After Madame LaLaurie's mansion caught fire and the people of New Orleans rushed to save the slaves who were trapped inside, they found some truly disturbing "experiments" in the attic of the house. According to Kalila Katherina Smith's book Journey into Darkness: Ghosts and Vampires of New Orleans:

"[A] victim [of the 1834 fire who] obviously had her arms amputated and her skin peeled off in a circular pattern, making her look like a human caterpillar."

The book also describes another woman who had her limbs broken and reset in a way that made her look like a crab.

It's hard to know whether LaLaurie escalated her gross treatment during the time she held slaves, but one of the sickest forms LaLaurie committed was allegedly chaining women up, cutting their stomachs open, and then wrapping their intestines around their waists.

Stories say she would then let their bodies hang and rot.

One of the most brutal forms of torment that LaLaurie exacted on her slaves indicates that it's possible she didn't act alone. After breaking into the Madame's attic to save slaves, rescuers found one woman with animal waste confined in her mouth, as someone had sewn her lips shut.

Aside from being one of the most gruesome torments imaginable, it's also something that would be hard to do on one's own. In order to do this, presumably someone has to hold the person down, and you need at least one more person to handle the animal waste, and maybe a third to sew. LaLaurie gets the credit for being the boogey-woman of New Orleans, but some theorists speculate that she had accomplices.

Many of LaLaurie's slaves were horrifically mangled, with bones that had been many times broken and reset. When the attic was finally opened up, one woman was discovered missing her arms and legs. Another woman had had her bones twisted and broken in order to fit her inside a tiny metal cage meant for dogs.

At the time of the discovery, both women were still alive.

Many skulls were found with holes drilled into them - and in one case, a slave was still living with a maggot-filled hole in his head. Even more horrifying, it was said one man was found with a hole drilled into his head and a stick protruding out that had been used to "stir" his brains.

Nothing dehumanizes a person quite like chaining them to the physical representation of their station in life, and that's exactly what LaLaurie did to the 70-year-old woman who cooked all of her meals. Either because she couldn't trust the woman to not escape or because she derived a sick satisfaction from exacting control, LaLaurie literally chained this woman to her work station.

Ironically, this would be LaLaurie's undoing. Rather than live out the rest of her life chained to an oven, the emaciated cook set fire to LaLaurie's mansion, calling attention to the Madame's brutal treatment of her slaves before the entire city of New Orleans.

If her beatings, whippings, and general nastiness weren't enough to keep her slaves in line, Madame LaLaurie would send her slaves to the attic, which was many slaves' final resting place. What's worse is that LaLaurie never removed the bodies from the attic.

By the end of her tenure in New Orleans, she contained her captives next to rotting corpses.

LaLaurie was so frightening that many of her slaves chose to end their lives rather than deal with her punishments directly. One story tells of a 12-year-old slave girl, Lia, who accidentally snagged LaLaurie's hair while brushing it.

LaLaurie went after Lia with a whip, and the girl chose to jump off the roof rather than face whatever vile torment was waiting for her. LaLaurie had the girl's body buried in a well, and the discovery of her remains is what contributed to the downfall of LaLaurie's life in New Orleans.

According to some accounts, Madame LaLaurie even beat her own daughters. When the two daughters attempted to give the emaciated slaves - who appeared "haggard and wretched" - any form of sustenance, LaLaurie punished them.

However, LaLaurie donned a shinning public image, and it was hard for locals to confirm that she was anything but "charming" and "hospitable".

Some of the slaves that did survive their horrific encounter in the attic only did so because they were thrown upstairs a few months before the fire and hadn't yet perished. Upon breaking into the attic, the people of New Orleans discovered some slaves who had been locked in shackles and left to hang until they expired.

Even though those slaves discovered during the LaLaurie fire were saved, it's doubtful that many people survived their treatment in the attic.

LaLaurie purchased shackles of all shapes and sizes for her slaves. She locked some in iron collars with inward-facing spikes. The way these collars work is that when you take a breath, the spikes drive deeper into your neck.

You can try to hold your breath until you pass out, but regardless, the collar will eventually end you.

In 1834, when the chained cook set fire to the mansion, LaLaurie skedaddled out of New Orleans without even so much as unlocking the attic where there were still living slaves. Rather than face recrimination of her acts of cruelty, she chose to let her slaves burn.

Some scholars have theorized that as much as LaLaurie felt a smoldering disdain for her female slaves, she absolutely hated the men whom she'd enslaved. When the bodies of slaves were removed from the attic, it was noted that the men had their fingernails, eyes, and genitals removed.

Most of the men were already deceased, but those who were still alive begged to be put out of their misery.

When the fire broke out at her mansion, bystanders attempted to evacuate the slave quarters but were denied the keys by the LaLauries. They had to break down the doors. Historians are unsure if she was terrified of being caught and planned to burn the evidence or if she wanted to continue her sadistic treatment.

Even though her mansion was set on fire by one of her slaves, and despite the people of New Orleans going full mosh-pit on her belongings, Madame LaLaurie was able to evade punishment. No one really knows how she spent the rest of her life.

Most people believe that LaLaurie first escaped to Alabama before going on to Paris, where she lived out the rest of her life in freedom.

LaLaurie was far from the only owner to harm slaves. Louisiana, in particular, was notorious for the cruel treatment of slaves by their owners. These acts of brutality were intended to terrorize slaves and squash any signs of rebellion. According to historian Daniel Rasmussen:

"They would tie your hands to four stakes, then whip you with a cat-o'-nine-tails. And that would leave you bleeding and barely able to move [...]. They also had iron masks to put around your head so you couldn't eat. And they had collars with spikes facing inwards so the slaves couldn't sleep without getting spikes in their necks. Those were common forms of punishment in Louisiana during this period. They believed that without the threat of tremendous violence, slaves wouldn't stay slaves."

In particular, the Haitian Revolution, as well as a major slave revolt in New Orleans in 1811, made slave owners fear that their captives might rise up and get revenge. New Orleans slave owners reacted with violent suppression - many historians today think LaLaurie may have been a scapegoat to shift guilt and blame from the many other slave owners of the period who were almost as bad.

At some point prior to the fire, word started getting out about LaLaurie's treatment of her slaves, and when Judge Jean-Francois Canonge witnessed LaLaurie keeping one of her women in an iron neck shackle, Canonge said something to the Madame's husband.

He reported to the courts that when he confronted Madame LaLaurie's husband about the state of their slaves, he responded that "some people had better stay at home rather than come to others' houses to dictate laws and meddle with other people's business".

Notoriously eccentric actor Nicolas Cage was one of the many residents of the LaLaurie mansion. Cage bought the home in 2007 and moved in, hoping the home's spooky vibes would provide inspiration as he tried to write a dark novel.

However, this novel was one of the many failed projects cursed by the LaLaurie home, and Cage eventually abandoned the project and the property.

After LaLaurie fled her home at 1140 Royal Street, a move ransacked the premises, which then remained vacant for years. Not surprisingly, there were rumors that the house was haunted, with people claiming to see and hear the ghosts of former slaves. When the house was fully occupied again, the new owner complained of hearing terrible shrieks and moans. He only stayed for three months.

Eventually, the house was turned into a girls' high school during the reconstruction, then later, "a conservatory of music and a fashionable dancing school". However, local news accounts allged that the school's male teacher made inappropriate advances on the students, and the school was subsequently closed.

Later, the home became the residence of Jules Vigne, an eccentric, wealthy recluse, who lived in the house secretly until he passed in 1892. Authorities discovered his body "on a tattered cot in the mansion, apparently living in filth". Investigators also uncovered his antique collection as well as other valuables stashed throughout the residence. Bags of money were found stashed throughout the house, with more treasures rumored to still be undiscovered.

At last, the house was converted into a cheap apartment building. Residents complained of ghostly encounters, many violent and terrifying. One resident alleged that the ghost of a naked, chained slave went after them but then vanished into thin air. Others maintained an array of sordid accounts, including phantoms going after children and animal sacrifices.

Eventually, residents had had enough. It was never easy to keep tenants in the house and finally, after word spread of the strange goings-on there, the mansion was deserted once again. Several businesses moved in, but none lasted very long. Today, the house is once again an apartment building; during renovations, the owners apparently discovered even more bodies that had been hastily thrown into a mass grave beneath the house.