19 Spooky Things to Do for Halloween in New Orleans

I’d wanted to do Halloween in New Orleans for years, and it turned out to be even better than I anticipated. I spent an entire month in the city getting fully immersed in all the spookiness it has to offer.

In New Orleans, people celebrate Halloween the entire month of October, with so many events going on. The biggest is the Krewe of Boo parade, which rolls through the French Quarter on the weekend before Halloween.

The rest of the month there are ghost and cemetery tours, haunted houses, Halloween parties, and dozens of historic bars and restaurants with their own resident ghosts.

Below are the best things to do in New Orleans for Halloween, from a vampire café serving drinks in blood bags to unsettling true crime tours and ghost tours, and I will share the real history behind the ghost stories you may hear.

Things to do in New Orleans for Halloween

Tour a Cemetery at Night

Cemetery and Ghost BYOB Bus Tour in New Orleans

You can’t spend Halloween in New Orleans without a cemetery tour, and I found the perfect one. It was BYOB, because when you’re dealing with death and ghosts, liquid courage goes a long way.

Most ghost tours stick to the lively French Quarter, but we headed into the quiet, eerie neighborhoods beyond it, where we learned about the city’s peculiar burial customs, and our guide shared spooky tales of the deceased.

We explored some of the oldest and most haunted cemeteries in the city, and we even got to talk to ghosts ourselves using dowsing rods. And if you’re worried about bathrooms or drink refills, we stop at a café halfway through for beignets, drinks, and a restroom break.

The stop that sunk my heart the most was the Hurricane Katrina Memorial at the old Charity Hospital Cemetery. Charity Hospital flooded during Katrina and never reopened, and the memorial here is a spiral of tombs holding more than 80 storm victims who were never claimed or identified, along with the names of others who died. It was heart-wrenching.

Get Spooked at a Haunted House

Mortuary

📍 Address: 4800 Canal St, New Orleans, LA 70119

At the dead end of Canal Street sits The Mortuary, a 150-year-old Victorian mansion that worked as a real funeral home and crematorium for decades before it became a haunted house. It is surrounded by cemeteries, with more than a million graves packed into a single square mile.

More than 20,000 funerals passed through the building between 1930 and 2003. It sat abandoned for years after that, then reopened as a haunted house. If you’re in New Orleans for Halloween, don’t skip it.

Visiting: The Mortuary opens September 19, 2026, and runs through November 13, 2026. Most of the season it’s open Thursday through Sunday, but it runs every day from October 25 to 31, so you can go any night of Halloween week. Buy tickets online in advance, because the lines get long.

Nightmare

📍 Address: 319 Butterworth St, New Orleans, LA 70121

If you want to get spooked, and I mean really spooked, Nightmare is the place. It bills itself as the largest indoor haunted house in New Orleans and sits across the river in Elmwood, right under the Huey P. Long Bridge, open on weekend nights through the fall.

Nightmare rebuilds itself every year, with new rooms and new storylines each season. So what you walk through won’t be what I did, but if mine is any indication, you’re in for a good time.

Visiting: Nightmare runs from September 19, 2026, through November 1, 2026, on weekend nights. Buy tickets in advance on their site.

Get Mesmerized At A Huge Halloween Parade

Krewe of Boo

Krewe of Boo is the official Halloween parade of New Orleans, and it happens the weekend before Halloween. The route winds from the Marigny through the French Quarter to the Warehouse District, and the floats are built by Kern Studios, the same crew behind the big Mardi Gras parades.

In 2026, the parade starts at 6:30 p.m. on Saturday, October 24.

It was one of the best nights I had in New Orleans, and not just because of the candy and booze (though that didn’t hurt). The best part is the throws. Just like Mardi Gras, the riders fling stuff into the crowd. You will catch small plastic toys, beads, and candy.

Tip: On parade night, the WDSU Parade Tracker follows Krewe of Boo in real time, so you can see exactly where it is and find the best spot to watch.

…And Party All Night At The After Party

The Monster Mash

The Monster Mash is the official Krewe of Boo after-party, and it was so much fun. It kicks off right as the parade ends, over at Generations Hall in the Warehouse District.

It’s the same night as the parade, Saturday, October 24 in 2026. Doors open at 8 p.m. and it goes until 2 a.m.

It’s a ticketed, 18-and-up event. I went alone and had a great time. There was a DJ and caged go-go dancers. I stayed until the early hours of the morning.

Wear your best costume, because there’s a contest. One tip: drink somewhere else first. There are drink specials, but they’re still pricey, and there are plenty of cheaper bars nearby.

Discover The World of VooDoo

Voodoo has been part of New Orleans since the 1700s, about as woven into the city as beignets and jazz.

Forget the Hollywood version, especially the doll full of pins. Louisiana Voodoo is a real religion, a blend of West African spiritual traditions and Catholicism, with Haitian and other influences layered in over centuries.

Marie Laveau was the original Voodoo Queen of New Orleans, and she was a force. People said she could heal the sick and make wishes come true.

The religion gets a bad rap from movies and from people who don’t understand it, but it’s a deeply spiritual, complex tradition that deserves respect.

New Orleans Historic Voodoo Museum

📍 Address: 724 Dumaine St, New Orleans, LA 70116

This small museum, just two rooms in the French Quarter, is packed with voodoo artifacts: altars, religious objects, and art. It’s a quick stop, but an interesting one, and there’s usually a voodoo priest on site giving readings.

Visiting: open daily, 10am to 6pm Monday through Thursday and 10am to 7pm Friday through Sunday. No reservation is needed to walk through. They also run a two-hour voodoo walking tour that takes you to Marie Laveau’s house. It’s worth booking a day ahead.

Shop for all Things VooDoo at Voodoo Authentica

📍 Address: 612 Dumaine St, New Orleans, LA 70116

Voodoo Authentica has been in the French Quarter since 1996, and what sets it apart is that it’s practitioner-owned. The people working there practice the religion, and everything in the shop is handmade on-site or by local practitioners.

You can get a reading, buy handmade dolls, candles, and oils, or just ask questions. They also run educational programs on the history and folklore of Voodoo, which is part of why they’re considered one of the more reputable places in the city to learn about it.

Mysteries of Voodoo Tour

This Voodoo tour in the French Quarter debunks some misconceptions. Our guide, who was a voodoo practitioner, taught us about the history, culture, and beliefs of New Orleans Voodoo and how it’s still a religion in the city today.

We learned about the Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau, how slavery shaped New Orleans’ Voodoo history, and how many of the misconceptions about Voodoo are rooted in racism and fear.

He even touched on summoning and possession by spirits. You won’t have to channel anything yourself, unless you want to, of course.

Wander Through Haunted, and Strange Museums

New Orleans has a museum for every kind of morbid curiosity. These two are the strangest, and both are said to be haunted.

Pharmacy Museum

📍 Address: 514 Chartres St, New Orleans, LA 70130

The Pharmacy Museum is dedicated to the history of healthcare through the ages. It’s housed in what was once the apothecary of Louis J. Dufilho, Jr., who became the first licensed pharmacist in the United States in 1816.

It’s a time capsule of medical oddities. You’ll see everything from old drug jars to vintage pharmaceutical equipment to surgical instruments, and you will see artifacts such as amputation saws, weathered lancets, and leech jars. People faint on the tour enough that the docents ask anyone feeling woozy to step outside.

The centerpiece is the recreated 19th-century apothecary, complete with an original soda fountain, and there’s a section on the history of voodoo and natural remedies too.

And yes, the museum is haunted. During the yellow fever epidemics, the upstairs was used as a sick ward. The disease killed roughly one in six people in New Orleans, including Dufilho’s brother.

Then there’s the legend that a later owner, Dr. Dupas, performed gruesome experiments on enslaved pregnant women and still haunts the place. Ghost tours tell it as fact, but the museum flatly disputes it.

They say there’s no evidence of anything like that happening in the building, and they think the story got pinned on Dupas by mistake, confused with Dr. J. Marion Sims, a different 19th-century doctor who did perform surgeries on enslaved women in Alabama, not here.

Either way, visitors report a feeling of being watched, strange smells, footsteps, and cold spots.

Note: This place closes fairly often for special events and film shoots (they film a ton of movies and shows inside). Plan your visit for the start of your trip, so if it’s closed, you can keep checking back. When I visited, it was closed for four days for filming and a couple of special events.

Visiting: self-guided visits run Tuesday through Saturday, 11am to 4pm, with no reservation needed. Guided tours run at 10am and have to be booked online in advance, and the days shift seasonally. The museum is closed Mondays, and on Sundays it opens only for the 10am guided tour. They also run a ghost tour called Mostly Ghostly, which runs during Halloween season and is worth checking out.

Bloody Mary’s Haunted Museum

📍 Address: 826 & 828 N Rampart St, New Orleans, LA 70116

This is the personal collection of Bloody Mary, a well-known New Orleans voodoo priestess and ghost-tour guide, tucked into a 200-year-old French Quarter building. Inside you’ll find haunted dolls, ghost photos, and creepy occult artifacts and altars. The tour is self-guided through an app.

It’s a small museum, but you’ll leave a little uneasy.

Visiting: I bought my ticket at the door, so you don’t need to book ahead for the museum. Their ghost hunts and seances, which they offer in the evenings, are reservation only.

Learn About Some Gruesome History

New Orleans True Crime Tour

Not scared of ghosts, but morbidly curious about the twisted things people do to each other? This true crime tour walks you through some of the seediest, bloodiest murders in New Orleans, stopping at the crime scenes in the French Quarter where they happened.

You’ll hear about the infamous Madame LaLaurie, the origins of organized crime in the Big Easy, and plenty more murders, mysteries, and mayhem. It’s a two-hour small group walking tour, and no one under 16 is allowed.

Fair warning: this one does not shy away from the gruesome, gory details. If you flinch at the mention of blood or decapitation, this may not be the tour for you.

We spent about 15 to 25 minutes at each stop, with the guide going deep on every case, so by the end you have a clear picture of exactly how each one went down.

Eat at a haunted Restaurant

Some of the oldest and most famous restaurants in New Orleans are also some of its most haunted, from the French Quarter to the Garden District. Pull up a chair, you might not be the only one at the table.

Napoleon House

📍 Address: 500 Chartres St, New Orleans, LA 70130 | Reservations: Walk-ins only

Napoleon House is haunted by more than one ghost: a mayor still waiting for an important guest to show, and a Civil War soldier who wanders the place.

To understand the haunting, you have to go back to the beginning…

The story goes that Nicholas Girod, a former mayor of New Orleans, wanted to impress an important guest by building the finest house in the city. That guest was none other than Napoleon Bonaparte, exiled on the island of St. Helena. Girod’s plan was to help Napoleon escape and use the house as his secret hideaway.

Sadly, Napoleon never made it. He died in 1821, before the rescue could ever happen.

So if you were hoping to conjure his spirit here, you’re out of luck. But some people think the ghost of the mayor is still up there, waiting for a guest who’s never going to show.

These days, Napoleon House is a beloved restaurant known for classic New Orleans fare: gumbo, red beans and rice, and its famous warm muffuletta (I think it’s the best in the city; I came here twice). If you want more of what to eat in New Orleans, I’ve got a whole post on it.
It’s just as famous for its bar, which pours classic cocktails like the Sazerac and the Pimm’s Cup. In fact, Napoleon House claims to be the first place in America to serve the Pimm’s Cup.

Muriel’s

📍 Address: 801 Chartres St, New Orleans, LA 70116 | Reservations: Recommended

Muriel’s is one of the most famously haunted restaurants in New Orleans, and its ghost has a tragic backstory. It starts with Pierre Antoine Lepardi Jourdan, who built his dream home right on Jackson Square. Pierre was head-over-heels in love with the place, but he had a serious gambling problem.

As the story goes, in 1814 he went all-in and bet his beloved home in a high-stakes poker game. Lady luck wasn’t on his side. He lost everything. His home, his dignity, all of it.

The poor guy was devastated, and the loss was too much to bear. He took his own life on the second floor, in the same spot where Muriel’s Séance Lounge sits today.

I recommend grabbing a drink at the bar and heading upstairs to see the Séance Lounge for yourself.

Pierre is said to still be hanging around, though not as a typical ghost. He shows up as a shimmering light that drifts around the lounge, which is how the Séance Lounge got its name, since he’s believed to spend most of his time up there. He’s also known to play harmless pranks on customers and staff, moving things around.

No need to be scared of him, though. He might give you a spook or two, but he’s friendly. Muriel’s even sets a table for him every night with fresh bread and wine. You can be Jourdan’s guest by reserving that table yourself.

Arnaud’s Restaurant

📍 Address: 813 Bienville St, New Orleans, LA 70112 | Reservations: Recommended

Arnaud’s has been around since 1918, when a French wine salesman named Arnaud Cazenave opened it.

As the restaurant took off, he kept buying more property until he owned most of the buildings on the block, which he turned into a kitchen and private dining rooms. A few of the buildings he purchased had reportedly been brothels and opium dens.

Then Prohibition happened and ruined everyone’s fun. Arnaud was not going to let a little thing like federal law get in his way, so he served booze in coffee cups in the back rooms and carried on like nothing was wrong. Until he got caught and went to prison.

He ended up opening Arnaud’s back up the second Prohibition was repealed.

In terms of the food, Arnaud’s is well-known for its oysters, including Oysters Bienville, which was invented here and named after the street out front.

When Arnaud died in 1948, his daughter Germaine took over, and she was every bit the character her father was. She was dramatic, loved a spectacle, and was crowned queen at 22 Mardi Gras balls, the formal masquerade galas Carnival krewes throw each year. You can still see her gowns in a little Mardi Gras museum tucked inside the restaurant.

And neither of them ever really left.

Arnaud is still on the clock, apparently. Staff say he haunts the dining room, straightening tables and nudging silverware back into place, and if something’s out of line, he’ll fix it himself. Death did not loosen his standards.

Germaine is the fun one. She’s got a prankster streak, and the story goes that a waiter once watched a woman stroll out of the restroom and walk straight through a wall. It was Germaine. That waiter, I assume, took the rest of the night off.

Tujague’s

📍 Address: 429 Decatur St, New Orleans, LA 70130 | Reservations: Recommended

Tujague’s has been feeding New Orleans since 1856, which makes it the second-oldest restaurant in the city, right behind Antoine’s. It started as a humble breakfast-and-lunch spot for the dock workers, and it’s been going strong ever since.

A heads-up though: for over a century, Tujague’s lived at 823 Decatur Street, and that’s where all its ghost stories come from. In 2021 it moved a few blocks down to its current spot at 429 Decatur, so whether the resident spirits made the move too is anyone’s guess.

Either way, the hauntings are a good story. Staff at the old building could never keep the chinaware intact, glasses shattering and plates smashing with no one around. Rumor pins it on a love triangle involving a former owner, his wife, and a young woman who worked there.

Then there’s Julian Eltinge, one of the most famous female impersonators of the early 1900s and a Tujague’s regular. His portrait hung proudly on the wall for decades, until someone moved it up to the attic. Big mistake. Julian was not pleased, and his face started photobombing guests’ pictures until the portrait was returned to its rightful place. He hasn’t been caught on camera since. Let’s hope he doesn’t leave lipstick on the glasses.

On a lighter note, Tujague’s invented the Grasshopper, the minty green cocktail. If you would rather not splurge on a full meal, grab a seat at the bar and order one. I went twice because it was that good.

The Court of Two Sisters

📍 Address: 613 Royal St, New Orleans, LA 70130 | Reservations: Recommended

The Court of Two Sisters is named for the Camors sisters, Emma and Bertha, who opened the Shop of Two Sisters here in 1886. They catered to wealthy Creole women, selling gowns, perfumes, and other fancy imports from Paris, and hosting tea parties in the courtyard for their favorite clients.

The shop closed around 1904, but the sisters stayed inseparable for the rest of their lives. They died within months of each other in 1944, Emma on Halloween of all days, and were buried side by side in St. Louis Cemetery No. 3.

Decades later, guests still swear they see the two sisters in the courtyard late at night. Unlike most ghost stories, this one is sweet: their presence is said to leave behind a feeling of joy. So if you are there, keep an eye out for a pair of older women enjoying the courtyard together.

These days the courtyard is the draw for a different reason. The Court of Two Sisters is famous for its daily live jazz brunch, served buffet-style under the wisteria.

Commander’s Palace

📍 Address: 1403 Washington Ave, New Orleans, LA 70130 | Reservations: Recommended

Commander’s Palace is one of the most famous restaurants in New Orleans, a turquoise Victorian landmark in the Garden District that has been around since 1893. It is a fine dining restaurant with a dress code, and reservations are a must for the most part. If you can snag a spot, the jazz brunch is supposed to be legendary.

They are also famous for launching some huge chefs, including Paul Prudhomme and Emeril Lagasse.

It is also very haunted. Guests have reported a young girl in white drifting down the staircase, a sinister feeling in the ladies’ room, and, in one case, a spirit that flung cutlery at a diner’s head.

It does not help that Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 sits directly across the street, with more than 7,000 people buried in a single city block. When you are that close to the dead, a few of them are bound to wander over.

The friendliest ghost is Emile Commander himself, the restaurant’s original owner. If you catch a glimpse of a dapper guy with an impressive mustache weaving between the tables, don’t freak out. That is likely Emile, still making sure everyone is enjoying their meal. Just keep an eye on your wine, because he has been known to sneak a sip.

Brennan’s

📍 Address: 417 Royal St, New Orleans, LA 70130 | Reservations: Recommended

Brennan’s is a New Orleans classic, the big pink building on Royal Street known for old-school Creole fine dining. It is also where Bananas Foster was invented back in 1951, and it’s still the most-ordered thing on the menu.

It is haunted too, by two former employees who loved the job too much to leave.

The first is Chef Paul Blangé, the man behind Bananas Foster. He was so devoted to Brennan’s that when he died in 1977, he was buried with the restaurant’s menu, a knife, and a fork laid across his chest.

And it seems he never really clocked out. Staff say his ghost still bangs pots and pans every night to signal the end of the shift. He has been spotted in the dining rooms and by the front door, sometimes as a shimmer, sometimes as a man in a chef’s hat.

The second is Herman Funk, Brennan’s former sommelier. He haunts the wine cellar, where he reportedly still helps the staff pick bottles. When his ghost approves of a particular vintage, he gives the bottle a little clink.

Drink Unlimited Beer at an Amusement Park (Yes, it’s 21+)

Brews and Boos

📍 Address: Carousel Gardens Amusement Park, 7 Victory Ave., New Orleans, LA 70124

Brews and Boos is a Halloween event for adults who love beer and amusement park rides. The best part? Once you are in, you get adults-only access to the whole park, unlimited rides, and all the beer you can drink.

It happens every year at the end of October as a fundraiser for New Orleans City Park.

They go all out with the decorations, effects, and lights the second you walk in, and a DJ spins music you can hear across the entire park. If you have a costume you are dying to show off, there is a contest for that too.

Oh, and there was a stand handing out free jambalaya. After all that beer, I had like five bowls.

Get Spooked by Ghosts on A Haunted Tour

Ghosts of the French Quarter Tour

Ah, New Orleans, the place where the ghosts of the past love to make their presence known. This is a city that has seen it all: fires, hurricanes, duels, disease, and the occasional vampire. So it comes with a lot of ghosts.

This tour takes you through the dark and spooky side of the city, with all the juicy stories you won’t find in a boring history book.

You’ll hear about the Casket Girls at the Old Ursuline Convent and the infamous Delphine LaLaurie, whose Royal Street mansion hid one of the most horrifying crimes in the city’s history. They will also take you to a fine-dining restaurant with a “spirited” reserved table, where a ghost might just be your dinner companion.

You’ll even learn the different types of hauntings, from run-of-the-mill residual ones to the oh-so-intelligent kind that will make you question your sanity. It is a small-group tour, capped at nine people. There are tons of ghost tours in New Orleans, but this one was fantastic. I loved it so much I took three more of their tours.

Stay in a Haunted Hotel

If you want to sleep somewhere haunted, the French Quarter has options. These four hotels all have resident ghosts and centuries of history behind them.

Bourbon Orleans Hotel

📍 Address: 717 Orleans St, New Orleans, LA 70116

The Bourbon Orleans sits right in the thick of the French Quarter, half a block from Bourbon Street’s nightlife and a quick walk to the antique shops on Royal. And it’s home to a few resident ghosts.

It opened in 1817 as a grand ballroom throwing the fanciest parties in the city, then got a makeover in 1881 when the Sisters of the Holy Family, the first Black order of Catholic nuns in the country, turned it into a convent, girls’ school, and orphanage. A yellow fever epidemic tore through during the orphanage years.

It didn’t become a hotel until the 1960s.

USA Today has named it one of the most haunted hotels in the country. The ghost that seems to be making her presence known quite frequently is a lonely dancer in the second-floor ballroom, a woman who still waltzes under the chandelier all on her own.

Others have seen a Confederate soldier and the ghosts of children from the orphanage, including a little girl who chases her ball down the sixth-floor hallway.

The Andrew Jackson Hotel

📍 Address: 919 Royal St, New Orleans, LA 70116

The current hotel building only dates to 1890, so it isn’t the building that’s haunted so much as the ground it sits on.

Back in 1792, the Spanish colonial government built a boys’ boarding school and orphanage here, mostly for kids who had lost their parents to yellow fever. Two years later, the Great New Orleans Fire of 1794 tore through the Quarter and burned the school down, and five of the boys died inside.

After the fire, the lot became a federal courthouse, and this is where the hotel gets its name. It’s where General Andrew Jackson, fresh off winning the Battle of New Orleans, was taken in and fined $1,000 for contempt of court. He went on to become president anyway.

An article from the 1850s claims the property actually survived the fires, which would mean the school never burned at all. So did five boys really die here, or not? Nobody is totally sure.

Either way, guests report seeing five boys laughing and running around the courtyard at night, and Room 208 is the most famously haunted, said to be home to a boy named Armand who likes to wake people up.

Hotel Monteleone

📍 Address: 214 Royal St, New Orleans, LA 70130

The Hotel Monteleone is a French Quarter icon, founded in 1886 by Antonio Monteleone, a Sicilian immigrant, and still run by the same family five generations later. It has long been a favorite of writers. Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, and Tennessee Williams all spent time here, and it’s one of the few hotels officially named a Literary Landmark.

It’s also one of the most haunted hotels in the city, and its most famous ghost comes with a sad story. In the late 1800s, a toddler named Maurice Begère was staying here with his parents, who liked to spend their evenings at the French Opera House on Bourbon Street. Children weren’t allowed, so they left Maurice at the hotel with a nanny. One night while they were out, he came down with a fever and died.

His mother was inconsolable and kept returning to the hotel, hoping to see him again. As the story goes, she finally did. Maurice appeared to her and said, “Don’t cry, Mommy, I’m fine.” He is said to still roam the 14th floor, where guests report seeing him and hearing children play in the halls.

Ghosts aside, the Monteleone is worth a drink at the very least. Its Carousel Bar & Lounge is a rotating bar that has been slowly spinning since 1949. There’s also a rooftop pool and a suite dedicated to the hotel’s writers.

The The Dauphine Hotel

📍 Address: 415 Dauphine St, New Orleans, LA 70112

The Dauphine Orleans Hotel has a wild past. Its bar, May Baily’s Place, is named for the madame who ran a brothel on the site in the 1800s. In fact, it was the first officially licensed brothel in New Orleans, and the original 1857 license still hangs framed on the wall.

With that kind of history, the ghosts come with the territory. The most famous is the Lost Bride. Her name was Millie, and she was May’s younger sister, put to work in the brothel even though she hated the life. Her way out was a Confederate soldier she fell for and planned to marry. But on their wedding day, he got tangled up in a gambling dispute and was shot dead. Millie never recovered. Guests still report seeing her drifting near the bar in her wedding dress, waiting for a groom who is never coming.

Some also say her soldier is still around, an apparition in a Confederate uniform spotted near May Baily’s. And the bar itself has a resident spirit, believed to be one of May’s former working girls, who likes to rearrange the liquor bottles behind the counter.

Get Drunk on a Haunted Pub Crawl

Haunted Pub Crawl

New Orleans is one of the most haunted cities in America as well as one of the best places to drink. One of the best ways to soak up both atmospheres in one go is on a haunted pub crawl. You get to dig into the city’s dark past while sampling some of its most famous drinks.

We met our guide and the rest of the group at a designated meeting spot. We did the crawl on Halloween, so it was way more crowded than usual, but a lot of fun.

As we went from bar to bar, our guide told us true stories of murder and mayhem from the French Quarter’s haunted past. At each stop, we sampled a signature cocktail, from potent hurricanes to shark attacks, which is delicious and comes with a complimentary plastic shark.

Shop at a Vampire Boutique

Boutique Du Vampyre

📍 Address: 709 St Ann St., New Orleans, LA 70116

Boutique du Vampyre is a tiny French Quarter shop devoted entirely to all things vampire. It bills itself as the only vampire shop in the country, and it’s packed with gothic jewelry, dark art, curiosities, custom fangs, and its signature fortune candles, which hide little pewter charms inside that reveal themselves as the candle burns. Basically everything a creature of the night could want.

It opened in 2003, founded by Marita Woywod Crandle, who also wrote a book on New Orleans vampire legends and owns the Vampire Café next door.

Marita has created a fun backstory. As the legend goes, Marita is a centuries-old vampire who ran the boutique in Transylvania, then New York, before finally bringing it to New Orleans.

Inside you will find antique furniture, chandeliers, and eerie music playing. And if you’re feeling a little lost in this mortal world, the shop also offers tarot readings and vampire tours to help you reconnect with your darker side.

Visiting: open daily, roughly 10am to 9pm, and it’s worth stopping in even if you’re not buying, since this is where you get the password for Potions Lounge.

Get Your Blood Sucked at a Vampire Themed Café

Vampire Cafe

📍 Address: 801 Royal St, New Orleans, LA 70116

Ever watched Elena on The Vampire Diaries sip blood from a bag and think, “Hey, I want to do that too”? Well, now you can. The New Orleans Vampire Café, tucked into the French Quarter behind St. Louis Cathedral, opened in 2021 and welcomes vampires and mortals alike.

The decor is elegant and gothic: chandeliers, moody lighting, gold cutlery (because, let’s be real, vampires hate silver), and napkins folded into little bats. The signature is the Blood Bag Cocktail, a drink served in a medical-style blood bag. The cocktails are named by blood type, so you can order a Type O, an AB, or whatever suits your palate. They do alcohol-free versions too.

If drinking blood isn’t your thing (understandable), there’s a full food menu, from a Dracula burger to shrimp and grits. I didn’t get to eat here myself, so I can’t vouch for the food, but it looked delicious, and the whole place was so fun.

Visiting: open daily from 9am to midnight, with last seating at 11pm. They don’t take reservations, so just walk in, and if there’s a wait, they’ll text you when your table is ready. They also do an afternoon high tea with tea leaf readings.

…And Vampire Themed Speakeasy

Potions Lounge

📍 Address: 733 Bourbon St, New Orleans, LA 70116

Bourbon Street is a cesspool of drunken craziness, and frankly, I am not a fan (I walked it sober one night… bad idea). So what if you could escape Bourbon Street without actually leaving it?

That’s Potions Lounge, a speakeasy hidden above Bourbon Street. Getting in is a process, so listen up.

First you need the password, and you get it at Boutique du Vampyre over on St. Ann Street. Have a browse, and the staff will whisper it to you (if they find you worthy). Some ghost tour guides hand out the password on their tours too.

Then head to Fritzel’s and walk all the way to the back, where a door leads upstairs. There will either be a bouncer to collect the password or the bartender will ask for it. Either way, as long as you have it, you’re in.

Sometimes there’s a cover charge, usually around $10 a person. I never had to pay it, probably because I came early, but it would be worth it.

At the top of the staircase, you’re transported into what looks like someone’s living room, low lighting, velvet couches. It definitely gave vampire lair vibes.

Then you hit the bar, where the menu is full of themed drinks designed to enhance your spell casting abilities. My favorite was the Love Potion shot, which comes in a little potion bottle you get to keep, and the Forbidden Fruit, made with blackberry, raspberry, and pomegranate liqueur.

They only let a certain number of people in at a time. If it’s busy, you’ll wait outside. This bar was a highlight of my Halloween in New Orleans.

Drink at a Haunted Bar

Some of the oldest bars in America are right here in New Orleans, and several of them are said to be haunted. Here’s where to get a drink with some ghostly friends.

Old Absinthe House

📍 Address: 240 Bourbon St, New Orleans, LA 70112

The Old Absinthe House is one of the oldest buildings on Bourbon Street and one of the most haunted in the French Quarter.

It was built around 1806, first as a grocery and import house selling Spanish liquor and tobacco. The first floor became a bar in the 1830s, and its absinthe frappé got so popular that in 1874 the bar renamed itself after the drink. Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain, P.T. Barnum, Franklin Roosevelt, and Frank Sinatra all drank here.

There is a story told that General Andrew Jackson met with the pirate Jean Lafitte in a secret room upstairs to plan the defense of the city before the Battle of New Orleans in 1815.

Historians who study Lafitte say there’s no proof it ever happened. A rival bar down the street claimed the same meeting, and the two of them actually went to court over the right to hang the historical plaque. In 1951 a judge threw the case out, ruling that legend is just hearsay handed down. Both places still tell the story anyway.

After more than 200 years, the bar has picked up some ghostly regulars. Jean Lafitte is said to hang around the second floor, and Andrew Jackson, Marie Laveau, and Benjamin Butler have all been spotted or felt here too.

People also report a woman in a long white dress, a child running around the third floor, and sudden drops in temperature, along with doors opening on their own and bottles and chairs moving.

Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop

📍 Address: 941 Bourbon St, New Orleans, LA 70116

Lafitte’s Blacksmith Shop is named after Jean Lafitte, a swashbuckling pirate and privateer who called New Orleans home. Pirates and privateers were basically the same thing, except privateers had a government-approved license to pillage and plunder.

Lafitte was born either in France or the French colony of Saint-Domingue, and by 1805 he was running a warehouse in New Orleans. During the War of 1812 he became a local legend for helping Andrew Jackson defend the city against the British, which is why his name is plastered on landmarks all over town.

This bar says they are the oldest bar in America, and that isn’t really true. It claims the building went up between 1722 and 1732, but property records point to the 1770s, when it was built as a home for a carpenter named Bartholomie Robert. It didn’t become a bar until 1933. Before that it was a house, a workshop, and an ice cream parlor. There’s also no actual proof the Lafitte brothers ever set foot in it.

None of which makes it less worth visiting. It’s one of the last surviving Creole cottages in the French Quarter, and there’s no electric lighting in the main room, just candles and the fireplace.

The main ghost is, of course, Jean Lafitte himself. He shows up as a full-bodied apparition, and people say you could mistake him for a living, breathing sailor right up until he vanishes into the dark.

He isn’t the only one. Upstairs there’s a chatty female ghost, said to have died by suicide in the 1890s, who whispers visitors’ names in their ears. And in the dark corners, people report a pair of red eyes, which ghost hunters will tell you is the calling card of something demonic.

The Jimani

📍 Address: 141 Chartres St, New Orleans, LA 70130

The Jimani sits below what used to be the UpStairs Lounge, the site of the deadliest fire in New Orleans history and, until the Pulse shooting in 2016, the largest mass killing of LGBTQ people in the country.

On June 24, 1973, Pride Sunday and the fourth anniversary of Stonewall, the UpStairs Lounge was hosting a social for the Metropolitan Community Church, the country’s first church founded for LGBT people. About 125 people came through for free beer and food, and by early evening the crowd had thinned to around 60.

Just before 8 p.m., the downstairs buzzer rang. Someone went to check it, thinking it was a cab. Instead, the wooden staircase had been doused with lighter fluid and set alight, and the fire tore straight up into the bar.

The bartender, Buddy Rasmussen, got about 20 people out through an unmarked back exit. Others tried the windows and found them barred. MCC pastor Bill Larson got halfway through one before he was trapped, and he died there in view of the street. Twenty-nine people died that night, and three more later from their injuries. Nearly a third of the victims were military veterans.

Nobody was ever charged. Police suspected Roger Dale Nunez, a regular who had been thrown out that evening after a fight and had threatened to burn the place down. They closed the case that August without ever questioning him and ruled that the cause was undetermined. Nunez died by suicide in 1974.

The aftermath was almost as bleak as the fire. Civic and religious leaders largely said nothing. Some families refused to claim their relatives’ bodies out of shame, including Bill Larson’s own mother, after news coverage identified him as the gay pastor of a gay church.

Given all that, it’s no surprise people say the spirits here never settled. Patrons of the Jimani report whispers, sudden icy chills, and the smell of burning hair and charred flesh. Some claim to have seen a full-bodied apparition on the second floor, where the UpStairs Lounge used to be.

There’s a memorial plaque in the sidewalk at Chartres and Iberville now, though it took decades.

Pat O’Brien’s

📍 Address: 718 St Peter St, New Orleans, LA 70116

Pat O’Brien’s is one of the most famous bars in New Orleans, and one of the most haunted. It started as a Prohibition speakeasy where you needed the password “storm’s brewin'” to get in, which turned out to be prophetic, because this is the bar that invented the Hurricane.

During World War II, distributors made bar owners buy up to 50 cases of rum just to get one case of whiskey. So, the bartenders here came up with a fruity rum drink to burn through the surplus and served it in a glass shaped like a hurricane lamp. They still sell thousands a day.

The building itself dates to 1791 and was once the first Spanish theater in the United States. Upstairs, the piano bar is thought to be the very first dueling piano bar.

Employees report footsteps and the sound of chairs scraping around when the bar is empty. One bartender said he heard footsteps trailing him around the bar, turned around to find nobody there, and then heard a piano start up.

The ladies’ room is supposedly the most haunted spot. Women report feeling followed and hearing someone rummaging through their purse from inside the stalls. One woman says she was chatting with a fellow patron at the sink, turned around, and found a dapper ghost offering her a towel. Her hand went straight through it.

A former employee said she was followed around by footsteps and heavy breathing, and it eventually made her quit.

MRB

📍 Address: 515 St Philip St, New Orleans, LA 70116

MRB is a low-key neighborhood spot with two courtyards, a pool table, food, and a 4 a.m. closing time. It’s a nice break from the chaos of Bourbon Street.

It’s also got a past. This stretch of St. Philip Street was rough in the 19th century, and the building spent most of that century as a brothel and boarding house.

As the story goes, one of the women working there had come to New Orleans hoping for a better life and never found it. She took her own life in the courtyard, and never left. These days the ladies’ bathroom is where most of the hauntings happen, the flickering lights and the feeling of being watched. But if you’re really unlucky, the Lady of the Night might sneak up behind you and smash your head into the mirror.

Explore New Orleans’ Most Haunted Places

Some of the most haunted buildings in America are right here in New Orleans, from French Quarter mansions to a convent that supposedly housed vampires. Here’s what happened in each one and which ghosts you might run into.

LaLaurie Mansion

📍 Address: 1140 Royal St, New Orleans, LA 70116

First things first: the LaLaurie Mansion is a private residence. You can look at it from the sidewalk, and that’s it. Nobody gets inside, not even the American Horror Story crew, who built a whole season around Delphine LaLaurie and still had to film somewhere else.

Delphine LaLaurie bought this corner lot in 1831 and had the mansion finished the next year, moving in with her third husband, Dr. Leonard Louis Nicolas LaLaurie. She was a wealthy Creole socialite known for her charm and her dinner parties.

She was also an enslaver, and rumors about how she treated the people she enslaved had trailed her for years. A court fined her for cruelty in 1833 and ordered nine enslaved people taken away from her. She had relatives buy them back at auction.

On April 10, 1834, a fire broke out in the kitchen. It had been set on purpose by the 70-year-old cook, who was chained to the stove and later said she did it to end her own life rather than face another punishment.

When neighbors forced their way upstairs, they found seven enslaved people chained in the upper part of the house, starved and mutilated. The New Orleans Bee reported it the following day, and the survivors were taken to the Cabildo, where thousands of people lined up to see them.

The next night, a mob attacked the mansion and, by one account, broke everything but the walls. Delphine escaped by carriage and eventually made it to France. She was never prosecuted. The building you see today was largely rebuilt afterward, with the third floor added later.

As for the hauntings, the reports come mostly from the people who have lived and worked in the house over the past 190 years: moans from the rooms upstairs, phantom footsteps, and doors that won’t stay shut.

St. Louis Cemetery No. 1

📍 Address: 425 Basin St, New Orleans, LA 70112

St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 is the oldest and most haunted graveyard in New Orleans. Established in 1789, it holds around 700 tombs and the remains of more than 100,000 people.

It’s the final resting place of Voodoo priestess Marie Laveau, civil rights pioneer Homer Plessy of Plessy v. Ferguson, architect Benjamin Latrobe, and musician Ernie K-Doe. Nicolas Cage also built himself a nine-foot white pyramid tomb here and no one seems to know why.

Marie Laveau’s tomb is the one everyone comes for, and her spirit is said to still walk the cemetery. For years people left offerings and marked the tomb with three X’s hoping for her favor, though guides now ask visitors not to, since all that marking is what damaged it in the first place.

Important: you cannot wander in on your own. Since 2015, every visitor is required to be with a licensed tour guide, and you need to book ahead. Tours meet across the street at Basin St. Station, and if you turn up without a ticket, you’re not getting through the gate.

The Beauregard-Keyes House

📍 Address: 1113 Chartres St, New Orleans, LA 70116

The Beauregard-Keyes House is an 1826 mansion in the French Quarter, now a museum, and one of the most haunted buildings in New Orleans.

It was built for a rich auctioneer named Joseph Le Carpentier, whose grandson Paul Morphy grew up to be the unofficial world chess champion. Then, in 1866, a Confederate general moved in.

P.G.T. Beauregard ordered the first shots of the Civil War at Fort Sumter and went on to command at Bull Run, Shiloh, and Petersburg. He rented rooms here for about two years after the war ended, by which point his wife Caroline had already died.

In 1904 the Giacona family bought the place. They were Sicilian immigrants running a wholesale liquor business out of the basement wine cellar. That got the attention of the Black Hand extortion racket.

On the night of June 17, 1908, four Black Hand men turned up at the house. Some accounts say Pietro Giacona invited them to dinner and turned on them, others say a confrontation just escalated. Either way, Pietro and his son Corrado shot all four on the back gallery. Three died there. The fourth ran, wounded. Both Giaconas were indicted for murder and walked on self-defense, and the family stayed put until the 1920s.

By the 1940s the house was falling apart and headed for demolition. Then the novelist Frances Parkinson Keyes bought it, fixed it up, and spent her winters here writing around 30 books, including Dinner at Antoine’s. She died in 1970, and her foundation runs the house as a museum now.

Okay, now the ghosts.

The famous one is Shiloh, the battle Beauregard commanded, where roughly 24,000 men were killed or wounded in two days. People say that on certain nights it plays out again in the main hallway. Soldiers with missing limbs. They stare at nothing, and they’re gone if you get too close. Some visitors report cannon smoke. Some hear gunfire.

No battle was ever fought on this spot, obviously. But Beauregard did write his war reports in this house, which is the explanation the paranormal crowd tends to land on.

Keyes had her own story. She said she used to see the general at night, wandering around looking for a pair of boots he left behind. Other people have reported a fiddler in a tuxedo, a beige dress drifting past a doorway, and phantom pets, probably Keyes’ dogs.

Out on the back gallery, people hear gunfire and shouting and report cold spots right where Giacona killed the men.

Then there’s the one everybody tells, which also happens to be the one that can’t be true. You’ll hear that Beauregard and Caroline waltz through the ballroom, reliving the grand welcome-home ball she planned for him in 1861 before he got called to war. They lived on Esplanade Avenue; Caroline died there in 1864, and Beauregard didn’t move to Chartres until two years later.

Visiting: the house is now officially called Historic BK House & Gardens. You can only get in on a guided tour, which runs on the hour at 10am, 11am, and 1pm to 3pm, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. It’s closed Wednesday and Sunday. Book ahead on their site.

The Ursuline Convent

📍 Address: 1112 Chartres St, New Orleans, LA 70116

The Old Ursuline Convent was completed in 1752, which makes it the oldest building in the Mississippi Valley and the oldest French colonial building left standing in the country. It is also, according to legend, where New Orleans keeps its vampires.

This is the story of the casket girls.

In 1728, a group of young women arrived in New Orleans to become brides for French colonists. They were called the filles à la cassette, after the small chests they carried with all their belongings inside. The colonists took one look and were disappointed, because the girls were deathly pale, which is what happens when you spend six months below deck on a ship.

The nuns housed the girls on the third floor until marriages could be arranged. Some of those marriages were miserable. Some of the girls never married at all and ended up in far worse situations. Their chests, still packed with everything they’d carried from France, were stored away in the attic. When the nuns went back for them, the story goes, every one had been emptied.

You can see how the rumors got going. The girls were pale, their luggage looked like coffins, the death toll was said to be climbing, and the shutters on that third floor were nailed shut. The nuns supposedly sealed them with 800 silver nails blessed by the Pope.

Then there’s the story every tour guide tells. In 1978, two paranormal investigators camped outside the convent to film the third-floor windows. Their cameras died in the night, and the next morning their bodies were found drained of blood.

There is no record of these deaths. No names, no dates, no police report, and no newspaper coverage.

Okay, time to dismantle the rest of this myth, because vampires aren’t real, right?

Start with the word. A cassette is a small chest, not a coffin. The girls were named after their suitcases.

The pale skin came from six months below deck with barely any sunlight. And the deaths? New Orleans in the 1720s was a swamp with a yellow fever problem. People died constantly.

As for the papal nails, no pope set foot in New Orleans until John Paul II in 1987.

And the third floor? The Archdiocese archivist has confirmed there’s nothing up there but archival records and storage.

So why has the vampire myth stuck around?

Maybe it’s Anne Rice. Maybe we’re just suckers for the creepy and bizarre. Given the choice between a story about young women who mostly went on to marry farmers and a story about the undead sleeping in luggage, we all know which one wins.

Visiting: the convent is now a museum, open Tuesday through Saturday from 10am to 3pm and closed Sunday and Monday. You can do a self-guided visit or a guided tour, and tickets are available on their site. The building shares its grounds with St. Mary’s Church, which is worth a look while you’re there.

The Sultan’s House

📍 Address: 716 Dauphine St, New Orleans, LA 70116

The Gardette-LePrête House, better known as the Sultan’s House, is one of the most photographed buildings in the French Quarter and the subject of the city’s most gruesome massacre legend. It’s now private apartments, so you can only admire it from outside.

Without further ado, let’s get into the legend of why it’s haunted.

Jean Baptiste LePrête bought the house in 1839. He was rich, spending half the year here and half at his plantation.

Then the Civil War came. His money was tied up in that plantation, and the war ended all of it: Union forces took New Orleans in 1862, Confederate money became worthless, and emancipation ended the enslaved labor his fortune had been built on.

That’s when a man with a mysterious accent turned up at the door. He said his brother was a sultan, and that he wanted to rent the place. LePrête was desperate enough to say yes.

Not long after the new tenant moved in, the parties started. Music, laughter, and noise coming from the house every night.

Then one night a terrible storm hit the Quarter. The next morning was calm and bright, and a man walking past the house stopped dead, because blood was trickling down the front steps. He ran for the police, and when they pushed open the door, they found a slaughter. Bodies everywhere. And out in the courtyard, a hand reaching up out of the mud. The sultan had been buried alive.

Now, this story is only a legend and never actually happened.

The legend comes from Charles Gayarré’s 1867 book History of Louisiana, which describes a mysterious stranger at the corner of Orleans and Dauphine in the 1720s. This house wasn’t built until 1836.

The story was pinned onto a building that didn’t exist when it supposedly took place. Researchers have found no newspaper coverage of any massacre, and the only sultans mentioned in New Orleans papers at the time were ones still living in the Middle East. As for the sultan’s brother, the ruler back then, Ahmed III, didn’t have any surviving brothers.

The one true part is that LePrête really was broke. Citizens’ Bank foreclosed on the house in 1878, a bank he had helped found.

The house is still haunted, though, just not by murdered sultans. Residents report two ghosts: a Confederate soldier who marches around in uniform, and a woman who probably just lived here at some point. People also report disappearing keys, footsteps, disembodied voices, and the smell of incense outside.

The Hermann-Grima House

📍 Address: 820 St Louis St, New Orleans, LA 70112

The Hermann-Grima House is an 1831 mansion in the French Quarter, now a museum, and it’s home to what might be the friendliest ghosts in New Orleans.

You may have seen it without knowing. When American Horror Story: Coven filmed Madame LaLaurie’s party scenes, they shot them here.

The house was built for Samuel Hermann, a German Jewish immigrant who made a fortune as a broker, then lost most of it in the 1837 cotton crash. He sold to Felix Grima, a judge, in 1844, and the Grima family kept it until 1921.

It’s a National Historic Landmark and one of the only Federal-style houses in the Quarter, which is why it looks a little different from its neighbors.

Now for the ghosts, who are lovely. Some of them leave the scent of roses and lavender in the rooms, reportedly the favorite perfumes of Mrs. Hermann and Mrs. Grima. Another lights the fireplaces on cold mornings. They don’t haunt the house so much as look after it.

One group of visitors spotted a couple in 19th-century dress and assumed they were costumed guides. They weren’t.

Not everyone here is charming, though. Union soldiers occupied the house during the Civil War, and their spirits are mostly reported in the wine cellar and on the grand staircase.

Visiting: the house is guided-tour only, running Wednesday through Monday and closed Tuesdays, with tours at 10am, 11am, 1pm, 2pm, and 3pm. There’s no noon tour. Reservations are encouraged, and you can buy a combination ticket that also covers the Gallier House over on Royal Street. The tour covers everyone who lived here, including the enslaved people who worked on the property.

Drink Some Absinthe in Pirate’s Alley

Pirate’s Alley Cafe

📍 Address: 622 Pirate’s Alley, New Orleans, LA 70116

Pirate’s Alley is a narrow cobblestone passage running alongside St. Louis Cathedral, and it’s one of the most photographed spots in the French Quarter.

The stories attached to it are mostly nonsense, which doesn’t make them less fun.

People will tell you pirates used the alley as a hangout, or that Jean Lafitte negotiated his brother Pierre’s release with Andrew Jackson right here, the price being Lafitte’s help fighting the British at the Battle of New Orleans.

Others claim Lafitte’s crew sold plundered goods through the fence of St. Anthony’s Garden.

There is some truth buried in there. The Spanish colonial prison, the Calabozo, did stand on this alley until 1837, and Pierre Lafitte was jailed there and escaped. So there is a Lafitte connection, but running a smuggling operation in an alley wedged between a church, a government building, and a jail would have been a bold choice.

The name is fairly new. It was called Orleans Alley South until 1964, when the city officially changed it to Pirate Alley because that’s what everyone was calling it.

When you want a drink, Pirate’s Alley Cafe is right there, about 14 feet from the cathedral. The staff occasionally turn up in full pirate attire.

Order the absinthe. They serve it the traditional way, with a fountain dripping ice water over a sugar cube. It will not make you hallucinate, no matter what anyone tells you; that reputation came from 19th-century scare campaigns. If you want something else, the cocktail menu includes drinks with names like Death in the Afternoon, Obituary, and Russian Funeral.

Next door is Faulkner House Books, where William Faulkner wrote his first novel in 1925. Worth a look while you’re on the alley.

Note: cash only, and despite the name, there’s no food.

Watch A Show in A Haunted Venue

Two of the best places to catch live entertainment in New Orleans are also two of its most haunted. One is a century-old theater, the other a jazz hall where three men died.

Le Petit Théâtre du Vieux Carré

📍 Address: 616 St Peter St, New Orleans, LA 70116

Le Petit Théâtre du Vieux Carré is one of the oldest community theaters in America, and one of the most haunted buildings in the French Quarter.

It started in 1916, when a group of neighbors began staging plays in each other’s drawing rooms (AKA living rooms). They called themselves the Drawing Room Players; they became quite popular and eventually outgrew the drawing rooms, so in 1922 they moved into the building that now houses the theater, where they’ve been ever since.

With all that history, you are bound to have some resident spirits haunting the place. Some say there are as many as 40 spirits.

The most famous one is Caroline, an actress who died here in the theater’s early years. There are two versions of how. In one, she fell from a balcony mid-performance while costumed in a white wedding dress. In the other, she fell from the catwalk above the stage during a rendezvous with a crew member. Either way, she’s the one people see most, drifting along the catwalk or backstage, usually accompanied by a sudden cold draft.

Actors say Caroline is friendly, and that if you’ve lost something, you can call her name and it’ll turn up.

Less friendly is the former theater manager, who died by suicide in the staff office. He’s blamed for slamming doors and making things disappear.

If ghosts aren’t your thing, don’t panic. They mostly turn up on opening night or backstage, bothering the actors.

Visiting: Le Petit stages dramas, comedies, musicals, and children’s productions throughout the year, with tickets on their site. It’s a community theater, but the productions are incredible. I saw The Play That Goes Wrong here and could not stop laughing.

Mahogany Jazz Hall

📍 Address: 125 Chartres St, New Orleans, LA 70130

New Orleans is the birthplace of jazz, so no trip here is complete without catching at least one show. Mahogany Jazz Hall was my favorite place to sit back and listen, and it turns out it also has one of the sadder histories in the Quarter.

The building was a lodging house in the late 1800s, run by a man named Fred Folks, and three men died here in the space of four years.

The first was Charles Murphy, a shoemaker who came over from England in 1886. Two years in, he was struck down by a fever that left him too weak to work the long hours he was used to, and he sank into a depression. One morning in 1888, after Folks had woken him and gone back downstairs, Murphy took his own life in his room.

Two years later, a German immigrant named George Kreis turned up at the lodging house, broke and homeless after burning through his money in the city. Folks took pity on him, gave him a room, and helped him find work as a baker, despite Kreis knowing nothing whatsoever about baking. On Valentine’s Day 1890, Kreis died by suicide in his room, and Folks was left to find him.

Then in November 1892, a homeless man named Scotty Boyle was standing outside the building when a tall man in a brown suit approached him and shot him. The killer ran and was never caught. One man was arrested and later cleared.

All three men are said to still be here, and the staff have stories. Hands touching them when nobody’s nearby. Whispers in their ears in an empty room. Shadows of people crossing the club when there’s no one there to cast them. And every so often, a glass will fly off the bar on its own.

Visiting: Mahogany is a jazz venue and an absinthe house, with live music nightly and bartenders who can make a mean Sazerac. It’s 21 and up, there’s usually no cover but a one-drink minimum, and some sets include a burlesque performance with nudity. Bring cash to tip the musicians.

Where to Stay in New Orleans

Stay in the French Quarter if you can. Almost everything in this guide is within walking distance of it, which you will want for Halloween, when the streets fill up and getting a ride anywhere takes forever.

If the Quarter feels too loud, the Marigny is right next door and much calmer. It’s close to Frenchmen Street instead of Bourbon Street’s chaos. The Warehouse District is a good middle ground, quieter at night and still an easy walk in. The Garden District is the prettiest of the lot but you’ll be relying on the St. Charles streetcar or Uber to get anywhere.

One thing to know: Halloween is peak season here, so rooms book up early and prices climb the closer you get. Book as far in advance as you can.

If you’d rather sleep somewhere with a ghost, I covered the haunted hotels earlier in this post.

Halloween in New Orleans FAQs

How do you get to New Orleans?

Most people fly into Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport (MSY), which sits about 15 miles from the city, roughly a 20 to 30 minute drive depending on traffic.

From the airport, taxis run on a flat rate to anywhere in the city, so you know what you’re paying before you get in. Rideshare works too, though the pickup zone is on the upper departures level. There are shared shuttle vans if you don’t mind a few hotel stops on the way, and the RTA 202 Airport Express bus is the cheapest option. It runs infrequently, though, stops in the evening, and has almost no luggage space.

I took the 202 but had a lot of trouble finding the stop, and when I got on, I realized I didn’t have change. The very nice bus driver lent me a quarter. Otherwise, I’d have been waiting an hour for the next one.

You can also get here by train or bus. Amtrak and Greyhound both use the Union Passenger Terminal near the Central Business District, which is a short ride from the Quarter.

Don’t rent a car. Parking in the city is expensive and scarce; the streets are narrow and half of them are one way, and you won’t need it. Everything in this guide is walkable or a short streetcar ride away, and on Halloween the traffic is bad enough that walking is usually faster anyway.

What Should You Do on Halloween Night in New Orleans?

The Krewe of Boo parade is the biggest Halloween event, and unfortunately, it’s the weekend before Halloween. So if you’re arriving for Halloween itself, you will have missed it.

You won’t be short of things to do, though. I did a haunted pub crawl on Halloween, and it was so fun. Everyone on my tour was in costume, and we even met some friends that we partied with the rest of the night.

After the tour, we went to Frenchmen Street and danced until the early hours. Every bar on that street has live music, and I prefer it to Bourbon Street.

Do People Dress up for Halloween in New Orleans?

Yes! Adults dress up here as much as kids do, and it isn’t just Halloween night. People are in costume all through the last week of October, at the parade, at the bars, at brunch.

The costumes also tend to be a step above. This is a city that spends all year building Mardi Gras outfits, so you’ll see a lot of handmade and elaborate costumes.

So pack a costume. Several of the events in this guide have contests, and almost everyone in the city will be dressed up on Halloween night.

How Do You Get Around New Orleans?

Mostly on foot depending on where you are staying. The French Quarter is only about 13 blocks by six, so you can walk end to end in around 20 minutes, and nearly everything in this guide is inside it or a short ride away.

For everything else, there’s the streetcar. Four lines run through the city, and the St. Charles line has been running since 1835, which makes it the oldest continuously operating streetcar line in the world.

It’s a National Historic Landmark, and it’s also just a lovely ride, rattling past the mansions and oak trees of the Garden District. The RTA also runs buses across the city, and if you’re planning to use transit more than a couple of times in a day, a Jazzy Pass gets you unlimited rides and works on both the streetcar and bus.

Uber and Lyft both operate here, and taxis are easy to find, though on Halloween night you’ll wait a while and pay surge prices.

One more option worth taking just for the view: the Algiers Ferry crosses the Mississippi from the foot of Canal Street, and the ride back toward the city at dusk is one of the best skyline views in New Orleans.

Is Halloween in New Orleans Safe?

Yes, with the usual big-city caution. New Orleans has a rough reputation, and the crime statistics are worse than the national average, but violent crime has dropped significantly in recent years. The areas you’ll actually be in are the most heavily patrolled parts of the city.

The risk for a visitor isn’t violence; it’s theft. Halloween brings enormous crowds into the French Quarter, and crowds bring pickpockets. Keep your phone in a zipped pocket, don’t leave anything on a bar top, and be wary of anyone who gets suddenly and unnecessarily close to you.

The other thing worth knowing is geography. The Quarter is compact and busy, but it stops being busy very abruptly at the edges. Bourbon, Royal, Decatur, and Chartres stay lit and full of people. Walk a couple of blocks toward Rampart or past Esplanade, especially after midnight, and you can find yourself alone on a dark residential street. Stick to the main streets, and if you’re heading back late from Frenchmen Street, take a rideshare rather than walking it.

This is also a city that lets you drink on the street, so watch your drink and don’t put it down and walk away.

Is Halloween in New Orleans Accessible?

Not very. Many of the old buildings have steep stairs and no elevators, and the sidewalks are in rough shape, cracked, uneven, and buckled by tree roots in many places. It’s unfortunate, but celebrating Halloween in New Orleans accessibly would be difficult.

Some things are more doable than others. The streetcars and city buses are wheelchair accessible, and Krewe of Boo is a street parade, so you can watch it from a flat stretch of sidewalk. The haunted houses, historic bars, and house museums will be tough, so it’s worth calling ahead if there is something you want to do.

Is New Orleans Expensive During Halloween?

It’s pricier than New Orleans usually is, but cheaper than most American cities you’d fly to for a holiday weekend.

Accommodation is where it hurts. Halloween is peak season; hotel rates climb hard through late October, and the good places in the French Quarter go early. This is why you should book early.

After that it’s up to you; there are free things you can do like watch The Krewe of Boo parade. Tours, haunted houses, museums, and the bigger parties can be pricey.

Food is where you have the most control, but if you want to eat at any of the haunted restaurants I listed above, it will cost you a bit more.

What is the Weather Like for Halloween in New Orleans?

Warm. By the end of October, highs are usually in the mid-70s and nights drop into the low 60s. It’s still humid, though, but October is technically the least humid month of the year here.

Make sure you pack a costume you will be comfortable in. A full-body furry suit or anything with a mask will be miserable. Pick something breathable, and bring a light layer for later, because it does cool off once the sun goes down.

October is also the driest month of the year, so you’ll stay dry most likely, though a short afternoon shower is always possible. A small umbrella is worth having.

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