The Blackest Ghost Tour In America

“Black history is Black horror.”

— Tananarive Due, Horror Noire Documentary, 2019

People flock to New Orleans by the thousands, seeking to be titillated and terrified by stories of brutality endured during slavery. But the mood often shifts when those stories are placed in historical context — when the horrors become less ghost story and more reality. The air in New Orleans is already heavy — soupy, as some describe it. While some blame geography, those of us attuned to ancestral presence know better.

Reclaiming the Narrative

One tour company is challenging the typical ghost tour script. Anansi’s Daughters, LLC., founded in 2022 by myself (Malika Hadley Freydberg) and Eshé (Mary Jackson), is committed to telling the stories of New Orleans’ ghosts with historical accuracy and reverence. Our mission is to honor the city’s deeply haunted energy by connecting it directly to its legacy as one of the most active slave ports in the nation.

Too often, guides are told not to “go too deep” — not to make anyone uncomfortable. We chose truth over comfort, launching private experiences and what we call The Blackest Ghost Tour. It’s for those who want more than sensationalism. We tell our guests up front: if you’re looking for thrills without truth, this is not the tour for you.

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The LaLaurie Mansion: Torture in Plain Sight

Perhaps the most infamous site on the tour is the LaLaurie Mansion, located at 1138 Royal Street. Long before American Horror Story: Coven brought it into the spotlight with portrayals by Kathy Bates and Angela Bassett, it was already central to New Orleans ghost lore.

Delphine LaLaurie, a Creole socialite in the early 1800s, was known for lavish parties. But on April 10, 1834, a fire at the mansion revealed the unspeakable: several enslaved people found tortured, mutilated, and murdered in a locked upstairs room.

Tour guide Eshé went beyond the typical retellings, diving into dissertations, slaveholder diaries (like those of Thomas Thistlewood), and records from Whitney Plantation. She built a fact-based narrative that exposes the methods of torture and control used against the enslaved, avoiding the Hollywood-glossed versions offered by many companies. The goal is not to glorify the horror — but to make it real.

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Buckner Manor and the Myth of Miss Josephine

Buckner Manor, made famous as Miss Robichaux’s Academy in AHS: Coven, is another stop. The official Garden District account tells of Miss Josephine — an enslaved woman who allegedly chose to stay on as a maid after emancipation, and who now haunts the home, sweeping hallways and welcoming descendants of the family.

This sanitized myth implies not only contentment in enslavement, but service beyond the grave. While telling this story on a tour, I found myself physically unable to speak — it felt like Miss Josephine herself was resisting the falsehood. After consulting a multi-generational New Orleanian, I learned it was far more likely that she was an indentured servant, not a willing housemaid in the afterlife.

I returned to the manor and left an offering: three mason jars — one with gin (West African tradition), one with rum (Caribbean), and one with champagne — to honor her spirit and hope she’s finally at rest, not still cleaning in death.

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Anansi Lives On

Many Black guides, myself included, grew up hearing Anansi stories — trickster tales passed down from the Ashanti Akan in Ghana. Anansi is the spider spirit who uses wit to overcome impossible odds. These stories survived the Middle Passage and became one of the few African oral traditions to endure in the Americas.

When I auditioned for a tour company, I chose an Anansi tale as my piece. My future boss appreciated it — though his only frame of reference was Neil Gaiman. Neither of us had heard the other’s version. That moment affirmed something: African stories are still here. Sometimes diluted, but still woven into the web.

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The Bourbon Orleans Hotel: Ballrooms and Spirits

Another frequently visited location is the Bourbon Orleans Hotel. Its ballroom once hosted the infamous Quadroon Balls, where free women of color were matched with wealthy white patrons. The legend of “Giselle,” a young woman who ended her life after failing to find a suitor, continues to haunt the space — literally and metaphorically.

Later, the ballroom became home to the Sisters of the Holy Family — the second Black Catholic convent in the U.S., founded by Henriette Delille, currently up for sainthood. The Sisters ran a school and an infirmary during the yellow fever epidemics. Some of those who died — including girls and nuns — are said to still dwell there, playing hide and seek or enforcing moral order with ruler raps on misbehaving guests.

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Telling Our Stories — Fully

The Bourbon Orleans now offers in-house ghost tours, allowing guides to speak more freely about the city’s haunted history. That autonomy is rare — and vital. These tours aren’t just entertainment. They’re reclamation. They pull back the veil on sanitized myths and reveal the realities of slavery, resilience, and spirit.

Through Anansi’s stories, through the specters of LaLaurie’s victims, through the voice of Miss Josephine refusing her misrepresentation, we connect past to present. The cobwebs are still there — but we are sweeping them away, one truth at a time.

To book The Blackest Ghost Tour, visit our experience page on Sepi.