Old Ursuline Convent

The oldest building in the Mississippi Valley and the oldest surviving example of French Colonial architecture in the country, built in 1752. Originally housed young French women sent to New Orleans to find husbands, who carried their belongings in coffin-shaped casquette chests.

The Old Ursuline Convent stands on Chartres Street in the French Quarter, the oldest surviving building in New Orleans and indeed the entire Mississippi Valley. Completed in 1751, this French colonial masterpiece has served as convent, school, archbishopric, state house, and seminary across nearly three centuries. But it is best known for a legend that has made it synonymous with the supernatural: the story of the Casket Girls and the vampires they may have brought to the New World.

In the 1720s, young French women arrived in colonial Louisiana seeking husbands among the settlers. They carried their belongings in small chests called cassettes, and they came to be known as the Filles à la Cassette—the Casket Girls. The Ursuline nuns housed these women in their convent until suitable marriages could be arranged, protecting their virtue in a rough colonial town.

But the voyage from France had been brutal. The women were kept below deck for over three months to preserve their purity. When they arrived, they were desperately ill—pale, weak, their gums bleeding from scurvy and vitamin C deficiency. The superstitious colonists looked at these ghostly figures and whispered a terrible word: vampire.

Legend holds that when the Casket Girls left to marry, the nuns stored their empty, coffin-shaped chests in the third-floor attic. Some believed the chests had never contained clothing at all—that the women had smuggled vampires into the colony. When the nuns later entered the attic, the chests had mysteriously vanished. Fearing satanic forces, the nuns sealed the attic with 800 silver nails, blessed by the Pope himself.

To this day, the third-floor dormer windows of the Old Ursuline Convent remain permanently shuttered—the only top-floor shutters in the entire French Quarter that are never opened. Nightly, ghost tour groups gather across the street, gazing up at those sealed windows and imagining what might still be imprisoned behind them.

Historians point out that the Casket Girls could not have lived in the current building upon their 1728 arrival, since it would not be constructed for another 23 years. The vampire legend likely originated in the late 20th century, perhaps inspired by Anne Rice's novels. But the stories have taken on a life of their own.

Other ghosts haunt the convent that have nothing to do with vampires. The spirits of Ursuline nuns have been seen walking up and down the original staircase in the foyer. Soldiers from the War of 1812, many of whom died within these walls, have been spotted in period uniforms. Ghost children have been heard laughing and seen playing on the front lawn.

The Old Ursuline Convent now operates as a museum, inviting visitors to explore its French colonial architecture and learn its remarkable history. But many who visit find their attention drawn upward, to those sealed third-floor windows, wondering what secrets the nuns locked away nearly three centuries ago.