Haunted New Orleans Murders and The Sultan’s Palace:
Imagine you’re walking to the French Market and see a river of blood—hot, thick, deep red, and sticky—oozing down the steps of a house on the corner of Orleans and Dauphine. You get the police. They go in to find that around 18 people have been murdered and cut to pieces in the house. Blood and body parts are everywhere. Minutes feel like they’re oozing by slowly, like the blood that fills the street and sidewalk. It takes them a while to put the bodies back together, body parts were being piled here and there, trying to make the original body forms. This is the was what was left of the Sultan’s Place after the killings occurred—a mass of blood and body parts.
The corner of Orleans and Dauphine. The Sultan’s Palace.
The Sultan and His Harem of Horror
Last night, on a Haunted Tour in New Orleans, Christie, one of our Historians—a lover of Paranormal History, with a talent for research and finding great recounts of hauntings, sightings, and mayhem among the haunted buildings of New Orleans—shared the story about a Turkish man, claiming to be a Sultan, who bought the Gardette-Lepretre mansion at 716 Dauphine St.
Once the place was purchased:
No one would leave the building…so people walk by at night…they hear music, they hear laughter, they smell incense coming from the windows, it sounds like there is a party going on, but nobody gets invited to anything so nobody really knows what’s going on.
After the police found nearly everyone of the murdered members of the Sultan’s harem, they find that one person still appears to be missing. Not one of the victims appeared to be a Sultan.
So they think: Did this man go crazy and hack everyone up in his house?
After a good amount of further searching, the police found the Sultan buried alive in the courtyard behind a wall. “We know he was buried alive,” Christie said looking at the tour group, “because his face was all contorted, his mouth was full of dirt and his body looked like he was trying to claw his way back out.”
To this day, no one knows who committed these murders.
Now! The theory is…this man was not actually a Sultan. They think he was possibly the brother or the cousin of the real Sultan. We found out years later that the Sultan in Turkey at the time was having all of his male relatives murdered to protect his position of power. So, we think this guy was possibly hiding out here in New Orleans. That’s why you never saw anyone coming or going…and when the Sultan’s assassins finally found him…
The rest is history.
Taking a Haunted Tour in New Orleans
Ghost stories and haunted rumors float around New Orleans like the breezes that linger on humid October nights. The Big Easy is never too far away from a scandal, and it shows in the stories we tell friends, family, and passers-by on the street (because everyone loves a good rumor).
There have been massive deaths, huge fires, and a level of crime that is too large to believe sometimes, but it’s always a good time down here.
Come take a tour with us, and experience the history of the most haunted places in the Big Easy. Book a Tour, and meet fellow history buffs. Our Historians, like Christie, bring their talents to the forefront, give you the facts, and share their excitement for the stories of our past and the possibilities of our present. It’s a real Treat to be Tricked in NOLA.
