The Louisiana Creole Restaurant That's A Popular Haunt For Locals And Spirits Alike

Being the most haunted restaurant in New Orleans is no mean feat; it's not like being the most haunted restaurant in, say, Davenport, Iowa. The Big Easy has been a cultural melting pot for centuries, giving it one of the richest and most distinctive histories of any city in America — and a whole bunch of ghosts to go with it. Along with Savannah, Georgia, it's considered one of the most haunted cities in the country. But whether or not you believe in the paranormal, you'll want to pay Muriel's Jackson Square a visit.

The property that is now Muriel's originally belonged to Claude Trepagnier, a French-Canadian who helped settle New Orleans in 1718, before being passed from one wealthy owner to another and suffering damage from the Good Friday Fire of 1788. (We told you it was rich with history.) Eventually, it came to be owned by one Pierre Antoine Lepardi Jourdan, who went to great lengths to turn the property into his dream home. Unfortunately for our man Jourdan, he was an inveterate gambler, and one evening in 1814, he bet his beloved house in a poker game, then lost. Bereft and broken, he retreated to the second-floor parlor and took his own life. From there, the property changed hands several more times until Muriel's opened its doors in 2001.

If you go to Muriel's Jackson Square looking for the ghost of Pierre Jourdan, you won't see one of those humanoid apparitions like you'd find in the "Haunted Mansion" ride at Disney World. Instead, he supposedly takes the form of a "glimmery sparkle of light," usually found on the second floor in what are now called the Seance Lounges. These intricately decorated rooms are where diners may enjoy cocktails in a gorgeous, ever-so-slightly-seedy Old New Orleans setting — all with a table set out for the man of the house himself, stocked with bread and wine.

But if ghosts were all Muriel's Jackson Square had to recommend, it wouldn't be such a local institution. The menu is full of tasty dishes, some of which are more generally Southern (the wood-fired pork chops, for instance, or the shrimp and grits — though you can make those at home with popcorn), while others reflect the city's Cajun and Creole heritage (including blackened redfish and seafood gumbo). Muriel's offers a jazz brunch every Sunday, where diners can enjoy mimosas and pain perdu (a French toast that doesn't need syrup) while listening to the music that was the city's lifeblood for decades. And, of course, they do Mardi Gras in style.