Happenings that baffle the French Police.
Haunted chamber.
Not far from the historic city of Blois there is a little village known as Fougeres-sur-Beivre. Apart from the possession of an historic chateau it has few claims to fame, and nobody would ever have heard of it were it not that the other day it suddenly sprang a ghost on a world always agpe for anything to do with the supernatural.
In its way, too, the ghost is quite a satisfactory one, and though the gendarmes who have inquired into the affair suspect a practical joker, the village gossips strongly maintain that the spook is a real one.
There is even a whisper that as the owner of the house where the manifestations occur is not a regular attendant at Mass the Cure of the place has summoned a spirit to bring him to a proper sense of his responsibilities. Others, however, talk with bated breath of the devil and Beelzebub and others of the lords of darkness.
What actually has been happening, however (says the Paris correspondent of the “Standard” to-day), is that the worthy M. Prousteau, a local land surveyor, and his family, who live in a little house near the Blois road, have been having their rest disturbed in the early morning by the strangest noises. The walls of their dwelling have suddenly resounded with thunderous blows, the partitions dividing room from room have vibrated with continuous knockings, and ever and anon there has been a tremendous noise, like the rolling of thunder, which has been heard two hundred yards away. The windows have rattled in their frames, and the whole house has been shaken as if by a little earthquake.
Not merely content with this, the spirit – be it playful or avenging – has ventured on a host of other tricks. It has, for instannce, sent the curtains of the beds and in the casements sailing up to the ceiling as if they were struck by a high gale, when there was never a breath of wind to stir the bare branches of the trees outdoors, much less within.
It has imitated the sound of wood chopping, at three in the morning, to perfection, and other items on the programme of earthly ventriloquists. Anyhow, the police have investigated the matter; they have explored the neighbouring houses, they suspect “un mauvais plaisant,” but they are battled all the same, and can give no explanation. And down in the village they still prattle of black magic and the Maire has had to forbid people assembling in the roadway before the “haunted” house, because people have poured in from the country round and spent a good part of the day and the night staring speculatively and uselessly at the windows of M. Prousteau’s modest residence.
Evening Despatch, 21st February 1914.