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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/velabas on 2023-12-20 23:59:01.
Chateau de Veuil is not much of a castle--more a ruin. A single tower and white facade, overgrown grounds, a musty cavernous cellar. The cellar is the point of this story. Just thinking about it causes my heart to race. But we'll get to that. Let me explain the nature of my presence at Chateau de Veuil first.
I was there on an internship after a year studying in nearby Tours through a student exchange program my second year of college. I spoke French, and used this to avail myself of French culture which I loved. My time there was ending with the end of classes, so naturally I jumped at the opportunity to stay longer when I saw the internship posted to my university's online student portal:
"Intern wanted -- June, July 2008. Work at a French castle! Give tours of the castle in French and English, assist with on-site events, promotion activities, and grounds upkeep. 1 hour outside Tours. Room and board provided!"
I got the internship.
Before writing this post, I searched for the castle on Google. It's cleaner now. When I was there, there were no prim paths to walk, no pert grass to frame the impressive stone structure. It was mostly high grass and weeds crowding the foundations.
Back in '08 there weren't many pictures of this place online. Now there are tons. The pictures of events--dining tables, caterers, wine aplenty. These remind me of moments I can pick out and analyze in a bubble as something I enjoyed. I was barman, caterer, dishwasher. Lots of jobs. Anything Claude needed.
Claude owned the place, and handled everything. A full personality, extroverted, gregarious. One time we went to another castle nearby, a big colonial estate, for Bastille Day. We handed out Chateau de Veuil event brochures to locals who'd gone to watch fireworks and mingle among Louis XIV period-dressed attendants and guests along lantern-lit gravel paths. By night's end he was more popular than the spectacle itself.
Just to show what kind of guy Claude was. Outgoing, life of the party, talkative and boisterous.
The opposite of me. Weird then that I would lead tours.
I was at Chateau de Veuil for two months. It's well off the beaten path so only the French pentioners found their way into the tours I gave. Back then there was no room to rent in the tower, it was roofless and the stone was mossed over. I see in Google images that Claude finished it, and it's part of wedding packages he offers now. We did smaller events. And the tours.
I feel silly writing this. Maybe I dreamt the whole thing. Why are there no pictures of the cellar? It has been 15 years. You can find all sort of images. But none of the cellar. My spine tingles, my jaw aches from this subdermal fear resonating right now--I'm on the brink of diving into the story that has stayed with me all these years, and the physiological response in my body is terrifying me! I'm pressing on. I can't keep it to myself.
It began with the very first tour.
Here is how a tour would go. I'd greet a tour group at the entrance to the grounds. I'd introduce myself. French pensioners are surprised by a young American telling them about a piece of their heritage, and are therefore demanding in their penetrating questions. I loved the French penchant for skipping small talk, but I could never tell if they were trying to trip me up on purpose or were genuinely curious. I decided it was the former.
"What month was the castle completed?" "What is the family history of title ownership behind this castle?" "What is the architectural style?" "Why is it a ruin?" "Were the occupants royalists during the revolution?" "Where is the quarry that furbished the stone?" "Who lived here in 1640?"
Claude equipped me with vast knowledge about his castle, so I could answer quite a lot. I don't remember any of it now.
From the gates of the grounds I'd walk them through the outbuildings first, where we hosted events (a bit of marketing-in-action), then straddle up alongside the facade, regailing the group with the facts I memorized. We'd enter through the facade's gatehouse, wrap around along paths that I'd hacked into the bush until we entered the still-standing tower. Here was a wrapping stone staircase into the cellar.
Down we'd wrap, crossing a threshold noticeable by all the senses--it became hard to see, the frigid and humid air summoned your goosebumps, a dank smell like earth rot, the hard stone walls created hollow echos of your shuffling feet. My voice carried that echo as well while I explained the uses of this space over the years: storage mostly, but also people slept here at times, wine was matured in barrels when the estate had a vineyard, there were things about its construction that were interesting but I can't recall them now.
The groups were never more than six to seven people. The cellar was vast compared to what was left of its castle. It was comprised of three domed caverns, sheathed in heavy foundation stones. These connected to each other with arched tunnels of the same stone. In French a cellar is "cave", which is more apt for the way this subterranean space made you feel, a cave. Something old, dark, and natural.
The group would emerge, and the tour always ended with an apertif I'd serve in the yard under a cypress tree.
That was the tour.
Something that I noticed on that first tour was a dimple in the dirt floor of the furthest cavern. I hadn't seen it during the other times I'd come down here alone, lamp in hand, practicing my French elocution. It was a small crater, right in the center of the room, directly beneath the apex of the vaulted dome where the wall stones met perfectly around a capstone. Nothing special, but had it not been flat there before? It was shallow enough, so I filled it with loose dirt.
For whatever reason it gave me an idea. The pensioners' questions were so demanding that I decided I'd make up a story to spite them. Some ruse to pique their interest and muddle their retelling of their experience at Veuil. A white lie, to make a boring cellar something mentionable.
I would tell them that in the 16th century, a prince had been imprisoned in the last cavern of the cellar. A prince or cousin-prince, someone in the house of Bourbon who would remain nameless. He had been imprisoned there, under false pretenses, but fell ill and died. To hide the crime, he was buried deep under the very dirt floor in the cavern that served as his cell, never to be revealed, no grave marker to speak of.
I even told Claude of my deception during lunch one day. My guilt needing his approval or I'd stop the silliness. Claude was normally frenetic, and had teeth so large they might be mistaken as dentures--he was only in his fifties. His skin was always cherry red, perhaps to match the excitement he always displayed at socializing. But when I mentioned this to him, I swear his skin went from red to white, and he just smiled shyly and went back to spreading foie gras on a bit of toast, crunching it with those big teeth.
The first time I told the story, the sceptical bunch threw questions at me, which I absorbed into the ruse. I told it again, and it felt more natural now. I embellshed the story with ever greater details that had come from previous questions. The dimple in the cavern floor was there again, probably from the shuffling feet. I would fill it with dirt, pour water in and pack it down with the sole of my shoe.
June progressed and I'd perfected the story of the buried prince. I had tips to prove it.
Then one day I brought a group down into the cellar. In the final cavern, which is where I'd begin to tell my story, my heart felt heavy at the sight of the dimple grown into a larger hole, a foot in diameter, half again as deep.
"Qu'est-ce que c'est que ça?" What's that?
Looking back I should have stopped there. It was obvious. But how was I to know? Instead I had the group surround the hole as I recounted the story of the buried prince. Almost as a reflex, I incorporated the hole into the end of the story, saying:
"It looks like he's trying to escape."
I got some tips, but I lost a few of the pensioners with that silly sign off.
I remember I went to Claude to ask if he'd been down in the cellar. He hadn't. I couldn't remember when he had gone down there. I had gone by myself with the one lamp when he first gave me a tour of the grounds.
After the tour was over and the apertif consumed and the pensioners had departed in their van, I returned to the cellar. I hadn't been down there alone for all of June. The thumping heart in my chest made me realize this. I'd been accompanied by a tour group each time. Alone, with tinnitus singing in my ear, and otherwise that cold damp echo of my movements giving me away to the darkness, I felt afraid. I peered into the darkness in the direction of the last cavern, where the hole was and my story had echoed a dozen times now. My feet felt planted, and an unnatural sensation filled me, caused me to turn and run back up the stairs.
I found that when the next tour came a day later, I was able to walk back down, and make my way to the last cavern in the presence of the group. My happy-go-lucky attitude at this comfort quickly dissipated when I saw a hole now two feet deep and as wide all around. I stood speechless as the group shuffled past and crowded into the cavern, surrounding the central hole. One man said to me I ought to fill in the hole because someone could trip and fall.
I nodded, staring ...
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