Free Ghost Tour New Orleans: The Dark Side Family Walk

What Is Included

Your $29 buys the professional local tour guide, the guided 1.5 hour walking tour of the historic French Quarter, a small-group experience, the stories of the city's haunted history and legends, and outside visits to the locations tied to paranormal lore. That is the whole package. Guides in New Orleans must be licensed by the city.

What You Might Pay on the Day

Gratuities appear in the listing's Includes list but not in the verified included lines, so treat them as not covered by the $29 ticket. No other mandatory extras are stated. Because every stop is exterior, there is no admission fee to budget for, and no museum entry is part of the walk.

If you want to go inside a haunted-site museum afterwards, the Old Ursuline Convent Museum can be visited on its own. Check the museum website for its hours and admission before you go.

St. Louis Cathedral, the Start

You meet at the cathedral at 615 Pere Antoine Alley. The listing says the guide tells the dark tales of Pere Antoine Alley itself, legends of torture and treachery. Pere Dagobert's ghost is said to walk the cathedral aisles with his head lowered, according to the city's tourism board.

The cathedral stands on the north side of Jackson Square between the Cabildo and the Presbytere, dedicated in 1794.

Muriel's Jackson Square

A photo stop at the restaurant at 801 Chartres Street. The listing highlights the seance room stories, and the legend says original owner Pierre Antoine Lepardi Jourdan killed himself in the building in 1814, after which the restaurant kept a seance room for his ghost. Treat that suicide as legend, since the tourism board repeats it but no document was found behind it.

Hotel Provincial

Another photo stop, at 1024 Chartres Street. A travel-trade source says the courtyard of one building was a medicinal herb garden for an 18th-century military hospital. Legend says a Civil War soldier and a benevolent nurse in white haunt the staircases, which fits the Civil War hospital stories the listing promises.

The Dupepe family has owned the hotel since 1961.

Old Ursuline Convent

The stop at 1100 Chartres Street carries the heaviest history. Ursuline nuns from Rouen arrived in 1727, the first convent building was completed in 1734, and the present one was completed in 1753. The National Park Service calls it the finest surviving example of French colonial public architecture in the country, and it survived the 1794 fire.

Ghost tours tell the casket girls story, young French women sent to Louisiana to marry in 1728, and claim vampires were shut in their caskets in the attic. The Ursuline order has denied chaperoning the girls that way and historians say little documentation exists for the tale as told.

LaLaurie Mansion

The walk reaches 1140 Royal Street. Delphine LaLaurie bought the property in 1831 and the mansion was finished in 1832. A kitchen fire broke out on 10 April 1834, and rescuers found bound and mutilated enslaved people in the attic.

The New Orleans Bee reported seven people, more or less horribly mutilated, suspended by the neck. A mob wrecked the house and LaLaurie fled to Paris, where she later died. Modern retellings claim up to 100 deaths, but records document 12 deaths of enslaved people in the household between 1830 and 1834.

The house is a private residence and can only be seen from the street, which is exactly what this tour does. American Horror Story: Coven gave it a heavily fictionalised portrayal, and the listing notes that Coven locations are part of the route.

Andrew Jackson Hotel, the Last Stop

The walk ends at 919 Royal Street before returning to the cathedral. The legend says five boys died in a fire at a boys' school on the site and that their ghosts play pranks on guests, laughter in the courtyard and faucets turning on. Hear it as legend, because the standing brick building dates from 1890 and the school fire is placed in different years.

From here the guide walks the group back to St. Louis Cathedral, where the tour arrives back and ends.

Anyone Who Wants to Go Inside

Every location is visited from the outside and the listing states plainly that there is no interior access. If stepping into a haunted building matters to you, the French Quarter Ghost Tour with Interior Visit at $37 includes one private haunted location inside.

Travellers Who Want Scares or True Crime

The listing bills this as family friendly. Adults who want grim material should look at the adults-only true crime walk at $38, restricted to guests 17 and over, or the Ghost, Crime, Voodoo and Vampires Guided Tour, which is not suitable for anyone under 18.

Non-English Speakers

The guide speaks English only. The listing states no other languages, so travellers who need a different language are not covered here.

People Needing Stated Access

The listing states no wheelchair policy and no difficulty level, so if step-free access matters, ask the operator before booking or pick a listing that states it, such as the wheelchair-accessible Ghost and Vampire walk at $21.

What You Can See Free by Yourself

The houses on this route sit on public streets and are free to look at from outside, day or night. St. Louis Cathedral, Pere Antoine's Alley, Muriel's at 801 Chartres, the Hotel Provincial at 1024 Chartres, the convent at 1100 Chartres, the LaLaurie Mansion at 1140 Royal and the Andrew Jackson Hotel at 919 Royal can all be seen on one self-guided loop. Since the tour itself never goes inside anything, a guide's access advantage is zero on this route.

The page on haunted places in New Orleans maps more free exteriors, and the Old Ursuline Convent page covers the one building on the route you can enter separately at the museum.

What the Guide Actually Adds

What $29 buys is the telling. A licensed guide connects the 1834 LaLaurie fire, the yellow fever epidemics that killed more than 8,000 people in Louisiana in 1853 alone, and the Civil War hospital stories into a route that makes sense after dark in a group. If you already know the stories from the LaLaurie Mansion page, walking alone at dusk costs nothing and covers the same facades.

The One Place You Cannot DIY

Cemeteries are the exception to the free rule. St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, where Marie Laveau is buried, can be entered only with a registered guide, so the St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 Official Walking Tour at about $25 is the way in. For ghosts and graveyards together by bus, see the cemetery bus tours on the ghost tours in New Orleans comparison.