***Note*** This story also has a simplified version for beginning readers found here: Big Easy Ghost Stories (Beginner Version)
March 20, 2022 – New Orleans, Louisiana, USA
The street in front of the Pharmacy Museum looked almost deserted in the early evening light. A hotel and parking garage faced the museum. On the other side of the street were multi-story buildings in the style of the French Quarter – plastered walls, wrought iron balconies, shutters pulled closed over the windows.
Thea Monroe stood under the pharmacy sign wearing a badge around her neck which identified her as an official walking tour guide. She wore comfortable shoes, long sleeves, and slacks suitable for springtime temperature swings. Thea only had four people on her list for the evening’s first tour. Two twenty-something women had already checked in with her. Thea spotted an older couple strolling up the street who looked like they might be her other two customers.
“You here for the tour?” Thea called.
“Yep. Are we stopping for drinks on the way?” the male half of the couple called back.
Thea ignored the question about drinks. Like many New Orleans tourists, the man likely had one too many already. “Let’s move back a bit so you have a good look at the pharmacy,” Thea said to her customers. “And please be careful not to block the sidewalk.”
With her her audience of four facing the correct direction, Thea introduced herself. “You’re standing in front of the oldest pharmacy in the country. It opened well before modern medicine developed. People living through yellow fever epidemics were willing to try any cure. This was the site for all kinds of experimentation and treatments that were worse than the diseases.”
Thea continued to describe the characters who operated out of the pharmacy and the many thousands of people who died during a series of epidemics.
One of the young women in the tour, who was wearing jean shorts and an oversized Minnesota Vikings T-shirt, raised her hand. “Are there any ghosts in the pharmacy?”
Thea barely flinched. “There were lots of deaths in and around the pharmacy, so if you believe in ghosts, this would likely be a place where they would appear.”
“Have you ever seen one?” asked the woman in the Vikings T-shirt.
“No. Now if you would like to learn more about the pharmacy and what went on there, I’d encourage you to Google it.”
Thea had been doing her job long enough that she had heard every possible question about ghosts, spirits, zombies, and vampires who might be haunting New Orleans. Some other tour guides reveled in that king of thing and tried to sound as spooky as possible. Other guides thrived on being comedians. Thea was in the third category of guides who liked to think of themselves as historians. She never repeated anything she could not verify on the internet.
The next stop on Thea’s walking tour was a nearby building which had served as a jail and hospital for slaves. “Many of them had yellow fever or other contagious diseases,” said Thea, pointing to the bars on the windows.
“Any ghosts in there?” asked the woman in the Vikings shirt.
“Again, it was a place where many people died, so if ghosts exist, it wouldn’t surprise me if they were concentrated here.”
Jackson Square was a short walk away. Thea led her group into landscaped grounds facing the St. Louis Cathedral, probably the most recognizable spot in the city. After talking about the surrounding buildings, Thea described Louis Congo. He was an executioner, paid by the early government to hang criminals around the square.
“Congo was merciless and made many enemies. He was nearly beaten to death,” Thea said matter-of-factly.
As Thea spoke, another tour group of twenty-five people crowded nearby. Their guide, named Figgy, wore a bleached bone in her dreadlock hair, which was piled high on her head. Figgy gestured wildly about the victims of Louis Congo who still haunted the square.
“If you feel the hair stand up on the back of your neck. If you feel someone watching you and only moving in the shadows. You can be sure spirits are still here, looking for revenge on Louis Congo.”
Thea rolled her eyes and motioned for her small group of four to follow her out of the square. They marched across Bourbon Street and into a part of the French Quarter filled mostly with older residential houses. Thea stopped on a corner and pointed at a house with two stories.
“We are standing on what was once a graveyard. Before people knew better, they buried bodies underground. This land is below the river level and when big rainstorms came, the bodies would rise up and float away. But not all of them. We’re still discovering bodies in the ground. A few years ago, that house was digging for a pool when they uncovered part of the unmarked cemetery.”
As the tourists in the group gawked at the house, a local resident walked down the sidewalk with his dog. When he saw Thea, he gave her a sour look and said, “Why do you people have to be such a nuisance? I wish you would respect our privacy.”
“All we’re doing is standing on the street and talking,” replied Thea. “This is public property. We have as much of a right to be here as you do.”
The dog owner left in a huff and Thea reassured her customers that they were doing nothing wrong. A narrated walking tour was a healthy way to learn about the city and enlarge their minds.
Their next stop was across from Marie Laveau’s house. She was famous in the early 1800’s as a Voodoo priestess and healer. Thea described the ceremonies she held behind her house and encouraged her group to read more about Marie’s colorful life.
The final stop on the tour was eight blocks away, but the night was so beautiful, Thea did not expect her customers to mind the walk. As they traipsed through the old streets in the fading light, Thea smelled newly bloomed spring flowers and heard the faint sounds of jazz from the clubs near Bourbon Street. Her group passed several others going in the opposite direction, probably to Marie Laveau’s house.
“We are finally at the LaLaurie Mansion,” announced Thea, pointing to a hotel-sized structure on the diagonal street corner.
Tour groups clustered all around the building. Over a hundred people listened to six different guides describe why the place was so interesting.
“You may have seen this house featured on American Horror Story,” Thea continued. “The owner was undeniably a terrible person. She owned many slaves and sadistically tortured them.”
Thea went on to explain the history of the house and how it was eventually destroyed by a fire before being rebuilt. At times, she had to shout to be heard over the other nearby guides and the passing traffic. Figgy, with her hair bone glowing in the streetlight, probably had the loudest competing voice. She danced around imitating a ghost she claimed could be seen in an upstairs window.
“So that’s the end of our tour,” Thea called to her group, annoyed by all the distractions. “I hope you enjoyed it and you learned something.”
None of Thea’s guests thanked her or asked any questions. The two twenty-something women were too busy slipping into the crowd surrounding Figgy. The older couple tramped off into the darkness, thinking about dinner.
Thea walked back to the Pharmacy Museum in a bad mood. After leading a second tour for another group of four, she called her booking agent, Roxi.
“This is peak tourist season, how come my groups are so small?” Thea asked.
Roxi, who handled advertising and booking for multiple tour guides, replied with, “Maybe you need to add some pizzazz to what you’re doing.”
“Other people aren’t seeing a slowdown?”
“No. Most of the other tours are booked solid. Like I said, you need to give me some pizazz I can advertise.”
“Like what? I’m not going to put on a show. I’m not a wannabe actor. I’m teaching people about the city.”
“Folks don’t want a lecture. They come to New Orleans for a good time. You need to entertain them. This ain’t a museum.”
“I know, but I like to stick to the facts.”
“The facts won’t put food on the table.”
For the rest of the night and into the next morning, Thea thought hard about the conversation. Four person tours at peak season were not going to cut it. Maybe she could stand to be a little bit more theatrical. Maybe she could wink and stretch the truth a little with things not found in a Google search. As she warmed up to the idea, Thea questioned why she was sticking with facts at all. If people were going on tours mostly to be entertained, why not go all the way and tell them exactly what they wanted to hear?
The next day, as Thea was leading a group of five tourists around, she skipped her usual swimming pool graveyard stop. Instead, she found a street one block over which was completely free of other tour groups. She pointed to an ordinary looking house with closed shutters.
“You’re not going to hear about this on any other tour. And you won’t find it on Google. But this is the most haunted spot in New Orleans.”
Thea did her best imitation of Figgy’s spooky voice as she continued. “A family with eight kids lived here until the father went insane and murdered them all. Now the property feels cold, even in the summer. They keep the blinds closed because you can see the ghosts of the children floating inside.”
All five of Thea’s customers had questions as they excitedly took pictures of the house. Thea told them more about the family and how she was a distant relation. She described the terror of looking through a window and having one of the ghost children stare back at you.
Thea smiled as the tour walked away from the house. Now untethered from the facts, she felt like an eager, naïve guide again. The next day, she chose another random street close to her new stop. Then she picked a creepy looking house built unusually far from the sidewalk. She made it the setting of a horror story she read as a child.
“Wow, I’ve never heard of that!” cried someone in her tour group after Thea shared the story.
“Don’t bother looking it up,” replied Thea. “Some things are so scary they never get written down. Here in New Orleans, we still share them by word of mouth.”
The people on the tour were wild about the new spots but acted bored when Thea dragged them to Marie Laveau’s house and the LaLaurie Mansion. Later that night, Thea called up Roxi.
“I want you to start advertising my tour as the city’s forgotten, unwritten story. A story too shocking to be put in the history books.”
“You decided to entertain the folks, huh?” replied Roxi.
“If they want stories, I’ll tell them stories.”
Within the next week, Thea completely abandoned her old route and was using all new, conveniently located stops. She would leave the old places to the other guides because she had new, chilling stories to tell. For her lucky customers, she uncovered the hidden world of magic and Voodoo curses, which were still alive behind closed doors. She described witches, zombies, and vampires who divided the French Quarter into distinct territories. She disclosed the exact times you should avoid the streets if you did not want to be a victim.
The size of Thea’s groups doubled and then doubled again. She soon had to tell Roxi that 30 was the maximum she could handle. A group that large was only manageable because Thea had the new streets and stops to herself.
“I don’t know what you’re doing, but keep it up,” Roxi told her. “I’ve doubled your prices and you’re still selling out. Word’s getting around.”
Everything felt smooth until the beginning of May. During one early evening, Thea led a group to the spot she called the most haunted house in New Orleans. Standing in front of the house was a guide who Thea did not recognize. She overhead him describe the house using almost exactly her usual dialogue.
Thea felt too amused and complimented to be threatened. She felt like the creator of a new phrase or meme which goes viral. People were copying her. It was a sure sign that she had done something right. She smiled to herself and wanted to tell her tour group exactly what was going on, but of course she had to keep quiet.
Even if Thea did not immediately realize her sticky situation, it was soon impossible to ignore. With each passing day, more and more copycat guides used her new stops and her stories. She no longer had the streets to herself. It got harder to squeeze her groups of 30 onto the sidewalk without overlapping with a copycat. Thea was not smiling about it anymore.
Thea’s frustration reached a peak one muggy night when she walked to the most haunted house and found Figgy standing in front of a large crowd. Figgy put on a dramatic show, acting out the story Thea had invented. It was too much.
“Where did you hear that story?” demanded Thea, ignoring the usual professional courtesy between guides.
“I heard it around, from different people,” replied Figgy, with a smirk and shoulder shrug.
Thea pointed her finger right at Figgy’s forehead, directly below the bone sticking out of her hair. “You can’t just steal stories that belong to other people. And you can’t be on this street.”
“Hey, chill out. This is public property. I have much of a right to be here as you do. I’m just telling people about the city.”
By that time, the tourists following Thea and Figgy had combined into a circle. Some of them held out their phone cameras, as if anticipating a fight. Surely two dueling tour guides in New Orleans would make for an interesting video.
Thea clenched her fists and wanted to scream that she had made it all up and Figgy and all the other guides were stupidly passing off lies as facts. But what good would that do? Did she want to destroy her own business and reputation just to prove a point? What point was she proving? Thea lowered her hands and motioned for her group to join her on the other side of the street.
Later that night she called Roxi. “It’s been too good to be true. Now it’s all crashing down.”
“What’s crashing? What’s too good?” asked Roxi.
“The tour. It’s no good. I’ve got to switch it up.”
“Don’t tell me you’re going back to the museum style.”
“What would you think of a tour called Fact versus Fiction? I could tell both real stories and the fiction ones going around, then tell people which was which.”
“Why would folks be interested in that?”
“Because the truth will set them free. And trust me, most of the time the real stories are a lot weirder than the invented ones.”
Please remember to subscribe for weekly reminders about new stories. You can subscribe by clicking here: Subscribe. You can also follow new content on any Podcast platform or on YouTube.