113 haunted destinations cataloged across Louisiana, spanning 39 counties. The collection features museum, cemetery, and haunted hotel — every listing verified with family ratings, accessibility info, and practical visit logistics.
LaPlace, LA
Julia Brown, a Black landowner in the swamp community of Frenier, died of natural causes on September 29, 1915 -- the same day a Category 4 hurricane devastated the area and killed dozens of her neighbors. The storm wiped out Frenier and the nearby mill town of Ruddock so thoroughly that neither was ever rebuilt.
Baton Rouge, LA
Louisiana's Old State Capitol at 100 North Blvd in Baton Rouge was built in the mid-19th century as a Gothic Revival structure on the bluff above the Mississippi River. It served as the state capitol until the early 20th century. During the Civil War, the building was occupied by Union forces and used as a hospital and prison for soldiers. The museum is currently operated by the Louisiana Secretary of State's office.
New Orleans, LA
The Cathedral-Basilica of St. Louis, King of France stands on Jackson Square in the New Orleans French Quarter and is the oldest continuously active Catholic cathedral in the United States. The parish was established in 1720; the first church (1727) burned in the Great New Orleans Fire of 1788, the second building was completed in 1794 and dedicated as a cathedral, and the present structure dates primarily to a major 1850 rebuilding. Pope Paul VI designated it a minor basilica in 1964.
New Orleans, LA
The Beauregard-Keyes House at 1113 Chartres Street is an 1826 raised center-hall mansion designed by architect Francois Correjolles and built by James Lambert for auctioneer Joseph LeCarpentier. Confederate Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard rented the house in 1866-1868. Novelist Frances Parkinson Keyes purchased it in the 1940s, restored it, and bequeathed it to the foundation that operates it as a house museum today.
New Orleans, LA
The townhouse at 624 Pirate's Alley was built in 1837. William Faulkner lived on the ground floor for approximately six months in 1925, sub-leasing from artist William Spratling, and completed his first novel, Soldiers' Pay, while in residence. The building was designated a Literary Landmark by the Friends of New Orleans Public Library on June 25, 1993. Faulkner House Books was founded as an independent bookstore on the ground floor in 1988 by Joseph J. DeSalvo Jr. and his wife Rosemary James.
St. Francisville, LA
Myrtles Plantation in St. Francisville, Louisiana was built in 1796 by General David Bradford on land he received after fleeing federal prosecution following the Whiskey Rebellion. The property changed hands multiple times throughout the 19th century, accumulating a documented history of violent deaths including the 1871 murder of attorney William Winter on the entrance staircase.
New Orleans, LA
American Ghost Walks runs two separately booked New Orleans products: the scheduled New Orleans Garden District Ghost Walk along Magazine Street, and a private, fully customizable French Quarter ghost tour with no public walk-up option.
New Orleans, LA
Arnaud's opened in the French Quarter in 1918, when French wine merchant Arnaud Cazenave — later known as "Count Arnaud" — began assembling a Creole restaurant out of adjoining buildings on Bienville Street. Now run by the fourth generation of the Casbarian family, it is one of New Orleans's oldest continuously operating fine-dining restaurants.
New Orleans, LA
Bottom of the Cup Tea Room has operated continuously since 1929 in the French Quarter. The building itself dates to the antebellum period when it served as a residence for Julie, an Octoroon woman maintained as the mistress of a wealthy Creole businessman. The structure represents French Quarter architecture and 19th-century social complexities.
New Orleans, LA
The site at 717 Orleans Street in New Orleans' French Quarter has been continuously occupied since entrepreneur John Davis built the Orleans Theatre and Ballroom in 1817, designed by architect Henry Latrobe. The Sisters of the Holy Family — one of the earliest African American religious congregations in the United States — operated a school and orphanage in the building from 1881 to 1964 before the property was converted to its current hotel use.
New Orleans, LA
Brennan's Restaurant opened in 1946 and moved to its current Royal Street building in 1956. The building dates to the late 18th century and previously housed the Banque de la Louisiane. Bananas Foster - now an iconic New Orleans dessert - was invented at Brennan's by chef Paul Blange in 1951. The Brennan family openly maintains haunted-history materials. The restaurant was featured on Ghost Hunters in connection with the Red Room.
New Orleans, LA
The Dauphine Orleans Hotel opened in 1969 as a French Quarter boutique hotel built around several existing historic buildings on Dauphine Street, the most notable of which is the former site of May Baily's Place - the first officially licensed bordello in New Orleans, which opened in 1857 under the city's 'Ordinance Concerning Lewd and Abandoned Women.' The original 1857 city license is displayed inside the hotel. The Audubon Cottage on the property is reputed to be a former workspace of naturalist John James Audubon.
New Orleans, LA
French Quarter Phantoms is a locally owned New Orleans walking-tour operator established in 2006, running six separately ticketed products across the French Quarter, Garden District, and Tremé.
New Orleans, LA
Ghost City Tours is a multi-city ghost-walk operator running nightly walking tours in New Orleans' French Quarter since 2012. The New Orleans program consists of four distinct products: the all-ages Ghosts of New Orleans Tour, two 16+ adults-only tours (Bad Bitches Ghost Tour, Killers and Thrillers Tour), and a 21+ Haunted Pub Crawl.
New Orleans, LA
Built in 1831 by architect William Brand for German-Jewish immigrant cotton broker Samuel Hermann, this Federal-style townhouse passed to Judge Felix Grima's family in 1844 after Hermann's bankruptcy in the cotton panic of 1837. The Grima family occupied it until 1921. The Christian Woman's Exchange purchased the property in the 1920s and reopened it as a museum in 1975.
New Orleans, LA
Hotel Monteleone has been owned and operated by five generations of the Monteleone family since Antonio Monteleone, a Sicilian immigrant cobbler, purchased a 64-room hotel at Royal and Iberville Streets in 1886. The current structure, substantially enlarged over the following decades, contains 570 rooms and is the only remaining family-owned luxury hotel in the French Quarter.
New Orleans, LA
Hotel Provincial opened in 1961 in a complex of historic French Quarter buildings on Chartres Street. The complex includes Building 5, which served as a Confederate military hospital during the Civil War, treating wounded soldiers brought back from regional battles. Original buildings on the property were lost to fires in 1874 and 1878 and were rebuilt; current structures incorporate surviving 19th-century walls. The hotel remains family-owned and operates as a boutique property in the French Quarter.
New Orleans, LA
Founded in 1861 by Irish immigrant philanthropist Margaret Haughery as St. Vincent's Infant Asylum, the red-brick building sheltered orphans of yellow fever and cholera epidemics for over a century under the Daughters of Charity. It operated as a budget guest house from the late 1990s before being acquired and reopened in 2021 as the 75-room Hotel Saint Vincent.
New Orleans, LA
The Hotel Villa Convento at 616 Ursulines Avenue is a Creole townhouse built in or around 1833 on land sold off by the Ursuline nuns. Its first owner was Jean Baptiste Poeyfarre. The building later served as a residence and a rooming house. The Campo family acquired the property in September 1981 and operates it as a small family-run guest house. Local lore identifies the building as the original 'House of the Rising Sun' of the Animals' 1964 song, though no archival evidence definitively links the song to this property.
New Orleans, LA
Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 in New Orleans's Garden District was established in 1833 by the City of Lafayette, then a separate municipality from New Orleans. The cemetery's above-ground tombs and society vaults serve a multi-ethnic immigrant population. The site is temporarily closed for repairs as of 2024-2025; tours operate from the gates.
New Orleans, LA
Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop at 941 Bourbon Street in New Orleans is a French Colonial townhouse built between 1772 and 1791. The briquette-entre-poteaux structure is one of the oldest surviving buildings in the French Quarter and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1970. It has operated as a bar since the 1940s.
New Orleans, LA
The LaLaurie Mansion at 1140 Royal Street in New Orleans was built in 1832 by Delphine Macarty LaLaurie. An April 10, 1834 fire revealed enslaved people who had been tortured and confined in the attic. A mob sacked the house; LaLaurie fled to France. The current Empire-style building dates to an 1838 reconstruction. The property is a private residence.
New Orleans, LA
The Lamothe House Hotel at 621 Esplanade Avenue in New Orleans was built around 1839 by Jean Lamothe, a wealthy sugar cane planter, after his sister Marie Virginia Lamothe purchased the land in 1829. The double townhouse design was among the first of its kind on Esplanade Avenue. The property is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
New Orleans, LA
Le Pavillon Hotel opened in 1907 as the New Hotel Denechaud at 833 Poydras Street in New Orleans' Central Business District. Designed in the French Renaissance style with the city's first hydraulic elevator, it was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1991 and joined Historic Hotels of America in 1994. It now operates as a Marriott Tribute Portfolio property.
New Orleans, LA
Le Petit Theatre du Vieux Carre was founded in 1916 by a group of amateur theater enthusiasts in New Orleans and moved to its permanent home at 616 St. Peter Street in 1922. Architect Richard Koch designed the building in Spanish Colonial style, incorporating a surviving 1790s colonial structure at the corner. It is one of the nation's oldest continuously operating community theater organizations.
New Orleans, LA
Hotel Le Richelieu occupies a row of mid-nineteenth-century townhouses at 1234 Chartres Street in the lower French Quarter of New Orleans, near the boundary with the Faubourg Marigny. The hotel has operated continuously since the 1960s and has hosted a notable roster of musicians, including Paul McCartney during the 1975-1976 Wings Venus and Mars recording sessions at Sea-Saint Studios.
New Orleans, LA
Metairie Cemetery was founded in 1872 on the grounds of the bankrupt Metairie Race Course in New Orleans. The 150-acre cemetery preserves the oval racetrack as its perimeter road and contains some of the most elaborate funerary monuments in the United States, including burial places of nine Louisiana governors, three Confederate generals, and Storyville madam Josie Arlington.
New Orleans, LA
Muriel's Jackson Square occupies a French Quarter property whose history dates to 1718, when New Orleans founder Bienville awarded the lot to French-Canadian Claude Trepagnier. The current building was rebuilt after the Great New Orleans Fire of 1788 by Pierre Antoine Lepardi Jourdan. Muriel's opened in March 2001 as a Creole restaurant and rapidly became one of the French Quarter's signature dining destinations.
New Orleans, LA
Nightly Spirits is a multi-city ghost-tour and haunted-pub-crawl operator running a French Quarter New Orleans program with three publicly bookable products, all starting at 410 Dauphine Street.
New Orleans, LA
The Old Ursuline Convent at 1100 Chartres Street was completed in 1752 and is the oldest surviving building in the Mississippi River Valley. It served as the convent of the Ursuline nuns - who arrived in New Orleans in 1727 - and as the city's principal hospital, orphanage, and girls' school for much of the colonial period. After the convent moved in the 19th century, the building became the archbishop's residence and later the Catholic Cultural Center; it is open today as the Old Ursuline Convent Museum.
New Orleans, LA
Built in 1826-27 as the Chapel of St. Anthony of Padua, also called the Mortuary Chapel, to hold funerals for yellow-fever victims outside the original city limits — corpses were thought to spread contagion in St. Louis Cathedral. It is the oldest surviving church building in New Orleans. Renamed Our Lady of Guadalupe in 1918 and now home to the International Shrine of St. Jude.
New Orleans, LA
Designed by William Strickland in Greek Revival style and opened in 1835, the New Orleans Mint is the only U.S. facility to have served as both a U.S. and Confederate mint. It coined money intermittently until 1909 and was decommissioned in 1911. Since 1981 it has operated as a Louisiana State Museum branch and now houses the New Orleans Jazz Museum.
New Orleans, LA
The Place d'Armes Hotel opened in 1969 on a French Quarter parcel a half-block from Jackson Square, occupying eight renovated 19th-century townhomes built around a central courtyard with a pool. Hotel materials state that the site was previously home to a Capuchin school - sometimes called the first school in French colonial Louisiana - that was destroyed in the 1788 Good Friday fire. The colonial school connection rests primarily on the hotel's own published history; the broader fire of March 21, 1788 is documented to have destroyed 856 of the city's 1,100 buildings.
New Orleans, LA
St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 is the oldest surviving cemetery in New Orleans, established in 1789 after a fire and yellow-fever epidemic destroyed the previous burying ground. Its above-ground tombs hold generations of French, Spanish, Creole, free people of color, and enslaved African burials. The Archdiocese restricted general public access in 2015.
New Orleans, LA
Established in 1823 to relieve the overcrowding of St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, St. Louis No. 2 was built during a period of frequent yellow fever and cholera epidemics. It is laid out in the New Orleans 'above-ground' style with thousands of family vaults and wall ovens, and contains the graves of jazz, Creole, and free-people-of-color community leaders.
New Orleans, LA
St. Roch Cemetery and Chapel were dedicated on September 6, 1875, by Reverend Peter Thevis, the German-born pastor of Holy Trinity Church, in fulfillment of a vow he made during the 1867 yellow-fever epidemic. The site became a major Catholic pilgrimage destination, and its chapel side-room holds an accumulated collection of ex-voto offerings left by pilgrims healed through prayer.
New Orleans, LA
The site at 919 Royal Street was originally a Spanish Colonial-era boys' boarding school and orphanage opened in 1792 for boys orphaned by yellow fever. The school was destroyed in the Great New Orleans Fire of 1794, in which five boys died. A U.S. Federal Courthouse later occupied the site, and the current hotel building was erected in 1890.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPNew Orleans, LA
The 1849 Creole townhouse at 626 St. Philip Street in the New Orleans French Quarter served as a makeshift morgue during the catastrophic 1853 yellow fever epidemic. The building later operated as the Morgue Bar and Lounge, a themed cocktail bar referencing the address's nineteenth-century role.
New Orleans, LA
Built 1883-1884 as a private home for wealthy tobacco merchant Simon Hernsheim, the three-story Italianate mansion was designed by prolific New Orleans architect Thomas Sully and is the only remaining example of his Italianate work. It was converted to a boarding house during World War I and became a hotel in 1953.
New Orleans, LA
The Old Absinthe House occupies a corner building at 240 Bourbon Street in the French Quarter of New Orleans. The structure was built in 1806 as a commission house and corner grocery; the ground floor was converted to a saloon in 1815, and the famous Absinthe House Frappe was created behind the bar in 1874 by mixologist Cayetano Ferrer.
New Orleans, LA
US Ghost Adventures runs a French Quarter walking tour, branded 'New Orleans Ghosts,' covering Jackson Square, the Beauregard-Keyes House, and the LaLaurie Mansion, plus a Garden District mansion-and-cemetery tour, a voodoo/true-crime tour, and a 21-and-up haunted pub crawl.
Baton Rouge, LA
On January 10, 1972, a confrontation between Baton Rouge police officers and Nation of Islam demonstrators on North Boulevard turned violent, leaving two sheriff's deputies and three demonstrators dead and 31 people wounded. Governor John McKeithen deployed 700 National Guard troops and imposed a citywide curfew. Nine Black men were convicted in a 1976 trial. The Louisiana Supreme Court subsequently reversed those convictions, a rarely discussed chapter of Louisiana's civil rights era.
Baton Rouge, LA
Established in 1868 under the federal national cemetery program, Baton Rouge National Cemetery was created to consolidate the graves of Union soldiers who died in Louisiana and neighboring Arkansas during the Civil War. It holds nearly 3,000 graves, approximately 500 of them belonging to unidentified soldiers whose remains were relocated from sites at Plaquemine, Louisiana, and Camden, Arkansas.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPBaton Rouge, LA
From 1927 to January 30, 1950, 929 Government Street operated as the Baton Rouge General Hospital, a 62-bed facility whose ground floor served as the hospital morgue. The morgue was later repurposed as a cafeteria and then for file storage when Guaranty Broadcasting acquired the building. The structure remains in use today as the headquarters of Guaranty Media.
Baton Rouge, LA
The Heidelberg Hotel opened in 1927 at the corner of Lafayette Street and St. Charles Street in downtown Baton Rouge. In 1931, Governor Huey Long used it as his base of operations during a political standoff with Lt. Gov. Paul Cyr — who had declared himself governor — effectively making the Heidelberg the de facto Louisiana state capitol for a period. Long had a tunnel constructed connecting the hotel to the adjacent King Hotel. Long was assassinated at the State Capitol on September 8, 1935. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.
Baton Rouge, LA
Pleasant Hall at Louisiana State University was built in 1931 as the university's first women's dormitory, originally named Smith Hall after President James Monroe Smith. The building operated as a dormitory until 2002, when it was converted to house the continuing education department. It now serves as classroom and office space.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPBaton Rouge, LA
Pleasant Hall was built in 1931 as Smith Hall, a women's residence hall on the Louisiana State University campus in Baton Rouge. At some point the building transitioned to hotel use before returning to university administration. A documented violent incident in Room 312 — a double death involving a female student and her boyfriend — became the basis for the building's reputation as one of the more reliably reported haunted locations on the LSU campus.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPBaton Rouge, LA
Evangeline Hall was constructed in 1930 as one of LSU's earliest residence halls, built during a period of rapid campus expansion under Governor Huey Long's administration. It remains among the oldest dormitories on the Baton Rouge campus.
Baton Rouge, LA
Established in the 1820s and among the oldest surviving cemeteries in Baton Rouge, Magnolia Cemetery gained a grim distinction on August 5, 1862, when the Battle of Baton Rouge pushed Confederate and Union infantry into its grounds. Soldiers used the tomb walls and iron fencing as firing positions; the Confederate dead from the engagement were buried afterward in a mass grave on the cemetery's grounds. The site was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1985.
Baton Rouge, LA
Constructed between 1836 and 1838 by the U.S. Army, the powder magazine is one of only two surviving buildings from the Baton Rouge Arsenal and Ordnance Depot. It held up to 3,000 barrels of gunpowder and withstood artillery fire during the August 5, 1862 Battle of Baton Rouge. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973, the restored structure now serves as a museum operated by the Louisiana Secretary of State.
Baton Rouge, LA
Designed by Army Captain James Gadsden and built between 1819 and 1825 on the site of the demolished Spanish Fort San Carlos, the Pentagon Barracks formed a five-sided complex of brick buildings around a central courtyard. The site served as a U.S. Army post, functioned briefly as Louisiana State University's first campus in the 1860s, and was occupied by both Confederate and Union forces during the Civil War. Today the buildings serve as apartments for Louisiana state legislators.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPBaton Rouge, LA
The building at 1109 Highland Road was constructed in the 1880s and functioned as a firehouse before transitioning to use as a Baton Rouge General Hospital annex. During the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, local accounts hold that the basement morgue was used to store the bodies of approximately 250 flood victims. The building later became the Spanish Moon music venue, which operated from 1997 until it closed during the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2022 it was purchased by TILT, a Baton Rouge creative agency, which converted the 5,500-square-foot space into its headquarters.
Baton Rouge, LA
US Ghost Adventures runs its Baton Rouge program, branded 'Baton Rouge Ghosts,' as a nightly downtown walking tour built around Louisiana's political history, including the Old State Capitol and the former Heidelberg Hotel.
Baton Rouge, LA
USS Kidd (DD-661) is a Fletcher-class destroyer named for Rear Admiral Isaac C. Kidd, killed aboard USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Commissioned in 1943, the Kidd served in the Pacific and was struck by a Japanese kamikaze aircraft off Okinawa on April 11, 1945, killing 38 sailors. She is now moored on the Mississippi River in Baton Rouge in her exact 1945 configuration — the only Fletcher-class destroyer in the country preserved in her WWII appearance.
Shreveport, LA
The Caddo Parish Courthouse, completed in 1926 on a site that has hosted courthouses since 1860, operated a jail and gallows on its upper floors where seven men were executed by hanging between the 1920s and 1934. The building also housed a coroner's office in its basement for decades.
Shreveport, LA
The Caddo Parish Penal Farm, known as the Pea Farm, was established in 1905 on the former Caddo Parish plantation of Caesar Carpentier Antoine — Louisiana's Reconstruction-era Black Lieutenant Governor. The self-sustaining jail housed the parish's most violent offenders until it was phased out in the 1960s. The vine-covered ruins still stand off West 70th Street, surrounded by industrial development.
Shreveport, LA
Built in 1897 by Lafayette Robert Logan and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the Logan Mansion is a well-preserved example of late-Victorian domestic architecture in Shreveport's historic Austin Place neighborhood. Current owners operate the mansion as a historic events venue.
Shreveport, LA
Founded in 1836 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1977, Oakland Cemetery holds a mass grave of more than 800 victims of the 1873 yellow fever epidemic — an outbreak that killed roughly one quarter of Shreveport's population in approximately three months.
Shreveport, LA
Built in 1896, the Ogilvie-Wiener Mansion is the oldest surviving Queen Anne-style Victorian building in Shreveport. At 9,000 square feet, it passed through two prominent grocery dynasty families before becoming Shreveport's first openly gay bar in the early 1980s, and was later featured in HBO's True Blood opening credit sequence.
Shreveport, LA
Built in 1929 in downtown Shreveport, the Municipal Auditorium became one of the most consequential small venues in American music history as the broadcast home of the Louisiana Hayride radio show. Its basement briefly served as Shreveport's city morgue before being converted to dressing rooms.
Shreveport, LA
The Spring Street Historical Museum occupies the Tally's Bank Building, constructed in the 1860s and considered one of the oldest remaining commercial structures in downtown Shreveport. The building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is affiliated with Louisiana State University Shreveport.
Lake Charles, LA
ACTS Theatre is the only pre-WWII theatre structure still standing in Lake Charles. The building occupies a site marked by a 1952 fire death — William Portie, a neighborhood fixture known for selling candy from a basket to local children, died of smoke inhalation in an apartment above an adjacent grocery fire on April 21, 1952.
Lake Charles, LA
The Calcasieu Parish Courthouse in Lake Charles served as the site of Louisiana's last judicial electrocution of a woman. On November 28, 1942, Annie Beatrice McQuiston Henry — known as Toni Jo Henry — was put to death in the courthouse basement.
Lake Charles, LA
The John Reid House is a three-story mansion in Lake Charles's Charpentier Historic District, standing for over 110 years. It was home to Sheriff D.J. Reid and his family, and became entwined in the story of the 1910 Great Fire that devastated Lake Charles.
Lake Charles, LA
The Imperial Calcasieu Museum in downtown Lake Charles operates as the primary regional history institution for Southwest Louisiana and home to the 'Haunted Histories' permanent exhibit. The exhibit covers the 1910 Great Fire, the 1940 electric-chair execution of Toni Jo Henry, and regional dark history and legends from Calcasieu Parish and surrounding areas.
Lake Charles, LA
The Rosa Hart Theatre occupies a corner of the Lake Charles Civic Center complex on the lakefront, built in the 1970s. The surrounding area has historical ties to Gerstner Field, a World War I Army Air Corps training facility that operated nearby.
Alexandria, LA
The Alexandria Zoological Park was established in 1926 in Bringhurst Park as a modest collection of caged animals. By the late 1960s the zoo faced closure under USDA pressure, prompting the creation of the Friends of the Alexandria Zoo (FOTAZ) support organization. Robert Leslie Whitt was hired as director in 1974 and spent 34 years transforming the facility into a 33-acre zoo with approximately 500 animals. He died of a heart attack six days before his 56th birthday. Hurricane Laura in 2020 caused extensive damage and the zoo was closed for repairs, reopening March 12, 2021.
Alexandria, LA
The building at 924 Third Street in Alexandria was originally constructed in 1865 by Scottish immigrants who opened a jewelry store near the Red River, capitalizing on the shipping traffic that moved through the city. The jewelry business later passed to Carl A. Schnack, a German immigrant owner who operated it through the mid-twentieth century. When Schnack's jewelry business relocated in the 1990s, a local attorney — a descendant of the original builder — purchased the Art Deco structure and converted it into an upscale restaurant named The Diamond Grill as a tribute to the building's commercial history.
Alexandria, LA
Hotel Bentley was built in 1907 and opened in August 1908 by timber baron Joseph Bentley at a cost of $700,000. Designed by architect George R. Mann in a Renaissance Revival style, the hotel was added to the National Register of Historic Places on November 15, 1979. During World War II it served as a base of operations for Generals Eisenhower, Patton, Bradley, and Stilwell conducting the Louisiana Maneuvers — large-scale military training exercises held in central Louisiana from 1940 to 1941. The hotel was purchased by Michael Jenkins in 2012 for $3.4 million and reopened after renovation.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPLafayette, LA
Harris Hall is an active dormitory at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. The ghost story associated with it originated with an earlier campus building — Denbo Hall — which was demolished and replaced. The legend of 'Lily' transferred from the demolished building to Harris Hall, which stands adjacent.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPLafayette, LA
St. John Cemetery was established in 1821 next to St. John's Cathedral in what would become downtown Lafayette. It is among the oldest cemeteries in the Acadiana region and holds thousands of early settlers including town founder Jean Mouton, Confederate general Alfred Mouton, and U.S. Ambassador Jefferson Caffery.
Lafayette, LA
T'Frere's House was built in 1890 on land that was part of the Comeaux family's plantation holdings in what is now Lafayette Parish. The property takes its current name from its years as a private family home before being converted to a bed and breakfast. The house is an Acadian-influenced Creole cottage, a style common in the Teche Country of south-central Louisiana.
Ruston, LA
The Biomedical Engineering Building opened in 1928 as Ruston-Lincoln Sanitarium with morgue on the first floor and surgical suite on the fourth. It transitioned to a nursing home in 1963 and remained in operation until the 1970s. Louisiana Tech University acquired it for research purposes and currently operates it as the CREST Building.
Ruston, LA
The building at 212 N Vienna Street in Ruston has operated as a theater since 1928, when it opened as the Astor Theater for silent films and live concerts. It became the Rialto in 1932, then the Dixie Theater after the Dixie Theater Corporation of New Orleans purchased it and reopened it in 1956 with air conditioning and a flashing neon star. A restoration effort returned the venue to active use in 2006 as the Dixie Center for the Arts. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places on October 14, 1993, and became a contributing property of the Downtown Ruston Historic District in 2017.
Ruston, LA
Howard Auditorium at Louisiana Tech University was constructed between 1938 and 1940 as part of a campus expansion funded through federal programs. Architect Edward F. Neild designed the 3,000-seat building in Streamline Moderne style, and it was named for Harry Howard — the university's first graduate and its treasurer for 40 years. The building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
St. Francisville, LA
David Barrow, the wealthiest planter in West Feliciana Parish, built a 40-room Gothic Revival mansion at Afton Villa beginning in 1849. The estate's name was drawn from Robert Burns's poem 'Sweet Afton.' Senator Alexander Barrow, whose Congressional memorial obelisk still stands in the family cemetery, is among the notable figures interred on the property. The mansion was completely destroyed by fire on March 7, 1963; the 25-acre historic gardens and cemetery survived and remain open to the public.
St. Francisville, LA
Grace Episcopal Church was established in 1827 as one of Louisiana's earliest Protestant congregations. The current Gothic Revival building was completed in 1860. In 1863, Union gunboats shelled the church during military operations along the Mississippi River, damaging the structure. The adjacent cemetery holds figures from both armies of the Civil War and is associated with the story of Union Navy officer John Elliott Hart, whose 1863 burial by local Confederates has given rise to an annual 'Day the War Stopped' observance. The church is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
St. Francisville, LA
Daniel and Martha Barrow Turnbull built Rosedown in 1835 on a cotton estate that would grow to approximately 3,500 acres, producing some of the highest-valued crops in antebellum Louisiana. The plantation's prosperity depended on the labor of enslaved people; the Turnbulls kept detailed records including Martha's garden journal and estate accounts. The family suffered successive losses in the following decades. Rosedown was designated a National Historic Landmark and is now a Louisiana State Historic Site open for daily guided tours.
Gibsland, LA
On May 23, 1934, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow drove south on Louisiana Highway 154 from Gibsland after eating breakfast at Ma Canfield's Café. A six-officer posse concealed in the brush — including former Texas Ranger Frank Hamer — opened fire on their Ford V8 without warning. The two were struck by approximately 130 rounds and died at the scene. Two granite monuments mark the roadside pull-off; the markers have been repeatedly vandalized and were most recently replaced in October 2024.
Gibsland, LA
The building at 2419 Main Street was Ma Canfield's Café, where Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow ate breakfast on the morning of May 23, 1934 — the last meal of their lives. They drove south on Highway 154 afterward and were killed by a six-officer posse that included Texas Ranger Frank Hamer. The café building now houses a museum of Bonnie-and-Clyde artifacts, including personal effects, photographs, and a replica of their bullet-riddled Ford V8.
Monroe, LA
Built in 1910 around the core of an 1814 plantation cottage known as Mulberry Grove, Layton Castle in Monroe has remained in the same family for six generations. The property includes a private burial ground where Georgette Layton, who died at approximately age ten from a lingering illness in 1901, is interred.
Monroe, LA
Built in 1914 in the Modified Tudor style, the Slagle-Masur House in Monroe served as a private residence before becoming the Masur Museum of Art — the largest visual arts museum in northeast Louisiana. It has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
New Iberia, LA
The Joseph Jefferson House was built in 1870 as a hunting lodge and painting studio for actor Joseph Jefferson, who portrayed Rip Van Winkle on stage more than 4,500 times. The 22-room Moorish Revival and Gothic Revival house sits atop the Jefferson Island salt dome at an elevation of 75 feet — unusual for coastal south Louisiana. It is now operated as a museum and gardens by the Bayless family.
New Iberia, LA
Shadows-on-the-Teche was built between 1831 and 1834 for David Weeks, a Louisiana sugar planter, on a 2,000-acre estate along Bayou Teche. The property was worked by hundreds of enslaved people and passed to Mary Moore, David's widow, after his death in 1834. Mary died in the house on December 29, 1863, as Union troops occupied it during the Red River Campaign. The National Trust for Historic Preservation acquired the property in 1958 and has operated it as a house museum ever since.
Opelousas, LA
The 1935 building at 315 N Main Street in Opelousas has served as Sibille's Funeral Home, a church, and a public library before housing the city museum and interpretive center. It holds Civil War relics and a barbershop chair documented as the one in which Clyde Barrow received his last haircut shortly before the May 1934 Bienville Parish ambush that killed him and Bonnie Parker.
Opelousas, LA
Five courthouse buildings have occupied this corner in Opelousas since the parish's organization in 1806. The 1847 structure served briefly as Louisiana's Confederate state capitol around 1862 when Union forces threatened Baton Rouge. The third-floor jail in that building was the site of two hangings and one electrocution before the current 1939 structure replaced it.
Angola, LA
The Red Hat Cell Block was built in 1935 at Louisiana State Penitentiary (Angola) as a punitive solitary-confinement unit for the facility's most difficult inmates, who were forced to wear distinctive red-painted straw hats as a mark of their punishment status. From 1956 to 1961, it housed the state's execution chamber and electric chair; eleven men were put to death there. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2003, it is now part of the Angola Prison Museum's public bus tours.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPBroussard, LA
Mary Jane's Bridge is a road bridge on Bayou Tortue Road near Broussard, Louisiana, where Parish Road 140 and the bayou road intersect south of Highway 90. The bridge serves as the setting for one of Acadiana's most persistent and widely documented urban legends — a story of a young woman killed on prom night whose body was never recovered from the bayou. No historical incident matching the legend's details has been verified.
Buras, LA
Fort Jackson is a National Historic Landmark masonry fort 40 miles up the Mississippi River from its mouth, in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana. Constructed between 1822 and 1832 as coastal defense for New Orleans, the fort was the site of the 12-day Battle of Forts Jackson and St. Philip in April 1862, after which Union forces captured New Orleans.
Centerville, LA
Susie Plantation was built between 1848 and 1852 by Royal and Adeline Harris as a working sugar cane and rice plantation along Bayou Teche in St. Mary Parish, Louisiana. After Royal's death in 1858, his widow remarried John H. Darnall. Their daughter Adeliza E. Harris is interred in an above-ground tomb on the grounds, where she died in the early 1870s.
Chalmette, LA
Chalmette Battlefield, a unit of Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve, preserves the ground where Major General Andrew Jackson's forces decisively defeated the British on January 8, 1815, in the Battle of New Orleans. The site includes the Chalmette Monument, the restored American rampart line, the Greek Revival Malus-Beauregard House, and the adjacent Chalmette National Cemetery.
Darrow, LA
Houmas House has been an agricultural estate for roughly 250 years, passing through French, Spanish, and American ownership before becoming one of the largest sugar-producing plantations in antebellum Louisiana. The Greek Revival main house visible today was built in the 1840s. After the Civil War and Yellow Fever epidemics devastated the region, the estate fell into decline before being restored in the mid-twentieth century. It now operates as a hotel, restaurant, and event venue.
DeRidder, LA
Built in 1914 in Gothic Revival style from cast concrete block, the Beauregard Parish Jail earned the nickname 'Hanging Jail' after the only execution carried out there on March 9, 1928, when two convicted murderers were hanged. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1981.
Destrehan, LA
Destrehan Plantation at 13034 River Road, Destrehan, Louisiana, is the oldest surviving plantation home in the lower Mississippi valley. Built between 1787 and 1790 for Robert de Logny, the property passed to Jean Noël Destrehan in 1792 and became a major sugar operation by the early 19th century. The plantation served as a trial and execution site following the 1811 German Coast Uprising.
Edgerly, LA
Big Woods Cemetery was officially consecrated in 1827 when wealthy Louisiana resident James Bryan donated a dozen acres of land for burial purposes. The cemetery served as a primary burial ground for the Edgerly community, with the nearby Big Woods Baptist Church providing spiritual context. The cemetery has been expanded multiple times throughout its nearly 200-year history.
Elizabeth, LA
The Elizabeth Hospital Building, completed in 1924, served the company town of Elizabeth, Louisiana, founded by the Industrial Lumber Company in 1907. The two-story frame structure operated as the company hospital until the lumber operation declined, after which the building was repurposed as the Elizabeth Town Hall.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPElm Grove, LA
The Taylortown Tower is the surviving brick bell tower of the Methodist Episcopal Church of Taylortown, a small plantation village in Bossier Parish, Louisiana, on US-71 near Elm Grove. The church was built in the early 1900s (sources date it to roughly 1906-1911) and later abandoned as the congregation dwindled; the building fell into ruin and burned, leaving only the bell tower standing in a field.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPEunice, LA
Miller Cemetery, also called Headless Cemetery in local folklore, is a small late-19th-century burial ground on Miller Cemetery Road north of Eunice, Louisiana. It contains the grave of Alexandre Miller, one of early Eunice's prominent residents, and remains an active cemetery for the surrounding Cajun Prairie community.
Houma, LA
Southdown Plantation in Houma, Louisiana sits along Little Bayou Black on land first granted under Spanish rule in the 1790s. William J. Minor and James Dinsmore established the plantation in 1828 and shifted it from indigo to sugarcane in 1831. The 1858 main house was donated in 1975 and opened as a museum in 1982. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.
Jackson, LA
The Louisiana Legislature created East Louisiana State Hospital in 1847; it was operational by 1848 on a campus in East Feliciana Parish featuring Greek Revival architecture. Over 4,000 patients are buried in an on-site cemetery that went unmaintained for decades. The facility continues to operate as an active state psychiatric hospital.
Keatchie, LA
Keatchie Female College was founded in 1857 by the Grand Cane Association of Baptist Churches in DeSoto Parish, Louisiana. Following the Battle of Mansfield on April 8, 1864 — one of the last major Confederate victories in the Trans-Mississippi theater — the college's second floor was converted into a field hospital for wounded Confederate soldiers. Many who died there were buried in the Confederate Memorial Cemetery adjacent to the campus.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPMansfield, LA
The Battle of Mansfield on April 8, 1864 was the decisive engagement of the Union's Red River Campaign and the last major Confederate victory of the Civil War. Confederate General Richard Taylor's 9,000-man force routed a 13,000-man Union army under General Nathaniel Banks in the afternoon fighting, inflicting over 2,200 Union casualties and capturing 20 artillery pieces and several hundred supply wagons. The defeat ended the Union's strategic threat to Confederate Texas and its cotton supply.
Natchitoches, LA
The American Cemetery at 200 Second Street in Natchitoches is described as the oldest cemetery in the Louisiana Purchase, established by 1737 on the grounds of a French colonial fort. Natchitoches itself was founded in 1714 as the oldest permanent European settlement in the Louisiana Purchase territory. The cemetery contains burials from across the colonial, territorial, and antebellum periods.
Pineville, LA
Rapides Cemetery sits on bluffs above the Red River in Pineville where European colonial activity has been documented since approximately 1722. The burial ground was formally established between 1774 and May 1798 and is recognized as the oldest cemetery in Rapides Parish. The Rapides Cemetery Association was founded in 1872 to restore and maintain the grounds. The cemetery was added to the National Register of Historic Places on June 15, 1979.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPPlaquemine, LA
Morrisonville was an African American community founded in the 1870s by formerly enslaved people on land west of Plaquemine in Iberville Parish. Residents built churches, schools, and farms that persisted for more than a century. When Dow Chemical began vinyl chloride production adjacent to the community in 1958, contamination from chlorinated hydrocarbons eventually reached the groundwater. Dow bought out all remaining residents and the community was fully vacated by 1993. No structures survive; the site is accessible only through the church graveyard and an open prayer shelter Dow provides for returning families.
Aerial survey · USDA NAIPRayne, LA
Hookman's Cemetery — formally the McClelland Cemetery — is a small rural burial ground on Ohlenforst Road in Acadia Parish west of Roberts Cove. Established in the early twentieth century as an informal plot for residents who could not afford church cemetery burial, the site contains seven marked graves with dates ranging from 1891 to 1934 and has been abandoned and overgrown for decades.
St. Martinville, LA
St. Martin de Tours Catholic Church was founded in 1765 by Acadian exiles fleeing the British expulsion from Nova Scotia. It is recognized as one of the oldest Catholic parishes in the United States and the third oldest in Louisiana. The current building was completed in 1840 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The church retains the colonial-era practice of burying priests beneath the sanctuary floor.
Stonewall, LA
Buena Vista is an 1859 Greek Revival plantation house built for Boykin Witherspoon in DeSoto Parish, Louisiana, near Stonewall. The two-and-a-half-story frame mansion was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1989 and is documented for its octagonal-columned gallery, fluted pilasters, and central-hall plan. Local tradition holds that the house served as a Civil War hospital for Confederate wounded.
Sunset, LA
Chretien Point is a two-story, twelve-room red-brick mansion on twenty acres along Bayou Bourbeaux, two miles southwest of Sunset, Louisiana. Construction began in 1831 under Hippolyte Chretien and completed in 1835. The plantation was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1977.
Vacherie, LA
Oak Alley Plantation at 3645 LA-18 in Vacherie, Louisiana, is a National Historic Landmark built in 1839 for sugar planter Jacques Telesphore Roman. The property is named for the double row of 28 live oak trees lining the approach to the main house, estimated to have been planted between 1700 and 1750 — roughly a century before the Greek Revival manor was constructed.
Vidalia, LA
On September 19, 1827, a formal pistol duel on a temporary sandbar in the Mississippi River between Louisiana and Mississippi — arranged to settle a dispute between Natchez-area plantation rivals — escalated into a melee involving at least six men. Samuel Cuny and Major Norris Wright were killed. Jim Bowie, who had come as a second, killed Wright with a large hunting knife after surviving being shot and stabbed. Contemporaneous newspaper accounts spread the story nationally and established Bowie's knife as a cultural phenomenon.
Wallace, LA
Whitney Plantation opened to the public in 2014 as the only museum in Louisiana dedicated solely to the history of slavery in the United States. The site preserves 16 original structures across a plantation that operated under sugar and rice cultivation from 1752 to 1975, using the forced labor of approximately 350 enslaved people across the antebellum period.
Washington, LA
The Steamboat Warehouse on Main Street in Washington, Louisiana was constructed in the 1820s to store cotton from the surrounding St. Landry Parish farms, shipped via Bayou Courtableau. Washington is among Louisiana's oldest settlements, and this building is documented as the last surviving antebellum steamboat warehouse on the bayou. It has operated as a restaurant since 1977 under the management of the Huguet family.