The Mansion

The History:

At the very “dead” end of world-famous Canal Street lies The Mortuary, a 150+ year old Grand Victorian Mansion, former funeral parlor, and crematorium… surrounded by New Orleans’ famed “Cities of the Dead” and sits among more than a million graves in a one-square-mile radius. “Between 1930 and 2003, more than 20,000 funerals took place within its walls, the blood and bodily fluids of the dead swirling into a drain in the embalming room deep in the basement catacombs.”  For many years, people from near and far journeyed to this breathtaking building to pay their last respects to dear departed loved ones.

Originally built in 1872 by Mary Slattery, the original mansion was intended to be a home for generations of her family. By 1880, John and Mary Slattery had six children living with them in the home. Their son, John Jr, was a Stone Cutter and sexton for the cemetery next door. In October of 1905, the Slattery home was sold to Mrs. Marie Lafontear and William Klein. Marie maintained possession of the home until May 15th, 1923, where the home passed into the custody of PJ McMahon & Sons who turned the property into a grand funeral home.

In 1930, the first advertising booklet of the PJ McMahon & Sons Undertaking Company began to circulate. In 1959, a expansion of the mortuary added a specially designed elevator for the discrete delivery of the dead, additional viewing rooms and offices. At its height, the building featured amenities found in only the grandest of mansions such as smoking parlors for the men, private bedrooms and apartments with separate baths for the bereaved, maid service, an on-site cook, dining facilities, chaise lounges for the ladies in their private bathrooms and private drawing rooms. The funeral home was designed to mimic the comforts of home and rivaled all but a few of the grandest of residences of New Orleans. Yet all was not “Victorian Splendor.” It was a full-service funeral home. There was an autopsy room and an embalming room. There was a crematorium onsite, cold storage for the dead, casket storage, casket sales and a flower sales facility. The property was designed to anticipate and take care of every aspect of the funeral business. The mortuary was massively successful.

The property was sold again in 1996 to Alderwoods as it fell into decay. During this time, many of the amenities of the funeral home were done away with in cost-cutting maneuvers. Business suffered. The cost of the massive upkeep of the 130+ year old building began to take its toll. On March 23, 2004, Alderwoods sold the property to Neil Corporation which owns Aveda’s Spas. Their first task was to gut the property due to its poor condition. All that was left was the wood framing, doors and the staircases of the building. In this process, the CEO of Neil Corp died surrounded by somewhat mysterious circumstances and their board decided to sell the property. The gutted building was listed for sale in 2004 and remained empty and abandoned for three years. During this period, disaster struck. Hurricane Katrina swept through New Orleans in late August 2005 and laid waste to the city. Windows were blown out, the roof destroyed, some water poured into the basement’s lowest areas, but the bones of the structure survived.

On July 2nd, 2007, Jeff Borne, the owner of PSX Worldwide Audiovisual Technologies, purchased the property to turn the decaying funeral home into the Mortuary Haunted Mansion, a multi-million dollar event venue and haunted attraction, designed to flood the senses with pulse-pounding terror and excitement. His dream was to turn the facility into a showcase of fear starting in the 2007 Halloween season. Little did he know what tales already lay in wait in this “Palace of the Dead!”

 

The Real Ghosts:

During this time Borne was approached by a paranormal investigative unit based out of Los Angeles. They hoped to investigate the PJ McMahon & Sons Funeral Home due to its hundreds of reports of strange occurrences over its long history. It seems that many of the souls that passed through the old PJ McMahon building… never left. A phantom woman in white was often seen on the top floor crying for her husband who had long since passed on. Legends told of a tall well-dressed man who appears when he believes people are disrespecting the cemeteries that lie beyond the walls of the home, admonishing the offenders to silence. The spectral forms of two rambunctious children, a boy and a girl, had been known to play pranks on the unsuspecting living. A former enraged mortician was often seen by employees, continuing his bloody work in the bowels of the basement. Footsteps and whispering voices supposedly carried throughout the building when no one was there.

Guests of the Mortuary Haunted House have come up to management asking “how did they do that?” after seeing what they called an unbelievable special effect of a ghost in a tall top hat disappearing right before their eyes, leaving the management just shaking their heads knowing they didn’t do it.

Tales traveled far and wide of poltergeist activity, of pieces of furniture moving on their own, while shocked eyewitnesses stared in disbelief. These were just a few of the stories that had reached the ears of paranormal investigators over the historic mansion’s life. This is an actively-haunted, 14,000 square foot, 3-story mansion and is reported to have nine known resident ghosts and documented ghost stories that originate over 125 years ago. Formal successful ghost investigations have been conducted by the Ghost Lab team from the Discovery Channel as well as Dustin Pari from SyFy Channel’s Ghost Hunter’s/GHI just to name a few.

 

 

On Season 6, Episode 22 of Ghost Adventures on The Travel Channel, Zak, Nick and Aaron headed to New Orleans, to investigate a city that’s still haunted by the lost souls taken by Hurricane Katrina. They visit the Haunted Mortuary and the guys’ investigation uncovered unsettling paranormal evidence. Zak examined photographic evidence of a ghost girl.