In the 1930s, a family reported strange animal deaths and suspicious noises on their farm in Daux. Journalists are investigating.
Perhaps you remember the program “Boulevard de l’étrange” and the report carried out by France Inter at the castle of Veauce (Allier) reputed to be haunted?
During the night of August 4, 1984, a team of journalists and technicians accompanied by the medium Raymond Réant and his granddaughter Aurore spent a night in the castle in an attempt to see Lucie’s ghost. They managed to take a photograph and record some of the strangest sounds.
Two oxen, a cow and a pig died
Long before the 1980s, in the early 1930s, a team of journalists conducted the same type of experiments at the Hangar farm, located in the quiet town of Daux (Haute-Garonne), 24 kilometers north- west of Toulouse. At the beginning of February, the local and national press echoed a funny rumor: the Ferrato family, owners of the house for seven years, were living in “terror”.
“The nights are disturbed by a dreadful din and we see ghosts there. In three weeks, two oxen, a cow and a pig died without apparent disease. The farmer himself is stricken with an ailment that the doctors do not know about,” writes The Intransigent in its February 4 edition.
Live on Radio Toulouse
Three Parisian journalists are assigned to participate in a program broadcast live on Radio Toulouse from the allegedly haunted farm. A great first! On February 9, the journalists described the inhabitants of the place in unfriendly terms. “The owner, a 43-year-old Italian who looks 60, Geofredo Ferrato is a strange silhouette of misery standing out against the most frightening background of cobwebs. The evil from which he suffers, the persecutions of which he claims to be the unfortunate object have ravished his face […] Her two sisters, with black headscarves on their heads, have dried up from deprivation. Two old girls. Bonnat, a 39-year-old farm hand, is the health in this lair of degenerates. »
Despite waiting in the dark, no supernatural phenomenon occurred on the night of February 7-8, as noted, not without sarcasm, by journalists. “In the kitchen, the four residents were talking hard in Italian patois. Nothing strange happened. It is probably that during this discussion the majority was not in favor of the materialization of the “spirits” that evening. We kinda suspected that. »
“The police will clear up this mystery”
The Parisians favor another hypothesis, which is not supernatural: the trail of a falling out between the old and the new owners. “The previous owner would seek to take back his house and his fields, the amount of which has not been fully paid to him. It is not the spiritualists but the police who will clear up this mystery. Dark questions of interest, atmosphere of obscurantism, stubbornness of beings both frustrating and cunning; such were the sensations we felt. It is not at the Hangar farm that we will find ourselves face to face with a ghost and that we will finally be able to explain ourselves to him in front of the microphone”.
A hypothesis endorsed by Yves Lignon, recognized specialist in the scientific approach to so-called paranormal phenomena: “What can we find surprising in hearing noises in an isolated building in poor condition? The lack of means leads to a lack of care for the animals and the lack of care for the successive deaths. The attribution of these deaths in series to dark and harmful forces is an ethnological constant in the rural environment. »
The Hangar farm still exists but the current owner did not want it to be photographed. “He has always lived on the farm, but neither he nor his family have witnessed paranormal phenomena,” says Patrice Lagorce, the mayor of the town.