Witches Brew Tours New Orleans: The Ghost, Voodoo and Vampire Walking Tour

What Is Genuinely Included

The verified part of the ticket is a guided walking tour of New Orleans with live commentary in English. That is it. The listing's Includes block also claims beverages, snacks and entrance to sites mentioned, but the Know before you go section says food and drinks are not included in the ticket price and describes an outdoor walking tour with the stops seen from outside. When a listing contradicts itself, plan on the stricter reading. Bring your own drinks if you want them, because the tour is dog friendly and outdoor and you are welcome to bring beverages.

Bring comfortable shoes, cash and weather appropriate clothing. The walk runs rain or shine and is cancelled only in rare cases of severe weather.

What You Might Pay on the Day

Nothing is required beyond the $33 ticket, but cash for a tip and for any drink at the finish is sensible since the walk ends outside Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop Bar at 941 Bourbon Street. If you want to go inside places the tour only passes, the museums set their own admission. The New Orleans Pharmacy Museum at 514 Chartres Street charges $10 for adults and $7 for seniors, students and military self-guided, and guided tours cost $20 for adults.

The New Orleans Historic Voodoo Museum at 724 Dumaine Street charges $10 for adults and $8 for seniors, military and students. Its own Voodoo walking tour costs $36 for about 2 hours. The Old Ursuline Convent museum sets its own admission, so check the museum website for the current price.

Note the convent museum runs tours only on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Monday at 10:00, 11:00 and 1:00, so it will be closed when a night ghost walk passes.

No Start Time Is Stated

The listing gives no departure time, and starting times show when you check availability. If you want darkness on your walk, remember New Orleans sunset runs from about 5:03 PM in December to 8:03 PM in June. An evening slot in winter is likely to run in the dark.

Free cancellation up to 24 hours before departure means a wrong guess costs nothing.

Start: Witches Brew Gallery, 311 Exchange Place

The tour meets at the company's own gallery and oddities shop in Exchange Alley. The listing describes it as an oddities shop. No start time is printed on the listing, so confirm your slot when you check availability.

Muriel's Jackson Square

The walk passes outside Muriel's restaurant at 801 Chartres Street on the edge of Jackson Square. The story told here concerns the building's original owner, Pierre Antoine Lepardi Jourdan, said to have killed himself in the building in 1814. The restaurant keeps a seance room for the ghost.

The tourism board repeats this tale, but no historical document for the 1814 death has been found, so treat it as legend. Jackson Square itself was laid out in 1721 as the Place d'Armes and renamed in 1851 for Andrew Jackson.

Old Ursuline Convent

At 1100 Chartres Street stands the Old Ursuline Convent, completed in 1753 on plans drawn in 1745. Ursuline nuns from Rouen arrived in 1727 to run a convent, a hospital and a girls' school, and the National Park Service calls the building the finest surviving example of French colonial public architecture in the country. The ghost and vampire story the guide tells here is the casket girls legend.

Young French women sent to Louisiana to marry arrived in 1728 with small chests called casquettes. Tour lore says vampires came in those caskets and were locked in the convent attic, with the shutters nailed shut. Historians say little documentation supports the story as popularly told and the Ursuline order has denied chaperoning the girls, so this is a modern legend layered on a genuinely old building.

New Orleans Pharmacy Museum

The walk passes the exterior of the Pharmacy Museum at 514 Chartres Street, a Creole townhouse built in 1822 to 1823 for Louis Dufilho Jr., who received his pharmacist license in 1816 and is called America's first licensed pharmacist. The listing says bloodletting and leeching took place in the building in the 19th century. Guides tell the story of Dr. Dupas, said to have experimented on enslaved people in the building, and the museum's haunted reputation rests partly on him.

That Dupas story has little to no proof behind it, and the museum itself has opened only since 1950. If you want the real collection, self-guided admission is $10 for adults, with hours Tuesday to Saturday 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

LaLaurie Mansion

The grimmest stop is 1140 Royal Street at Governor Nicholls Street. Delphine LaLaurie bought the property in 1831 and the mansion was finished in 1832. In 1834 a fire broke out in the kitchen, set by a 70-year-old cook chained to the stove, and rescuers found bound and mutilated enslaved people in the attic.

The New Orleans Bee reported seven people, more or less horribly mutilated, suspended by the neck. A mob then wrecked the house and LaLaurie fled to Paris, where she died on 7 December 1849. Modern retellings claim up to 100 deaths, but records document 12 deaths of enslaved people in the household between 1830 and 1834, and the goriest details were added in later retellings such as a 1946 book.

The house is a private residence, closed to visitors, which is why every tour sees it from the street.

New Orleans Historic Voodoo Museum

The route continues past the Historic Voodoo Museum at 724 Dumaine Street, opened in 1972. Here the guide covers the secrets and traditions of the Vodou religion, which in this city is inseparable from Marie Laveau. She was born on 10 September 1801, worked as a hairdresser, herbalist, midwife and Voodoo practitioner, and died on 15 June 1881.

She rests in the Glapion family crypt in St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, which since 2014 can be entered only with an approved guide. A municipal ordinance of 1817 limited dancing by enslaved people to Sundays at places such as Congo Square, and the only recorded colonial prosecution tied to Voodoo was the 1773 Gris-Gris Case. The museum itself can be visited any day for $10 adult admission, open Monday to Thursday 10 AM to 6 PM and Friday to Sunday 10 AM to 7 PM.

Finish: Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop Bar

The walk ends outside Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop Bar at 941 Bourbon Street, a building dating from the 1770s and a rare surviving example of briquette-entre-poteaux French colonial construction. It was named a National Historic Landmark on 15 April 1970 and is a bar today. The pirate link is legend, since no document proves Jean Lafitte owned a business here, though his brother Pierre was a blacksmith who may have kept a shop in the building.

The listing shows two drop-off locations, one on Royal St at Jackson Square.

Anyone Who Wants to Go Inside a Building

The listing describes an outdoor walking tour and every stop is seen from the street. The Includes claim of entrance to sites mentioned is contradicted by the description, so plan on no interiors. If stepping indoors matters to you, the French Quarter Ghost Tour with Interior Visit at $37 enters one private haunted location that the operator says it has access to.

Travellers Hunting the Lowest Price

At $33 this is a mid-priced listing. The Ghost and Vampire Walking Tour of the French Quarter costs $21, runs 2 hours and holds a higher 4.7 rating from 2,547 reviews. It carries the lowest price badge in the comparison.

Adults After True Crime Rather Than Folklore

The tone here is storytelling, ghosts and legends, with no age restriction stated. If you want documented crime and darker material with no children present, the Adults-Only True Crime and Ghost Walking Tour costs $38, runs 1 hour 45 minutes, admits only guests 17 and over and carries a 5.0 rating.

People Who Need a Fixed Group Size or a Set Schedule

Group size is not stated for this listing, so you cannot know in advance how many people you will walk with. If a small group matters, The Ghosts of New Orleans Tour caps groups at 9 with a maximum of 6 per booking for $29.99 over 90 minutes. The listing also prints no start time, so travellers who need a set departure should check availability carefully or pick an operator with published times, such as the Ghost and Cemetery Bus Tour at Night departing 7pm or 9:30pm.

Non-English Speakers

Live commentary is provided in English only and no other language is stated. No minimum age is stated, the walk is wheelchair accessible and it is dog friendly.

What You Can See Free on Your Own

The LaLaurie Mansion at 1140 Royal Street is a private residence, can only be seen from the street and is not open for visits or tours, so paying a guide buys you no access a walker lacks. Muriel's Jackson Square, the Old Ursuline Convent facade, the Pharmacy Museum exterior, the Voodoo Museum storefront and Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop are all on public streets and free to see from outside. Jackson Square itself is free, and St. Louis Cathedral, Pere Antoine's Alley and other street exteriors cost nothing.

The pages on haunted places in New Orleans and the LaLaurie Mansion map the exteriors with the history.

What You Can Visit Alone, with a Ticket

Three of the stops sell their own admission. The Pharmacy Museum at 514 Chartres Street charges $10 self-guided for adults, open Tuesday to Saturday 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. The Historic Voodoo Museum at 724 Dumaine Street charges $10 for adults, open daily until 6 or 7 PM depending on the day.

The Old Ursuline Convent museum lists tours on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Monday at 10:00, 11:00 and 1:00, so check the museum website for admission before you go. All three give you interiors the tour never enters.

Where a Guide Is Genuinely Needed

One place on this route's wider world cannot be entered alone. St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, where Marie Laveau is buried, is restricted to approved tour groups, which is why the St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 Official Walking Tour exists at $25 for 55 minutes. What the Witches Brew guide adds on its own route is the storytelling: licensed guides must pass a written exam on New Orleans history and culture, and a good one separates the documented 1834 fire from the legends stacked on top of it.

If you are happy reading the plaques and the guide pages on this site, walking alone is enough.