Letters With The Dead- Haunting Tales of the Reign of Terror

Speaker A: Tales of French ghosts and terrifying, hauntings, thriving corner of local culture. Any country as rich and exciting as France is bound to have some interesting remnants of its past serving to remind us of times long ago. France is a country that saw a deep period of radical political and societal change, dominated by political control, exacerbated by economic depression and civil disorder, the revolutionary wars of eight or 1792 would follow with subsequent uprisings. This sparked the Reign of Terror, an attempt to eradicate alleged counterrevolutionaries. By the time it ended in July 1794, over 16,600 had been executed in Paris in the provinces, with hundreds of thousands more imprisoned. With such evidence of mass violence, terrifying to comprehend how people struggled to come to terms with events. In 1788, one year before the Reign of Terror began, a writer and would be mystic was at a lavish dinner party. Jacques Cosette was a man of standing, and so was dining in illustrious company with the great and good academics and aristocrats of France. He was about to make a haunting prediction, one sure to spoil the merriment. That evening, along with everyone's appetites, speaking to the assembled guests, he announced his prediction that he and his companions would die horribly, either by suicide noose or by guillotine. Each of the diners would be dead and dead soon. You condescere, he said. You'll die in prison. Champor, you'll cut your veins to death 22 times before dying a long and miserable death. Nikolai, you'll lend at the scaffold. You Duchess of Grammel, along with many of your genders, you'll end at the scaffold too. Only the King Louis XVI will be granted the grace to confess before being beheaded one by one. Sure enough, the assembled aristocracy perished. Shamfour, for example, did not meet the Bain public for a date set for his execution. The critic instead slashed his wrist 22 times with a dull razor before dying at his own hand. He would be found unconscious and suffer for a whole year before finally dying. Condescey would avoid the scaffold by consuming poison from within his jail cell. In 1794, Gazottis frequently labeled as the man who saw death due to a reported string of accurate, ****** predictions such as these, including that of his own death. After anti revolutionary letters were intercepted, he was guillotine for treason on September 25. In researching this period, I came across an interesting anonymous pamphlet called Correspondence de vivant Edinoir, published in 1795, that had gone through several editions. It's an unusual and unique find letters between the living and the dead, a correspondence between two friends who had found themselves in prison together during the Reign of Terror. Fascinating question emerges can ghost teach us anything about this time in prison? These friends had promised that, should they survive, they would devote their lives persecuting those who arrested them and shine a spotlight on the dark times that had fallen on them. One of them would survive the ordeal the other would be guillotined. One day, approximately a year after the end of the Terror, a friend who'd been executed appeared in the dream of the survivor, intent on fulfilling the promise he'd made. The following morning, when his friend awoke from sleep, he found an assortment of sheets of paper on his desk. The writing on them appeared to be quivering and moving letters written from beyond the grave. The two friends would embark on a correspondence between the living and the dead. They discussed politics, revolution and people of the day. Normally, when we think of time, we do so in a linear fashion the past, the present and the future. Ghosts and spirits disrupt this sense of time. They embody a past that has not passed. The document teaches us something incredibly valuable about the period. For those that lived through the Terror, they were haunted by the events they experienced. In this case, literally. Ghosts gave people a way to talk about a difficult past that reverberated for them in the present. The pamphlet was not the only appearance of ghosts in the immediate aftermath of the Reign of Terror in 1797. Three years later, a man of science named Etienne Gaspar Robert invented a machine for the projection of moving images. He called this phantasmagoria phantasma, from the Greek meaning ghost agora, the public meeting place in the city states of ancient Greece. Phantasmagoria therefore translates to a gathering of specters. The shows would present images of ghosts rising from the dead, usually accompanied by the sounds of a glass harmonica. An instrument invented by Benjamin Franklin. Fantasmagoria was a kind of 18th century horror show that was highly popular in Paris. The show used images of victims from the Terror or other celebrated figures from the French Revolution. The police would eventually come and close it down, finding it to be seditious. Ghosts here were being used as a conduit for forbidden topics to be discussed, whilst also allowing a haunting past to be shared as an outlet for collected grief and trauma. Letters with the Dead are not the only intriguing account that allows us a view of this turbulent period. On the 10 August 19 one, two English women are said to have experienced something that can only be described as a time slip whilst on the visit to the palace of Versailles in Paris. Anne Mobley and Eleanor Jordain were both academics. The principal and vice principal of St Hughes College in Oxford. During the afternoon, after touring the palace, they set off for a walk of the ground, in particular wanting to visit the Pity Trenom, the house on the property about a mile from the palace. Despite using a map, they soon became lost and as they wandered aimlessly, they passed a deserted farmhouse and an old plough lying by the road. Miss Mobiley in particular started to feel rather unwell. Overcome with a strange feeling of depression, her mood was quite altered. Miss Jordan also did not escape such feelings of dread. Ahead the two women would come across two men in long green overcoats and small three cornered hats holding items like a spade in a wheelbarrow. They appeared to be gardeners who would, on seeing the ladies, direct them down a path. After more subsequent wrong turns the women would arrive at a gazebo type structure in which a man with a deep pitted complexion face that looked once ravaged by smallpox, was stood. The ladies quickly hurried away, confused by what they'd seen was 1901 and smallpox was a disease more of the past than the present. Soon they were approached by another figure who, speaking in rushed French, directed them to cross a bridge after which they arrived at what they assumed was the Pity tree and all. A woman was seated on a chair sketching beneath the value straight of the rear terrace. Her dress was old fashioned and unusual. Her hair was fluffed and curled and pinned around her head. Out of a nearby building a footman came rushing out hurrying the women away to the other side of the building where the entrance was. Months later the women would sit and reminisce about their grand holiday. Recalling their strange visit to the palace. Miss Mobiley mentioned the woman I have described someone Miss Jordain had not seen. Amused, they both wrote down the details of that strange day to compare their memories. It turned out a number of things Mobiley had seen Miss Jordan had not, including other figures investigating further would only deepen the mystery. The day of their visit coincided with the anniversary of the sacking of Versailles in 1792 during the French Revolution. The Pity Triangle was used at the time as a private gateway by Mariano. From her seat at the Pity Trionon mariano learned the mob was marching towards the palace gates. Louis XV and Marianoinette both captured at Versailles antoinette herself witnessing the massacre of their Swiss guards. They were beheaded in January 1793. Questioning whether they had seen the ghost of Mariano that day or somehow stepped back in time they came across a painting of the Queen. To their amazement it depicted the same sketching woman and dressed as remembered by Mobiley. 109 years divided these events. The two women would send a letter to the Society for Psychical Research asking them to investigate convinced that they had seen something otherworldly something that did not take place at the time. And so the women continued investigating further for themselves. They made visits to Versailles trying to recreate what they'd experienced. Eventually they came to the conclusion that they had witnessed a memory of 1789 Versailles. The result of their investigations would lead to the 1911 book An Adventure being published under the pseudonyms Miss Morrison and Miss Lamont. It provoked an outpouring of interest and also criticism. Upon their deaths in 1924 and 1937 their identities were revealed and subsequent studies followed. Their book An Adventure is one you can still read today, like the letters with the dead. Maybe they provide a window to the past that we may learn from. Maybe the ghosts from that time have stories they wish to share. There are numerous other accounts about the palace of their sign, France, and its former occupants still making themselves known today. King Louis XVI and Mariano are one of the most infamous royal couples in the history of France. They helped spawn the French Revolution and were ultimately beheaded for their frivolous spending whilst the rest of their country starved. There had been plenty of reports of white mists and cold spots by Marianonette's bed in Petite Weinon. Some reports also include sightings in the Queen's apartment, objects moving by themselves, as well as glass objects breaking for no apparent reason. She's also said to haunt the concierge where she was held captive until her beheading. Louis XV is said to roam the halls of his vast palace. Is he wandering around looking for his wife and children? Or is he wondering how he let things get so out of control that he was ultimately beheaded? Other spirits that are believed to linger in Versailles vast walls are benjamin Franklin, who visited the famous royal couple in 1778 charles de Gaulle, who used the northern wing of Grand Trianon of the palace as his offices during his presidency and Napoleon Bonaparte, who stayed in the Grand Trianon with his second wife on many occasions. Whether you want to search for Mariano's spirit or just want to experience the overwhelming awe one feels while exploring the enormity of Versailles or Paris and other regions of France, I'm sure it will reveal some of its majesty and history to you. Go sleep or otherwise. Thank you very much for listening. Bye for now. If you like this podcast, there's a number of things you can do. Come and join us on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. Spread the word about us with friends and family. Leave a review on our website or other podcast platforms to support the podcast further, why not head on over to join us on Patreon, where you can sign up to gain a library of additional material and recordings. And in the process, now you're helping the podcast continue to put out more content? On a final note, if you haven't read it already, then you can find my piece In Search of the Medieval in volume three of The Feminine Macabre over on Spookets.com or via Amazon. Links to the book will also be in the episode description. Thank you everyone, for your amazing support.