4 Paris Ghost Stories from the City of Light

Paris is known as the City of Light, but it’s seen its fair share of darkness over the centuries. It’s not surprising that Paris ghost stories loiter on the boulevards, amid the tourists and fashionable locals.

And they even have celebrity ghosts. Oscar Wilde apparently haunts room 5077 of the Westin Vendome hotel (Brace 2019). Some even report seeing the ghost of Jim Morrison in Père Lachaise Cemetery, where he’s buried.

In this second instalment of European City Ghost Stories, we’re going to explore a handful of these supernatural tales. And yes, we’re going to start with one of the most famous ghosts in musical theatre…

1. The Phantom of the Opera

Perhaps the phantom most people associate with Paris is the Phantom of the Opera. Banish the musical from your mind – the original novel by Gaston Leroux was more concerned with the tunnels and vast lake beneath the Opéra Garnier.

The Phantom in the book is very much a flesh-and-blood man, but his magic tricks give the illusion of a phantom. If you visit the Opéra Garnier, and I highly recommend that you do, Box 5 bears his name on a plaque.

So is there any truth to the stories? Could there be an actual ghost behind the phantom?

Well, there is a massive water tank beneath the building that gave rise to the stories of a lake. Some point to the legend of the architect named Erik who requested permission to live beneath the opera house (Brace 2019).

Others speak of Ernest, a pianist badly injured by the Salle Le Peletier fire of 1873. After losing his companion, he sank into depression and hid in the Opéra Garnier’s basement during the building work. He remained in the shadows, eating fish from the underground lake. Two other disasters were attributed to Ernest, including the hanging of a machinist and the fall of a chandelier which killed a member of the audience (World in Paris 2022).

The Salle Le Peletier theatre really was destroyed by fire in 1873, and some think it was caused by the gas lighting of the building.

The problem with this story, though, is that construction began on the Opéra Garnier in 1861 some 500m to the west of the Salle Le Peletier. While it’s not inconceivable that someone could have sneaked into the new building, it seems unlikely that they would move into a building they had no connection with. It’s even less likely they would still be there in 1896 when the chandelier fell, killing a concierge.

Either way, Leroux immortalised the Phantom in his novel, though it’s less supernatural than we might like!

2. The Tuileries Hitman

That’s not the case for our next ghost story, which has royal connections.

Catherine de’ Medici was the queen of France from 1547 to 1559, having married Henry II of France at the age of 14. She was part of the famous Florentine family of Medici, and it seems she was rather ruthless in her quest to cement her power, especially when Henry II died in 1559. At least, that’s how history paints her.

History has preserved her as malicious, her nickname of the ‘Black Queen’ a sign of how vicious people considered her. Many held her responsible for the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in 1572, in which thousands of Protestants died. She was also the mother-in-law of Mary, Queen of Scots, who married her eldest son, Francois II. When he died in 1560, Catherine sent her back to Scotland when her next son inherited the throne. Charles was only ten years old, and Catherine became regent.

Catherine Creates a Ghost

As part of her scheming, Catherine used a man named Jean the Skinner as a hitman. Over time, she realised that Jean knew too much about her various intrigues, having been involved in so many murders. She had him killed outside the Tuileries Palace, which is now the Louvre. But when the guards returned to bury the body, it was gone. It does beg the question of why they didn’t take his body with them, but either way, Jean was dead.

Soon after, reports started to circulate about a man clad in blood red in the Tuileries Gardens. In some sightings, he even stalked the corridors of the nearby palace. It could only be Jean, and seeing him became an omen of impending violent death.

Some sources say it was an omen of your own death if you saw him. According to legend, Marie Antoinette saw him the day before her execution. Other sources see him as a more general omen of impending death. Napoleon seemed to use him to predict the outcome of battles. No one seems to have seen him for a while, but it certainly puts a different spin on this popular tourist site.

3. The Ghost on the Bridge

There are fewer details available about this next story, which dates to Vichy France. During the German occupation in the Second World War, a woman in Paris took a Nazi lover. In some versions of the story, he was an SS officer.

Either way, she had an ulterior motive for taking this less-than-appealing lover. This brave woman sweet-talked secrets out of him to pass to her husband, who was a member of the Resistance. I can only imagine her terror that she might one day be discovered.

One night, she waited for her husband on the Pont Marie, a 17th-century bridge over the Seine. The stories don’t explain why she was waiting, so we don’t know if she had information to pass on, or if she just wanted to spend time with him.

She waited, and waited, and waited, but sadly, he never showed up. The woman waited so long in the cold that she froze to death. People have apparently seen her ghost sobbing on the bridge.

There is a possibility that the sightings came first, and the back story appeared later to try and explain the sightings. The lack of names doesn’t help, and while it’s an entirely plausible back story, we can’t ever know if it’s true. Still, I can’t help feeling deeply sorry for her.

4. The Lonely Musician

This is perhaps my favourite story because it brings to mind the phenomenon of the time slip, made famous through the story of two women who apparently encountered Marie Antoinette in the gardens of Versailles.

But we enter the story in 1925. A man named Jean Romier sat reading in the Jardin du Luxembourg one evening. It’s a beautiful park, inspired by Florence’s Boboli Gardens, and it dates to the early 1600s.

While Romier sat reading, a well-dressed man in black approached him. They got into conversation, and the man in black invited Romier to a chamber concert in his apartment. For the want of anything else to do, Romier agreed and accompanied the man to his apartment on the Rue de Vaugirard. An evening of poetry and music followed, and Romier had a wonderful time.

After he left to head home, he realised he’d forgotten his lighter. Not wanting to leave it behind, Romier decided to go back and get it while he was in the neighbourhood. He went back to the Rue de Vaugirard apartment but no one answered when he knocked on the door. If anything, it sounded like the apartment was empty.

A neighbour poked their head out into the hall and told him he was wasting his time. They told Romier he would get no answer from that door since the apartment was empty. Romier was shocked; how could it be empty? He’d been inside that very evening. He simply asked the neighbour if they were sure it was empty. The neighbour replied that it was, and had been empty for twenty years since its previous tenant died.

You won’t be surprised to learn the tenant was a musician.

According to Time Out Paris, one of their own team was extended the same invitation in the park (Dudok de Wit 2015). It seems no one takes up the man in black on his invitation anymore, so I hope he isn’t feeling too lonely.

What other Paris ghost stories do you know?

Other Paris ghost stories abound, involving the Eiffel Tower, or Notre Dame – the latter of which is explored in my April 2023 Patreon exclusive episode of Fabulous Folklore.

And why would such stories not congregate in a city? There are few places where humans rub up against each other in quite such volume, and for so long.

But if you do head to Paris, keep your wits about you. You never quite know who, or what, is still haunting those beautiful boulevards…

References

Brace, Alice (2019), ‘A Haunting Compendium of Paris Ghost Stories’, Messy Nessy, https://www.messynessychic.com/2019/10/30/a-haunting-compendium-of-paris-ghost-stories/

Dudok de Wit, Alex (2015) ‘Paris’s top ten ghosts’, Time Out, https://www.timeout.com/paris/en/walks-tours/paris-top-ten-ghosts

World in Paris (2022), ‘8 Scary Stories and Urban Legends of Paris’, World in Paris, https://worldinparis.com/legends-of-paris