There are hundreds of fascinating and frightening tales that come down to us from the days of Old New Orleans, but though they all puzzle us only a few of them actually reach out and touch our present-day lives in a real way. The Legend of the Devil Baby, the enduring ghosts of Marie Laveau and Prince Ke’yama, the Chicken Man are only a few of the legends that repeatedly surface, year after year, in modern tales experienced by local residents and visitors alike.

Among these tales one of the most tragically gruesome is that of Little Violette whose name rings through infamy, forever associated with the epithet “The Zombie Child.”

Here, then, is her story, just as it was told to me by a grand old dame of the secret Vodoun sosyete founded by New Orleans legend Marie Laveau who had heard it firsthand from her grandmothers and aunts, all followers of Laveau’s successor, Mam’zelle Malvina LaTour. According to most sources, Malvina experienced the entire event while an adolescent child learning the dark arts of her African ancestors alongside her mother, who was a student of Marie Laveau, and numerous aunts who were all members of Laveau’s sosyete.

It is said that the child was born into one of the wealthiest families in Old New Orleans; although the surname has been obscured by the passage of time (perhaps deliberately so), the given names of her parents never change in the telling: they were called Robért and Yvette among the Europeans and Creoles.

Most believe they once lived in a beautiful home on the edge of the Old Quarter on lands then owned by members of the great Marigny family. Their marriage, while both were still quite young, had been a joyous occasion and the source of celebration among all the extended members of their family. But though they were wealthy and rich in love, for several years the greatest blessing – that of a healthy child – seemed to elude them.

On the advice of an elderly aunt, Robert sought the help of one of the most famous physicians then practicing in New Orleans, Dr. Joseph Victor Gottschalk, known to all as “Physician, Surgeon, Occultist and Accoucheur.” In these last two capacities, particularly, Dr. Gottschalk was to serve his clients only too well, for when his skills as physician helped produce the desired result – pregnancy in Yvette – his services as an “accoucheur,” the French name for male mid-wife were then also required. However, in a tragic twist of fate, his dabbling in the occult, and his association with others who practiced the forbidden crafts, would secure a place in legend for Yvette’s child.

Beautiful little Violette , it is said, came into the world in one of those vibrant New Orleans springs that make a person happy to simply be alive. In the courtyards and alcoves of the old Quarter the foliage was growing lush and every breeze smelled like mimosa and honeysuckle in the day while in the evenings the scent of jasmine hung heavy on the air. Across the Marigny estates the native azaleas were budding and the dogwoods bursting into bloom. It seemed that the entire landscape had been painted by some unseen hand to be a gift in celebration of the arrival of little Violette.

Relieved of her nine month burden, the young mother, Yvette, held socials in her home where the landed and the wealthy came bearing tokens of welcome for the little girl whom the doting parents had named Violette because her eyes were the color of pure amethysts. While the women cooed over the gorgeous child, the men heaped congratulations on the proud father, Robert. For the first time, the couple felt their married life was now complete.

For the first year of Violette’s life the feeling of joy and contentment reigned over the little family. The child thrived under the care of Dr. Gottschalk who had secured a mulatto woman to provide constant care for the beautiful little girl. Violette’s life was once of pampered elegance, because her parents had so longed for a child; the baby lacked nothing and the budding little girl had no wants. The doctor himself presented little Violette with a pair of beautiful amethyst earrings, a mere reflection of the color of her eyes, that had been sent to him by his sister Adelaide in Philadelphia as a gift for the little girl.

Robert’s business often took him to more distant areas of the estates where he is supposed to have acted on behalf of Count Marigny in the capacity of manager of the estate overseers. Little Violette would watch wide-eyed when her father rode away to work and would wait patiently in her nursery, sometimes for several days, for his return. Eventually, as she grew, she made her discontent with Robert’s absence well known, throwing a tantrum every time he prepared to depart and insisting that he take her with him. Yvette, however, always objected to the mere suggestion that Robert might take Violette into the swampy lowlands and woods of the unoccupied estates where she might be exposed, so Yvette assumed, to all sorts of dangers, not the least of which were the slaves and Native Indians who resided there.

Violette lacked nothing and the budding little girl had no wants.

But even the most doting mother cannot be at hand all the time and one day Yvette received a message that her mother was ill and had asked for her to come and nurse her. Reportedly, Yvette’s mother lived a sizeable distance outside New Orleans, among the Acadiens of St. John Parish, and Yvette was adamant that Violette should not make the rigorous trip perhaps to be exposed to the dangers of the road. So Violette was to remain at home in the care of her mulatto nurse while Yvette went to her mother’s aid.

Now it was said that the nurse always spoiled the now five-year-old Violette, giving in to her whims and letting her have almost anything she asked for, even, so they say, despite the approval of the child's mother. So it was that on a day when Robert was departing and Violette was embroiled in another of her violent tantrums the well-meaning nurse gave in to Violette’s demands to accompany her father. And Robert, seeing no harm in it, agreed to take the little girl along.

They were gone for almost five days when in the dusk of the fifth day the mulatto woman watched from the porch as Robert’s surrey heaved into view. It seemed that the little trap was hurrying more than usual and the nurse could hear the rapid beat of the horse’s hooves as it drew nearer. A sudden fear fell over the nurse as she ran down the porch steps to meet her master’s carriage and her heart nearly burst when she saw Robert hunched over and carrying a small bundle in his arms. It was little Violette, lying limp and feverish in her father’s arms.

“Send for Dr. Gottschalk!” Robert barked as he ran upstairs to place his limp burden in her nursery bed. “Take the trap!” came his order and at this two strong house servants jumped into the little surrey and disappeared in a cloud of dust, heading for the Old Quarter.

After what seemed like a lifetime, the surrey once again came into view, this time accompanied by a man on horseback. Robert recognized the tall figure of Dr. Gottschalk. The two men met at the front door and as they ascended the stairs, two at a time, Robert provided Dr. Gottschalk with all the information he could about little Violette’s condition.

The physician came to Violette’s bedside and examined her with an expression of grave fear on his face. The flaccidity of her little white arms and legs, the languid, almost lifeless expression except where the fever burned, like two clown spots, one on each little cheek. The child’s breathing was shallow and every few minutes she shivered as if a chill wracked through her little body.

Dr. Gottschalk took Robert aside. The news was grave. Violette had contracted a delirium fever, possibly Scarlet fever or malaria, and it had so drained her tiny body that there was little hope of her survival. “We can make her comfortable, insofar as that is possible,” he said as Robert fell to his knees beside the little girl’s bed. “But I do not expect that she will be with us tomorrow.”

Nearby the mulatto nurse wept quietly, but Robert, already wracked with guilt at having taken Violette against his wife’s constant wishes, now cried out miserably, “My child! My little child!”

Though he could do nothing to stave off the illness, Dr. Gottschalk did not leave the child’s side that night, ministering to her as best he could as the fever ran it’s course. Just before dawn, with the birds beginning their morning song outside, the beautiful little angel with the haunting violet eyes passed from this life. The doctor, looking out into the morning, remembered a spring five years before, when the innocent one had come into the world. He sighed and was grieved that he should also be in attendance at her passing.

Indeed, it was Gottschalk who made the funeral arrangements for Violette as her father Robert succumbed to his grief and could not be comforted. The next visitor to the elegant Marigny home was a New Orleans undertaker who came to prepare the little body for it’s last presentation. Word was sent to St. John Parish to tell Yvette that her dearest child was no more.

Such was the lamentation and grief that accompanied the end of this child’s life that many who saw it compared it to the great Danse Macabre of medieval times, for it seemed Death had visited even the countenances of the living as they tried to come to terms with the loss of such a beautiful little girl. The funeral procession to St. Louis Cathedral was a long river of black following the cortege and the little copper casket that held Violette. Afterwards, led by the priests, the river changed course and flowed to the Bayou Cemetery on the city’s outskirts, where Robert’s family had donated a picturesque spot for the interment of their jewel. They laid Violette in the good, dry earth of the Esplanade Ridge and were loathe to leave her there when the time came to go.

Robert’s guilt and grief were only exacerbated by the grief of his young wife. Yvette’s mourning had taken on tragic proportions and almost immediately it became apparent that her mind had suffered a blow from which it could not recover. The once-beautiful and bright home on the Marigny estate was now encased in an almost impenetrable darkness and no one, not the well-meaning visitors nor the prayerful religious, nor the stern Dr. Gottschalk could stem the tide of mourning and bereavement.

Robert and Yvette seemed to take their grief in shifts, and at any given time one or the other of them could be found sitting in Little Violette’s nursery, staring blankly at the wall. All business, all domestic obligations seemed to come to a complete halt and had it not been for the reliable servants, the home and lands might have gone derelict. There seemed to be nothing that could bring back the light that Death had snuffed out when He took Violette.

It was into this Stygian atmosphere that Dr. Gottschalk came when little Violette was nearly three weeks in the grave. Try as he might, he could not dissuade the young couple from their grief. No prescription seemed to work and the mere suggestion that there might be other yet to come produced angry outbursts from both parents. Desperately sad, but unable to salve the melancholy that faced him, Gottschalk resigned himself that there was nothing more to be done for the couple.

Thus he was surprised when one rainy day, nearly four weeks since Violette’s death, when he was locking up his surgery for the evening, none other than Robert himself accosted him on the street. Gottschalk looked at him: the man seemed strangely animated, his movements furtive and nervous. It was with no small amount of shock and consternation, then that Gottschalk recoiled from Robert even more after he had taken him inside to hear out this madman’s proposal.

“It is said that you know about these things,” Robert rambled wildly. “Then you must know something of what I am asking you.”

“What you are asking is blasphemous in the eyes of God and man, Robert!” Gottschalk is said to have responded at first. “I will not do it. Not for all the money in the world,” he added quickly as Robert produced a copious amount of gold and paper money.

“Then tell me who will!” Robert demanded, but Gottschalk was adamant. “Very well,” Robert growled. “I will find someone who has the courage to do the deed!”

Gottschalk watched as Robert rushed out into the rainy street. “The child has been dead a month, Robert! Let her rest in peace, in the name of the saints!”

Now in those days money might buy anything, even the name of a person of power who could do extraordinary things. Whether in league with God or the Devil, Robert did not care: he would find the person who would help him put an end to his pain and bring back the mind of his beloved wife. Thus, lurking outside the gates of Congo Square in the wild torchlight of one of the great vodoun “bamboulas,” Robert found a link in the chain he had been dredging through the darkest of his thoughts.

To hear Malvina LaTour tell the tale, she stood beside Robert on the night he made the hellish pact with the mavens of Marie Laveau’s secret sosyete. LaTour is said to remember it well as the first such ritual she participated in. Not only this, she also maintained that she was the one who led them all to the dark little Bayou Cemetery gravesite.

What Robert and Yvette desired had been the heart’s wish of bereaved parents since time immemorial; it was only a rare few, however, who attempted what he was about to allow. Because what Robert had done that night in the wild heat of the bamboula was make a pact with the reigning vodusi; for money, they had agreed to attempt to bring back his beloved Little Violette.

By methods best kept secret and which even LaTour in her retelling would not reveal, the decaying corpse of Little Violette was removed from her resting place in the old Bayou Cemetery and taken to a secret location where for one full cycle of the moon it was subjected to the most powerful vodoun magic that had been performed by that most secret sosyete up to that time. In dark bargains with the keepers of the dead and Death himself, the high vodoun mambo and her followers were attempting something that was only heard of in legends.

Back in their brooding Marigny home, Robert and Yvette waited for the appointed time to pass. As the passage of the moon brought it again to full, one night there came a knock at the front door.

The couple rushed to open it and was puzzled to see an old vodusi matron standing there, with only the girl, Malvina, standing next to her. Imagine, then, the joy that overcame them as the old black woman moved the folds of her skirt to reveal none other than the dear, departed, but now very much alive Violette holding tightly to Malvina’s dark hand!!

The couple burst into tears of joy and happiness. Yvette scooped the little girl into her trembling arms. With violet eyes once again burning with life, the little girl said in a familiar voice like the sound of tinkling glass: “Mama!” With that, the couple’s joy seemed complete.

Though they urged her to, the old vodusi would not enter the couple’s home, nor would she allow Malvina to cross the threshold once the restored Violette had been returned to her parents. In fact, Malvina recalled how the old woman’s gnarled hand dug into her skinny little shoulder as if to prevent her from even considering entering the home. But the old woman took the cash that Robert now happily forked over. With that, the couple was left to their joy.

And joyful it was, at least for a time. Although, when the servants learned of the child’s return, they immediately recoiled from the little girl. Loathe to leave the couple, and not certain how the child was reanimated, the loyal servants remained, but vowed cautiously that at the first sign of trouble they would have to leave. The mulatto nurse was the most frightened of all the house servants, not the least because the care of the child was returned to her once “Violette” had miraculously reappeared. Fear kept them all in place: fear of what this little jewel might now be capable of.

The house took on a dreamlike quality after Violette returned. It was clear, even to the most slow-minded of the servants, that the master and his wife had obviously lost their sanity. Not only this, but the once beautiful and vibrant Violette was now somehow different; something about her was never quite “right” and none of the servants liked being in her presence very long. Where they had previously seen untainted innocence they now sensed a brooding presence, something entirely “other” had come to live with them.

It wasn’t long before the worst fears and superstitions seemed to be coming true. Deep inside the house, pattering footsteps deep in the night troubled the servants; grunting sounds or the sounds of furtive eating could be heard in the darkness outside, but no one had the nerve to investigate. And while all this happened, Robert and Yvette seemed only to see Violette, living in a perpetual dream state, under the child’s spell.
First it was the little night creatures that were found, dead, hidden (or so it seemed) under the spreading low azalea branches or covered in moss in the roots of trees. Some looked as if they had been scaled and skinned alive by claws; others were torn in half, with parts missing. Another strange occurrence was the disappearance of meat stock in the smoke house and pantry. No fresh cut of meat was safe, evidently, and although at first the cook staff were puzzled they became outright fearful when they observed marks in some of the cured meat that looked as if it had been gnawed upon by little HUMAN teeth…

And throughout this, though Robert and Yvette seemed blissfully unaware of the change, the servants watched in horror as the little girl seemed, for all intents and purposes, to be decomposing before their eyes. It did not take much mental acuity at this point for the servants to reason out what had happened: Violette had been taken to the bokor vodusi, the black magic workers, who instead of restoring her to wholesome life had zombified her!

Now the servants knew they were trapped in a horrible nightmare, and fearful for their own lives they first determined to leave the home. But it was the memory of the beautiful little Violette, the vibrant happiness she had brought to them all when she was alive, that combined with their fierce loyalty to her parents to keep them there. So it was that they made a pact among themselves that the strongest of them, when the opportunity presented itself, would take the zombie child from the home and kill it, or, if it could not be killed, then bind it to keep it from returning. But they knew they could not attempt this without the aid of a powerful vodoun patron.

It is said that they took their case to the daughter of Marie Laveau, Mamzelle Marie, and begged for her aid. Not surprisingly, Mamzelle Marie was angered by what she saw as a horrible act that went against the practices of her mother’s sosyete and the vodoun beliefs in the sanctity of life and death. So angry was Mamzelle Marie, in fact, that from that time until now the followers of the true secret sosyete of the original Marie and the followers of the old bokor vodusi have been constantly at odds with each other. On the night that the servants appealed to her, Mamzelle Marie said to them: “For Violette, I will give you strength to do this thing. For Violette.”

Of all people it was the faithful mulatto nurse who found the courage and the strength to face the little creature that had taken the place of her beloved Violette. Alone with the zombie child in the grim nursery, the mulatto woman was able to overcome her worst fears and trap the horrible creature in a bedsheet. Tying it tightly in knots and praying in the Krayol language of vodoun, the nurse rushed to a wagon that waited to take her to a rendezvous with Mamzelle Marie herself.

When she arrived at the appointed place, the nurse was surprised to find Mamzelle was not alone: with her was the old vodusi woman who had brought the zombified Violette home. Not only this, Malvina LaTour stood by, a skinny, shaking girl, struck silent by the fury in Mamzelle Marie’s dark eyes.

Thinking at first that she had been betrayed, the nurse was reluctant to turn over the kicking bundle that contained the zombie baby. But a look from Mamzelle Marie reassured her and she handed the bundle over to the powerful vodoun mambo. As soon as Mamzelle Marie took hold of her, the zombie Violette burst into a horrific tantrum, not unlike those she threw in the days when she begged to be taken about with her father. This tantrum, however, sounded more like the ravings of a caged animal; there were even marks from the zombie child’s fingernails as she began to claw her way out. Mamzelle Marie shouted a word of Command and the tantrum stopped, then she turned to the nurse. “Go home,” she told her, “and perform the house cleansing ritual that I taught you earlier. Turn your back on this child immediately and forget her. She is in my charge now.”

Violette the zombie child never did return to the house of her parents, who, once she had been removed, seemed to return as if from a dream world; even their grieving had ceased. The loyal servants never mentioned anything about the horrible visitation of the zombie child, nor did the nurse ever reveal what she had done with it. A year and a day from the moment the nurse relinquished the child to Mamzelle Marie, the young couple was blessed with another child: this time a son came to live with Robert and Yvette.

What happened to the Little Violette the Zombie Child? According to Malvina LaTour, who told the tale while she yet lived, what is already dead cannot be killed again, and such was the anger of Mamzelle Marie that, it is said, the old vodusi was made to take the zombie child home to live with her. Unfortunately for Malvina, this old woman was her aunt and lived in one half of a double in the old Bywater section near the Marigny while Malvina and her family lived in the other half. The old vodusi kept the zombie Violette confined, but when the old woman died there was no trace to be found of the child. No one ever knew for certain, but most other vodusi and members of the secret sosyetes assumed that the old woman had finally found a way to destroy the creature she had made.

Now the way I found out about this story is weird and what I have related is really a “backward retelling.” I have pieced together the facts the best I can in an attempt to explain an amazing series of events that have plagued some friends of mine who now reside in the very Bywater home that once was the residence of Malvina LaTour’s old aunt.

When they moved into the home, having bought both sides, they took up residence in one portion while renovating the other. Over the years since the house had been built a series of modifications had been undertaken to make the home appear more modern, but now even those changes are woefully out of date and the new owners – Mark and Andy – wanted to restore the entire house to its former elegance.

I first heard of the house in a phone call Mark made to me in Miami when they had first moved in. My immediate feeling was that there was something – a residual haunting or possibly an entity – in the home and that this would make itself known over time.

After settling in, Andy was constantly complaining about the sound of cats yowling – this is what he thought he was hearing. He and Mark would stand in the kitchen and listen to what sounded like a cat trapped in the other side, yowling to be let out. When they would investigate, there was nothing found. Nothing, that is, until one day, when Mark was home alone working on the empty side scraping the old plaster from the gabled ceiling of the little bathroom. As he worked, he revealed what appeared to be a small door; assuming it went into the attic, Mark put some elbow grease into it and by the time Andy returned that evening they could both see the outline of a little trap door.

It had been painted shut under the plaster coating and had all the appearances of having been sealed for generations. Working together they were able to pry the little door open. Needless to say, now they are sorry that they did.

Peering into the darkness of the attic gable, pushing aside the bones of dead pigeons and rats, sorting through a rusty pile of chains and tattered rags, they came upon what appeared to be an old doll. It was the size of a young child, but it appeared for all intents and purposes to be a mummy doll wrapped in layers of tattered cloth – sheets, curtains, ropes, even lace and a kind of gauze around the face. What caught their eyes though, even in the dim light of the attic, was the dazzling purple flash of a pair of amethyst earrings, still brilliant – and still attached – even after all the intervening years.

Something about the horrid, lifelike “doll” terrified Andy and he insisted that the rickety attic door remain nailed shut at all times. Although Mark wanted to take the thing out of it’s attic home, Andy was having none of that and confessed later that he could barely stand living in the other side of the house knowing the little “creature” was in the empty attic. He even considered moving out at one point, when the confusion of Hurricane Katrina came roaring into everyone’s lives.

Mark and Andy were forced to evacuate their home during the storm and in the chaos they gave little thought to their next door “neighbor” left alone in the shotgun double yet again. Andy did confess that he thought about the horrible “doll” quite often while they were staying in a Little Rock area hotel, but he and Mark never once discussed it.

When they were allowed to return to their home after the storm they discovered minor damage to their side and a collapsed Chinaberry tree piercing the roof of the empty side. Both men agree that their hearts fell when they saw this and not just because of the horror of insurance claims and FEMA paperwork. It was as if, they said, they “knew” the broken roof meant trouble.

Reluctantly, Mark held the ladder while Andy bravely went to the little attic door and, with a feeble flashlight, looked inside.

I cannot describe the horror and dismay in their voices when they called me in Miami later that night to tell me that the horrible, mummified “doll” was nowhere to be found and that there was nothing in the attic but “a bunch of rags and some bird bones!”

Although I tried hard to console both men, Mark’s angry cry of “That thing is LOOSE!” haunted me so badly that I could not sleep that night. Intuitively I knew, he is right. Not only that, once we were able to ascertain the actual nature of the “doll” and identify it by working backward through the maze of legend and oral tradition in the area, a pervading gloom fell over us all.