Metairie Cemetery sits on 150 acres of former racetrack in New Orleans. Over 7,000 tombs sprawl across the grounds. But it’s said that ‘the dead here don’t rest quietly’…
What makes this place different from your average graveyard? The people buried here spent fortunes – sometimes over $500,000, building monuments to outlast their enemies. They constructed fake ruins, erected 80-foot towers of spite and commissioned statues that reportedly walk at night.
These aren’t ghost stories someone made up around a campfire. These are documented incidents, verified historical records and phenomena that visitors still report today.
Read on to discover the weirdest stories and have your own chance to book a Metairie Cemetery Tour Experience for yourself…
The Man Who Cursed A Racetrack Into A Cemetery
Charles T. Howard wanted to join the Metairie Jockey Club. They rejected him.
So he vowed the racetrack would one day become a cemetery.
After the Civil War bankrupted the track, Howard made his curse real. He bought the property and transformed it into the burial ground you can visit today. In 1885, he died in Dobbs Ferry, New York – ironically, thrown from a newly purchased horse.
Visitors to his tomb report disembodied noises so loud they stop mid-path to check if someone’s trapped inside. The sounds come from a nineteenth-century memorial with no one (living) inside it.
The curse worked. The racetrack died. Howard’s spite outlived him. But it doesn’t stop there…
The Flaming Tomb ‘That Walks’
Josie Arlington ran one of Storyville’s most successful brothels. She spent $5,500 on her tomb – a massive sum in the early 1900s and selected every detail personally.
One month after her death, her family started fighting over her $50,000 estate. They sold everything, including the tomb.
Here’s where it gets strange.
A red traffic light was installed on New Basin Shell Road beside the cemetery. The light reflected off the tomb’s reddish granite, creating the illusion that the structure was on fire. Crowds gathered nightly to watch.
Two gravediggers, Anthony and Todkins, swore they saw the tomb’s statue descend the steps and walk through the cemetery. On separate occasions. The statue has been found elsewhere on the grounds multiple times and returned to its original position. No one knows who moves it.
The 80-Foot Tower Of Social Revenge
Mary Farrell Moriarty was snubbed by New Orleans society. Her husband decided she’d have the last word.
He built an 80-foot marble tower so she could look down on everyone who rejected her. The construction required a temporary railway line just to transport the materials to the cemetery!
The monument still stands. You can see it from across the grounds. The families who snubbed Mary are buried nearby, in smaller tombs, forever beneath her gaze. And that was exactly the point!
The Fake Ruins That Outlast Reality
The Egan family tomb looks like a ruined abbey – broken towers, cracked walls, crumbling buttresses. But every crack was intentional.
When the tomb was built in the 1890s, workers chipped and cut the stone to create artificial decay. The “ruins” were brand new. The family wanted their resting place to look ancient from day one. Over a century later, real decay is finally catching up to the fake decay. The tomb is now becoming what it always pretended to be.
The Police Chief Who Patrols After Death
David Hennessey was New Orleans’ police chief in 1890. His murder sparked the largest mass lynching in American history – eleven Italian immigrants killed by a mob.
Visitors report seeing Hennessey’s ghost walking the cemetery in full police uniform. Witnesses say he appears to be watching for vandals and grave robbers, still protecting the tombs decades after his death.
He’s not resting. He’s working, it would seem!
Phantom Horse Races From Beyond
The cemetery was built on the old Metairie Racetrack. The oval track layout still defines the cemetery’s main paths. People report hearing phantom horse races at night. Hoofbeats. Crowd noise. The thunder of a race that ended over 150 years ago. The track is gone. The horses are dead. The sound (supposedly) remains…
Wealth That Death Couldn’t Diminish
Ruth Fertel’s mausoleum cost somewhere between $125,000 and $500,000 in late twentieth-century money. She made her fortune in restaurants and decided her tomb would reflect that success.
Walking through Metairie feels like touring a city built by millionaires who refused to stop competing after they died. The monuments aren’t just graves, they’re final statements, carved arguments, permanent middle fingers to anyone who doubted them.
Ironically, the dead here spent more on their tombs than most people spend on houses!
Walk Among The Millionaires’ Tombs Yourself
Reading about Metairie Cemetery gives you the facts. Walking through it shows you the scale.
The Millionaire’s Tombs of Metairie Cemetery Tour takes you through the grounds with a guide who knows which monuments hide the best stories. You’ll see the revenge tower, the fake ruins and the tomb that supposedly catches fire every night.
The tour runs regularly, and you can book your tickets here. It’s two hours of verified strangeness in one of America’s most elaborate burial grounds…
