New Orleans: Historic Voodoo Museum

One of the first places we wandered into on a recent trip to New Orleans was the Historic Voodoo Museum, located on Dumaine Street in the French Quarter. The museum is small, but packed and stacked with artifacts (some of questionable authenticity) relating to Louisiana voodoo, a blend of Afro-American religions brought to New Orleans by the enslaved West Africans, French, Spanish and Creole inhabitants.

I'm not a Voodoo expert by any means, but I'm fascinated by beliefs of any kind. I wasn't raised religious, so almost every type of spiritualism seems equal parts believable and far-fetched to me. There has always been something appealing to me about relics—I think it's the hoarder in me that appreciates the value and sentiment that can be attributed to stuff—so I especially loved all of the altars inside of the museum. You can't have a voodoo museum without paying homage to the Voodoo Queen, Marie Laveau, and in addition to her own altar the museum also claims to have her kneeling bench.

Of course what I loved even more than the haphazard and dusty altars were the bones. There were pelvic bones, entire skeletons, crosses made from bones and numerous human skulls (allegedly collected from medical schools). I also really love the voodoo practice of leaving an offering—believed to expedite the prayer fulfillment process—and I couldn't resist leaving a dime inside one of the skulls (the fact that someone left a $15 Bath & Body Works gift card on one of the altars is still making me laugh). For years I've been finding dimes seemingly everywhere, and it seemed like the right time to start giving them back.