Residents Claim Haunted Building in French Town, Officials Consider Religious Intervention

The tenants of the building sent a letter to the town hall on May 23 to alert them to the supernatural phenomena occurring there (abnormal presence, strange noises, shadows) and request "urgent" relocation. Four months later, they have still not received a response from the authorities. But this week, they learned that the municipality was going to send an imam and a priest to exorcise the common areas of the "haunted" building, reports Le Parisien.

The social landlord Hauts-de-Seine Habitat announced in June that it would process these relocation requests "as a priority". To date, only one proposal has been made to a family who refused it and another is in the process of being processed, says Damien Vanoverschelde, general manager at Hauts-de-Seine Habitat, adding that a "social advisor met the ten signatories of the letter in early summer".

"We were promised a relocation proposal in September. We are early October, we still have nothing," denounces a tenant. Of the ten signatories, four are "in arrears. We cannot move them as long as this debt is not cleared, otherwise we lose this debt. We are therefore carrying out a debt repayment plan with the families concerned," specifies the general manager.

Two among the six remaining tenants "are truly frightened by paranormal aspects", while the others mention "problems of overcrowding of housing, humidity and difficulty of mobility, because the building is without an elevator," says Damien Vanoverschelde. It is to put an end to this persistent situation that Mayor Laurent Vastel has called on an imam and a priest to exorcise the building.