For my first post here, I thought I would go with something few people outside of New Orleans tend to talk about: the haunting and subsequent reign of terror caused by the Ghost Rider himself, academy award-winning actor, Nic Cage.
I’ve spent a lot of time in New Orleans over the years, and locals, especially those who live in the Quarter, have stories. There are endless tales of alleged vampires, ghostly apparitions, and weird goings-on once the sun goes down. Still, by far the most intriguing thing is that almost everyone I’ve met who lived there has at least one completely insane Nic Cage story.
From drunkenly jumping on a cop car to bribing the Catholic Church to get a plot in New Orleans Cemetery No. 1 to erect a pyramid tomb, Cage seems to have left quite an impression during his tenure there, so much so that local police actually came to Bourbon Street several times to deal with him.
So, let’s set the scene for this alleged haunting - it’s 2006, Cage has finished filming National Treasure 2, and the world has already been blessed with this meme:
Cage was riding a career-high and flush with cash. And what does a man with heaps of cash and no impulse control do? He buys property in the French Quarter, but not just any property — he purchases 1140 Royal St.
The number might not ring a bell for you, but the name sure will.
At the corner of Royal and Governor Nicholls sits the infamous LaLaurie Mansion, the former home of the infamous Delphine LaLaurie (yes, yes, Kathy Bates played her on AHS: Coven).
It’s a somewhat familiar story that many of you have probably heard some version of over the years that involves a rich socialite in New Orleans and her proclivity for torturing, maiming, and murdering slaves. And when I first set out to write this missive that was exactly the story I was going to tell, but as I dove deeper into Delphine LaLaurie’s story, I discovered that even contemporaneously, her crimes were sensationalized, making it difficult to find a fully accurate account of what occurred at 1140 Royal Street.
So, who was the real Delphine LaLaurie? Was she a sadistic serial killer? Or is there more to her story? And who or what haunts the halls of LaLaurie Mansion?
Want to know more? The full version of this story can be found here.