Hey beauties and bees. Welcome back to the show. Today, let's take a visit to New Orleans, the Big Easy.
And if I say New Orleans, I think you would already know what I'm going to talk about. There is this fancy three-story mansion on the French Quarter's vibrant royal street, charming shuttered windows, a beautiful wraparound balcony, a picture perfect home fit for a postcard. But this house, or I should say this plot, is the sight of unthinkable pain, and locals know it immediately.
If you know anything about New Orleans, it's that the city is steeped in dark history. That even locals will cross the street to avoid this place. And that seriously means something.
Did you know tour guides will dare their clients to creep under the awning, but they would never dare? Faces in the hallways, screams in the night, and people who leave stunned, questioning their own eyes, ears, minds. Because this place had two sides to it.
Parties, wealth, glamour. And underneath all of that, something truly evil. And in New Orleans, history sticks around.
And now, let's get into that story. April 10th, 1834. The Lori mansion ablaze.
What was the center of New Orleans social life was a blazing inferno. Flames were curling like fingers, as if the house was saying, "Come inside. Come and see for yourself.
" The fire marshals had to force the door down. The owners, the Loris, weren't interested in sharing their keys. And what they discovered in the kitchen wasn't going to be their first shock.
Chained by the ankle to the stove was the enslaved cook. She told them she had been there for months. But there had been others too, she said.
And those others who disappeared upstairs were never seen again. The first responders, they freaked out, but they continued. Up the stairs they went, and underneath the sound of burning wood, there was something else, something more human.
They found themselves in front of the closed door of the highest room. They broke their way in and the door swung open. Inside was the most appalling spectacle.
That's what the next day's newspaper said. Over a dozen maimed and disfigured slaves were found manicled and chained to the walls. A woman suspended by the neck, pulled up to within an inch of choking so that her feet barely touched the filthy floor.
Some were shackled in a way that their arms were stretched to the point that their joints and senus were coming loose or tearing. There were people people with eyes gouged out or sewn shut. One woman was kept inside a cage.
Her limbs had been broken and reset so that she appeared crablike. Another woman had her arms and legs severed. She had been skinned alive in a circular pattern that looked like a caterpillar.
That's what the records say. The ultimate dehumanizing torture. It was a waking unending nightmare.
And the sadism didn't end there. A man stood in front of the horrified responders whose body had been forcibly altered in what can only be described as an unwilling sex. And imagine the feeling, the shock and pain of, you know, when you suddenly catch your finger on a sharp corner or a kitchen knife or a hot burner.
You know how painful it is. So imagine the feeling of having your hands sewn to different parts of your body. Wounds seared or sewn closed without any extra anesthetic.
These are the terrifying sights the first responder saw. Most still alive. Some of the people still alive begged for death and are released from their pain because according to newspaper the New Orleans B, they had been confined for several months and had been merely kept in existence to prolong their suffering and to make them taste all that the most refined cruelty could inflict.
Refined cruelty. Remember that. While most of the victims were still alive, and the corner was one corpse, his mouth sewn shut, his body emaciated, starved to death as the glitterati of New Orleans partied below.
So, what the hell was going on in this place? Who were the Loris? We first need to get to know Deline Malli, the madame who built this house and with it her lasting empire of pain.
One of five children, Mary Deline Mccardi was born in New Orleans on March 19th, 1787 to wealthy white parents. Delphi was a well-connected family, really well established in the upper echelons of European Creole society. Her uncle by marriage, for example, was a governor, and her cousin was actually the mayor of New Orleans.
And this is important because Delphine will have grown up surrounded by the belief that a two-tier society wasn't only just, it was natural. Here was a community built on and enabled by racism and exploitation. And more than that, with the 1791 Haitian Revolution and similar revolts, paranoia among white landowning communities swelled and punishments became even harsher as slaveholders took revenge and attempted to discourage insurrection.
In fact, according to historical accounts, Delphine's own uncle was killed by his slaves in 1771. While this is not an excuse for the evil that would follow, it certainly adds detail to the murky world of Delphine Lori. So, how did Marie Deline McCarti become the infamous Delphine Lori?
She married twice, but both husbands died, leaving her with five children and hefty inheritances. Then in 1825, she married a physician from France, Dr Leonard Louie Nicolola. They had one child in 1831 with family wealth and the inheritance of two deceased husbands.
Deline now commissioned a two-story mansion with slave quarters attached at 1140 Royal Street and her husband it is said minimal involvement. In 1832 the marriage appeared to be failing and Delphine petitioned the local judiciary for what was then the equivalent of a legal separation. Apparently, he treated her in such a manner as to render their living together unsupportable.
Nonetheless, at the time of the fire, it seemed that Dr Lori was still in the residence. The Loris threw lavish parties, and Delfine even built the reputation of being kind to her slaves. But this couldn't be further from the truth.
However, in a tight-knit community like that of the European slave holders, the whispers of mistreatment began. Between 1830 and 1834, 12 deaths of enslaved people were documented at the property, though the causes of the deaths were not recorded. The deceased included a woman by the name of Bon who was a cook andress and Bon's four children Juliet Florence Jules and Leotine.
Leotin was two. And there were also conflicting narratives by coincidence or design. You decide.
Court records show that Delphine freed two enslaved people. Were these rare acts of goodwill? Or could they have been calculated attempts to disperse rumors about her conduct?
Amidst the rumors, a lawyer was sent to the mansion to remind the Lories of their legal duties as slaveholders. However, during that brief visit, he recorded no evidence of mistreatment. Imagine how close he came within whispering distance, but he saw nothing and so filed no report.
And this tells us something of how carefully crafted the Lori image was and perhaps more importantly, how money and power worked in that society. Luckily, we have a contemporary witness, a woman who would go on to become an important voice in the abolition of slavery in the US. English woman Harriet Martineau recognized as the first female social theorist visited New Orleans in 1836 and heard from people in the community who knew the Lores that Deline slaves appear to be singularly haggarded and wretched when compared to other enslaved people.
And she also gives us the most damning piece of evidence of early abuse. She tells us that a neighbor saw an enslaved girl plummet to her death from the mansion's roof. And standing above the girl's fallen body, Deline, whip in hand.
Some reports say the girl was 12 years old. Some say she was eight. We believe her name was Leah.
Another writer later suggested, though perhaps this may be embellishment, that Deline was pursuing the girl in order to punish her for snagging her hair while brushing it. Marginau goes on to report that this incident resulted finally in an investigation into the practices of the Lores. Here they were found guilty of illegal cruelty under the Louisiana Civil Code of 1825.
A master convicted of cruel treatment or more chillingly unusual rigor could be forced by a judge to sell the slaves. And while this was intended as protection against extreme cruelty, I think we can agree that it was barely any punishment at all, especially when so few slaveholders were actually convicted. not about to be beaten by the law, she exploited a loophole in the code and had an intermediary relative make the purchase of the nine enslaved people.
And so each of them returned to the hellish mansion from which they thought they'd escaped. Martino also said that Lori chained her cook to the kitchen stove, starving her and beating her daughters. Food or whip, it didn't matter.
Deline could always find a weapon. withholding basic nourishment from her already hungry and captive slaves. And so we come to April 10th, 1834 and the night of the fire that was to be the great unveiling of the evils of the Lores.
The fire had started in the kitchen and when the police and fire marshals went in, they found that chained cook. Some reports say that the cook intentionally set the fire in a last bit for freedom. That is to say, taking her own life as a last resort.
After the fire, two of the slaves sadly passed away while the others were moved to a local prison where more than 4,000 people came to view them to convince themselves of their sufferings. and the Lores. Their last remaining slave, a coachman called Bastion, was ordered to help them escape.
People say Delphine was composed, defiant even as she stepped aboard the coach. They tore through the city with the flames of their home rising behind them. And they boarded a schooner across Lake Poncha Train, then moved on to New York before finally arriving in Paris.
Their coachmen they left on the shores of the lake and their horses, it is said, were torn apart by the mob when the coachman returned. The house was soon a wreck of smoking timber, a rib cage against the night sky. Whatever the fire didn't take, the mob did.
The original house was no more. What we see today, the neat gray walls, the beautiful awning, was built on the same site after 1838. And this is also when the third story was added.
New walls, new rooms, new windows, floors that had never seen what those original floors had seen. But in a place like this, one that has witnessed too much pain, everything changes. So much pain that it seems to have seeped into the very ground and air on which the modern mansion now stands.
In the almost 200 years since the building was burnt down, what each different tenant owner guest has reported is a hungry waiting presence. It doesn't announce itself. It just makes itself known when you get too close.
The mansion was an African-American girl school during the reconstruction era of the 1960s and '7s. And the teachers recorded strange things. Weeping girls with fresh bruises on their arms would track down staff to show them their marks.
Marks that hadn't been there the day before. When the teachers asked, "Who did this to you? " The answers, everyone the same, came that woman.
And you know, children have vivid imaginations, but what they don't have as an agenda. You know, kids are guless. They blurt things out, say what they see, and each girl identified the source of their misery.
That woman. In 1894, a man was found murdered in one of the rooms. And at first, police suspected it was a robbery gone wrong.
Maybe the man had interrupted the thieves, but nothing of value had been taken. Then, the police interviewed the man's friend. Apparently, this man had been deteriorating mentally for some weeks prior to his death.
Telling his friend about spirits in his room, then of a demon that wanted him dead. He stopped eating. He stopped sleeping.
He became drawn, tired, unwell looking. He walked the floors at night, searching every dark corner for the demon he believed had every plan to kill him. And we will never know what exactly happened to that man, only that he died in that very room of dread and demons.
So the house continued to cycle through owners and functions. Sometimes lodgings, sometimes businesses, sometimes private ownership, including unbelievably by Nicholas Cage. There was one constant though, a high turnover of staff.
A housekeeper looking for work in 2019 was over the moon to find a role in a beautiful house on Royal Street. And she didn't know New Orleans well. Maybe if she did, she'd think twice about accepting that position.
So, she started working, moving from room to room with her cart of supplies. But over the scent of the cleaning agent, there came a new smell. At first, she thought it was coming from some of the eeries in the area or the Mississippi just a short walk away.
She closed the windows and tried to continue, but the smell was even stronger with the window shut. She mentioned it to her manager and her manager just said, "Just ignore it. " And this smell, it was of spoiling meat.
Soon it became strong enough to make the housekeeper gag. But she continued, "She needed the work after all. " Then the smell changed.
Now there was the tang of burning. The housekeeper rushed to find out what it was. What if it was dangerous?
But it seemed like the moment she was nearly at the source, it vanished again. She told her manager. And the manager shrugged, "I told you just ignore it.
" And here's the thing. Others reported the same burning smell, the sweet sickness of rotting, but the housekeeper, unaware of the historic weight of the house, told herself she was just imagining things and screams. She started hearing screams, sharp, sudden, angry screams.
She convinced herself it was kids outside pranking each other. But when she rushed to the window, all she saw were adults going about their days. One night she heard furious screaming and words like, "Come back here.
" And there was the pounding of feet above her. She ran to the door and swung around the door jam to peer upstairs, but there was nobody there. From the corner of her eye, she thought she saw something plummet past the window.
And then she heard chains bumping and trailing sluggishly across the floor. "Are there a workman upstairs somewhere? " she wondered.
She followed the sound, heavy iron scraping across uneven floorboards, even though the floors of the mansion were polished and pristine. And turning the corner towards a long corridor, she saw him, a figure, tall, silhouetted against a frame of light. Hello.
And the figure said nothing, only stared. And then he raised one manicled hand, and the chain shuddered again, loud as delta thunder. The housekeeper fled.
She left her tools, her materials, and she didn't tell her manager, but she did tell her friends. And they knew New Orleans better than she did. And so, with barely any surprise at all, they said, "Well, of course, it's the Lori mansion.
" So, that is the story of the Lori Mansion, a place many now believe is haunted. And it is a truly tragic story. The day after the fire, April 11th, an angry mob gathered outside the Delorei home.
They were horrified by witness accounts that spread like embers from the blaze. They tore the house apart. By the time they were gone, little remained of the grand walls that had hidden so much human misery.
And when the grounds were later excavated, investigators uncovered the remains of at least two bodies, including a child believed to be Leah, the little girl whose only mistake was reaching for her mistress's hair. At last, the Earth was giving up its secrets. But here's something to think about.
Was Deline the only villain? So, as I mentioned before, the New Orleans bee described what was found as the most refined cruelty, refined, surgical. So, what they discovered were not random acts of violence, but something far more deliberate, something far more methodical.
And that raises a question we rarely ask. What about Dr Lori? When a judge arrived at the scene, he reported seeing a woman in an iron collar.
Another with a deep untreated head wound, too weak to walk. And when he confronted Dr Lori, he just said that people should stay home rather than meddle in others business. I think it's long past time we say his name alongside hers.
And then there is what happened after. Records show the Loris fled to France. Dr Lori later died in Havana.
Delphine was said to be buried in Mumatra Cemetery, but some records suggest her body was exumed. After that, the trail goes cold. Some believe her children secretly brought her back to New Orleans where she now lies in an unmarked, unknown grave.
And maybe that's fitting because while the Lores may have left the mansion, the mansion never let go. A school of terrified girls. A man driven to death, claiming something followed him.
A sound of a woman screaming into the night. And a hand reaching through time, still asking to be seen. I want to believe the fire freed those who suffered there.
That they found some kind of peace, if not justice. But if something still lingers within those walls, maybe it has every right to. And maybe it isn't only the victims who are trapped there.
Maybe it's also the ones who caused it all. Because a place remembers even when people try to forget. That's the end of tonight's story.
I will see you in the next one. And until then, bye-bye.
