Marie Laveau's House

The former residence of Marie Laveau, the legendary Voodoo Queen of New Orleans who practiced her craft and held ceremonies here in the 1800s. Though the original structure is gone, the spiritual energy remains.

The site of Marie Laveau's house at 1020 St. Ann Street in the French Quarter marks the spot where New Orleans' most legendary figure lived, practiced her craft, and died. Marie Laveau was born around 1801 to a free African woman and grew up in the cottage that her grandmother, Catherine Henry, had built after purchasing the lot in 1798. Laveau married Creole nobleman Jacques Paris in 1819, becoming known as the Widow Paris after his mysterious disappearance in 1824. She later partnered with Jean Louis Christophe Duminy de Glapion, a French nobleman, with whom she had several children. Working as an elite hairdresser to high-society women, Laveau gathered secrets and intelligence from her clients that she leveraged into an extraordinary reputation as a spiritual advisor, healer, and Voodoo Queen. She practiced a syncretic religion blending West African Voodoo traditions with Roman Catholicism, creating protective gris-gris amulets, preparing herbal remedies, and reportedly even administering last rites to death row prisoners. At the height of her power, she was consulted by people of all races and social classes across the city.

According to one of the most persistent legends surrounding the house, a wealthy man promised Laveau the St. Ann Street property in exchange for freeing his son from false murder charges. On the morning of the trial, Laveau placed spicy guinea peppers under the judge's chair, and the son was acquitted. The truth is less dramatic. The cottage had been in her family since her grandmother purchased the lot in 1798. Laveau became confined to her home around 1875 and died there in June 1881. Her daughter, Marie Laveau II, continued her mother's work and became equally renowned as a Voodoo practitioner. The original cottage was demolished in 1903, and the current structure was built on the same foundation.

The paranormal activity at the site is among the most varied and well-documented in the French Quarter. Marie's ghost has been seen walking down St. Ann Street wearing a long white dress and her signature tignon, the turban with seven points representing a crown that she made famous. A couple renting the property as a vacation home were awakened by sounds of chanting and drumming emanating from the living room. When they investigated, they found the room empty except for a single pristine feather lying on the floor, despite all windows being locked. The feather was one of Marie Laveau's signature ritual objects. Another guest awoke from a nap to find a shadowy figure standing in the corner of the room, glaring at him. A woman staying at the property reported waking one morning and finding herself physically unable to get up, as if someone was holding her down against the bed. Visitors walking past on St. Ann Street have reported feeling taps on their shoulders and pressure against their bodies, as if being touched by unseen hands. Photographs taken at the site frequently capture blurred anomalies that were not visible to the naked eye.

Believers say that Marie's spirit and those of her followers continue to perform Voodoo rituals at the site, and the property retains a powerful spiritual energy that even skeptics find difficult to dismiss. On May 19, 2025, an electrical fire damaged the rear section of the home in the early morning hours, destroying historical relics belonging to current owner Jody Cajun Queen Boudreaux. Whether the fire was mundane or something more, the site at 1020 St. Ann remains one of the most spiritually charged locations in a city that knows its ghosts by name.