ST. LOUIS CEMETERY NO. 1
Cemetery — New Orleans, Louisiana
Status: Status unknown · Access: Access unknown
Dossier: https://haunthunt.com/place/st-louis-cemetery-no-1-new-orleans-louisiana/

Cemetery in New Orleans; research record.

St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 is a cemetery in New Orleans, Louisiana. Cemetery in New Orleans; research record. HauntHunt files it with haunted places. Ask the file who haunts it and it answers: Marie Laveau. The dossier holds 1 reported claim, 1 legend and 1 named or described presence — all telling, no verified spine yet, and the file says so plainly. Access details are unverified — research before visiting.

St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 opened in 1789 — the oldest surviving cemetery in New Orleans, where the city's dead were laid in above-ground tombs because the water table wouldn't take them. The file's spine is the landscape itself: a city of white vaults outside the old ramparts, holding two centuries of the city's dead including the most famous grave in American folk religion.
The cemetery's tombs — the oven vaults, the society tombs, the crumbling plaster — are the file's architecture: a burial ground where the dead sit above the earth, the city of the dead mirroring the city of the living.

MARIE LAVEAU'S TOMB
The file records the Marie Laveau haunting tradition — the Voodoo Queen's tomb being the cemetery's most visited grave, where offerings and the famous X marks accumulated until the markings were banned. The lore reports her presence in the cemetery — the priestess reportedly still in the ground where the faithful still leave offerings.
The X-mark tradition is the file's documented folklore — visitors marking the tomb for wishes, a practice the cemetery eventually prohibited, the ritual's banning being the record of the legend's power.

WHY THIS FILE MATTERS
St. Louis No. 1 is the archive's signature cemetery — America's most famous burial ground, holding the Voodoo Queen's tomb and two centuries of the above-ground dead. The documented cemetery is the record; Marie's presence is the most reported haunting in New Orleans.
A cemetery where the dead lie above the earth keeps its queen — the file's suggestion being that Marie Laveau's tomb is still a working shrine, wishes and all.

FILED CLAIMS — 1 on record, reported not verified
· [Documented legend] haunting: Explore Louisiana records a Marie Laveau haunting tradition. A cemetery in New Orleans, Louisiana accumulating ghost reports is almost tautological — but this is the one the record kept. The story is documented as legend — recorded and retold, never verified as fact. Sources including 'Louisiana’s Haunted History' keep the claim in circulation. The haunting claim is now part of the site's identity, filed alongside the documented history.
  source: Louisiana’s Haunted History (https://www.explorelouisiana.com/articles/haunted-louisiana-experiences)

SOURCES — 1 cited
· Louisiana’s Haunted History — Louisiana Office of Tourism
  https://www.explorelouisiana.com/articles/haunted-louisiana-experiences

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HauntHunt is a research archive. Claims are filed as reported — documented where sources exist, marked as folklore or unverified where they do not.
Methodology: https://haunthunt.com/methodology/ · Corrections: https://haunthunt.com/report/