Haunted Paris Metro Station- Chatelet Les Halles 2007

The Ghost of Le Chatelet Les Halles Metro Station (Unpublished)

I was touring Paris and stayed a week. It was while I was traveling the RER- Rapide Express Rassemblement that I had my Ghostly encounter. I have always had the ability to sense and see Ghosts, and have had several Ghostly encounters. I was tired so I sat down on one of the seats at Le Chatelet Les Halles, Metro Station. After a few moments I started to hear in my head, whistling to attract someone’s attention and ghostly laughter very loud in my right ear.

I was so startled, that I looked around, to see where it was coming from. I thought that it must be coming from a man on the opposite side of the platform. I looked around, and puzzled I could not work out who was doing it. I got onto the Metro train, after pulling on the handle of the door and took a seat amongst fellow commuters. I looked at them, puzzled. I thought someone would get up and ask whoever was making the loud noise to stop .

I realized then, that only I could hear this, and it was directly aimed at me. Everyone continued as if nothing had happened, even though the whistling was so loud and the Ghostly laughter continued, and everyone else on the Metro was oblivious. A man continued to read his paper, and another, minded his own business. I thought I was going mad as I could clearly hear the whistling. As the Metro train pulled out of the station they abruptly stopped. I looked back, and saw the words Sortie-Exit and a sign that said, ‘Rue De Lingerie’ et La Ferronerie, access to these streets was from the Station.

When I got home I did the following research on the Internet and found that the Station has an interesting History. Construction was completed in 1977 on Châtelet-Les-Halles, Paris's new urban railway hub. The site was to become the point of convergence of the RER, a network of new express underground lines which was completed in the 1960s. Three lines leading out of the city to the south, east and west were to be extended and connected in a new underground station.
For several years, the site of the markets was an enormous open pit, nicknamed "le trou des Halles" (trou = hole), regarded as an eyesore at the foot of the historic of Saint-Eustache. It is situated in the Ier arrondissement of Paris, built between 1532 and 1632 at the entrance to Paris’ ancient markets (Les Halles) and the beginning of the famous rue Montorgueuil, the Eglise de Saint-Eustache is another Parisian gothic gem.

Les Halles was the traditional central market of Paris. In 1183, King Philippe II Auguste enlarged the marketplace in Paris and built a shelter for the merchants, who came from all over to sell their wares. In the 1850s, the massive glass and iron buildings that Les Halles became known for were constructed. Les Halles was known as the "stomach of Paris".Émile Zola's 1873 novel Le Ventre de Paris (The Belly of Paris) revolves around Les Halles.

It is thought that the Parisian immigration to the Right bank had begun as early as the 9th century with the stables of butchers carrying their often unhygienic trade outside the city walls. In any case it is certain that they were well established there by the early 12th century, with their stables and slaughter pens lining the river to the east of the Grand-Pont (pont au Change) and a wall of the Grand-Châtelet; the Seine was Paris’ only sewer then, and the above location made evacuating the bloody wastes of the butchery trade an easier task.

The Place de la Grève’s creation from 1141 of course only added to the above activity, and after this in turn was joined by Louis VI (“le Gros” – 1108-1137) with the île de la Cité market (le marché Palus) in barren land to the north of the Chatelet, “Les Champeaux” (little fields – also “petits-Champs”), the rive Droite became Paris’ principal centre of commercial activity. Philippe-Auguste further added to the importance of the new marketplace when he joined to it, in 1181, the “foire Saincte-Ladre” (Saint-Lazare) from the monetary hospital further north along the road that it today’s rue Saint-Denis.

Two years later the same king decided to enclose the whole in two enclosed squares, or “Hallas”, to at once protect the merchant’s wares (in an upper floor) and to separate them from the just-adjacent Les Innocents cemetery. The rue de la Ferronerie and rue de la Lingerie still bear memory to the halls of then and later years, and “les Halles” is still the quarter’s name today. (http://www.paris-promenades.com/en/site_text/I-ii.htm)

At the time, the Les Halles district in the middle of the city was suffering from disease, due to contamination caused by improper burials and mass graves in churchyard graveyards, especially the large Saints Innocents Cemetery. It was decided to remove the bones discreetly and place them in the abandoned quarries.

So therefore the Ghost either that of a market trader, or of someone buried in the Saints Innocents Cementry and removed to Paris Catercoombs. Either way the spirit clearly does not rest