I discovered this older article I'd written a while back....

http://www.oliverstravels.com/blog/chateaux-ghost-stories-now-written-by-the-guests/



 

Filed in: France, Stories & Interviews Tagged: Rhones-Alpes


Chateaux Ghost Stories… Now written by the guests!

Filed in: France, Stories & Interviews Tagged: Rhones-Alpes

Electric Night (A Story in the making…)

Written by Sherry Joyce

We rented a chateau for family and friends for our 60th birthday in the Perigord region of France called the Dordogne.  It was about 30,000 sq. ft. and was the home of the owner who grew up as a child there while her father wrote encyclopedias for the Sorbonne.

The owner gave us the keys to the “castle” for a week to enjoy.  The chateau was 4 stories and perched on a high cliff overlooking the Dordogne river.  My husband and I chose a bedroom on the top floor with a 4-step turret room for reading.  In the middle of the afternoon with slightly grey skies and no discernible wind, I started writing out postcards in the turret room.  It was flanked with 8 small windows which were open to the garden.

As I wrote the first few sentences on a post card of how wonderful our trip was, an enormous explosion occurred sounding as if the castle had been bombed.  I screamed and ran down three flights of stairs expecting to see the side of the castle blown out.  A slight misty rain was now falling and our guests were shaken and terrified.  Apparently lightning had struck the lightning rod above the turret room where I was writing, and it actually grounds the castle to keep it from catching fire – however I got a “surge” of electricity that went through my body, lasting for days.  That night, a real storm crept up the Dordogne.  I could not sleep with my head buried in my pillow terrified that the castle would be struck again by lightning–the thunder was tremendous (being on a high mountain in a castle is not the best thing in a storm!).  It was the most nerve-wracking evening, with winds blowing the leaded windows inside, draperies flying, carpets getting soaked….

After that experience, I pondered how fun it would be to write a Romantic Suspense novel, entwined with a murder mystery and the book, The Dordogne Deception should be out this Spring!  The castle is the actual setting in the book…but you will have to read it to find out if the heroine survives…