There’s no such thing as a boring cemetery in New Orleans. Yet it’s become increasingly difficult to find some eternal peace and quiet while visiting the Big Easy's many burial grounds. If one of your goals while traveling to New Orleans is to explore its cemeteries and unearth their dark secrets, you’ll want to book a tour or two. These 11 tour groups offer the best cemetery tours in New Orleans, from the strictly historical to the wholly haunted.
This supernatural tour company offers lots of haunted history options, including a daytime tour of St. Louis #1 Cemetery, focused on permanent resident Voodoo queen Marie Laveau. For the brave, there’s also a “moonlight” graveyard tour that begins at twilight and continues into the dark. For those looking to cover more ground, Bloody Mary’s also offers tours by luxury van.
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Lafayette Cemetery
Photo Credit: Ken Lund / Flickr (CC)Two Chicks gives the option of hour-long cemetery-focused tours and longer, two-hour Garden District walking tours for those who want to know more about the Garden District’s rich history and the ways in which Lafayette Cemetery #1, the city’s oldest municipal burial ground, fits in. You can even book a private cemetery tour for a group event, like a Bachelorette party.
This history tour company offers a wide range of options for every kind of New Orleans visitor. From foodie tours focused on particular neighborhoods to nighttime ghost tours, you’ll find an adventure with New Orleans Secrets Tours. Whether you’re more interested in the historical side of New Orleans’s particular morbid obsessions or you’re looking to hunt down a real ghost, the cemetery tours are beloved and thorough.
St. Louis #1 Cemetery
Photo Credit: John Uhrig / Flickr (CC)For the civic-minded, you’ll want to go with Save Our Cemeteries, an organization that does more for historic preservation than any other tour on this list. The cost of your tour ticket on Save Our Cemeteries goes towards restoration efforts. The tour guides in this company pride themselves on being historically accurate and are truly passionate about New Orleans history.
One of the oldest tour companies in New Orleans, Haunted History Tours offers a two-hour cemetery tour of St. Louis #1 during the day so that all the gorgeous, elevated aboveground mausoleums (due to New Orleans’s being below sea level) can be studied in detail.
Related: Spirits in the Pews: The Haunted History of New Orleans’ St. Louis Cathedral
This tour company was founded by New Orleans native Carlo Gambino, who once worked as a mule carriage driver and bartender on Bourbon Street. Gambino would often field questions from tourists in his former career and has formatted his tours around the subjects that these visitors brought up most frequently. Storyville caps their tours at 15 guests, so those interested in an intimate experience will enjoy their tour of St. Louis #1, or the expanded tour of St. Louis #1 and St. Louis #2, both within walking distance of the French Quarter.
Marie Laveau's tomb
Photo Credit: Shannon Badiee / Flickr (CC)Go all in with the New Orleans’s self-described #1 psychic. Tours offered by the Voodoo Bone Lady focus on Marie Laveau’s final resting place at St. Louis #1. What's more, the Voodoo Bone Lady is the only outfit that performs a blessing at Laveau’s tomb. So if you’re interested in Voodoo rituals, this is the tour for you.
If you’re looking for some ghost hunting, New Orleans Ghost Adventures is dedicated to the paranormal tour of St. Louis Cemetery #1, focusing on its ties to Voodoo as the burial place of Marie Laveau. For those more interested in the ghost stories of the city, there are also plenty of haunted history options from this same company back in the French Quarter.
Related: The Most Haunted Graveyards in the World and Where to Find Them
Photo Credit: dustinpsmith / Flickr (CC)For those looking to do an excellent walking tour of the Garden District, look no further than this company, that caps their tours at 15 people. The tour encompasses Lafayette Cemetery #1, directly across the street from legendary restaurant Commander’s Palace, at the heart of the Garden District.
Focused on the dark side of New Orleans history, Dark Crescent Tour prides itself on being authorized by the archdiocese to tour St. Louis #1. Their cemetery tour offers discounted prices for children and children under six are free.
Voted one of the best touring companies in New Orleans by Trip Advisor, French Quarter Phantoms’ Cemetery Tour is again of St. Louis #1. In true New Orleans fashion, your ticket gets you a two-for-one drink special so you can take a Hurricane on the road for the tour. Regular readers of The Lineup may also be interested in the true crime walking tour offered by French Quarter Phantoms.
