The story described on another thread is in all essentials true. In (I think) August 1901, two English ladies, Miss Mobberley and Miss Jourdain were on holiday in Paris and decided to visit Versailles. The weather was, as usual in August, very warm and, like today, Versailles was crowded with tourists. After viewing the main palace, the ladies decided to visit the Petit Trianon. Making their way across the vast, unshaded formal gardens, they looked in vain for signs which would point them in the right direction. It was then, according to Miss Mobberley and Miss Jourdain, that things became odd.
Feeling overcome by a general feeling of oppression and discomfort, the ladies felt that the trees and flowers were 'unreal' - as though painted on a kind of backdrop. They also lost sight of all other people. During the next - hour/hours ? - the two ladies both together and seperately had encounters with people they were later convinced did not exist in their own time. They saw 'gardeners' wearing thre-cornered hats raking leaves and placing them in a rustic cart, an unpleasant, pockmarked man, dressed in a dark cloak and sitting on an ornamental rock, a smiling younger man who appeared from nowhere and urged them - in French, naturally - to hurry to "the chateau". Near The Hameau they saw a woman, dressed in peasant costume, passing a jug to another woman on an upper floor one of the buildings. They heard the sound of running feet, the swish of "long silk skirts" on the grass, the sound of a harpsichord and a faraway band playing a stately, repetitive air.
Arriving suddenly before the facade of the Petit Trianon, the ladies saw a lady apparently sketching or paintng at an easel. She was wearing a white "old-fashioned" dress, a large picture hat over blonde hair and around her shoulders a very pale green gauzy scarf or "fichu". As the ladies approached, the sketching lady looked up briefly "with an appearance of annoyance" and then returned to her drawing. Miss Mobberley later declared that the lady had slightly heavy, pretty features - although she "did not consider her attractive." On climbing to the terrace of the Petit Trianon, a man opened a side door and motioned the ladies towards the rear of the house. As they turned the corner they found themselves at the back of a queue waiting to enter the building, hundreds of chattering tourists passing by and vendors of souvenirs and ice-cream.
It was only when they returned to their Paris hotel that evening that the ladies spoke to each other of their curious experiences in the Gardens of Versailles. Some days later, they decided to return there. For hem it might as well have been a different landscape. The people they had seen were no longer there and they failed to recognise garden features they remembered perfectly.
Much later, Miss Mobberley and Miss Jourdain published a book which they entitled "An Adventure" in which they stated their conviction that they had somehow entered Marie-Antoinette's consciousness as it was in 1791 or 1792 and they had seen what she saw or remembered.
Ever since there have been many attempts to try to explain exactly what happened on that August day in 1901. An author, Lucille Ironmonger, wrote a book about the ladies in which she compared their experience with that which befell to women staing in a hotel in Dieppe in the late 1940s who were terrified by having to listen all one night to a tremendous battle involving bombs, artillery, explosions and the cries of dying men. They apparently heard a repeat performance of the Canadian wartime raid in which many were killed.
As for Versailles, visitors continue to report odd encounters in the grounds. Some report them, others will only share their eperiences privately.
Has anyone had or heard of similar experiences elsewhere ?
