Reverend Zombie’s Voodoo Shop on St. Peters Street is a popular tourist destination. It pays homage to the role of voodoo in the French Quarter.
The New Orleans version of voodoo draws from a set of spiritual folkways originating from African diaspora. It is a cultural form of the Afro-American religions that developed within the French, Spanish, and Creole speaking African American population in Louisiana.
Voodoo became syncretized with the Catholicism and Francophone culture of South Louisiana as a result of the slave trade. Louisiana Voodoo is often confused with—but is not completely separable from—Haitian Vodou and southern Hoodoo. It differs from Vodou in its emphasis upon Gris-gris, voodoo queens, use of Hoodoo occult paraphernalia, and Li Grand Zombi (snake deity). It was through Louisiana Voodoo that such terms as gris-gris and voodoo dolls were introduced into the American lexicon.
The most-famous voodoo practitioner was Marie Laveau, who was born in 1794 and died in New Orleans in 1881.