Ghostly encounters in the French Alps

Ghostly encounters in the French Alps

While I was staying with my host family in the French Alps, I happened to have some supernatural experiences.

The ski chalet that I was helping to renovate has apparently been there for a few hundred years. Even when the family first started clearing out the cave, basement they found some old uniforms from Napoleon times. So that would at least make the house 300-400 years old. Some of the supporting beams have carvings of the year it was installed, 1600s etc.

During one of the days I was working, were building a brick wall. The bricks were underneath a shelter at the back of the chalet- this was where I was mixing the cement. Mark, the host father, instructed me to add a few drops of dishwashing detergent to the concrete mixture, supposedly to help with the mixing process.

After dinner that night, I was washing up the dishes and couldn’t find the detergent. So I assumed that I had left it outside near the wheelbarrow. By this time, it was already very dark outside and even more so at the back of the house where I had been working.

I wasn’t phased by the absence of light at first, so I walked into the pitch blackness. It was so dark I couldn’t see even one metre in front of me, so I simply reached out blindly in the darkness trying to find the bottle of dishwashing detergent. I spent a minute or so trying but without success.

As I turned around to return to the house, I caught a glimpse of something that seemed to be in the shape of a small child. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, but I quickly assured myself that it was a trick of the moonlight shining on some oddly shaped thing in the dark.

I walked quickly back inside and did not say anything to anyone. I was creeped out.

Later that night, Zoë, Alex and I went down to Archie’s place in front of the house. We spent some time there drinking beer and wine and just having a casual chat about nothing. We then started talking about French sayings and trying to guess the English equivalent- that was actually quite fun and interesting to do when somewhat drunk.

The conversation somehow went on a tangent, I mentioned the child I saw earlier in the night. They told me about how old the house was and that Gilbert, a man from one of the oldest families in the area, had also seen a ghostly child in the area. This immediately frightened me, I really could not bring myself to go back home.

Actually, even now that I am writing this, I feel somewhat cautious of my surroundings. I am alone in my bedroom, in an empty apartment, in a foreign place.

Let’s leave it there for now, we can talk about this when there is daylight and time to forget about it before darkness falls.