When a ghost rained stones on rue d'Enfer in Paris

The rain of stones lasted four days.

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• This Saturday is Halloween, the opportunity to tell horror stories.

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  In Paris, in the 4th arrondissement, we still cannot explain a paranormal phenomenon, rue d'Enfer.

• At the beginning of the 19th century, a grocery store was completely destroyed by a shower of stones of unknown origin.

• Even the super cop of the time Vidocq will investigate this mystery.

• Of this story, there remains an expression “to hell with Vauvert”.

On September 10, 1826, Mr. Nant, a grocer in the rue d'Enfer in Paris, went in disaster to the police station in the Sorbonne district.

His grocery store, in which he keeps liquors and other jars, has just been “attacked”.

Dozens of stones of all kinds have crossed its tiles to shatter the glass protecting its products.

The problem ?

Unable to determine the origin of the projectiles.

No group of kids determined to do anything stupid is hanging around, no malicious rivals to report, nothingness.

However, the facts are there, it is as if the stones had "materialized" in space, with the sole purpose of smashing its goods.

“When he turned to Commissioner Roche to explain his problem to him, the grocer made it clear that there were no delinquents, the stones came by themselves, broke the windows and dropped all his jars.

For him, they seem to come from several sides at the same time, ”says Marie-Charlotte Delmas, writer and semiologist specializing in French popular beliefs.

This aspect that the projectiles seem to come from all sides will come up throughout the case.

Commissioner Roche is, of course, skeptical of his interlocutor's account and encourages Mr. Nant to simply close his “shutters [external shutters]”.

The grocer does not budge and ends up convincing the representative of the order to go to his shop.

Rue d'Enfer, now partially replaced by Boulevard Saint-Michel - Creative Commons

"A stone as big as a fist went in like a bomb"

On the spot, the observation is clear, everything is broken, of course, but it is not enough to convince the police officer who believes more and more in a hoax.

However, if we are to believe a transcription of the scene in a copy of

from 1899, the commissioner, who begins to lose patience, will quickly be disillusioned.

"A pebble the size of a fist entered like a bomb into the closed room and smashed a liter of blackcurrant two fingers away from the inspector's face, whose whole shoulder was flooded with liquor.

Roche then heads for the door to catch the offender, but the street outside is empty.

Worse, the shutters and the door are closed, and the tiles already missing.

Impossible to know where the projectile came from.

It is as if he had appeared directly in the store.

The case made headlines at the time.

- Retro News

Puzzled, Commissioner Roche will ask for reinforcements from the Paris police headquarters, which will send him neither more nor less than the legendary Eugène-François Vidocq and his brigade who will also be witnesses of the phenomenon.

Despite a strong mobilization on the part of the police, a coachman and a carpenter wrongly arrested, it is impossible to understand what could have happened in the rue d'Enfer.

The phenomenon will even accelerate, according to research by Marie-Charlotte Delmas: “The same evening, at five o'clock, it starts again.

A hail of new pebbles fell outside the grocery store with a thunderous noise, a crowd formed in the street.

We see the projectiles arriving but we cannot determine the origin, it looks like they are forming in the air, and just on the facade.

These rocky showers will continue for four days then, nothing more, if we are to believe a brief from the

of September 16, 1826 where one can read soberly.

“The rain of stones has stopped falling for two days at the grocer of the rue d'Enfer.

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Castle in ruins and howls

How to explain such a phenomenon ?

Does the street, whose name is more than explicit, carry some hidden secret?

Would one or more spirits have taken up residence there?

In any case, the district has a history loaded with mysteries, according to Marie-Charlotte Delmas.

“Towards the Luxembourg Gardens, in the 13th century there was a ruined castle, the Château de Vauvert.

It was said that terrible things were happening there.

We could hear noises, screams… Ruined windows lit up and we even saw specters.

The criminals occupying the surrounding quarries could have been at the origin of these “unexplained phenomena”.

King Louis IX, when he granted the castle to the Carthusian monks in 1257 to make it into a monastery, favored the arguments of “possession.

The latter will not fail to carry out an exorcism of the building before taking possession of it.

And, if all this seems a little distant to you, we owe the expression to this event.

“They chased away the Devil, but the expression“ Au diable Vauvert ”remained, explains the semiologist.

And it is not a question of sending someone "elsewhere".

No.

It's "send someone to hell!"

Either the relatively well-known expression "go to hell", amputated.

"

Has the poor grocer in the rue d'Enfer suffered the wrath of the Evil One, annoyed at having been dislodged from his pied-à-terre a few centuries earlier?

We will never know, but we will note that similar phenomena have occurred in Paris throughout this century.

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