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| The Casket Girls |
The French Quarter sleeps uneasily. By day, the pastel buildings and wrought-iron balconies bustle with music and laughter. But when night falls, shadows gather around the Ursuline Convent on Chartres Street. Its wooden shutters remain bolted tight, never opened — not even to let in sunlight. Locals whisper it’s because something unnatural lies behind them, sealed away centuries ago.
They say the Casket Girls brought vampires to New Orleans.
Arriving from France with small wooden chests that resembled coffins, these young women were supposed to start new lives in the colonies. Instead, legend claims they carried more than gowns and rosaries in their boxes — they carried the undead.
This is the tale of the Casket Girls, Louisiana’s most chilling legend, where faith, folklore, and vampiric fear have clung to New Orleans for nearly three hundred years.
Part Eighteen of Our Series
This is Part Eighteen in our series: The Scariest Urban Legend from Every State.
Last time, we traveled to Kentucky, where the Witch Girl of Pilot’s Knob still claws at her cage from beyond the grave. Now we journey south into Louisiana, where vampires are said to dwell behind locked shutters, their hunger sealed in wood and iron.
Who Were the Casket Girls?
In the early 1700s, life in New Orleans was harsh and unstable. The colony, newly established by France, was filled with soldiers, trappers, and fortune-seekers. Women were scarce, and men far outnumbered them. To stabilize the colony and encourage family life, France devised a plan: send young women to Louisiana to become brides.
These girls were drawn largely from convents, orphanages, or impoverished families. They carried with them small wooden chests called casquettes — narrow boxes that held their meager belongings, including dresses, linens, and religious items. Though practical, the long boxes looked eerily like miniature coffins.
When the girls arrived in New Orleans, locals eyed them with suspicion. Stories spread that their pale appearance and strange manners were unsettling. The resemblance of their luggage to coffins sparked whispers that the girls had carried more than belongings across the sea.
Thus, they became known as “les filles à la cassette” — the Casket Girls.
The Legend
According to legend, the Casket Girls’ trunks contained vampires. Some said they had been shipped from France intentionally, smuggled into the colonies to spread their curse.
The Ursuline nuns, tasked with protecting the girls, supposedly stored their caskets in the attic of the convent. But when the boxes were opened, they were empty. Locals panicked — had the vampires escaped into the city?
From that moment on, New Orleans was said to be infested with the undead. The convent became ground zero for suspicion. Its shutters were nailed tight with holy nails, and its attic was sealed to contain whatever lurked inside.
The Ursuline Convent
The Old Ursuline Convent, completed in 1752, is the oldest building in the Mississippi Valley. Its thick brick walls, simple facade, and iron-shuttered windows make it stand out in the French Quarter. While other homes swing their shutters wide in the humid Louisiana heat, the convent’s attic remains sealed tight.
Guides say the nails were blessed by the pope himself, hammered into the shutters to prevent the vampires’ escape. The attic has never been opened to the public.
Over the centuries, the convent’s role as both a holy site and a supernatural prison cemented its place in folklore. Even today, ghost tours pause outside its walls, pointing to the silent, locked attic where legends claim the Casket Girls’ vampires still wait.
Paranormal Accounts
The convent’s legend has sparked countless eerie reports:
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Locked Shutters – Tourists often remark that while shutters all around the Quarter are open to let in air, the Ursuline’s remain bolted shut day and night. Some visitors insist they’ve seen them creak open at dusk, only to slam shut before dawn.
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Faces in the Windows – Several witnesses describe pale faces peering from the attic shutters, vanishing when looked at directly.
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Bloodless Corpses – In the 1970s, locals whispered that two women were found dead near the convent, drained of blood — a chilling rumor that persists on countless ghost tours.
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Tourist Photographs – Visitors snapping pictures at night often discover strange orbs, streaks of light, or pale forms in the background. Some claim their photos reveal shadowy figures leaning against the shutters.
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Drained Batteries – Paranormal investigators report electronic failures near the convent. Cameras die, phones lose charge, and EMF meters spike.
Even skeptics admit the convent radiates an oppressive energy. Its sealed attic has become one of the most famous “forbidden” spaces in New Orleans.
A Haunting That Became an Urban Legend
Historically, the Casket Girls were ordinary women with trunks of clothing, not coffins. But in a city where Catholic traditions mingled with French superstition, voodoo beliefs, and a taste for the macabre, it was inevitable that a darker legend would take hold.
The idea of vampires in New Orleans fit perfectly. The city was already steeped in tales of blood, sin, and forbidden desire. Writers and artists embraced the legend, and eventually, the story of the Casket Girls became one of the cornerstones of New Orleans’s vampire mythology.
Similar Legends Across the World
The Casket Girls legend reflects fears that span continents and centuries. Across cultures, coffins, corpses, and young women have been tied to tales of the undead.
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Elizabeth Báthory (Hungary, 1600s)
Known as the “Blood Countess,” she was accused of torturing and killing hundreds of girls, supposedly bathing in their blood to preserve her youth. While historians doubt the full scale of the crimes, her legend cemented the image of vampiric nobility preying on the innocent. -
Mercy Brown (Rhode Island, 1892)
The most famous case of the New England “vampire panic.” When Mercy Brown’s family fell ill with tuberculosis, villagers exhumed her body. Finding it well-preserved, they declared her a vampire feeding on her relatives. Her heart was burned, and the ashes fed to her sick brother as a cure. The panic mirrors New Orleans’s fears of blood-drinkers hiding among the living. -
Nosferatu of the Balkans (Eastern Europe)
Villages feared revenants — corpses that rose to feed on blood. They were said to carry disease and death, much like the tuberculosis-linked “vampires” of New England. Garlic, holy water, and stakes were standard defenses. -
Coffin Ships (Ireland, 1800s)
During the Great Famine, ships carrying emigrants to America became known as “coffin ships” due to the sheer number of deaths aboard. Survivors brought tales of curses and restless souls, echoing the fears of “coffins” bringing death across the sea — much like the Casket Girls’ trunks. -
The Ankou (Brittany, France)
A skeletal figure said to drive a cart of coffins, collecting the souls of the dead. Many of the settlers in Louisiana were from Brittany and Normandy, carrying coffin-related folklore with them.
These legends echo the same fears: that coffins and caskets may hide something more sinister than a body, and that the dead can travel, bringing darkness wherever they go.
Honorable Mentions: Other Louisiana Legends
Louisiana brims with terrifying tales, but three stand out alongside the Casket Girls:
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The Myrtles Plantation (St. Francisville)
Often called “the most haunted house in America,” the plantation is tied to the ghost of Chloe, a slave girl said to have poisoned her master’s family. Guests report phantom footsteps, cold spots, and apparitions throughout the house. -
The Axeman of New Orleans
A real-life serial killer who stalked the city from 1918–1919. The Axeman murdered families with an axe, terrifying the city. In a chilling letter to the newspaper, he claimed he was a demon who would spare any home playing jazz. That night, music spilled from every doorway as the city danced in fear. -
The Rougarou
A Cajun werewolf that prowls the swamps, punishing children who misbehave and Catholics who break Lent. Said to have glowing red eyes and a monstrous howl, the Rougarou blends French folklore with Louisiana’s unique cultural mix.
Together with the Casket Girls, these legends make Louisiana one of the most haunted states in America.
How to Survive an Encounter
If the Casket Girls truly brought vampires to New Orleans, folklore suggests a variety of protections:
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Stay Indoors at Night – Vampires are strongest after dark.
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Garlic and Holy Water – Traditional repellents believed to burn the undead.
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Salt and Iron – Sprinkle salt across thresholds and carry iron charms, said to block evil spirits.
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Crosses and Rosaries – Religious symbols are thought to ward off vampires, especially in Catholic communities like New Orleans.
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Mirrors – Vampires were often said to cast no reflection. Some kept mirrors by doors or windows to detect intruders.
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Local Protection – In New Orleans, some turn to voodoo charms or gris-gris bags for supernatural defense.
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Never Invite Them In – Legends insist vampires cannot enter a home without permission.
In New Orleans, where folklore and faith intertwine, these protections are part of the city’s cultural fabric.
Why We Still Tell the Story
The Casket Girls legend endures because it fuses history with horror. The girls themselves were real, the convent is real, and the sealed attic is still visible today. That reality gives the legend weight, even as the supernatural details remain unprovable.
It’s also a story that captures New Orleans’s unique character — a city where Catholicism, French superstition, voodoo, and gothic imagination all overlap. Whether you see it as myth or truth, the Casket Girls remain central to the city’s identity as America’s “most haunted city.”
Final Thoughts
The Casket Girls of New Orleans are more than a tale about vampires. They show how folklore grows from misunderstanding, cultural fears, and the power of storytelling. Some say their caskets carried only dresses and rosaries. Others swear they carried the undead across the sea.
This concludes Part Eighteen of our Scariest Urban Legend from Every State series. Next, we’ll journey to Maine, where rocky coasts and shadowed forests hide tales of ghosts, curses, and things that walk in the dark.
📌 Don’t miss an episode!
Check out the last edition, where we uncovered Kentucky’s Witch Girl of Pilot’s Knob and her grave still caged in iron.
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