I’ve already covered most of the locations used in The Artifact (you can read about them here and here if you missed the newsletters), but there’s another location that was so creepy, I had to add it to the book, even though I didn’t really need another location.

The place is named the Lafon Boy’s Home (or the Lafon Orphan Boys Asylum, if you want to be really accurate), and it was an old orphanage on the outskirts of Nola, built to house children made homeless by yellow fever.

I found it when ‘scouting’ locations for scenes in the book, and when I came across the images on the site below, I knew I had to put it in. Some of the details, like the decapitated statue of Jesus, just screamed to be put in a book; it’s one of those things I wouldn’t believe if I read it in a book myself. I mean, just how do you go about sawing off the head to a concrete statue? And why?

Anyway, the place was demolished after Katrina, but you can still explore it virtually by clicking the image below.