Last week I attended Keller Williams Family Reunion held this year in New Orleans Louisiana.
My wife, Teodora and I stayed an extra day to get out and walk the French Quarter from end to end. One of my most anticipated stops was at St Louis Cemetery #1, the oldest cemetery in New Orleans with graves dating back to the late 1700's. Some have called this place America's most haunted graveyard and several web sites feature reputed 'Ghost' pictures, many taken in broad daylight.
It trully is a City of the Dead!
On our trip I came across a French tour group being lead through the city of the dead, they had stopped at one of the other tombs bedecked in 'XXX' and I strained to listen to the story she told but I lost quite a bit in translation, so when I returned to Vancouver I researched this very interesting story and here is what I found.
This is one of the reported tombs of the woman who is considered to have done more to entwine New Orleans with Voodoo worship then any other person. In a sense, it does not really matter if Voodoo High Priestess Marie Laveau was buried here, because the tomb has been accepted as her final resting place whether it is or not. You never quite know what you will find upon visiting this grave site, anything from a statue of a monkey and a cock to a wedding cake couple circled in coconut, cayenne, and honey, to a freshly dead rat wearing Mardi Gras beads. On our visit we found an un-opened beer, some business cards, several small toys flowers and the "Monkey" and some coins, no dead rat on this day.
Hundreds if not thousands of"X's" blanketing this tomb and several others. The origins of this proverbial New Orleans Voodoo practice are unclear, but contrary to popular belief, it is not rooted in age-old local ritual. Judging from the sheer amount of X's scrawled throughout the cemetery, it would appear the legions of Voodoo practitioners make their way through the City of the Dead on a regular basis. 
Although more Voodoo is practiced at this one tomb than any single tomb in the United States, many people who worship through Voodoo and genuinely live it as a lifestyle have never left a mark on the structures of the City of the Dead.
The thousands of X's are largely the result of tour groups, who have been coached to practice Voodoo by their tour guide. Their instructions always include breaking a brick off of other tombs and a combination of steps which involve spinning around three times, scratching three X's on the tomb, knocking on it, or rubbing a foot on it or hollering at it or kicking it, etc., (everyone does it slightly, if not very, differently from everyone else) and then leaving an offering to get a wish granted.
There is a modern tabloid report that a woman named Mimi Dealah won 2 million dollars in the Missouri State Lottery after en-scribing 'XXX' on one of the Voodoo Priestess tombs. Not much credibility to this claim but it serves as yet another addition to the popular culture and beliefs that tend to grow over time.
The above ground cemeteries of New Orleans built because of the high water table and flooding that has occurred over the centuries are a MUST SEE on any trip to Louisiana.
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