The Haunted Dauphine Orleans Hotel, New Orleans: Millie and May Baily's Place

The Dauphine Orleans Hotel stands at 415 Dauphine Street, one block from Bourbon Street in the French Quarter. It is made up of three historic buildings, the Main House, the Carriage House and the Hermann House across the street, with brick courtyards and a saltwater pool. It has been a hotel since 1969.

Unlike many hotels, the Dauphine Orleans tells its own ghost stories. Its bar, May Baily’s Place, was a licensed bordello from 1857, and the hotel says its most famous ghost is a bride: Millie, May Baily’s sister, whose Confederate fiance was shot on their wedding day. Guests and staff add a pacing officer in the courtyard, glasses that leap off the bar and a barstool that lifts off the floor. For more nearby, see our guide to the most haunted hotels in New Orleans.

The ghosts of the Dauphine Orleans

Millie, the phantom bride

The hotel’s most famous ghost is a bride. According to the hotel and to Explore Louisiana, Millie was May Baily’s younger sister, who wanted to leave the bordello life behind. In 1861 she fell in love with a young Confederate soldier and became fixated on their wedding and her gown. On the morning of the wedding, her groom was shot dead in a gambling dispute. She heard the news on her way to have the dress altered and never recovered.

Guests say they see Millie in her lace wedding gown near May Baily’s Place, white fabric floating through the bar as she waits for a groom who never comes. Some tellers say her fiance haunts the grounds too, in uniform.

The worried general

A dark-haired man in a dark Confederate uniform is seen pacing the outer courtyard, and Culture Trip mentions a uniformed general lingering in the bar. Ghost City Tours reports that a team from the International Society for Paranormal Research, led by Dr. Larry Montz, investigated and came away with the name “Eldridge” for him.

Pranks in May Baily's Place

The bar is the busiest spot. The hotel itself lists glasses breaking at random, levitating barstools and doors that open on their own. One employee told Ghost City Tours that she arrived at 5:30 one morning, found the front door open though she had locked it, and watched a barstool lift off the floor. On another occasion every brochure in the reading nook by the front entrance fell at once.

In the guest rooms

Guests report odd sounds, televisions that flicker on and off, and beds that shake. Some, usually men, say they have felt ghostly hands on their calves as they slept. Culture Trip adds doors locked from the inside, sounds of romantic encounters from empty rooms, and a woman with long dark hair dancing alone in the courtyards, thought to be one of the women who once worked here. The hotel says paranormal television shows have investigated, and Ghost City Tours names Ghost Adventures among them.

The most haunted rooms and places to look

• May Baily's Place: The bar in the old bordello cottage, where Millie is seen and the barstools misbehave. Its 1857 license hangs on the wall.
• The Bordello Suite: The suite above May Baily’s, for guests who want to sleep where the story happened.
• The courtyards: Where the uniformed officer paces and a dark-haired woman is said to dance.
• The Hermann House: Across Dauphine Street, on the site of a notorious 19th-century den called the White Elephant.

History of Dauphine Orleans Hotel

The Dauphine Orleans grew from several older properties on both sides of Dauphine Street. The building that houses May Baily’s Place is described as a French Creole cottage of about 1820. Some sources say parts of the hotel date back to 1775, though that cannot be checked. The hotel opened in 1969 and today has more than 100 rooms across the Main House, the Carriage House and the Hermann House.

May Baily opened her “sporting house” here in 1857, after her father died in the yellow fever epidemic of 1847. It operated under a city license issued under the “Ordinance Concerning Lewd and Abandoned Women,” and that license is displayed in the lounge today. The hotel calls it one of the city’s first and most notorious bordellos. It predates Storyville, the official red-light district created in 1897 a few blocks away, by 40 years.

Across the street, the Hermann House rooms are named for Samuel Hermann, a German-born merchant who came to New Orleans in 1813 and lost his fortune in the crash of 1837. In the late 1800s part of this block was home to the White Elephant, a rough house of prostitution. One of its residents, Eliza Riddle, was arrested 24 times between 1881 and 1896 and served ten years in the state penitentiary for robbing a man of $500 there.

The hotel’s breakfast room is called the Audubon Room. Hotel tradition says the naturalist John James Audubon worked on paintings for Birds of America there in 1821 and 1822. Today the hotel is run as part of The J Collection, the local group that also operates the Bourbon Orleans.

Tips for a haunted stay

• Start in May Baily’s. Have a drink at the bar, look for the 1857 license on the wall and ask the bartender for the latest story.
• Ask about the Bordello Suite. It sits above the old bordello and is the obvious choice for ghost hunters.
• Check the bar hours. May Baily’s opens at 4pm and is closed on Mondays.
• Ask for the Hermann House if you want quiet. It is across the street and more secluded, and it stands on the site of the White Elephant.
• Walk to the neighbors. The Hotel Monteleone and the Le Pavillon are both a short walk away.
• Want to investigate with a team? Haunted Rooms runs ghost hunts at historic venues across the US.

More haunted hotels nearby

• Hotel Monteleone: Maurice on the 14th floor, a few blocks away on Royal Street
• Bourbon Orleans Hotel: a sister J Collection hotel with a ghostly ballroom dancer
• Le Pavillon Hotel: one of the city’s most haunted grand hotels, on Poydras Street
• Haunted places in New Orleans: the city’s other famous haunts
• Haunted hotels in Louisiana
• Haunted hotels in New Orleans

Sources

Facts on this page are checked against the hotel’s own website, historic records and news coverage. Ghost stories are reported as guests, staff and local historians tell them. Read how we rate haunted hotels.

• Dauphine Orleans Hotel: Haunted history (official)
• Dauphine Orleans Hotel: FAQ (official)
• Ghost City Tours: The haunted Dauphine Orleans
• Explore Louisiana: Haunted New Orleans hotels
• Culture Trip: A guide to the haunted hotels of New Orleans
• SmarterTravel: 9 haunted hotels in New Orleans

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