If you found us through Instagram or YouTube and the haunted question, hello and welcome! I’m Kamille, and we’re an American family raising two kids in a 17th-century French château that we’re slowly (very slowly) restoring, and I write about all of it here.
Ever since we started sharing the château on Instagram and YouTube, one question keeps showing up in the comments, usually from people who sound like they’d quite like the answer to be yes.
Is it haunted?
It’s a reasonable thing to ask. The house has been standing since the 1600s, there’s a chapel hidden in the forest with its bell still hanging in the tower, and Halloween falls on the night before la Toussaint, when many French families carry chrysanthemums to the graves of the people they’ve lost, so if anyone in this house was ever going to be up and about, it would be this week.
So for our first Halloween at the château, we went looking, and I’ll get to that. But first, the pumpkins! Because one of us has accused the rest of us of cheating, and I think the public deserves to hear both sides.
Before the cold
October started fairly mild, and we made the most of it while it lasted. The cyclamen were blooming, and the kids spent most of their free time on the swing.
The swing deserves a small introduction. It began life as a Fermob 1900, the classic French garden chair, built to sit on a gravel terrace beside a small table and with an even smaller coffee. Ours has had its legs removed and an arch fitted over the top, and it now hangs from a tree. The kids love it and are on it constantly.
Then Sean’s sister, Hilary, came to stay for a couple of weeks, and the kids pretty much annexed her on arrival.
She made pop-up books with them, little handmade books where a magical creature unfolds out of the page. London’s featured a dragon and a kraken. Léonie’s featured a unicorn, a fairy, and a mermaid. They colored in every creature themselves, and then chose special paper for the covers. Hilary even added her whimsical handwriting for the titles.
If you want to make them with your own kids, here are some of the tutorial videos she used:
You can explore Matthew Reinhart’s channel, where he has several pop-up book tutorials. They’re pretty amazing.
The pumpkins (and the accusation)
We went a little more modern this year. Sean took the tops off our Halloween pumpkins with a jigsaw, then cleared out the insides with an electric mixer. It sounded exactly as alarming as you’re imagining, but it saved a lot of time and a lot of wrist effort.
Our son wanted nothing to do with any of the power tools. He announced that his pumpkin would be fully human made, refused all electrical assistance, and did every single step himself. And he did it! We were genuinely impressed.
Then, pumpkin finished, he informed the rest of us that, by using the power tools, we had cheated.
I’d like to tell you I mounted a defense, but I didn’t. He’s a tiny bit right, depending on your own morals regarding tools to carve pumpkins. His is entirely fait main (handmade), and he would like that on the record.
The final lineup: London’s dragon (human made, as you’ve heard). My witch hat, Hilary’s cat sitting on the moon, and Léonie’s little cat, which she drew and carved entirely by herself.
And then there was Sean’s.
He’d recently taken a photo of the full moon rising over the château, and he used it as his model. A freehand drawing first, then a slow, painstaking carve, until there it was: our little castle, lit from the inside, in pumpkin form. He’s a really good artist, and I love watching him make things.
When it got dark that evening, Sean carried a projector outside, and we put on their witch and wizard costumes to make some magic with shadows and pointy hats.
Behind the wall: witches flying across a 17th-century façade, ghosts in the tall windows, the moon photo, a unicorn birthday with cupcakes on a carousel, our family’s carrot cake recipe, and our ghost hunt, with the answer to your question.
The rest of this post is for Supporting Members. Castle Diaries is the real-time record of restoring a 17th-century French château with two small children and a husband who owns a jigsaw. Supporting Members get every post in full, every photo, and all the extras (this one includes our family’s carrot cake recipe). If you’ve enjoyed the story so far, this is the best way to keep it going.
