Hello Everyone,

Well so far only have a few more of the haunted cemeteries to get through and they are all in the United States of America. Yet, someday here soon I want to address a few others that have been brought to my attention by my brother and other parties. This week, however, we are going to get a glimpse at St. Louis Cemetery.

St. Louis Cemetery:

The cemetery is one of the oldest located in New Orleans. That is right, St. Louis Cemetery is located in New Orleans, Louisiana. If that isn’t enough to confuse you, it is the name of three, yes 3, cemeteries in the city.

The cemetery is one of the oldest in the area and was established in the late 1700s.

Many people don’t realize how often cemeteries don’t last for as long as some of these listed. They either get moved for development. The land fades away back to nature, and sometimes the buried remains return to the surface due to disruption in the soil. This can be from erosion but also other natural/unnatural disturbances in the ground below. Who knows, maybe it’s none of the above and just some angry forgotten spirits wanting attention.

I mentioned that because one thing that sets this Roman Catholic cemetery apart from many is that most of the graves are above ground vaults, or tombs. This was probably a good idea because of the soft land around the area and the potential for flooding due to its low elevation. In fact, after Hurricane Katrina flooded the area most of the tombs/vaults were left intact.

An Interesting Occupant:

At St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 lies a famous Creole practitioner of Voodoo. Her name was Marie Catherine Laveau. Although she wasn’t one of the earliest to be buried in the cemetery she is a notable character because of her lifestyle that some find to be taboo or eerie.

The actual history of Marie is somewhat confusing and indecisive. It appears that others with a similar name, or perhaps family like daughters and sisters led to some of this confusion with her actual lifestyle. There were others that even used her name that people thought were her but were in fact not.

Her believed heritage and ancestry is believed to be a mixture of Native American, White, and African. It is thought that she brought aspects of the three ancestries religions, of her particular ancestry, and molded them into one type of practice. Her Voodoo.

She supposedly walked the streets like she owned the city and was always seen around. Perhaps her wide spread familiarity was just that confusion with which women was really Marie the Voodoo practitioner and the other with the same name that were actually unassociated.

To this day people believe if you go to her grave and write an “X” on her tomb, then three times turn around before knocking on the tomb and yelling a wish, it will be granted. You will return and circle your “X” if your wish is actually granted. Others are more destructive and try to exhume the body of the resting Voodoo Queen.

Haunted?

The beliefs of those walking the graves of the cemetery vary. Marie is a major contributor to these haunted mysteries of the cemetery because of the lifestyle she lived. Others believe it’s just the long years of burials that the cemetery has witnessed and laid rest to over the last 300 years.

It is a major attraction for ghost and paranormal researchers hoping to catch a glimpse of something form beyond the grave. The side-by-side tombs add a very eerie effect and closeness that they rest next to one another add to the affect. Kind of give you that feeling of wondering what lurks around the corner or the next tomb. Maybe something, maybe nothing at all as you make your way through looking at the graves that date back centuries.

Who knows? Maybe you will be that person that finally disturbs something resting in the shadows among a tomb. Something that isn’t supposed to be disturbed. That person you see standing in the distance just staring out at you from among the riddled tombs is not a person at all. Perhaps they are a spirit long laid to rest that has been brought back with a little Voodoo magic.

The spirit or entity might not do much to you there but perhaps they just were hunting, picking you out so they know who to follow home. Contrary to most beliefs is that cemeteries are not particularly haunted spots. Maybe that’s because the spirits follow you home to do the haunting. Unless they are cursed to the land then they respectively have no bounds to the graves or the tombs that contain their earthly remains.

But now I am just going off on a tangent while looking at these eerie pictures of the cemetery on a cloudy grey day.

Thanks for Reading,

Joshua Crane Dowidat