“An alleged haunted house.”
What the Paris correspondent of the “Morning Post” cautiously describes as “an alleged haunted house” is to be found just now in a village near Rouen, named St Martin-en-Campagne. The house was occupied by a man and wife named Caron, who at night used to hear strange noises in their isolated dwelling. The sounds sometimes resembled the reports of firearms. Sometimes it seemed as if threshing machines were at work, and there were also many other mysterious disturbances.
Two nights ago the Carons fled from their house in the wildest terror, the husband carrying a gun and the wife a revolver. They were almost naked, but ran in the cold and the rain for more than a mile until they fell into a ravine. The Carons said in the morning that they had no idea they had gone so far. They absolutely refuse to return to their home.
Southern Echo, 18th February 1897.
Ghosts in France.
A Haunted House.
Some months ago (says a Paris correspondent) immense excitement was created in a village near Paris by the action of alleged ghosts, who played marvellous pranks in a house there. Spirits are now said to have invaded a residence near Rouen, and their antics have caused the occupants of the place to lose their reason.
The haunted habitation was tenanted by a small agriculturalist and his wife. They heard terrific noises upstairs every night, and, in spite of their researches, failed to discover the authors of the nocturnal disturbances. They accordingly left their house one evening as the riot began, and, rushing across the fields, fell over the edge of a quarry. When rescued they were in a deplorable condition, and the gendarmes took them back to their haunted home, where they are now being attended to by their relatives.
The supposed ghostly disturbances have ceased, probably owing to the presence of additional people in the house, but the ill-fated agriculturalist and his wife have not yet recovered from the mental shock occasioned by the spirits, who were in all likelihood the flesh-and-blood enemies of the pair, or local jokers intent on amusing themselves at the expense of their neighbours in order to relieve the monotony of country life.
In the case of the alleged haunted house near Paris, all the supposed phantoms disappeared before the gendarmes, and the ghosts at Saint Martin’s, near Rouen, will now, no doubt, also vanish under similar conditions.
South Wales Echo, 19th February 1897.