No ghosts were harmed in the making of this blog post.
New Orleans is famous for a lot of different things: the food, voodoo, Mardi Gras, and music. However, some people are unaware of a part of New Orleans that makes it unique from any other city in the country — the cemeteries are above ground. Now I know that people from New Orleans tend to be a little on the crazy side, but trust me there are good reasons for this.
The main reason for the above ground cemeteries is because New Orleans sits below sea level. Way back in the 1700’s when the first settlers arrived to New Orleans, they started to build conventional cemeteries where the tombs were under ground. However, at a time when plagues were popular and disease would take over the masses, they quickly realized that being in a city below sea level, the streets of the French Quarter quickly became a cemetery. The graves were filling up with water making the bodies float to the surface and drifting them towards the town. Nasty I know! So to avoid having the streets of New Orleans be full of dead bodies, they came up with the idea of having above ground cemeteries. Whoever came up with that miraculous idea is a genius if you ask me, and now gives me a really cool back drop to shoot my outfit of the day.
Fast forward a couple hundred years, and the cemeteries of New Orleans are some of the most visited tourist spots in the city. You can find tours going to all of the major cemeteries in the city. However, I recommend not paying an arm and a leg for a tour and using the tour company Free Tours By Foot to get a great experience. The pictures above are from St. Louis Cemetery No 3. This cemetery was established in 1845, and is sometimes called the most haunted of the three St. Louis Cemeteries, making it one of the least visited compared to the other two. Mitch and I were unaware of the hauntings of cemetery no 3 until after we played around taking some pictures.
A little history about the cemeteries that I find extremely interesting is that it is common for one family to buy a tomb for the whole entire family. This means that when one family member passes they are added to the tomb, and then when the next family member passes they are then added to the tomb as well, and so forth and so forth. This is said to be done so the family members can stay together after death and be reunited after their time on earth. As Mitch and I were roaming around the cemetery we were quite surprised to see that there were as many as 10-15 people in each tomb. *shudders. It is actually really creepy to think about, how many corpses are in each tomb. However, on the other hand, it is so cool to see how old some of these tombs are and how many generations are represented. There is a grave in St. Louis Cemetery No 3 that has 175 nuns buried and one priest. What a lucky guy, I’d say.
With as old as the cemeteries are in New Orleans, there is no doubt in me that there are some major hauntings and ghosts floating around the area. No out-of-the-ordinary occurrences have happened to Mitch and I after our little date in the cemetery, but if something happens I will be sure to let all of y’all know.
So besides stumbling down Bourbon St, and stuffing your face with beignets, I would 10/10 recommend taking a cemetery tour to learn about yet another aspect of this town that makes it so amazing. Have a great weekend y’all!
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