The New Orleans French Quarter is home to dozens of haunted historical hot spots. Many of the city’s ghost tour companies boast, “New Orleans, the most haunted city in America.” But tour companies may have missed a haunt in one of the French Quarter’s most famous historical sites, Napoleon House.
A painting of Napoleon sits near the entrance to Napoleon House's third-floor apartments.
Built by Nicholas Girod, mayor of New Orleans from 1812 to 1815, Napoleon House was originally intended to be a residence for Napoleon Bonaparte. Although Napoleon House is rich with history, Napoleon himself was never actually a part of it, said Maria Impastato, one of the building’s owners.
Today, the three-story building functions as a restaurant, bar and reception hall. The Impastato family has owned Napoleon House since the early 1900s. Impastato said her grandparents used to live on the second floor, which is now the reception hall. The third floor consists of three separate apartments, which the family always rented out, Impastato said.
Covington residents Chastian and Liz Taurman have been renting one of the apartments for the past year. They and their five grown children use the apartment when they stay in the city.
Catherine Taurman, the youngest of the Taurman siblings, is a student at Tulane University and occasionally uses the apartment for school. She said she thought the apartment was haunted the first time she walked into it.
“You get a creepy vibe from it,” Catherine said. “When you’re there by yourself, you feel like someone else is with you, but no one is with you.”
Catherine said she had an “eerie experience” when she and several friends stayed in the apartment during Mardi Gras. When one of Catherine’s friends mentioned that she thought the place was haunted by a ghost, Catherine said the lights in the kitchen started blinking wildly. Astonished, they decided to ask the spirit questions.
“We asked if there was a presence here to blink the light three times,” Catherine said. “It blinked. One. Two. Three.”
After asking several more questions and watching the kitchen light flicker correspondingly, Catherine said she and her friends were convinced the flickering was no coincidence due to faulty wiring.
Despite the unsettling incident, Catherine said she is not afraid to stay in the apartment.
“I don’t think it’s there to hurt me or scare me away,” she said. “It’s a very old house. There’s probably going to be spirits there. That’s just new Orleans.”
Catherine’s sister, Mary Taurman, had a similar experience when she and a friend visited the apartment after a wedding.
When Mary mentioned the strange experience her sister had, her friend declared that she did not believe in ghosts. Suddenly, the kitchen light flickered.
Mary said she asked the ghost to make the light blink again, and it did. It was very deliberate, and it did not flicker again after that, Mary said.
Liz Taurman, the girls’ mother, said she is “not as big on hauntings” as her daughters are. Despite her skepticism about ghosts, she said she cannot deny strange things have happened in the apartment.
The first time Liz slept there alone, she experienced a rude awakening.
“I was just going to sleep, and something hit me in the back. It was like a shove,” she said.
She said the push was strong enough to make her question whether there was someone else in the room. But she was alone.
Maria Impastato has spent her life around Napoleon House and said that she has never had a supernatural experience there. However, she admits there is a “ton of history” in the more than 200-year-old building.
The third-floor apartments were historically rented out to short-term visitors, not families, Impastato said. Most of the people that lived up there were seamen, she said.
“Who knows? Maybe there is a spirit going around,” she said with a laugh.
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