New Orleans is the category's capital, and it rewards structure: the cemeteries only open by day, the tours only sing by night, and the kitchen hours in between are not optional in this city. The weekend, built:
Friday — arrival and the classic walk. Check into the Monteleone (fourteenth floor if they will give it), dinner early in the Quarter, and the 8pm small-group haunted-history walk — the LaLaurie Mansion telling, Jackson Square's execution history, the Ursuline convent's shuttered third floor. End at the Carousel Bar as it revolves; one drink per revolution, and listen to the bartenders — they keep the house's own stories.
Saturday — cities of the dead and the deep night. Morning: St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 with a licensed guide (the only legal entry) — Marie Laveau's tomb, the Easy Rider lore, the above-ground arithmetic of a city below sea level. Afternoon: the French Quarter by daylight — Royal Street's antiques, the Pharmacy Museum's grim case collection (the sleeper attraction of the whole weekend), beignets as recovery. Night: the 18+ late tour — vampire route or true-crime, cocktail stops built in — which runs looser and darker than the early walks, then Frenchmen Street's music to shake it off.
Sunday — the Garden District and the long goodbye. Streetcar up St. Charles for the Garden District's mansions and Lafayette Cemetery No. 1 (walkable without a guide when open, and greener-gothic than St. Louis), brunch in the district, and the afternoon flight — or the extension below.
The Myrtles extension. With a fourth day, drive the ninety minutes to St. Francisville: the Myrtles' evening mystery tour under the oaks, the overnight in the main house, plantation breakfast, and the River Road's Oak Alley on the return. It converts the city weekend into the complete Louisiana gothic circuit.
The craft notes. Book the Friday and Saturday tours before you fly — small groups, named guides, 15-25 heads maximum; October needs two to three weeks of lead. The LaLaurie Mansion is private — every tour views from the street, and any operator promising entry is selling fiction. Tip the guides; they are the show. And the eating is load-bearing: a po-boy lunch, one serious Creole dinner, and the 2am beignet are as canonical to this itinerary as any ghost — the city insists the living eat well, and the category's capital agrees.
