Rustic Superstition.
A queer haunted house story comes from the village of Agny, near Arras. In the commune lives a family of small peasant proprietors, named Caron, which is just now full of tragio-comic misery. The head of the household has for some time been under the conviction that the house is haunted by evil spirits that all his most ingenious efforts have failed to exorcise.
For five years he has been tormented by strange noises, sometimes under a table, sometimes under other furniture, and sometimes behind a door. These pieces of furniture have been committed to the flames one after another, to the unfortunate man’s heavy loss in replacing them, and, still worse, without producing the slightest result, for the noises break out in fresh places.
At present the point of disturbance is an outhouse, and as the poor fellow’s distraction has not yet quite overpowered the characteristic close-fistedness of the French peasant, he cannot bring himself to contemplate wrecking a whole building. The family is now ventilating the notion that a witch has cast a spell over them, and information has had to be laid with the village mayor, who has ordered precautions against the family wreaking superstitious vengeance on some person whom it may enter into their heads to take for a witch. There is more than a suspicion that practical joking may be at the bottom of the trouble.
Globe, 24th September 1906.