This past week, I renewed my Hulu subscription to rewatch “American Horror Story”’s iconic season, “Coven,” which was

filmed here in New Orleans. It made me curious about voodoo in New Orleans. Did it still exist? Is it as evil as it was portrayed in “Coven”? Is the show’s characterization voodoo practitioner accurate?  

When most people hear the word voodoo, they picture dolls stuck with pins, smoky altars or villains muttering curses in a New Orleans alleyway. For Tulane University students raised on Hollywood, that imagery probably feels familiar. The voodoo we’ve inherited from pop culture is more fantasy than faith, and it says more about Hollywood’s obsession with fear than about the real spiritual practices that shape this city.  

Even Disney’s “The Princess and the Frog,” despite its love letter to New Orleans, paints its only voodoo practitioner, Dr. Facilier, as a slick-talking villain haunted by his “friends from the other side.” 

When voodoo is treated as a spooky tourist attraction, voodoo’s history gets erased. Students see voodoo dolls in the French Quarter without realizing that the dolls were once tools for prayer. They were symbols of connection, not control.  

The “spooky” imagery that Hollywood has warped is built on the spiritual practices of enslaved people who found ways to keep their faith alive under oppression. 

To learn more about New Orleans voodoo and how it is still alive today, I visited the New Orleans Historic Voodoo Museum and spoke with its owner, Suzette Gandolfo. She explained how voodoo came to New Orleans through the Transatlantic Slave Trade and originated from West Africa and Haiti, and that voodoo is a deeply spiritual and cultural practice in New Orleans. 

New Orleans voodoo is also known as Voodoo-Catholicism.It is a religion of Catholic, Haitian and West-African influence, connected to nature, spirits and ancestors.  

There are two large celebrations during the year for people who practice voodoo: St. John’s Eve and Halloween. St. John’s Eve is on June 23, a celebration started by Marie Laveau, a famous 19th-century voodoo priestess. 

Voodoo dolls, which are normally portrayed by Hollywood as a vessel for evil manipulation, are actually used for promoting love, healing, success and money. Today, voodoo remains in practice to serve others and influence life events in connection with ancestors and spirits. The Voodoo Spiritual Temple, across the street from Congo Square, is New Orleans’ only formally established voodoo temple. 

Voodoo in New Orleans is a means of connecting with ancestors through spiritual reflection.  

As voodoo priestess Manbo Jessyka explained in a video for BBC, “Voodoo isn’t devil worshipping or dark magic. Usually when you hear people talk about voodoo or portray voodoo, whether on film, whether on TV, or even in books, they always focus on the ceremonial, ritualistic magic part of voodoo but they miss out on what voodoo is, which is a way of life.”   

Voodoo should be understood not as a spooky myth, but as a reflection of the city’s complex blend of cultures, its history of survival and its power to turn displacement into community. Maybe then, when someone says “voodoo,” we’ll think less of curses and more of connection.