Lafayette Cemetery No. 1

March 6th, 2009

Lafayette cemetery is located on Prytania Street between Washington Avenue and Sixth Street in New Orleans, Louisiana. This cemetery is world famous for being the setting for movies including Double Jeopardy, Interview with the Vampire, and Dracula 2000. The famous writer Anne Rice even used Lafayette cemetery as a setting to many of her books. The cemetery sits on land that was once the land of the Livaudais Plantation. Madam Livaudais was the owner of the plantation, and in 1832 she sold the land to developers. The developers went on to divide the land up into the city of Lafayette.

The significant amount of immigrants that were coming into New Orleans at the time sprung up the city of Lafayette rather quickly, for both the living and the dead. By the year of 1852, an astounding number of approximately 2,000 people were killed due to yellow fever or other illnesses. The cemetery was built on a ridge that reaches upriver from the French Quarter. Since the ground was so high, in-ground burials lead to quick dissipation of human remains. As a result, the soil here has been turned to a white color similar to that of chalk.

By the year of 1860, above ground burials were the only type or burial that would be used in the New Orleans area. When the Civil War hit the nation, countless Confederate and Union soldiers would be killed and buried in Lafayette cemetery. By the end of the Civil War, the cemetery was already filled to capacity. However, new burials still continued, as the older remains were pushed to the side. This has always been a practice done traditionally in New Orleans. It consists of opening a grave one year and one day after burial to place the remains in the graves foundation, and putting in fresh remains of someone else.

Due to this practice, many tombs, crypts, and vaults have a list of a numerous amount of names that would in no way possible be able to fit in. There have been many horrid discoveries from all of the opening and closing of the tombs, possibly being one of the reasons for the hauntings here. In one example, a man was mistaken for dead, but he was actually in a coma the whole time. When his grave was opened a year later, they found that this man was buried alive, scratching the coffin with his nails desperately trying to escape but to no avail.

People who have been brave enough to venture into the cemetery at night have reported hearing the sounds of metal or wood scratching stone, along with strange tapping sounds. Cold spots and temperature fluctuations are quite common if one is standing by a grave stone, indicating that the energy of a spirit still remains to this day, perhaps of the man who was buried alive, as he is still trying to escape his premature coffin and death.

(Source: Dwyer, Jeff. Ghost Hunter’s Guide to New Orleans. 2007.)