MYSTERY IN SAVOY

Hokitika Guardian, 19 October 1931, Page 3

MYSTERY IN SAVOY

A MUMMIFIED INFANT. PARIS. August 10. Curious rumours are circulating in Chambery, in Savoy, concerning what is known as “the Haunted House..” It is an old, four-storeyed building, with an address which might have been he. stowed upon it by a writer of mystery —No 13, Rue de Portiques. There is a tradition that Rousseau passed a winter there with the Baromie de Warens. This week one of the residents of the house, Mile Fagnot, a spinster of seventy, died, and an old wooden chest containing the .mummified body of a baby was found .shortly: afterwards in an attic which she had used for years sis a lumber-room. An inquiry has, been opened by the police.- A doctor has expressed the opinion that the child was Lorn alive and that it died or was killed as long as twenty-five years ago. Everybody is now wondering what Mile ■Fagnot who never allowed anyone to enter the attic,,knew about this mystery. The sinister reputation of the haunted-'house does not date,-,from tile discovery -in the .spinster’s attic. Seven years ago a waiter tried to murder his fiancee there. In January two women living in one part of the building—a mother and her daughter—committed suicide. No satisfactory explanation of this desperate act was ever found

More recently, on March 24, an American visitor named Louis Clarke was suddenly seized with a fit ol madness while walking through the streets of Chambery, and was drawn by sortie irrestihle force to Hie vicinity of the house. ,

A funeral procession was passing. Clarke ran into ..the ..yard, of Ahe haunt, cd house and, seizing'a"hatchet, killed an old woman and injured a- man. Doctors declared that lie was of unsound mind, and he was taken to his home in Los Angeles by his mother. People in Chambery are now shaking their heads over the death from an uiiexplicahle illness of the owner of the place. M. Favre. H e died the other day.