Metairie Cemetery
Metairie Cemetery is a cemetery in New Orleans, Louisiana. The racetrack-turned-necropolis with the "mystic" gate. HauntHunt files it with historic cemeteries, local folklore and haunted places. Ask the file who haunts it and it answers: Woman in white. The dossier holds 1 reported claim, 1 legend, 1 documented fact and 1 named or described presence — documented record and retelling kept side by side. The site is open to visitors.
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Is Metairie Cemetery haunted?
The record holds 1 claim, 1 legend, 1 named entity — filed as reported, not verified. The heaviest filing is classed local folklore. The archive documents the claim; it takes no position on the ghost.
The record — long form
Metairie Cemetery is a racetrack that became a graveyard out of spite — the legend the archive notes as too good to drop. The Metairie Race Course ran champion horses from 1838; when the Metairie Jockey Club refused membership to Charles T. Howard — the lottery king who'd made his fortune on the Louisiana State Lottery — Howard swore he'd turn the track into a cemetery. The club went bankrupt; Howard bought the grounds; in 1872 the oval became Central Avenue, still tracing the racetrack's curve under the tombs.
The cemetery that rose on the infield is New Orleans's grandest — 150 acres, over 7,000 tombs, Egyptian and Italianate and Exotic Revival mausoleums in the 'cities of the dead' style, Millionaire's Row holding the city's moneyed dead. Anne Rice's tomb waits on the row near Ruth Fertel's; Louis Prima lies under a trumpet-playing St. Gabriel, pennies left at the foot for 'Pennies from Heaven.' Storyville madam Josie Arlington's tomb famously showed a flaming urn — 'the tomb that burned' — until the flames were removed.
The grounds are quiet the way only a racetrack-turned-necropolis can be — the oval drive where Lexington and Lecomte ran in 1854 now circling the elaborate dead: governors, the police chief whose 1890 assassination set off the lynching that scarred the city, Civil War generals, the lottery man who bought the track to spite the club that snubbed him.
Metairie Cemetery is the archive's racetrack file — the 1872 graveyard built on the Metairie Race Course after a snubbed lottery king vowed to bury it, New Orleans's most palatial city of the dead.
Why this file matters
Metairie Cemetery is the archive's spite file — the cemetery that exists because Charles Howard was refused jockey club membership, the oval of the old racetrack still readable under 7,000 tombs on Millionaire's Row.
A cemetery built to spite a club keeps its curve — the file's suggestion being that Metairie's hold is the oval: the racetrack's ghost in the avenue's bend, the dead riding the rails where the thoroughbreds ran.
Metairie Cemetery is a historic cemetery in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States, founded in 1872. The name has caused some people to mistakenly presume it is located in Metairie, Louisiana, but it is located within the New Orleans city limits on Metairie Road (and formerly on the banks of the since filled-in Bayou Metairie).
Metairie CemeteryThe record of claims
Reported a woman in white and figures among the tombs. The burial ground at New Orleans is exactly the setting the account needs — old graves, older grief, and a story that won't settle. The claim is neighborhood knowledge — retold locally, verified nowhere. Sources including 'Metairie Cemetery' keep the claim in circulation. Whatever walks there, it walks often enough to keep the reports coming.
Reported a woman in white and figures among the tombs. Metairie Cemetery's dead are the site's permanent residents; the reports are how the living say they keep noticing. It survives as local folklore, which is to say it survives because people keep telling it. 'Metairie Cemetery' carries the account. As folklore it's unkillable: the story is too good, and the place too fitting, to let go.
Alleged entities
Reported a woman in white and figures among the tombs. Cemeteries keep their stories in the stones; Metairie Cemetery in New Orleans, Louisiana has its version filed among them. 'Metairie Cemetery' carries the account. The name travels further than the proof; the sightings keep renewing the lease. The report keeps its place in the record.
Documented history
Converted from a racetrack in the 1870s; holds the city’s grandest tombs. A cemetery in New Orleans, Louisiana with this much on record gives the file real ground to stand on. The fact is historically verified — the part of the file that doesn't need hedging. Sources including 'Metairie Cemetery' carry the record. It is the kind of fact the rest of the dossier leans on.
Verified historyWikipedia
Sources on file
- 01Metairie CemeteryWikipedia · encyclopedia · A4
Field notes & open questions
Southern Gothic batch; VERIFY task auto-queued.