This truly and totally
unique Voodoo shop and museum display is located
in the heart of the New Orleans French quarter.
This the original and only house on the reported
actual site that legendary Voodoo Queen Marie
Laveau once " REPORTEDLY " called
home during her life, Marie II, briefly lived
in what is now Marie Laveau's House of Voodoo,
and adjacent to the St. Ann Street cottage
where Marie I died.
Voodoo has
been a matriarchy in New Orleans from the
beginning. Very little is known with any certainty
about the life of Marie Laveau. She is supposed
to have been born in the French Quarter of
New Orleans, Louisiana in 1801, the daughter
of a white planter and a free Creole of Color
(a multi-racial combination of African, Native
American, and French (or Spanish)). She married
Jacques Paris, also a free Creole of color,
on August 4, 1819; her marriage certificate
is preserved in Saint Louis Cathedral in New
Orleans.
Of her magical
career, little definite can be said. She is
said to have had a snake called Zombi. Oral
traditions suggest that the occult part of
her magic mixed Roman Catholic beliefs and
saints with African spirits and religious
concepts. It is also alleged that her feared
magical powers came in fact from a network
of informants in the households of the prominent
that she developed while a hairdresser and
that she owned her own brothel. She excelled
at obtaining inside information on her wealthy
patrons by apparently instilling fear in their
servants whom she "cured" of mysterious
ailments
On June 16,
1881, the New Orleans newspapers announced
that Marie Laveau had died. This is noteworthy
if only because she continued to be seen in
the town after her supposed demise. It is
claimed that one of her daughters by M. Glapion
assumed her name and carried on her magical
practice after her death.
According to the list of
deaths recorded at RootsWeb.com, a certain
Marie Glapion Lavau died on June 15, 1881,
aged 98. The different spelling of the last
name as well as the age at death may result
from inaccuracies during entry of the cited
text file.
She is buried in Saint
Louis Cemetery #1 in New Orleans, in the Glapion
family crypt. The tomb continues to attract
visitors who draw three crosses (XXX) on its
side, hoping that her spirit will grant them
a wish.
Marie Laveau appears as
a character in numerous novels, especially
those that touch on the occult. New Orleans
journalist Robert Tallant featured Laveau
in two novels: The Voodoo Queen: A Novel and
Voodoo in New Orleans. These are considered
standard tales of Laveau and New Orleans and
can be found in many New Orleans stores. She
is the main character in the 1977 eponymously
titled novel by Francine Prose, and figures
in works of fiction including Neil Gaiman's
SF novel American Gods, "The Arcanum"
by Thomas Wheeler, Voodoo Dreams by Jewell
Parker Rhodes, Isabel Allende's romance Zorro,
and Midnight Moon by Lori Handeland, among
others.
As a character, Marie Laveau
appears in other genres as well, including
children's literature, comic books, and short
stories. She is an enemy of both Doctor Strange
and Dracula in Marvel Comics.
In the film Cry of the Werewolf,
Marie Laveau is the ancestress of a werewolf.
The character of Queen Mousette in the film
Blues Brothers 2000 was modeled after Laveau.
THE
HAUNTED VOODOO SHOP IN NEW ORLEANS
This is what all who
visit call the most unique real Voodoo, museum
and shop in the entire New Orleans French
quarter. At one time it was also the home
to Chicken Mans Voodoo shop also at one time
in the past. It was recently visited and featured
on Scifi Investigates when they were looking
for gifts to bring to Marie Laveaus grave
when they met up with Voodoo Priestess Bloody
Mary.
CHICKEN
MAN
Witnesses
Claim The Ghost 0f The Chicken Man The True
King Of New Orleans Voodoo Is haunting The
French Quarter And Marie Laveaus' House of
Voodoo.
It
began to surface slowly, as people came back
in twos and threes to live in the French Quarter,
the beating heart of a city that had been
abandoned to the
ravages of Hurricane Katrina; and it was not
among the locals that the talk began.
“Oh, I just saw the most realistic
voodoo man!” said the FEMA worker to
a group of her other friends inside Pat O’Brien’s
main bar. These days it isn’t uncommon
to see New Orleans bars brimming with FEMA
and other recovery and reconstruction personnel.
With the lack of tourists, these have been
the main customers in the once busy bars and
clubs that are bringing the Quarter back to
life
“I saw him down there,” she said,
pointing over her shoulder in the direction
of Bourbon Street. “He came over to
me,” she chuckled when they chided her
for hooking up with a colorful local stranger.
“He walked over to me and stopped me.
He said he knew what I needed and he gave
me this green bag.”
With that she pulled out a little green mojo
bag and all her friends recoiled in horror,
not because they recognized anything about
the bag immediately, but mostly at the sight
of the gnarled, black chicken claw tied around
it.
“Ewww!” said one of the group.
“That’s disgusting!” said
another.
As the women stood by laughing at the little
bag they were overheard by one of Pat’s
longtime doormen. He came over and said, quietly,
“Say, where’d you get that mojo
bag, ma’am?” And when he heard
the woman’s story, that she had got
it from a voodoo man on Bourbon Street, and
when he asked her to describe what the man
looked like, Nathan the doorman just about
fell down.
“That’s The Chicken Man!”
he said, eyes wide and staring. He handled
the little bag gingerly. “You just met
up with The Chicken Man!”
At this the women all laughed again. “Chicken
Man!” said the woman with the mojo bag.
“You’d figure the only voodoo
man I meet and he’s called Chicken Man!”
But as they slowly became aware of the blood
draining from the curious doorman’s
face, they fell quiet again. “What about
Chicken Man?” cackled one of the women.
“Well,” the doorman replied, “it
can’t be Chicken Man you saw! Chicken
Man’s been dead now for years! Ain’t
nobody like him on Bourbon Street nowadays.
If He gave you that mojo bag, I’d make
sure I NEVER lose that thing!”
Prince
Ke’eyama, The Chicken Man, died in December
1998.
“Well,
he was always around when we needed him,”
says Lance, a bartender at a popular Bourbon
Street nightclub. “It makes sense to
me, at least, that he’d be around now,
when the city is on its knees.”
Lance, whose occupation keeps him out late
into the night, is another who has sighted
The Chicken Man.
“I was on my way home, and I have to
walk down Bourbon then I cross over to Royal
and follow it home,” he said. “I
saw him from a distance, standing just past
the shadows of the [street]lights on St. Ann.
He looked just like he always did, with the
straw hat and that staff he always carried,
and it looked like he was wearing an overcoat,
or something big around him. He looked right
at me when I was coming up on him, but then
he turned away and I looked to cross the street.
When I got to where he should have been, he
was gone.”
One local hairstylist
will cherish a small relic she claims to have
obtained from an encounter with the Chicken
Man.
“He just glowed,” she said. “It
was strange, you know, but it was like he
was looking at me and through me at the same
time. I was feeling really depressed –
I had just broken up with my boyfriend who
wouldn’t move back here with me after
the storm – and it was just miserable
down here those first weeks back. The night
I saw the Chicken Man I was on my way back
home and he was standing against the wall
at the back of the [Marie Laveau’s]
House of Voodoo. He held out his hand and
I was about to run to the other side of the
street. But he had this little bag.”
She pulled out a pink gris-gris bag; attached
to it was a holy card image of St. Helena,
the patron saint of lost loves.
“He just smiled at me and nodded,”
she went on. “He seemed so nice, I just
took the bag and thanked him.”
Within two weeks her boyfriend had experienced
a change of heart. He has since reunited with
her and made a permanent move to New Orleans.
The Chicken Man was encountered by a group
of recovery workers out enjoying a night on
Bourbon just as Hurricane Rita was about to
become a threat to western Louisiana. This
time four people saw him and his demeanor
was different than previous sightings. He
appeared to be worried or preoccupied and
he stood silently, leaning on his staff and
contemplating the night sky. The group even
had to walk around him to pass down the street.
They found this funny until, several blocks
on, one of them looked back and the Chicken
Man had disappeared.
New Orleans was spared a hit by Hurricane
Rita and many people who are beginning to
believe the stories of the Chicken Man sightings
believe that he has returned to intercede
for the city, now that Katrina has done her
damage.
“I personally don’t believe that
we’ll have another hit like Katrina,”
says Deborah, a local police officer whose
beat is the French Quarter, “not as
long as people are seeing the Chicken Man.”
Deborah’s mother was a firm believer
in the power of this King of New Orleans Voodoo
and she can recall her often consulting him
about important events in the family over
the years. “I think he’s come
back to protect us, and as long as we’re
seeing him, New Orleans will be OK.”
That’s the feeling of Armando, perhaps
the most devoted of Chicken Man’s present
day followers and the leader of a secret voodoo
society based around Chicken Man’s practices.
He greets the reports of the growing number
of Chicken Man sightings with a broad smile,
gold teeth flickering.
“Oh, I believe it! I believe it!”
he says, holding up his hands. “It’s
not the first time, you know, that I know
of that he has come back. He has never left
us [his followers], you know!” With
a laugh, Armando adds, “I’m glad
to know he’s making his presence
known!”
Lately, Armando has been adding extra libations
and offerings to his Chicken Man altar and
regular rituals are being planned to invoke
the spirit of Chicken Man to appear and protect
the city.
“We have always honored him, in life
and in death,” says Armando. “Now
there is a chance for everyone, all of them
to see just what power the King really has!”
Priest Armando firmly believes that The Chicken
Man is not only capable of returning in spirit
form again but that he is quite definitely
doing so, appearing to locals and visitors
alike. And very often just outside the doors
of the famous Voodoo Shop is one of his favorite
haunts!
“All must know,” he says, “all
must know that the true power lay with Ke’eyama.
It is nothing to say, ‘He was a powerful
man.’ It is to be said, ‘He IS
a powerful king!’”
The
City of New Orleans has a potent connection
to its ancestors and benefactors. In times
of crisis they have repeatedly returned to
visit those who remember them, the people
of the city they loved who remember the powerful
connection to this area they had in life.
The Chicken Man is returning to remind us
of that link so that we can carry it into
the future.
If you are fortunate enough to encounter this
icon of true New Orleans Voodoo, count yourself
truly blessed. If you receive a favor from
the Chicken Man, you are truly holding a talisman
from the Other Side made especially for you
by the One True King of New Orleans Voodoo,
Ke’eyama, the Chicken Man.
WHO DO VOODOO GHOST
In house Psychic
Readers and shop employees say Marie Laveau
and the Ghost of Chicken Man haunt the actual
building especially in the reading room and
often they too will sit in on a tarot card,
and palm readings and add their two cents.
Recent visitors
to the shop have stated more often then not,
that they felt (Marie Laveauss') her icey
dead fingers touch them on the shoulders from
beyond the grave. Others state they have seen
her ghost in the actual back room behind the
beaded curtain. Alway sitting there in her
finery.
The Ghost of
Chicken man is sometimes seen walking up and
down in front of the store employee's tell
of customers coming in and saying the chicken
man sent them!
Still another
of the most real recent most chilling frightening
haunting reports comes from a lone visitor.
She states, that one of the very Tarot Card
readers, Psychic advisor Reese is none other
than Marie Laveau incarnate herself. "I
actually saw his face change into that of
a ghostly womans face before her eyes!"
She further states ,that she could hear him
speak in a foreign tongue similar to French,
(Creole French?).
The Haunted
building now houses a small but unique New
Orleans historic Voodoo museum and a shop
that caters to all manner of clientele –
from the simply curious to the avid modern
practitioner of the ancient Voodoo and Voudon
(Vous Dous) beliefs.
Marie Laveau was what we
would define as a Voodoo Mambo, High Priestess,
and legendary Witch Queen of New Orleans.
She left a strange legacy on theB big Easy,
darkly laced with intrigue and spells and
great black magic voodoo hex's, that still
casts shadowy powers on visitors to this famous
haunted Cresent City.
Marie Laveaus' House of
Voodoo is a shop jam filed with all types
of voodoo merchandise from around the globe.
I'ts just for the serious practitioner but
also geared the novice explorer and curious.
African, Brazilian masks
hand carved statues and fetishes, Voodoo Saints
and Catholic Saint plaster statues, Jelwery
and rosaries, T- shirts, many blends of incense
and hand made New Orleans voodoo dolls and
occult and voodoo books.
Stories have
it Marie Laveaus rests in various cemeteries
in the city. Legend also tells she frequently
visits the cemeteries, as well as the French
Quarter, and her old voodoo house in which
she srill haunts.
Until the
past decade or so, the mystical belief most
associated with New Orleans, and particularly
the French Quarter, was voodoo.
Brought to
the area over two hundred years ago by West
African slaves, voodoo has a rich tradition
that dates back some 7,000 years. Perhaps
the best known and most revered practitioner
of voodoo in the city, and some say the "founder"
of New Orleans voodoo, was Marie Laveau, a
free woman of color born in 1794 in Haiti.
Laveau was
also a devout Catholic; it was this unique
blending of Voodoo rituals and Catholicism
that would differentiate New Orleans voodoo
from other forms of the practice. Legend has
it that Laveau lived in a house at 1020 St.
Ann Street; there is no "Laveau Museum"
here as one might expect, but there is a small
plaque commemorating her residency. To view
an interesting collection of voodoo artifacts,
purchase voodoo accessories, or commission
a love potion or customized gris-gris bag
filled with magical herbs, head to The New
Orleans Historic Voodoo Museum (http://www.voodoomuseum.com)
at 724 Dumaine Street.
The Museum
also offers a variety of otherworldly tours,
some of which include a trip to the priestess'
much-visited tomb in St. Louis Cemetery #1.
Zombie's House of Voodoo at 723 St. Peter
Street and the Marie Laveau House of Voodoo
at 729 Bourbon Street are rumored to be less
authentic but are no less popular with the
curious; Zombie's is the departure point for
another group of tours.
You can also walk
down to 509 Decatur Street and have a drink
at the Marie Laveau Voodoo Bar, where the
proprietresses offer art and artifacts for
your perusal and claim to have the petrified
body of Laveau's cat. To complete your indoctrination,
visit the New Orleans Pharmacy Museum 514
Chartres Street, in 1823 the shop of one of
the country's first licensed pharmacists and
now home to an interesting collection of medicinal
artifacts including voodoo items and handwritten
recipes for potions and cures.
MARIE
LAVEAUS' House of Voodoo
739 Bourbon St
New Orleans, LA 70116
504-581-3751
New Orleans
Historic Voodoo Museum
739 Bourbon St
New Orleans, LA 70116
504-581-3751
On Bourbon St. between Orleans and St. Ann
Hours: Sun-Thu 10:00AM-11:30PM
/ Fri-Sat 10:00AM-1:30AM / Free Admission
American Express • Cash
• Discover • MasterCard •
Travelers Checks • Visa Accepted
To learn more
about New Orleans Voodoo, Hoodoo and Gris-Gris,
stop by:
Marie Laveau's Childhood Home
in the 1900 Block of Rampart Street
Congo Square in Armstrong
Park, at the Corner of Rampart and St. Peter
Streets This paved plaza was the only place
where slaves could openly gather for fellowship
and worship during antebellum days. This is
the site of the African (Calinda) dances that
were part of the Voodoo tradition. Congo Square
is a National Historic Landmark.
Voodoo Island of Salvation;
504-484-6499. One of the twenty most active
Voodoo practitioners in the United States,
Priestess Jones is known for promoting positive
thoughts through her faith. She is also a
historian on Voodoo tradition and its roots
in African Vodun and Roman Catholicism.
The
following are some places of interest that
any fan of Marie Laveau must include for a
perfect visit to the haunts of this most famous
Voodoo Queen.
1801
Dauphine Street Marie -Laveau's Father's Home
1900
block of North Rampart Street (in Faubourg
Marigny) - Dowry House
1016,
1028, 1022, 1020 St. Ann (originally 152 Rue
St. Ann)
St.
Louis No. 1, Crypt No. 3 - Alleged Burial
Site of Marie Laveau
723
Rue Dumaine - New Orleans Historic Voodoo
Museum
729
Bourbon Street - Marie Laveau's House of Voodoo
Ghost
Articles & Haunted Stories
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