The Haunted 'Sultan’s Palace': Ghosts or Big Easy Tall Tales?
So, check it out - there's this big ol' mansion situated at 716 Dauphine Street in New Orleans' infamous French Quarter that people dramatically dub "The Sultan's Palace." Crazy name, am I right? Let me break down the whole haunting backstory around this hotspot for you.
Built Back in 1836... Records confirm the stately property first took shape in 1836, commissioned by a Philadelphia-born dentist named Joseph Coulon Gardette, who came to the bustling Cresent City to make his fortune on the mouths of the well-to-do.
Business must have been booming drilling cavities because Gardette had prospered enough to tap prominent local architect Frederick Roy to design him a magnificent mansion just four years after arriving. The final product? As they wrote back then, a lavish "crib" in the Greek Revival style - we're talking a brick three-and-a-half story manor with a raised basement level to boot. Swanky dumbwaiter system, too. This was some prime real estate!
Sold in 1839 For a Song...Well, For Over 20 Grand, Actually
But Gardette wouldn't remain on Dauphine Street long enough to fully enjoy his fine palace. Just three years later, in 1839, records show our dentist sold off the property to a certain Jean Baptiste LePrete for the royal sum of $20,049. Now, that was some heavy cash in the 1800s - over half a million by today's rates!
So, who was this cat with deep pockets scooping up primo French Quarter mansions? One Jean Baptiste LePrete is noted to be quite the wealthy banker and plantation owner, inclined to make it rain, proving his elite societal status. Once settled in, LePrete allegedly capped off the lux property by hiring builders to add customized wrought iron lacework and rails to the balconies - the fancy filigree you can still see dressing up the exterior today.
The LePrete Fam Lived Large Until Hard Times
Now, the LePrete family lived large for decades, hosting lavish parties and dividing seasons between the comforts of town and their sprawling Plaquemines Parish plantation across the river.
But the good times couldn't roll forever. Historical records note that around the upheavals of the 1860s Civil War, life for Southern aristocrats like the LePretes took a decidedly downward turn. Details on precisely what went down with the family finances are vague. But correspondence confirms the war years left the clan cash-poor and looking for options to keep appearances.
The Legend of the Mysterious Sultan Renter
And now we get to the juicy but unconfirmed legend of the "Sultan" that helped 716 Dauphine snag its creepy nickname for eternity. They say desperate times call for desperate measures. In the LePrete family's darkest financial hour, legend spins a pretty tall tale that the pride-wounded patriarch committed the ultimate humiliation - renting out his fine French Quarter mansion as a money grab.
And not just to any deadbeat boarders either, according to the lore. Whispers suggest a mysterious brother of a Middle Eastern Sultan takes the lease like an actual royal member of some foreign dynasty now camping up in LePrete's palace as a temporary tenant.
Details get more colorful from there - some accounts talk of the shadowy Sultan rolling into New Orleans accompanied by his exotic entourage consisting of his harem of women dressed in shimmering silks, a protective detail of large eunuch guards bristling with weapons, and lavish Trunk loads of opulent furnishings and treasures the likes of which the humbler Big Easy residents had never laid eyes on.
This envoy reportedly set up camp inside 716 Dauphine in a grand, mysterious fashion. And once settled in, tales suggest the transient tenants wasted little time turning the apartment into a den of vice and constant pleasure seeking. Elaborate in-house parties kicked off nonstop behind closed doors, with musicians, exotic incense, and the tantalizing sounds of sensuality wafting from the windows night after night for months on end as the Sultan lived like...well, a sultan.
Locals whispered fiercely about the debaucheries happening inside the so-called "Sultan's Palace" over cups of chicory coffee but weren't privy to catching a glimpse of the scene themselves. The affair was quite cloistered and private as all groceries or requests were delivered and picked up from the front stoop without interaction.
A Gruesome Mass Murder?
Now, there's no fancy party that doesn't have to end. And this dubious Sultan's stay concluded shockingly if you buy the legend.
Late one night, a thunderous storm swept into New Orleans. Early next morrow, blood was chillingly discovered streaking down the mansion entry stairs, oozing from inside onto the street!
Authorities rushed to the property expecting foul play but couldn't have imagined the sheer carnage that awaited. The mansion's interior was described as displaying a savagely horrific tableau filled with brutally murdered corpses scattered about - men and women alike diced up or missing limbs in gorey fashion.
The Sultan himself was ultimately unearthed outside, allegedly found buried alive under the muddy ground of the courtyard, clawing desperately to get out until his last breath. Speculation ran towards a possible assassination by a jealous sibling awaiting the Sultan's inheritance overseas. But no perpetrator was ever verified.
At only ten corpses, it may have seemed a relatively modest body count by New Orleans homicide standards. But given the elite status of the victim and crime location combined with the pool of blood left behind that ran like a river down Dauphine Street, news of the crimes electrified early gossip circles. Practically overnight, as tales mutated, "The Sultan's Palace" gained oversized infamy from the mystery massacre that may have transpired betwixt its elegant walls and garden courtyards. Oooooh!
Debunking the Drama or...Embellishing Further? You Tell Me!
Now, before we modern folks start spreading fabricated tales further with our fancy iPhones and TikTok dancing, let's establish what's verified on record versus uncorroborated rumor mill hearsay.
That certainly seems like one heck of a juicy sociohistorical nugget, right? A ransacked palace, a massacred Middle Eastern Sultan found clawing from his garden grave? It puts a whole savage spin on the backstory of this property!
But here come the buzzkill historians investigating deeper with a wet blanket. Records officially confirm zero lurid Sultan cadavers were ever logged at the location. Jean Baptiste LePrete himself is documented comfortably inhabiting 716 Dauphine until 1878, when the bank finally foreclosed. Over 40 years past this supposed slaying melee, mind you!
Furthermore, there is no legitimate evidence suggesting the mansion was ever rented out to strangers during LePrete family ownership in the 1860s. Certainly not to foreign noblemen.
In fact, the very first whispers alluding to any "Sultan" tenant don't even emerge in print until a 1922 book over a half-century later. One might conclude it seems less an accurate retelling of blood-soaked historic estate rental gone wrong and more a dramatic bit of scene-setting flare whipped up later by imaginative story spinners. Maybe even taking creative license from the well-documented unsolved Axeman serial killer murders terrorizing New Orleans around 1919.
But where's the fun in letting the truth get in the way of a genuinely dreadful story with staying power?! Even if more fairy tale than cold hard facts, the scandal of an exotic overseas Sultan turning out a tortured corpse or ten while renting in the French Quarter does up intrigue quite deliciously. No wonder it captured public fascination!
The Gardette-LePrete House Endures Through the Years
Murderous Sultan tenant tale debunked or not, records confirm the Gardette-LePrete House itself soldiered on stoically through the ages since 1836. LePrete family descendants stayed rooted another nearly 40 years, at least until a bank foreclosure in 1878 snapped the thread.
The stately building floated between various owners and capacities over the decades, serving everything from the New Orleans Academy of Art to tenement housing before landing in the hands of Frank D’Amico and Anthony Vesich, Jr in 1966. This duo bestowed painstaking restoration efforts on the aging but impressive French Creole architecture.
Converted cleverly into a cozy complex of individual apartment spaces filled with character, the resurrected property endures largely intact today, hosting new eras of tenants that come and go - though now hopefully more peacefully without any back-alley burial plots!
Restless Spirits Roam the Halls...Or So They Say
But just because records suggest previous tales of a massacred Sultan may fall more on the folklore spectrum doesn't mean the Gardette-LePrete manor hasn't hosted tragedies lost to time that left spirits restless. Too many tenant testimonies over too many years report unexplained encounters within the walls to dismiss entirely.
Since conversion to apartments in the 1960s, accounts persist of shadowy apparitions appearing to residents inside apartments and shared spaces. The most noted seem to be visions of a tall, slender man fully dressed in a military uniform resembling 1860s Confederate soldier garb...which is admittedly odd since no Civil War battle occurred close enough to impact the site directly. It makes you wonder what unverified backstory lays behind that ghostly soldier eternally boning up on boot camp drills trotting about.
Elsewhere in the building, first-hand accounts spanning decades report sightings of an elegantly dressed lady enveloped in old-fashioned perfume aromas like fading antebellum garden roses and thought perhaps to be a benign lingering imprint of the Madame LePrete spirit from more halcyon days revisiting past digs. It is not threatening but notable for its periodic presence wandering the wings.
Other spectral shapes described involve the manifestation of a shadowy, amorphous dark figure known to appear unpredictably at bedsides around the former bedrooms. Imagine jolting awake to an ominous dark creeping specter observing you while asleep! It lingers briefly before disappearing but leaves quite an intense impression.
Eerie paranormal antics extend beyond visual apparitions into other unexplained manifestations commonly reported by rattled tenants over the years. Disembodied voices, phantom footsteps tromping room to room, sounds with no identified origin, objects toppling over untouched.
Distraught pets seem perturbed by things the human eye can't discern, refusing to enter specific spaces. Knocking, screams & loud crashes rage violently without source on occasion, scaring the daylights of anyone present...before stabilizing back to silence as quickly as the turmoil arose.
Whether caused by the imprint of powerful past events or restless spirits carrying baggage between dimensions, the Gardette-LePrete House retains potent energetic resonance that is not fully understood.
A French Quarter Mystery Inheriting New Twists as Years Go By
The 1970s brought fresh paranormal perspective to the fore when the then building owner's wife - a Mrs. D'Amico herself - described a chilling encounter. As she climbed into bed one night in her third-floor apartment, the poor woman witnessed a shadowy male figure inexplicably materializing at first at the foot of her bed. As she froze watching this creepy development, the ominous form began slowly gliding towards her. At that point, the terrified lady finally flipped on her bedside light to flood the room with illumination.... prompting the dark figure to vanish. What was that??
Jump forward to more recent ownership, and managers growing used to unexplained occurrences also report modern twists. Nina Neivens, who purchased the apartments in 2015, relayed in media interviews that while she initially blew off legends of gruesome murders on the premises from ages ago...she did come to first-hand experience reports of objects mysteriously moving overnight. She added that Resident keys were noted to go missing for unexplained stretches puzzlingly before turning up again, musing aloud if playful spirits were the cause.
Present-Day Hauntings with Historical Implications
Whether flashy legends of a massacred exotic Sultan prove true, the Gardette-LePrete House boasts well over a century's worth of eclectic ghostly behavior as documented by owners and residence reports alike so far.
Paranormal experts who've investigated agree significant evidence points to one or more spirits haunting the Dumaine Street residence up to the current day. The impressions left range from harmless to occasionally aggressive.
What precisely keeps them mysteriously tethered is ripe for speculation. Theories consider hauntings may potentially tie back to layered traumatic events at the property lost to incomplete records. Disturbed warring soldiers, religious exiles repeating old-world customs, and victims of crimes sadly covered up could all be possibilities.
Architecture, as psychically imprinted through time by highly charged eras or energy released violently, could be another metaphysical factor that resonates forward from the 1800s. Similar to documented phenomena found notoriously imprinted at places like Louisiana's Myrtles Plantation.
The jury is still out on who (or what) seems to haunt the Orleans Street corner, largely considered New Orleans’ top haunted hotspot. But between architectural grandeur and perplexing paranormal happenings enduring decade upon decade after its 1836 origins.... the mysteries entwined with "Sultan's Palace" only thicken more intriguingly with each passing generation.
Where to Find the Palace:
716 Dauphine St, New Orleans, LA 70116
