Someone once asked me, if I were a superhero, what special power or ability I’d want to have. At first I said, of course, that I wanted to be able to fly, so I could get to Paris fast and cheap (these days a flight from Guernsey, which is just 50 minutes from Paris by air, costs as much as a flight from somewhere much farther away and takes about the same time, since there are no direct flights). The problem is that Superman beat me to it by a few decades and already took that superpower. So, after giving it a lot of thought, I’ve finally figured out the superpower I actually need: the ability to make the walls talk and get the ghosts of Paris to tell their stories.
I See Dead French People
If there’s any place in the world where ghosts have a right to exist, it’s Paris. There’s no denying that there is something magical about this city, and with the magic come the ghosts too. Where does the magic come from? No one can really explain it. Maybe it’s thanks to 2,000 years of magicians and sorcerers who left their mark on the City of Light. Take, for example, the column that still stands near Saint-Eustache Church and the old grain exchange, which once belonged to Cosimo Ruggieri, the astrologer of Catherine de’ Medici (1519-1589), who dabbled in sorcery. Or take the witch hunts of the 17th century during the Affair of the Poisons, traces of which can still be found in the Latin Quarter.
And this magic is everywhere, especially in the things that are useful, everyday, and seemingly least magical. Take, for example, the Tube in London and compare it to the Paris Métro. The Tube is purely practical: you go into one station and, thanks to technology, come out of another. In Paris, you feel the magic from the moment you go down the stairs, especially if you’re at a station with one of Hector Guimard’s (1867-1942) iconic gates, or an imitation of one, which make you feel like you just stepped through a portal into another dimension.
It continues with the strange acoustics that let the sound of a Métro musician reach you from every direction without you ever knowing where they actually are (by the way, to get a license to play music in the Métro, you have to pass an audition proving your level is good enough. Apparently, to keep the magic going, you need to meet a certain standard).
And finally, there’s that faintly sweet smell, probably created by the friction between the rubber wheels of the cars and the tracks, that reminds me of incense at some bewitched black mass whose only purpose is to wave a magic wand and send you from one place to another (advanced Francophiles who know the Métro lines by heart can tell you exactly where to find that smell, since not all the cars run on rubber wheels). So with all these effects combined, is it really a surprise that riding the Métro feels like going underground and, with a wave of a magic wand, finding yourself somewhere else entirely?
So now that I have proven to you that Paris is a magical place, let’s get back to the ghosts. No, I don’t mean spooky ghosts that chase you around like in a game of Pac-Man while you run through the streets of Paris gobbling down croissants (and then, when you find a particularly good brioche, you get to be the one chasing them).
I mean people who lived in the City of Light over the past few centuries (and even longer). The fact that they have moved on to a better world doesn’t stop them from coming back for a short visit to their old Parisian home and the streets where they used to walk (apparently, love for Paris doesn’t fade even after death).
These ghosts are everywhere, and if you focus and listen, maybe you can catch them walking through the Marais or having coffee at “Le Procope“. Each of them has stories to tell: some juicy, some funny, some tragic. So next time you walk through, say, Les Halles, ignore for a moment the ugly mall they built there and try to listen for the ghosts of the fishmongers who worked that spot for nearly 1,000 years.
Walk through the Latin Quarter and maybe you’ll run into Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961). It worked in “Midnight in Paris,” so it can work for you too. And best of all: walk through the Marais and try slipping into the courtyard of a private mansion (hôtel particulier) whenever someone happens to open the gate for a moment. There you’ll find the ghosts of marquises and duchesses, and the stories they tell will make you blush, and make your hair stand on end and turn white like an 18th-century powdered wig. And of course, if that isn’t enough for you, wander the alleys and streets and you’ll discover that more than a few counts and marquises went out hand in hand in the Marais…
On that note, here’s a Parisian story that my dear friend Yoel Thamanlis once told me, and I think it illustrates this perfectly. A little girl is standing in the dark of night on one side of the old Montparnasse Cemetery, and to get home, which is on the other side of the cemetery, she has to cross it from end to end.
The girl is understandably afraid to cross alone in total darkness. Suddenly, a very old, wrinkled man appears, leaning on a cane. She turns to him and asks if he would walk her to the other side of the cemetery. The old man agrees, takes her hand, and they start to cross together. As they walk, the girl tells the old man how glad she is that he showed up just in time, because she is very scared to walk alone among the old graves. The old man replies: “I completely understand. Even when I was alive, I was scared to walk here alone…”
In Search of My Own Ghost
A friend of mine who studied biology once told me that a human cell lives, on average, about seven years. Of course, not all the cells are born and die at the same time, but you could say that every seven years or so, we die and are born again, right up to the day we die for good. There are places in Paris where I can still see a chestnut-haired boy, curious and happy, running around.
I see him coming out of the hotel on Rue de Richelieu and ducking into the computer game store (long gone by now) near the Palais-Royal. I catch him playing pinball or video games in a Parisian café near Saint-Roch Church while his parents rest after hours of walking through the streets of the City of Light.
And finally, sometimes I find him in Parc Monceau eating a hot waffle or riding the carousel (both are still there today). That boy is my own ghost. He no longer exists, and in his place stands a man who is about to turn 40. So when I get to Paris, after I am done wandering around and summoning the ghosts of Victor Hugo, Louis XIV, and other famous Parisians, I go back whenever I can to those same streets and parks I visited so many years ago. Who knows, maybe I’ll run into myself there again.
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