New Orleans's oldest surviving cemetery

Marie Laveau was buried in the Glapion family crypt

Marie Laveau, the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans, died on June 15, 1881. Marie Laveau was interred in the Glapion family crypt, plot 347. Historians disagree on when she was born. Some say 1801, others as early as 1741. Her tomb now draws more visitors than any other grave in the cemetery. Over 80 people lie inside it, though only 15 were actually Laveau's relatives.

For decades, visitors marked three X's on the tomb's plaster, believing it would call up Laveau's spirit and grant a wish. The custom asked for three turns, a knock, and a spoken request. It grew out of an older habit of chalking three crosses on the stone. The marking is disputed ground in another way too. Author Robert Tallant questioned whether Laveau is even buried here, and some accounts suggest her remains, or those of her daughter Marie Laveau II, may lie elsewhere. The Archdiocese's own cemetery records say otherwise, naming this tomb as hers.

Pink paint covered Marie Laveau's tomb before removal

The cemetery's maze of white tombs drew filmmakers too. It appears in Easy Rider, in the acid-trip scene that Dennis Hopper shot among the crypts in the late 1960s.

Laveau's tomb kept drawing crowds and kept drawing damage. In 2012, someone painted it over with pink latex, apparently trying to cover graffiti scratched into the plaster by visitors chasing wishes. The paint had to come off by hand, since the old plaster beneath it couldn't take a chemical strip. By 2015, the vandalism had grown bad enough that the Archdiocese of New Orleans changed the rules for good. It began requiring every visitor to enter with a licensed tour guide. Drawing X's on any tomb, Laveau's included, is now forbidden.

Some visitors report headaches, cold spots, and sightings of figures in old-fashioned dress while walking the alleys. Local tradition also places Laveau's ghost on nearby St. Ann Street, dressed in white with a red and white turban, close to where she once lived.

Guides still lead crowds to Laveau's crypt each year

Saint Louis Cemetery No. 1 still takes a handful of new burials each year, and still pulls more than 100,000 visitors annually, nearly all of them led in by licensed guides. The tombs of Paul Morphy, Étienne de Boré, and Homer Plessy stand among the more than 700 crypts packed inside the walls, but Laveau's remains the one everyone asks for first. Every November 1, on All Saints' Day, families still return to whitewash the stucco and lay chrysanthemums on their own dead.