seen trickling out from under the door. "The Sultan" was allegedly buried alive in the backyard.

A large building on the corner of a city block. The building is yellow. The top of the building has a fence near the roof.
Every French Quarter building has a story...some grislier than the others.

St. Louis Cemetery No. 1

Whether you believe in ghosts or not, the oldest cemetery in the city is straight-up electric. It's like winding through a maze of jumbled, crumbling above-ground tombs and crypts. Voodoo queen Marie Laveau's remains are here—as is the future tomb of actor Nicolas Cage.

A cemetery with above ground mausoleums. All of the mausoleums are decayed.
These oven-like tombs reduce a body to bone and dust within a year.

Jackson Square

Jackson Square is so charming and picturesque, it’s easy to forget it was a site for public executions in the 18th and 19th centuries. More than 100 enslaved people were executed and decapitated here following the 1811 German Coast Uprising, known as the country’s largest slave revolt. Their bodies were left to rot, and their heads were placed on the city gates.

“Their Heads, which decorate our Levee, all the way up the coast… look like crows sitting on long poles,” wrote one traveler, according to The Daily Beast.

Omni Royal Orleans

Built on the site of a former slave market, the hotel is rumored to be haunted (as is just about every place in the Quarter).

New Orleans Pharmacy Museum

America's first licensed pharmacist practiced here and took joy in performing exploratory surgeries, especially on women. If the antique medical instruments aren't freaky enough, the pharmacist’s ghost is said to haunt the third floor. Employees say groans can be heard.

Charity Hospital

A million square feet of space in the middle of downtown shuttered since Hurricane Katrina, with no solid plans in place for its future. Scary. But at least the festering biomedical waste has been removed.

The UpStairs Lounge

On June 24, 1973, an unknown arsonist set a fire in the stairwell leading to this gay bar. The old dry wood and flammable carpeting went up like a tinderbox, trapping dozens of men and women inside. Bars across the windows prevented them from leaping to safety. Thirty-two souls lost their lives in the devastating blaze, which remained the largest mass killing of LGBTQ people until the Pulse nightclub shooting in 2016.

Though the Upstairs Lounge never reopened, the bar on the building’s first floor, The Jimani, is still in business.

The exterior of a decayed building.
Bars on the windows prevented victims from escaping.
Bettmann Archive

Memorial Medical Center

Memorial Medical Center, now Ochsner Baptist Medical Center, was home to great suffering in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.. Surrounded by filthy water, with no sanitation, no electricity and indoor temperatures of up to 110 degrees, Memorial Medical Center became a hellish scene—particularly on the seventh floor, where the most critically ill patients were housed. Dr. Anna Pou and nurses administered fatal doses of morphine, midazolam (Versed), and/or Lorazepam in what investigators believed were up to two dozen patient deaths. On Sept. 11, 2005, 12 days after Katrina made landfall, authorities recovered 45 decaying corpses from the hospital.

A building with an above ground pedestrian tunnel. There is a sign on the tunnel that reads: Memorial.
A doctor and two nurses who worked through the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina were arrested and accused of euthanizing desperately ill patients trapped in the flooded-out hospital.
Getty Images