In August 1951, two English women, cousins, were vacationing in Normandy, in the seaside town of Puy, northeast of Le Havre. One night, at about four o'clock, they were awakened by the rumble of artillery cannonade, replaced by the howl of dive bombers and the roar of explosions, through which loud shouts and groans broke through. Asleep, they did not immediately realize that these were the sounds of fighting. For three hours, the ominous cannonade either briefly subsided, then again became unbearably loud …
The landing was repeated after nine years
The next morning, the shocked sisters tried to find out what had happened at night. But people just shrugged their shoulders in bewilderment and answered that there were no incidents, let alone a night battle. According to local residents, no one, except "these two strange Englishwomen", has heard anything like a night battle.
However, the "strange Englishwomen" did not calm down and began to look for the causes of their mysterious auditory hallucination. They found out.
During World War II, the Germans built a line of defensive fortifications on the coast of occupied France, which also ran through this town. And it was here, exactly nine years ago, on August 19, 1942, that the Allies made the first attempt to land amphibious assault forces sent from the coast of England. It was like a rehearsal of the later famous "Day D", which came on June 6, 1944. Then the successful landing in Normandy of the troops of the allies of the USSR opened the long-awaited "second front". And the landing operation in August 1942 turned into a bloody tragedy: more than half of its six thousand participants were killed, wounded or taken prisoner.
The curious sisters soon realized that the roar of gunfire and explosions that woke them up at night was an accurate sound reproduction of the battle that took place nine years ago, and if they were here at that time, they would have heard these sounds "live".
According to military reports preserved in the archive, the shelling of the landing began at 3:47 am and stopped at 4:50 am. After that, German bombers, until 05:40, bombed the fighters and landing craft who had managed to land on land, going to the shore. And by 6:00 it was all over.
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Night at the ghost hotel
The Gisby and Simpson families of Ton Bridge, southeast of London, often spent their holidays together. So in the fall of 1979, they went by car through France to the Mediterranean coast of Spain. An exciting two-week journey awaited them.
However, in addition to pleasures, they had a chance to experience something completely inexplicable and contrary to common sense.
It was late afternoon when the travelers entered Montélimar, a town on the banks of the Rhone in southern France, and began looking for a hotel where they could spend the night. Suddenly, an elderly man appeared at the side of the road. This somewhat old-fashioned monsieur advised them to take a side road, assuring them that it would lead them to where travelers would find everything they needed.
Indeed, a building of ancient architecture soon appeared ahead. It turned out that its interior decoration and furniture also looked like they came here from a museum or an antiques salon. And even the guests of this hotel walked in the lobby in costumes, which were worn at the very beginning of the 20th century. At the entrance to the hotel stood a gendarme, dressed in an old uniform, similar to an operetta. When asked about the nearest motorway leading to the south, he only smiled perplexedly, as if masterfully playing his role in this grandiose performance from a past life.
The next morning, while paying for the shelter, both families were amazed when they were told that they were only owed a few dollars for dinner, bed and breakfast for four.
Unsurprisingly, on the way back, the Gisby and the Simpsons decided to stay again at this quaint but very welcoming hotel. However, when they turned onto the already familiar side road and arrived at the place where he was supposed to be, it turned out that there was no hotel there! The travelers tried to find the mysterious establishment, but all their attempts ended in vain. The conclusion was that the hotel simply does not exist, at least in modern reality. Another mysterious circumstance was in good agreement with this conclusion. All the photos taken while on vacation are great, except for the ones in which Len Gisby and Jeff Simpson captured their wives in front of the hotel. In place of these pictures, blank frames gaped.
Thus, it turns out that in October 1979, in the vicinity of Montelimar, four English tourists spent the night in a ghost hotel, inexplicably appearing in the modern world from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
But if this is so, then why did the administrator accept modern banknotes and coins from them without any questions or objections? And the gendarme was not at all surprised when he passed their car, which was supposed to look fantastic in his eyes? There are no answers to this.
Figures in black
Mr. and Mrs. George Benson from Battersea on a Sunday in July 1954 got out into the nature in the picturesque surroundings of the town of Wotton in the English county of Surrey. They decided to start their walk by visiting the Evelyn family church. The couple had long been interested in the personality of John Evelyn, a 17th century chronicler, and they wanted to know if many of his relatives were buried in the churchyard.
After finishing their inspection of the cemetery, the couple noticed a path that ran along the church fence and led to the top of a nearby hill. On the sides of the path were thickets of bushes, from it came the hubbub of a bird. Mr. and Mrs. Benson climbed the path to the top of the hill, and a wide clearing opened up in front of them, on the edge of which stood a massive bench of thick oak beams and planks. To the left, at the far end of the clearing, several trees rustled with foliage. On the right, the hill sloped steeply towards the forest, from where the barking of dogs and the clatter of axes of lumberjacks could be heard.
It was noon, Mr. Benson opened the bag of sandwiches, and the couple began their meal. Meanwhile, as they later confessed to each other, at that moment each of them was seized by some kind of painful, anxious state. As soon as she touched the food, Mrs. Benson began to crush bread with a sad look and toss it to the birds.
And suddenly there was a downright ominous silence: the knocking of axes stopped, the barking of dogs stopped, as if on command, the birds fell silent. And at that moment Mrs. Benson with some sixth sense felt and out of the corner of her eye saw that three figures in black robes appeared behind her. She felt creepy. She tried to turn around, but couldn't even move. Mr. Benson did not notice anything unusual, but he saw how his wife had changed in her face. He took her hand and was horrified - the hand was cold as ice.
After a while Mrs. Benson recovered a little, and the couple decided to leave the unkind place. They went down the hill, crossed the railway tracks and wanted to wander around the neighborhood, but they were suddenly seized by a terrible sleepiness, the couple lay down on the grass and instantly fell asleep.
Further, both remember very vaguely. As a result, they somehow ended up at Dorking railway station, a few miles from Wotton, got on the train and returned home.
Need to check
For the next two years Mrs. Benson was in a state of confusion. She could not forget the horror that gripped her when three sinister figures in black appeared behind the bench. In the end, she decided to "knock out the wedge with the wedge." Without a word to her husband, Mrs. Benson went to the Evelyn family church to climb the path to the top of the hill again to make sure that the birds were still singing merrily there and there were no personalities in black.
However, approaching a familiar church, the woman saw that everything around was different. First of all, there was no path leading to the top of the hill, because … there was no hill either! There was a flat, flat space all around. No bushes, no trees within a radius of about a kilometer.
From a conversation with a local old-timer, Mrs. Benson learned that there is not and has never been anything like the landscape that she described to him. And her interlocutor does not know that somewhere in the immediate vicinity in the field there was a bench, and even an oak one.
Returning home, Mrs Benson told her husband about her trip to Wotton and what she had seen there. He, being a purely practical person and even a skeptic, decided to sort things out on the spot himself. The next Sunday Mr. Benson went to Wotton, but, going up to the church, to his great surprise, he was convinced of the veracity of his wife's story.
Execution of "despicable villains"
Benson reported this case to a member of the London Society for Psychical Research, Dr. Mary Rose Barrington. Convinced of their veracity, she began to study the chronicles of John Evelyn. And I found a clue!
The chronicles reported that on March 16, 1696, "three despicable villains, including one clergyman, were executed, exposed as participants in a Catholic conspiracy to assassinate King William." A description of the execution ceremony was given, as well as the area where it was performed. The area was very similar to the one that more than two years ago appeared before the eyes of the Bensons in the vicinity of the family church of the Evelyn family.
Mary Barrington believes that the Bensons' passion for the work of John Evelyn in some incomprehensible way helped them to find themselves in his world, which existed in the past, more than 250 years ago.
Vadim Ilyin