In 1728, a ship arrived at the port of New Orleans carrying a group of young women sent from France to marry settlers in the Louisiana colony. Clutching small coffin-shaped chests—called “cassettes”—these women were handpicked by royal order to become the foundation of a new, thriving society. But the moment they stepped onto Louisiana soil, a strange unease took hold. The townspeople muttered in hushed voices, pointing to the girls’ ghostly pale skin, their odd behavior, their casket-like luggage. And thus, the legend of the Casket Girls began.
Arrival and Suspicion
The girls arrived aboard ships after six grueling months at sea, having rarely seen sunlight, their skin nearly translucent. Their appearance alone was enough to start rumors. Locals began calling them “Filles à la Cassette,” referencing the strange chests they carried—shaped eerily like coffins. Though they were meant to be wives, many were met with suspicion and hostility. Some were forced into unhappy marriages, while others were abandoned or worse—forced into prostitution.
The Ursuline Convent and the Locked Third Floor
Until they married, the girls were housed at the Ursuline Convent on Chartres Street. But something strange happened. When the king recalled the women to France, the nuns stored the girls' cassettes in the convent’s sealed third floor. When they returned later to retrieve them, the chests were inexplicably empty. Terrified, the nuns had the third-floor shutters nailed shut—allegedly with nails blessed by the Pope himself. That floor remains closed to this day, giving birth to some of New Orleans’ most sinister vampire lore.
The truth behind the Casket Girls is as elusive as the mist that drifts through the French Quarter. Historically, most of the women were pious, well-raised, and genuinely seeking new lives in the colonies. Only one, Catherine Guichelin, was ever known to engage in prostitution—and even that was after being abandoned. The myth of their impurity and supernatural origin may have been a cruel deflection from the abuse and abandonment they endured.
In 1978, two paranormal investigators camped outside the Old Ursuline Convent, seeking proof of the vampire legend. What happened that night became part of the city’s darkest folklore: both were found dead the next morning, drained of blood and savaged as if by claws. The shutters on the sealed third floor—supposedly locked shut with sacred nails—had been mysteriously opened and shut during the night.
Was it just coincidence? Were they attacked by wild animals? Or was something more sinister hidden behind the convent’s louvered windows? In a city like New Orleans, where the veil between the living and the dead grows thin, the line between truth and legend blurs. Some say the girls never truly left. That they walk the streets still, pale and unblinking, searching for the lives they were promised but never given.
Whether seen as tragic victims or eternal brides of the undead, the Casket Girls remain woven into the haunting fabric of New Orleans lore. History tells us they were ordinary women, but myth has made them immortal. And in a city that loves its ghosts, perhaps that’s exactly how they were meant to be remembered.
So next time you walk past the Ursuline Convent in the heart of the French Quarter, glance up—if you dare—at the sealed windows on the third floor. You might just catch a glimpse of a pale figure watching. Waiting. Remembering.
