If you live in New Orleans, chances are you have heard stories of local vampires. But have you ever wondered where these stories came from? 

The first rumors of the undead in New Orleans come from the 18th century when Louisiana was still a new colony. The men of the young French colony were in want of wives, but the few women in the colony were deemed insufficient, so France sent ships of women to satisfy their needs. After the grueling journey from Europe to Louisiana, the women got off the ships looking unnaturally pale — was it seasickness or perhaps something spookier? They also carried small trunks called cassettes or caskets, although the word casket had a different connotation back then. These trunks would have had everything that the women were allowed to take with them to their new home and were how the women became known as the Casket Girls. The Casket Girls were under the care of the Ursuline nuns and lived on the third floor of the Ursuline convent that still stands on Chartres Street.  

Some say that the girls themselves — with their ghostly, undead pallor — were the first vampires in New Orleans. Others say that the vampires hid in the small “caskets” to hitch a ride to the New World in search of fresh blood. Either way, the legend says that the vampires still reside in the attic of the convent, which has been boarded up for over a hundred years, supposedly with nails blessed by the pope. In the 1970s, two journalists snuck onto the convent’s grounds to evaluate the truth of the legend themselves. They planned to stake out to see if the vampires truly emerged from the attic at night. Unfortunately, we can never know what they saw as they were found the next morning completely drained of blood.  

In the early 20th century, another vampire appeared in New Orleans. Jacques St. Germain was a mysterious man who lived in a luxurious house on Royal Steet in the French Quarter. He claimed to be a descendent of the Comte du St. Germain who died in France in 1784 and bore an uncanny resemblance to his predecessor. Many believed that he was the very same count, going by a different name, and was an alchemist in possession of a substance that granted him immortality. Being a man of means, he threw lavish parties for fellow New Orleans residents but never ate the food provided. Instead, he would only drink what seemed to be red wine out of a chalice. During one of these parties, a woman in attendance jumped off the balcony and ran to the police, claiming that Jacques St. Germain was a vampire and that he had tried to bite her. Instead of bothering the high-status man late at night, the police had asked him to come into the station the next morning for questioning, but he never showed up. That night, he had completely vanished from the city and was never seen again. Some people claim that a man known as Jack still roams the streets of the French Quarter, looking for his next victim.  

John and Wayne Carter were two self-proclaimed vampires who lived and hunted in New Orleans in the early 1930s. They were discovered after a young girl escaped from their French Quarter apartment and ran into a policeman, who followed her back to where she claimed she was captured. The police found other victims in the house and arrested the brothers. They stated that they were vampires and had no control over their urge to drink blood, warning that they would continue their gruesome hunting if they were released. The brothers were tried as serial killers and sentenced to death — according to legend. There is a notable lack of legal records about this story, leading to many doubts about its truth. True or not, it has contributed to a long history of New Orleans vampires.  

Even today, vampires walk through the streets of this old city. For example, the New Orleans Vampire Association, formed after Hurricane Katrina, is an organization of self-identified vampires who perform charity work, such as feeding the city’s homeless residents during holidays. If you spend enough time in the French Quarter, you might even run into one of these vampires yourself.