And now for the thrilling conclusion of our dive into Delphine LaLaurie and the curse upon Nic Cage. If you haven’t read part 1, start here.
When we left off, I told you there were some pretty important things we had to cover before diving into what really happened at LaLaurie Mansion. So, let’s dive into the truth behind the lore:
There is no public record of Delphine being violent with servants in her home before her marriage to Louis LaLaurie. This does not mean she was never violent with bondspeople, simply that she had either never been caught or she was not as violent. We do know that in the period between Jean Blanque’s death and her marriage to Louis, eight slaves died. They were all younger women and children, with no recorded cause of death. It’s hard to say definitively whether Delphine played a role in these deaths, as death was not uncommon in New Orleans, particularly during the summer months when tropical fevers ran rampant.
However, there is a public record of Delphine’s cousin, Celeste de Macarty LaRusse, killing two of her bondspeople. Celeste was married to the President of the Bank of Louisiana, and it was common knowledge at the time he had rather public affairs with free women of color and several mixed children by different women, one he even went so far as to name CeCe, after his wife (what a great idea). Celeste was jealous and angry over these affairs and took her rage out on domestic staff.
She, like many white women in the South, whose husbands carried on interracial relationships (some consensually with free women, but many “relationships” were non-consensual interactions between slaveowners and bondspeople), blamed women of color for “tempting” their husbands, and took out their rage on the household. And while we often talk about the violence of white men towards slaves, we don’t often talk about how violent white women could be as well, especially in domestic spaces where they held control.
Now, we know Celeste killed at least two female bondspeople. One woman was violently whipped to death, and the other Celeste abused and tortured for some time until the woman eventually died. Celeste was never formally charged with these crimes, as the Court felt it should not pursue charges out of “respect” for her husband, but word of her crimes still circulated in society. Is it possible the two cousins’ crimes were conflated at some point? Or is this a window into how the Macarty family treated their bondspeople?
Additionally, we don’t have any record of Delphine being racist. In fact, unlike most wealthy white women of the time, she openly associated with and was cordial to mixed-race people. She accepted the role of godmother to her mixed-race half-sister and openly acknowledged all of her relatives' interracial relationships and mixed children.
Delphine also frees two of her bondspeople before meeting LaLaurie. She frees one as the last request of her second husband, and she frees her children’s nanny, as a thank-you for years of good service. None of this is to say Delphine couldn’t have been privately racist, but that there is no significant evidence the violence was racially motivated.
Lastly, and most importantly, much of what is known today about the LaLaurie story comes from a few select sources that did not necessarily seek to report accurate information.
Harriet Martineau, known as the “Mother of Sociology”, was one such source and her version of the story is perhaps the primary source used by most scholars and folklorists. In "Retrospect of Western Travel” she details a version of events that include the suicide of a small child that spurs an investigation of the LaLauries and the discovery of the attic torture dungeon; however, though Martineau maintains her sources are reliable, there are no contemporaneous records, even in the local gossip rags, that can confirm these accounts.
Could Martineau have fallen into the trap of local folklore or did she add new gory details to sensationalize LaLaurie’s story? But why would a notable sociologist potentially fudge facts and fictionalize a real story?
To understand that, it’s perhaps important to understand why Martineau wrote "Retrospect of Western Travel” in the first place. Martineau was an English-born social theorist and abolitionist, who, after working for several years studying and writing about the economy and “poor laws”, decided to tour America and bring light to the struggle of American abolitionists.
By the time Martineau began her tour, slavery had been outlawed in England for several years, and was shocked to see how different slave ownership was in the Americas. This is not to say that slavery was somehow better in areas of European rule, but that American slaveowners introduced a particularly brutal brand of ownership that horrified Martineau.
It’s entirely possible that Martineau exaggerated the tale of the LaLauries to further drive home to the world just how horrific slavery in America was, and it’s equally possible she did speak to locals who may have added their flourish to weave a more interesting tale. Regardless of whether Martineau took some creative liberties with Delphine’s story, she is very much the architect of the modern myth of the “Mad Madame”.
In Martineau’s version of events, there is a wellness check by a Creole legal clerk after complaints that Madame LaLaurie’s slaves appear malnourished and abused. The clerk goes to her home and is so blown away by her charm and good manners, that he says she couldn’t possibly abuse anyone, and the investigation is dropped — until a neighbor reports that she witnessed Delphine chase a nine-year-old slave girl to the top balcony with a whip in hand, and the girl killed herself to avoid punishment.
Allegedly, this is when law enforcement gets involved and Delphine is charged with a crime. She has nine of her slaves taken away as punishment but has a relative buy them back for her. Shortly after, a fire broke out on April 10, 1834. When locals break in to evacuate the remaining slaves, they stumble upon a dungeon of horrors filled with torture devices, dead bodies, flayed flesh, and horrific experiments.
But, what’s the real story?
We know from gossip magazines at the time that there were potentially three occasions (1828, 1829, and 1832) in which Delphine LaLaurie was questioned in court about her treatment of bondspeople. There are unfortunately no court documents that can confirm this, but we do have a 1829 letter from a local attorney that indicates Delphine paid to be represented in criminal court, and there is an 1829 article that notes Delphine was in trouble for her abusive treatment of slaves. The case seems to have been dropped given the lack of witnesses (slaves were also not allowed to testify against white people), and Delphine was never formally charged. It is possible she had to pay a monetary fine at some point, but there is no evidence Delphine was ever ordered to sell off slaves by the Court.
That being said, around this time, she did sell six slaves in 1828 to a family member, who re-sells several back to her at a later date. It seems likely that these pieces of Delphine’s history were conflated into one event, either by mistake or perhaps to create a more compelling story. It’s unclear if there ever was a “wellness check” performed on the home, but by 1834, rumors of Delphine’s cruelty were rampant in the Quarter and speculation over the couple’s separation was at a fever pitch.
A fire did break out on April 10, 1834, at the LaLaurie Mansion, while the LaLauries were out for the morning. And when police and fire marshals went to tend to the fire, they found a 70-year-old, enslaved woman chained to a stove. When police later spoke with the woman, she claimed to have been attempting to kill herself to avoid further punishment and told police that she was afraid of being taken to the uppermost room of the house, as those who were taken up there never returned.
Bystanders attempted to assist by evacuating bondspeople inside the home but found the uppermost area of the home was locked. When the LaLauries were tracked down, they refused to provide the key, and bystanders decided to break down the locked door to rescue those still inside the home.
Now, there are varying reports of what bystanders saw inside the locked room ranging from discovering chained, malnourished bondspeople to finding a pile of corpses and a few survivors, so brutalized by LaLaurie’s torture that flesh hung off their bodies in ribbons from repeated brutal lashings. Given how the story was reported in local papers over the course of a week, it seems as though there was a snowball effect of people exaggerating details and repeating gossip in order to be involved or in the know.
So, while it is difficult to parse fact from fiction, we do have one contemporaneous account from one of the bystanders who was deposed the following day that seems to be credible. Judge Jean François Canonge said that upon entering the locked room with other bystanders, he had witnessed one enslaved woman wearing an iron collar around her neck, and an elderly woman with a deep laceration on her head, weakened to the point she was unable to move. He also mentions that many of the slaves were heavily scarred and restrained by chains.
Another thing of note is that Canonge describes an encounter with Louis LaLaurie at the home when trying to obtain keys to the attic area before bystanders break down the door. Louis told the judge to basically mind his business and worry about his own home. It appears, at least at the time of the fire, that the couple was once again living together at 1140 Royal.
Once word of what the fire uncovered got out, a mob of angry locals descended upon the mansion and attempted to completely raze the property. The mob destroyed furniture, tore down sconces and paintings, and even began breaking down walls. The surviving slaves were moved to a local prison so that locals could bear witness to the extent of LaLaurie’s crimes. Later, several bodies would be discovered in the back courtyard, and children were found among the deceased.
After the mob descended upon their home, the LaLauries quietly slipped out of town. Delphine and her children fled to Paris, while Louis absconded to Cuba to live out his days in Havana. We don’t know why the couple decided not to flee together, but to our knowledge, Delphine and Louis did not remain in contact after they fled the Quarter.
We don’t really know much about Delphine’s life after she left New Orleans (though there is some speculation she may have been killed by a wild boar in a hunting accident). According to letters from Delphine’s son, Paulin, she spent the rest of her life wanting to return to New Orleans and seemed to not understand why the family needed to leave the city in the first place. Sometime before she died in 1849, she did attempt to return but canceled her plans after her children begged her not to go.
And that’s all she wrote folks.
Now, I had always assumed the stories told about Delphine LaLaurie were mostly true, even if her crimes were a bit exaggerated. So, when I went down the rabbit hole writing this now incredibly long post, I was surprised to find that, while her treatment of human beings was horrific, the most frightening thing about the truth is that how the LaLauries treated their slaves really wasn’t that far beyond the pale for most of the South at the time.
Anyone who has studied American Slavery knows that whippings and beatings were common forms of punishment. Threatening slaves with starvation, sexual violence, mutilation, or being sold off to a worse situation was typical. And it was not necessarily better under French rule.
Even though Delphine LaLaurie would have grown up under King Louis XIV’s “Code Noir”, the law still allowed owners to whip and chain slaves. While mutilation and murder by owners were forbidden under the code, it was because the King felt that severe punishments should be public and carried out by the legal system. It should also be said that owners who broke the law were rarely convicted.
So, the question is did the mob truly care about the abused slaves? Or were the people of the Quarter simply excited to knock an independently wealthy woman, who publicly flaunted her money, political connections, and much younger husband, down a peg? Or were people acting out because of the sheer discomfort of having to witness the reality of what happens when you dehumanize someone to the point they are perceived as property? Perhaps it was some combination of the three.
We’ll never really know if Delphine LaLaurie was the sadist stories paint her as or why suddenly, late in life, she began to abuse her slaves to the point of public speculation. Most stories also curiously paint Louis LaLaurie as a complicit bystander in all of this, but is it not possible for the doctor who traveled across the Atlantic to make a name for himself only to fail miserably, could have participated in some of the violence? And what about her adult children who lived in the home, who fled with their mother and protected her until her death?
Regardless of who participated in the abuse or whether it was as horrific as folklore would have us believe, the fact of the matter is while Delphine LaLaurie was a cruel and violent mistress, her story is sadly not unique. The impact of slavery has left an indelible mark, not merely on the LaLaurie Mansion, but on the city of New Orleans and the entire American South. And potential haunting aside, who is to say, in places where so much suffering and death occurred, that mark wouldn’t leave an impression or a darkness behind to ensure the past was not forgotten?
And, at long last, this brings us back to Nic Cage.
So, why did Cage buy a former house of potentially unspeakable horrors with a courtyard that once held a mass grave? Speaking with the New York Daily News in 2009, Cage said he loved the Haunted Mansion as a child and wanted to live out his childhood dream as an adult. When pressed about the house’s sordid past, Cage had this to say: “The house has such a mystery to it. Some of the stories about it are pretty horrific.”
Cage would only own the LaLaurie Mansion for a short time before he was forced to declare bankruptcy. He lost the house in late 2009 and it was sold at auction in 2010. In the years following, he would continue to have a rather spectacular downward spiral and struggle with his career and finances.
While Cage claims to have never experienced any paranormal activity during his time at 1140 Royal, many locals hypothesize Cage’s financial troubles and downward spiral might have been linked to a curse. After all, what sort of person would want to live in a place rumored to be haunted - let alone a place where enslaved men, women, and children were maimed, tortured, and killed?
And to be fair to the locals, it’s hard to believe supernatural forces weren’t at work when someone is actually charged with public drunkenness in the Quarter (it’s REALLY hard to do). You can read more about the night Cage got so drunk he forgot where he lived, shoved his former wife at a tattoo parlor, and began running down the street screaming and punching cars here.
There have been many stories and sightings over the years of a woman in period clothing wandering the halls of 1140 Royal. It’s possible, I suppose, that even in death Delphine couldn’t let go of the city and the home she loved, though I’m not sure she would recognize the rebuilt home as it is now.
But, would the ghost of the madame of the house really haunt Hollywood legend and Coppola clan member, Nic Cage? Could it be the souls of those who died in the home, enraged that the place where they were killed was purchased as a curiosity by the man who to this day stands behind his performance in “Vampire’s Kiss”? Or does Nic Cage just have issues with money management and sobriety?
It seems though that in recent years, Nic Cage has finally broken free of any potential curses and embarked on what many would consider a Cageissance. And while we’ll never truly know if Nic Cage was cursed, there is a valuable takeaway from this story:
There is a vast difference between a ride called “The Haunted Mansion” and deciding to live in a home, where real people died, for fun. And ghosts or not, it’s kind of weird to want to live in the latter.
The LaLaurie Manor recently went on the market again for a cool $10.25 million (you can see pictures of the truly haunting design choices here). The former owners, unlike Cage, never really lived in the manor and used it mostly as a destination for large parties a few times a year. Maybe the next owners will do the same.
And perhaps the spirit of Madame LaLaurie is fine with that.
After all, she did love a good party.
Sources:
Hancock Historical Society: Jean Blanque
Legends of America: LaLaurie Mansion