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My Husband and I visited New Orleans before Hurrican Katrina hit and did a few of the haunted walking tours of the city and enjoyed them very much.

The Lalaurie House or as most locals like to call it "the haunted house". Now here's why residents of the French Quarter still hurry past this otherwise beautiful building. When Madame Dolphin McCarty de Lopez Blanquette wed Dr. Louis Allure, it was her third marriage-she'd already been widowed twice. In 1832 the Lalauries moved into this residence and soon impressed the neighbors with their extravagant parties. At these parties guest could not help but notice the condition of the servants who were painfully thin and seemed to be terrified of their mistress. The gossip about how she treated her slaves was confirmed in April of 1834, when a fire broke out at the house. When neighbors rushed in to save the contents of the house and extinguish the flames, they found seven starving slaves chained in painful positions unable to move and a number of grim looking torture instruments. The sight combined with Delphine's stories of past slaves having "committed suicide", enraged the neighbors. A story in the local press further enraged the neighbors and a mob arrived intent on destroying the place. Madame Lalaurie and her husband escaped and went back to France. She died and her body was shipped back to New Orleans for a secret burial.

The building was a Union headquarters during the Civil War and later was a gambling house. Through the years, stories have circulated of ghosts inhabiting the building, especially that of one slave child who fell from the roof trying to escape Delphine's tortures.

This house is now a private residence but it is also included in a haunted tour of the French Quarter which is usually Monday-Saturday at dusk, weather permitting. There was no ghostly activity when I took the tour, but many people claim to have seen the little slave girl.

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