They put the bodies in those ovens to bake! You know, it gets well over 400 degrees - just like in your oven at home. See that one over there - there's even a chimney on top for the baking!

One of tall tales heard in the cemetery

Tall Tales

In the 1800s, travelers sought out the cemetery to experience, just for a moment, the thrill of contemplating a foreign custom and place of burial. Throughout the historical accounts are both fact and fiction as writers sought to dramatize their own experiences and impressions. Today, the cemetery is still a major tourist draw, and cemetery tours are a key element for the total New Orleans experience. Many visitors are drawn by the architectural and historical content of the cemetery, while others seek to experience a small moment of the modern intrigue created by fictional accounts in popular books and movies; the excitement of voodoo, vampires and high adventure.

The many daily tours at St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 serve to define the site to thousands of people each month. The tourism industry packages economical, scripted slices of local color with a small dash of physical adventure for the mass marketing of most tours. Heritage marketing thrives on the gaps between history and memory introducing elements of colorful folklore and fictional accounts. Most of the tour guides at St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, such as those volunteering for Save Our Cemeteries or the Friends of New Orleans Cemeteries and others, are well-versed in good historical infomation on the cemetery, and would not make the above silly comment. With the wealth of interesting and highly entertaining factual information available, it should not be necessary to confuse visitors with fictional 'tall tales' disguised as facts.