Another account states that three young men tasted tragedy because of Marie's sepulcher. The gentlemen in question had spent a constructive evening in the French Quarter - drinking and carousing. Becoming drunk and bored, their talk turned to death and witches and Marie Laveau. Before too long one of the trio was enticed into a wager. Thirty dollars said he would not have the courage to climb the cemetery's wall and drive an iron spike in old Marie's final resting place. With thirty dollars as a reward the young man threw himself over the wall.

His friends waited for his return. The minutes stretched to an hour. The inebriated fools called to their friend. No answer. They waited. They drank. They cursed. Dawn came, and with it, the opening of the cemetery's gates. The angry young men rushed to the grave waiting to vent their rage on their inconsiderate comrade. They found him by the side of the witch's grave - dead!

In his drunken state he hammered the spike through his coat and into the stone sarcophagus. As he rose to leave and collect his thirty dollars, some unseen force held him in place - obviously his misdirected nail. Panic and fear must have raped his drunken, confused mind. He panicked. His struggle was in vain. Who knows what his mind conjured before him in the city of death? What ever it was, the power of his illusions were so strong that his alcohol stressed heart exploded. When discovered, his friends were aghast at the horror that was etched upon his wretched face.

Whatever the truth really is concerning the hauntings of St. Louis Cemetery #1 and the witch queen who allegedly orchestrates them, one fact is certain and verifiable. The cemetery is a hotbed of a continuing tradition of Voodoo that reaches back almost four centuries. The faithful still flock to Marie's grave to offer dark sacrifices and occult supplications. Perhaps in this maelstrom of superstition Marie actually does rise from her grave on Saint John's Eve to preside over an orgy of the dead. Perhaps...well, who can really say?