a paranormal investigation

By Paige Lawrence

Storyville Opera House at the corner of Bienville and N. Rampart St. (1904)

Hs. VAUDEVILLIAN CIRCUS

In a city too well acquainted with horror and the supernatural, one event stands out in New Orleans’ long litany of unexplained tragedies.  On April 8^th, 1904 at the Storyville Opera House on what is today North Rampart Street, just blocks from the famed French Quarter an evening’s performance ended in inexplicable tragedy.

On this site, Dean Parewig Lawrence (professionally known as “D.P. Lawrence”) a circus impresario and former stagehand held a Vaudevillian variety show.  Of the 134 people known to be in the building that evening, all but two were dead or permanently insane within weeks of the performance.  Interpretations and theories about what happened vary wildly but the common thread in every account is a supernatural act, conjuring or experiment gone horrifically wrong.

Lawrence rented the building in the fall of 1903 for a pittance on the promise of large revenues to come from the theater he intended to open there.  At that time, the building had been derelict for many years but it had originally been a hospital for yellow fever victims during the frequent outbreaks of the 1800s.  In the 1870s it is said that the so-called “Voodoo Queen” Marie Laveau was regularly seen at the hospital, tending to the sick...