City of Frights

If you listened to this weeks show you'll know all about the mysterious 'red man', but amazingly there's also a story concerning a 'green man'. It stems from the Catacombes de Paris which houses the remains of over 6 million people so is bound to harbour a haunted tale or two. At the end of the 18th Century workmen carrying up stones from underground to build modern Paris saw a green man running about and hiding in wells and cellars. Those who saw him were cursed, which seems a bit unfair seeing as they were already having a hard enough time working underground & lugging rocks about. So there you have it, a red man & a green man and not a traffic light in sight.

There are numerous reports of people visiting the Cimetiere du Pere Lachaise & encountering the ghosts of Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrisson, Moliere or some of the other famous people buried there. What's not always reported are the large amounts of drugs that have most probably been consumed before these 'encounters'. Still, it would be nice to think that you could go & have a chat about Dorian Gray with Oscar then walk a few steps & talk rock n roll with Jim, as well as finding out how he really died. But the story that really caught my eye was one concerning a ghost that gets in a taxi at Chatelet & asks to be taken to Pere Lachaise, then disappears on arrival. Apparently this has happened to several taxi drivers. So if you ever need a free taxi ride from Chatelet to Pere Lachaise, tell the driver you're a ghost when you arrive and make yourself scarce!

As for Halloween, no trick or treaters chez moi (as expected), so enough carambars & marshmallows to see me through winter. Bit of spookiness prevented the show going out on French Radio London, they told us it was due to some kind of technical error but clearly it was a witch casting a spell. Thankfully the spell wore off in time for it to be broadcast the next day. Oh & didn't get round to apple bobbing, partly because it's pretty weird & partly because I didn't have any apples, although I am definitely looking forward to introducing it to my son & his French friends in a few years, & even more to reassuring some confused parents that it is a traditional game with a very low fatality rate.