- Some people said they wouldn't set foot in, let alone buy, this mansion in New Orleans for sale.
- The 10,284-square-foot LaLaurie Mansion, listed for $10.25 million, sits on land with a dark past.
- It replaced a house that burned down in 1834, where an owner reportedly tortured enslaved people.
Some people are drawn to old homes for their charm, quality construction, and rich histories.
History, however, is why some say they wouldn't dream of living in one particular house in the heart of New Orleans' French Quarter.
The 10,284-square-foot, eight-bedroom property is currently owned by Michael Whalen, an energy trader based in Houston, who listed it for sale on July 4 for $10.25 million, The Wall Street Journal reported last week.
Later that day, the Zillow listing said the property, wnown as the LaLaurie Mansion, was already "pending sale," which broker Patrick Knudsen confirmed to Business Insider. Its current status on Zillow is "active under contract."
At first glance, it's not hard to see why someone with cash to spare would be drawn to the mansion.
Its traditional antebellum exterior is lined with a wraparound Juliette balcony. But inside, the home is decidedly modern, featuring two sets of double parlors, a garage with space for two vehicles, a billiard room, and a wine cellar with enough space for 2,000 bottles. Per the listing, the main house also connects to "servant wings" with two independent apartments.
Before Whalen got his hands on the mansion, actor Nicolas Cage briefly owned it. After failing to pay $151,729 in property taxes, Cage lost it at an auction, local outlet NOLA.com reported. Regions Bank scooped up the mansion for $2.3 million at auction before selling it to Whalen a year later.
Cage is known for many Hollywood flicks, including Disney's 2004 "National Treasure." However, his former home sits on land with a past that's anything but a national treasure.
The property has a dark history of torture and slavery
As the Journal reported, the home was built to replace the original LaLaurie Mansion, which burned down in 1834. The first house was named after socialite Delphine LaLaurie, who lived there with her third husband.
While the 1834 fire broke out, those who arrived at the scene made a grim discovery: Inside the mansion, the LaLauries had been torturing and starving enslaved people they kept locked up in chains.
The findings were so horrific that news even made its way across the pond, where British newspaper The Morning Post covered the incident. Upon entering, it reported, witnesses were reportedly met with the "most appalling spectacle," with the people trapped inside tied up by the neck and "horribly mutilated."
While the house survived the flames, it was consequently ransacked and destroyed by outraged locals, costing the LaLauries an estimated $40,000, the equivalent of around $1.4 million today, according to an inflation calculator from Official Data, a site that gathers and analyzes government data.
According to New Orleans Historical, an online project run by the University of New Orleans, the house was rebuilt in 1834 and briefly used as a high school and apartments before becoming a single-family residence once more.
Whalen, the current owner, kept the home private, but its dark history has made it a fixture of many of New Orleans' spooky ghost tours.
While Whalen told the Journal that the grim and ghostly lore surrounding the house didn't "scare" him, it certainly has put off a number of people who learned about the house via the Zillow Gone Wild Instagram account.
"This place needs an exorcism," one user wrote, while another quipped that they couldn't be paid $10 million to live there.
"If I were a billionaire," another commented, "I would buy it and demolish it."