Delphine LaLaurie - Tumblr Posts
I will be reading this in the future and highly recommend you all do too. I started it and it's already amazing.
Echoes of the Past
By Horror73
The house had sat vacant for years. New owners came and went, none able to spend more than a night in the infamous home.
Sometimes the truth is more frightening than fiction.
Madame Delphine MacCarthy Lalaurie was a wealthy New Orleans socialite and notorious enslaver. In 1832, Madame Lalaurie moved into a neoclassical mansion at the intersection of today’s Royal and Governor Nicholls Streets with her third husband Dr. Leonard Louis Nicolas Lalaurie. Madame Lalaurie hosted many lavish parties there. However, through the years, information surfaced about her gross mistreatment of enslaved people.
On April 10, 1834, a fire broke out in the Lalaurie mansion. A group of onlookers gathered outside of the home as it burned. According to The New Orleans Bee, the city’s French-language newspaper, firefighters discovered “seven slaves, more or less horribly mutilated” locked inside the building as they attempted to control the flames. The Bee went on to condemn the “barbarous and fiendish atrocities committed by the woman Lalaurie upon the persons of her slaves.” The firefighters brought these enslaved people to the Cabildo.
As word of Lalauries’ abusive actions surfaced, neighbors became enraged. According to The Bee, a crowd of 4,000 people gathered at the Cabildo. Neighbors ransacked the mansion and destroyed what was left of the burned mansion. The Lalauries fled to Lake Pontchartrain and ultimately relocated to Paris. Madame Lalaurie died in Paris, but it is believed her body was brought back to New Orleans and buried at the St. Louis Cemetery.
Many had owned the house since that time and it had been used as apartments, private residence, and even a school but bad luck befell anyone who owed the home….Nicolas Cage fell into bankruptcy after owning it less than a week.
The house was yearning for a new occupant to torment much the same as the spirits that occupied the house had been tormented in their prior lives.
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Eve sat in her office drinking a glass of cold ice tea. It was extremely hot on this hazy Monday morning and the humidity level had to be close to 80 percent.
She had been hired to find out what happened to a famous paranormal investigator who had gone missing in the Lalaurie Mansion. She was writing a story about the mansion for her new book and had decided to spend one night to see if the stories of ghostly apparitions and screaming phantoms was indeed true. The next morning when the realtor went to unlock the house she found the writer had vanished. No signs of foul play and the doors were all locked from the inside. Her belongings were all sitting in the spare room untouched.
Eve knew enough about New Orleans history that the mansion was bad news. NOBODY spent any type of time in the home alone. When a cleaning crew was brought in , they cleaned in pairs and the attic was off limits. Eve had decided that her visit would be no exception, she contacted her friend Allie, who was a tough as nails security contractor to join her. They planned on meeting outside the mansion at 4pm.
Allie was right on time as Eve had expected. Her prior military training had never left her after her three tours in Iraq.
They walked into the mansion wishing for the best but fearing the worst.
After storing their gear, they began searching the house, never leaving sight of each other. Allie was as tough as they came but she was also a New Orleans native and knew the brutal stories of misfortune that plagued the mansion.
They went floor by floor, finding nothing…no signs of struggle, blood, footprints. The house was spotless and looked like it had been frozen in time for the last decade.
Eve looked at her phone. “Its almost midnight, let’s call it a night and come back in the morning”
Allie nodded and made her way to the door…it wouldn’t budge. They checked the servant’s entrance and found the door jammed in the same manner.
“Somebody or Something doesn’t want us leaving” said Allie
“Let me call the realtor” said Eve. She pulled out her phone…no signal.
They were trapped.
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They ultimately decided they had no choice, they would have to spend the night. They decided to sleep in the great room since it was well lit and only one doorway in and out. They were going to sleep in shifts and Allie had first watch.
As the clock ticked later and later the atmosphere of the house began to change. The temperature had to have dropped 20 degrees. Allie swore she could feel a dark presence around them.
The lights began to flicker and the lights went out.
“Eve, wake up…we got a situation here” said Allie in a whispered tone.
Eve groggily woke up and grabbed her flashlight from her bag.
They began to hear moaning and footsteps coming from the second floor. Allie loaded a clip into her 9mm and grabbed her flashlight.
They walked up to the second floor and froze, at the end of the hallway was a ghostly apparition. It turned around and looked at them angrily.
“Why are you in my home” it screamed
The specter ran towards them at full speed. Allie fired two shots at it with no effect. Then it was gone.
They heard screams, human screams coming from the floor above.
“It’s coming from the attic” said Eve
They slowly made their way up the stairs. The screams and moaning was getting louder. They made their way to the attic door and slowly pushed it open.
The smell they encountered was a mix of burning flesh and rot. The room was a torture chamber with spectral entities trapped in each cell.
“It’s the spirits of the slaves who were trapped and tortured here” said Eve sorrowfully.
“Look” screamed Allie. “It’s the writer”
The writer was trapped in a cell barely big enough to sit or stand. They slowly made their way toward the cell when the same angry apparition who they had encountered below appeared.
“Under whose authority were you given permission to trespass in my home and steal my slaves” she screamed. “You both are never leaving and are trapped here forever”
Allie pulled her pistol out knowing it was useless but Eve looked around the room. In the corner she saw a small piece of iron rebar, probably used to make the cell bars. She grabbed it and swung it at the apparition. The specter screamed and was gone.
They quickly made their way to the cell door and freed the writer and quickly made their way down the stairs.
The lights began to flicker and the temperature began to get colder and colder.
“If we don’t get out soon we are going to freeze to death” said Allie through chattering teeth.
Eve tried the door to no avail. The spirits were trying to trap them there. She grabbed a chair and tossed it through the window shattering it into a thousand pieces. They quickly but carefully climbed through the damaged frame and made it outside. As soon as they made it to the street the noise all stopped.
The writer thanked them as they walked towards Eve’s car.
“ I guess the stories were all true” said the writer in an exhaustive tone.
All Eve could do was nod her head. They had survived a night in the Lalaurie Mansion.
Thank you to @samcrosfaith for portraying Eve and @raceyrhymes for portraying Allie. You’ll definitely see these two in stories down the road.
AHS fans. Delphine’s Mansion in New Orleans. Our guide watched them film half the season with Kathy and they kept stopping because they heard noises and it messed with their filming.