I swear I would like to know there they come up with 15 percent of nola folks practice some form of voodoo.
They count the number of faux voodoo shops and museums, and their employees, and then add in the number of tourist hustlers conducting faux voodoo tours ... and Voila! 15% ... but, I want to know ... are they basing that number on pre-Katrina or post-Katrina population figures. LOLI lived in New Orleans for many, many years ... superstition was alive and well. I can remember hearing people say not to let anyone "get" any of your hair [like from your hairbrush] or your fingernail clippings ... or they could make a voodoo doll.
In certain parts of the Quarter, "they" would mop their banquette [sidewalk] with urine to keep the ha'nts away. [My mother always laughed and said there was no indoor plumbing and they had to empty their chamberpots somewhere ... !]
Certainly, Marie Laveau was infamous as an ersatz voodoo priestess [when she was not at Mass, apparently] ... and people used to mark up her tomb with bits of broken brick ... maybe for luck, or for her to intercede for them, or in hopes of removing a "spell" ... or something like that. Marie Laveau's tomb is in the old St. Louis Cemetery No.1. I have never seen it because in my lifetime it has always been considered entirely too dangerous to venture into that cemetery ... it is completely walled with only one gate for access. Predators from a nearby housing project preyed on unsuspecting tourists who would get trapped in there with no way out.
Most of these things occurred in the earlier years of the 20th Century, most of it before my time ... but I remember hearing about them.
From about the time of the WPA, there began to be interest in preserving folkways so that they would not be completely lost. That is where much of this emphasis on this sort of stuff began.
Superstition abounded and went hand in hand with ignorance and lack of education. But ... this is a more enlightened age ... and all this voodoo stuff has popped up since I left New Orleans. It is all commercial ... every bit of it.