Encyclopedia of the Undead by Bob Curran

Author:Bob Curran [Curran, Bob]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 978-1-4532-5403-5
Publisher: Career Press
Published: 2012-09-10T04:00:00+00:00

On 16th June 1881, many newspapers in New Orleans carried the story that Marie Laveau, the famous Voodoo queen, had died. This was, of course, the Widow Paris, the first Marie Laveau, who had been languishing in the back room of the Maison Blanche whilst her daughter conducted her Voodoo gatherings. She was now said to be an old and withered woman whom very few people saw and who, when she was released from her room, shuffled vacantly about the house in a vaguely bewildered state. Of course, as soon as her death was announced, legends began to form around this event. One said that there had been a thunderstorm over the house at the very moment of her death; another said that there had been shrieks and howls and clanking of chains from the room itself and that a strong smell of sulphur had pervaded the general area around the Maison Blanche and St. Anne Street. However, the most astonishing thing about the death was that before Marie died, she had been attended to by a priest only hours before. She had renounced the Zombi and all her “old African wickedness” and had accepted the Sacraments. In other words, she had died a good Catholic. Indeed, some members of her family seethed with indignation at the mere suggestion that she had ever practiced Voodoo. As part of her will, she urged those who loved her to administer to the fever-ridden hospitals of the city. She was now treated as a virtual saint, both by those who had followed her and by the Church—something of an achievement! At the time of her death, her daughter, Marie Glapion (Marie II) was fifty-four years old and immediately formally assumed the name “Marie Laveau,” although she’d been using it for years.

Following the death of the Widow Paris, cracks and schisms began to appear in the Glapion family. Marie II was unmarried, although she had several lovers and reputedly a good number of children, some of whom had changed their names in order to marry. Given their newfound “decent” status, they began to look disapprovingly on their mother as what was effectively the mistress of a brothel. Some of them also disapproved of her “Voodoo ways” and wanted little to do with her.

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