Featured on PDR in the collection In the Mind of Marie: A Haunting Encounter in the Gardens of Versailles (1913)

In 1901, two British women just getting to know each other took a trip to Paris. The day they visited Versailles, things turned strange. They were wandering in the gardens, hoping to find Petit Trianon, a smaller palace that had been the home of Marie Antoinette, when they began to see unusual things: people in antiquated clothing, a man with dark, pitted skin, a breathless servant delivering an urgent message to a woman sketching on the ground. The atmosphere was strange too, heavy and unsettling. Things seemed flat and otherworldly; Moberly wrote later of feeling “an extraordinary depression” and a “dreamy, unnatural oppression”. In time, the women joined a tour group, and the feeling went away. Everything felt normal again. The whole incident couldn’t have…