The Cultural Construction of Monstrous Children. Группа авторов

In a medium-sized town in the South of France, troubling events occurred to an unnamed family, ‘Family A’, that consisted of a couple, their six children and the paternal grandfather. Each of the protagonists is the subject of a short clinical description, and Jeanne, the eldest daughter, is immediately presented as being hysterical with a detestable morality. Grasset also produced a plan of their home (see Figure 2.1) and attempted to describe quite accurately the ostensible phenomena (based probably on the detailed testimony of the mother). Family A rented Part 2 of the house, which was on wasteland, but the owner of the house also allowed them to live in Part 1 of the house free of charge. In Part 1, the entry was through a kitchen, which connected to the bedroom of 20-year-old Jean (the eldest son), itself communicating with the grandfather’s bedroom. There are no other openings in the room that opened onto the street. Shortly before the events began, there had been talk of the sale of Part 1 of the house in the future, which would force the family to move. Grasset suggested that this element acted as a trigger.²⁰ The first phenomena happened in the grandfather’s bedroom, which is noted as occurring on 4 December 1901. That same morning, Jeanne had searched the bed linens after the departure of Jean and his grandfather to work and noticed nothing. It was not until that afternoon that the mother of Family A discovered ‘the upset bed, the mess of blankets on the floor, the mattress folded at the foot of the bed’.²¹ Jeanne, and later her grandfather, denied being responsible for the mess, and the grandfather was quick to interpret the events in a paranormal way, speaking of a visit from his late son and daughter, who, respectively, died 6 and 14 years earlier, and consequently recommended attending masses. Jean was thought to have been the possible prankster behind this.

      

       Figure 2.1The house inhabited by Family A.

      Source: Renaud Evrard, ‘Montrer la violence intérieure: Figures cinématographiques de l’adolescente hantée’, in L’adolescente vue par le cinema, ed. S. Dupont and H. Paris (Paris: Erès, 2013), 13; © 2015, Renaud Evrard. Used with permission.

      However, unsure of a definite attribution of blame, the mother decided to conduct an investigation. The next morning, she accompanied Jeanne into the bedroom of her grandfather after he had left and once again found that the bedding was thrown in the middle of the room. The grandfather was confronted but vehemently denied these alleged facts and Jean concurred. The next day, 6 December, the grandfather called his stepdaughter to show her that everything was in order. Everyone then went about their business, when suddenly the grandfather found that his bedding has been disturbed. The same routine happened three times during the same day, with the room being put into disorder without anyone being seen entering it. The grandfather, alarmed, asked to sleep in another bedroom.

On 7 December, the same phenomenon of spontaneous disorder occurred. Jeanne, accompanied by her mother, stated that she had seen a skeleton on a mattress move on the terrace. The family fled the house and sought refuge with neighbours. Rumours spread in the neighbourhood and beyond, even reaching the city. The father mobilized friends to increase the level of surveillance and catch the pranksters. On 8 December, the phenomenon continued. Having locked the door that communicated between Jean’s room and that of the grandfather, the father and his friends found it smashed, the lock broken away and the two rooms turned upside down. Grasset then summarized the story by saying that the same phenomenon took place on 9 and 10 December, despite the intervention of a priest called to ‘ward off the spell’. On Wednesday, 11 December, on the advice of a neighbour from Paris, they decided to set a trap for the prankster by tying the bedding to the wood of the bed, affixing stamps everywhere and sprinkling sawdust on the floor. Thus, both rooms where the phenomenon occurred were well prepared, but nothing happened either on Thursday or on Friday. Mrs A then decided to remove the trap and each man was reinstated in his room. Two days later, on Sunday, 15 December, everything was upset again, and so the sawdust was once more sprinkled on the floor. The next day, mattresses and blankets were dragged into the kitchen, but no footsteps were visible in the wood dust. New precautions were taken: a lock was installed at the entrance of the house (kitchen) and an aggressive watchdog was locked inside. An hour later, Mrs A was surprised to meet the dog outside. The door was still locked and the furniture was upset, but oddly the dog had not barked. The phenomenon continued without the family being able to control or observe all that was occurring.²² On Saturday, 21 December, the phenomenon changed: the family heard raps, then Jeanne began crying because her long hair had just been cut. The priest said that the evidence was insufficient to conclude that it was due to the intervention of the devil. In the days that followed, the family also noted the disappearance/reappearance of a wallet emptied of its contents, either from the pants pocket of the father or from under the pillow of the mother. In addition to the events in the rooms of Part 1 of the house, plants were uprooted in the garden, and Jeanne and her 6-year-old brother claimed to have seen a cabinet autonomously open and empty itself of its contents.

A hairdresser from the town contacted the editor of the Messager de l’occulte. The journalist replied on 5 January 1902, speaking of mediumship and of a ‘fluid’ comparable to electricity. The remedy, he said, is to pierce the air with iron spikes. He directed towards the search for the presence of one or several mediums. And more specifically, he indicated the need to focus research on ‘a girl about to be nubile’ because ‘it was noted that, almost always, it was so in haunted houses’.²³ The theory of the naughty little girl expressed in its self-fulfilling logic. The hairdresser’s answer gave details confirming the suspicion. He said that the parents ‘already suspected that it came from the girl, without guessing the cause’.²⁴ During this time, Jeanne seemed to wither and lose her appetite. A doctor advised that she be hospitalized, which, in addition, would also allow an assessment of her influence on the phenomenon. She manifested, in the hospital, some hysteria and somnambulism, but refused to be hypnotized. During the eight days she remained there, no occurrences were reported at the family house; however, they resumed on her return. Unsurprisingly, Jeanne was then identified as a medium and brought to a professional female somnambulist. The somnambulist prompted her to scan a glass filled with water placed on a white plate and consequently was able to see a wicked woman who had allegedly put a curse on Jeanne’s family. Mrs A immediately made the connection with the history of a witch she had molested because she believed she was responsible for the long agony of her own mother. The family, via the raps on the wall, interrogated ‘the spirits’ using the formula of two raps for ‘yes’, three for ‘no’. The origin of the raps was uncertain because Jeanne’s bed was very close to the partition wall where the knocks were heard. Still, the ‘spirits’ supported the theory of a spell being used against her. The girl even succeeded in recognizing the ‘witch’ among a group of women in a picture.

Subsequently, the phenomenon changed again and took on a more symbolic twist. The grandfather, coming one night to his room, found all the candles lit and, on his bed, a crown and crosses made with dried herbs.²⁵ Various objects disappeared and were found in surprising places. Jeanne felt stung in different places of her body and there were pins, forks and nails in her bedclothes. Her mother decided to crouch in her bed, and the bed begun to shake furiously. The grandfather was called to the rescue and, following the advice of the occult journalist, slayed the air with his sword … but seemingly in vain. The professional somnambulist suggested that the spell be thwarted by the burning of a live cat. The family executed the ritual, and Grasset describes the resulting scene thus:

At this moment they hear, outside, a great ride, a thunderous