Make Me Afraid: "We find ourselves locked in a house full of crucifixes"

Goosebumps, Tales from the Crypt, American Horror Story … On TV and streaming platforms, scary stories for young and old abound. And according to the statistics portal Statista, one in three French people are fans of these spine-chilling tales. In real life, too, we enjoy scaring each other by sharing our best anecdotes during evenings under the stars or by the fireside. With Halloween approaching, Libé has compiled stories from people who recount a truly terrifying experience. Today, we hear from Maxime (1), a 33-year-old Parisian magistrate, still scarred by a terrifying game of hide-and-seek with a group of friends.

“At that time, I was 28 years old. With five friends, we went away for a weekend in the spring to visit the Loire Valley castles. We rented a large house on Airbnb in a tiny village of about twenty houses. They all seemed extremely closed off, it was as if nobody lived there. There wasn't even a small shop, nothing. The only person we met seemed quite strange. She was walking a dog and had a rather medieval look, so much so that a friend nicknamed her “Louis XII.”

“When we arrive at our house, part of it is inaccessible to us. Upstairs, the decor is strange. There are photos of children in front of the locked door to the upper floor and quite a few crucifixes of all kinds around. Crosses—mostly metal—and then other religious objects.”