The story of the Ghost of Petit Trianon is a strange and curious tale. As a paranormal investigator, I have grown accustomed to strange and curious tales, but this one is a little too much, even for me. The story goes that two women calling themselves Elizabeth Morison and Frances Grant (known to their friends and family as Charlotte Anne Moberly and Eleanor Jourdain, respectively), visited the gardens of Versailles on August 10, 1901. While walking the grounds, the women allegedly became lost and traveled back in time. As they walked, they compared what they saw with a map they had and they noticed locations and people that seemed out of place for 1901: an old farmhouse and a plow; men dressed as "dignified officials"; a woman and young girl in the doorway of a cottage. They also claim that they felt the atmosphere change from excitement and adventure to that of oppression and weariness. Eventually, they happened upon a dark complexioned man whose face was covered with smallpox scars, whose "expression was dark and unseeing." Jourdain was the only one to see this man and hurried past him because of the feeling of repulsion she felt towards him. As the women progressed through the gardens, they crossed a bridge and walked past a set of stairs where Moberly claims to have seen a woman who looked strikingly similar to Marie Antoinette. After encountering a few other people, some of whom interacted with them by giving them directions, the women eventually made their way back to the entrance. There they joined a group of tourists from their own time, effectively ending their strange journey.
One would think that after such an experience these women would be eager to discuss the events of the afternoon. Instead, it was over a week before they mentioned it to one another and then only in passing when Moberly asked Jourdain if she thought the Petit Trianon was haunted. After that, it was three months before they decided to compare notes about the incident. The women agreed to write independent accounts of what they experienced and then research the history of the site. They discovered that August 10 was a significant date for the French royal family, marking the beginning of the end of their rule over France. The women visited Versailles again on several occasions, attempting to locate the path they followed. They claim they could not find it again, even discovering that the bridge they crossed had not existed for centuries. They also attempted to identify the people they met along the way, concluding that Moberly had indeed seen Marie Antoinette and the pox-scarred man Jourdain had seen was Comte de Vaudreuil, a friend of Marie Antoinette.
With a story this good, how could these women not write a book? Of course, the fact that Moberly and Jourdain were well educated and well read, (Moberly being the principle of St. Hugh's College at Oxford and Jourdain as her assistant) likely aided in their ability to spin a convincing yarn. Fearing their professional integrity would be questioned, however, they decided to publish their book, An Adventure, under the pseudonyms Morison and Grant.
As one would expect, the book and its authors were subject to harsh criticism. Disbelievers of the story have a range of arguments: the women mistook a theme garden party for something paranormal; that they were simple liars; or even that the delusion was subconsciously created to explain away a lesbianFolie à deux between the two women. Likely, because of these character attacks, their real identities were not revealed until 1931, several years after Jourdain's death, and six years before Moberly's passing.
As you, dear reader, may have surmised, I can be counted in the ranks of the disbelievers (though I will stop short of a Freudian analysis and accusations of lesbians trysts). There are far too many holes in their story and, based on my knowledge and understanding of paranormal phenomena, there is very little substantiating evidence of the event.
The most generous explanation for the event is the suggestion that Moberly and Jourdain experienced a time slip, whereby a person's own time "bumps into" the past allowing that person to experience a moment or two of another time. Another attempt to explain this hypothetical phenomenon suggests that time and space can develop a "tear," again allowing one to see and experience a time other than their present time. Modern theoretical physics has attempted to explain the possibility of time slips; however, the historical facts in this case do not support this explanation. While the women visited the Petit Trianon on a date that was indeed significant to Marie Antoinette, and no doubt to her friends as well, historical records show that she was not at Versailles on August 10, 1792, but was instead hiding from French revolutionaries with France's Legislative Assembly near the Tuileries Palace. If Moberly and Jourdain had indeed traveled back in time to August 10, 1792, it begs the question as to how could they have seen Marie Antoinette and her friends if Antoinette and her friends were not there?
Furthermore, if these women did indeed stumble across the 18th century, interact with members of Louis XVI's court, and wander aimlessly around the grounds of Versailles, isn't it likely they would have aroused some suspicion among the palace guards? I would hope, if I were part of the royal family, that if two strangely dressed women wandered into my home my armed guards would do more than kindly give them directions. Marie Antoinette's life has been exhaustively documented and none of the books addresses any strange encounter with women from the future. I would hope that such an event would have made her more famous than her line about cake.
If we interpret Moberly and Jourdain's experience as an encounter with a highly dynamic residual haunting, their documented interactions with the spirits of Versailles suggest an extraordinary intelligent haunting. While it is not unheard of for both types of paranormal phenomenon to occur in the same place, it has yet to be documented that they can occur simultaneously.
The facts as described by Moberly and Jourdain make this story suspect at best and wholly unbelievable at worst. I applaud their creativity and ability to make many people believe this outrageous claim. Unfortunately, it is claims such as these that make the field of paranormal research seem absurd to outsiders.
