On Chartres Street, in the French Quarter, stands the Old Ursuline Convent.
Nightly tour groups walk by to hear the story of the vampires who occupy the third floor. While the story says the windows are nailed shut with a pope’s blessing, somehow, shutters break off and bloody attacks have been reported. Two women who once attempted to stake out and videotape the convent were later found dead, their bodies drained of blood and their deaths impossible to understand.
For French Quarter Phantoms tour guide Luke Siddall, this is his favorite story to tell guests on his vampire and ghost walking tour.
French Quarter Phantoms is a tour company that holds vampire, ghost and cemetery tours throughout New Orleans. Tour guides have to go through extensive background tests, drug tests and a history test to become licensed by the city. Once licensed, they’re able to work for a tour group. Siddall has been a tour guide for three years, and all three years have been with French Quarter Phantoms.
“Our biggest, most popular tours are the ghost and vampire tours — we actually do a combo tour, so it’s both ghost stories and vampire stories,” Siddall said.
Siddall begins his tour at Flanagan’s Pub on St. Philip Street and shares the background of the city.
Siddall said New Orleans is considered the No. 1 haunted city — the dead people outnumber the living 10 to 1. He said the city has the highest missing persons rate and a steep murder rate.
He said when Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne claimed New Orleans, the Native Americans told him the area was used as their burial ground, and any city placed atop of it would be cursed. The city has since experienced its fair share of diseases, fires and hurricanes.
Siddall said French Quarter Phantoms’ tours are a combination of history and folklore.
“We call it a roving campfire story,” he said.
Siddall said the company’s head tour guide is a historian by trade, so she’s hard on the other tour guides to be historically accurate. The folklore is based on traditional legends and myths.
He said he pulls his information from other tour guides and research on New Orleans hauntings and history.
“Quality isn’t just about knowing facts,” Siddall said. “It’s about telling a good story.”
Siddall said he credits Anne Rice for the revival of the modern-day vampire story. He even honors her on his tour by taking guests to the second-oldest building in the city, where part of the “Interview with a Vampire” filming took place.
Siddall said vampires in folklore began as more monstrous and violent creatures, but they’ve since become more romantic and sensual.
“Anne Rice kicked off that progression of making them a little less dangerous, a little less evil, more human, a little more romantic,” Siddall said.
Along with the Ursuline Convent, Siddall tells guests the tale of the Carter brothers, who drained the blood of unsuspecting French Quarter visitors, and the story behind the haunted mansion of Delphine LaLaurie, whom Kathy Bates portrayed in “American Horror Story: Coven.”
It’s said that whoever walks under the wraparound balcony of the LaLaurie mansion will experience supernatural phenomena. Siddall said he’s been told of people followed home by spirits and spirits photobombing pictures.

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Raegan Labat

French Quarter Phantoms offers a variety of tours ranging from a ghost and vampire tour and a cemetery tour located at 625 St. Philip Street in New Orleans.