I highly recommend visiting the French citadel in the town of Bitche in north-eastern France. Especially if you like very haunted places with history stretching centuries.
The Bitche fortress is amazing, and from my experience, it has paranormal activity and this article has the photo evidence to prove it.
The Bitche citadel has been through so many wars, not just in modern history, but over the last 8 centuries and even prior to the 13th century when on the site of the fortress was an ancient castle.
The number of people who have died in and around the fortress, and the castle before it, cannot be accurately estimated. And I tell you, from personal experience when you’re in the fortress you can feel the weight of history in the air.
Interestingly the town of Bitche itself has only existed since around the 17th century and even now the population is only a little more than 5000. The fortress has passed between the Germans and French several times over the years and most recently during World War Two, until in March 1945 when the U.S. 100th Infantry Division liberated both the fortress and town.
The fortress is built on what can be described as a hilltop that has been flattened and it’s an imposing site from miles away as you enter the area just outside the town. It’s HUGE! We parked on the lowest level and walked up from the town to the entrance. We discovered this was the longest way around, but it’s okay because just look at the photo we captured during our walk to the entrance above.
The walk around the base of the fortress turned out to be just as interesting as being in the fortress itself. The walls are built to last forever, and I’m sure, thousands of years later when humans have long left Mother Earth, they’ll still be here.
Here are a few pictures from our walk around the fortress.
Okay, see that little doorway in the moat area? First, how is there a doorway in a moat? Second, who was the wise guy who put the sign above it? There’s nothing quite like medieval humor.
The Tavern Lancelot
Well, there you have it, if you were able to make it through the surrounding defenses, and swim below the moat’s water level, you could stop in and have a drink at Lancelot’s tavern! Seriously, how cool is that?
I’m not sure if the moat was filled with water or if it was a trench but judging from the location of the entrance it must have been a trench.
What’s really interesting to me is what might be in there. From what I understand, there are many passages in the lower fortress that have been abandoned for years, perhaps even decades, and some even for hundreds of years. No one seems to know how deep the passages go. Just imagine.
I’m going to share a couple of pictures with you in a few moments that might make you never want to even consider exploring whatever is in those passages. Then again, they might make you want to catch the next flight to France.
Whew, we hadn’t even entered the citadel yet.
As we got closer to the entrance, we started to realize how truly massive and imposing it was. It’s no wonder that up until World War Two the fortress had never been conquered!
Every nightmare I had collectively about where those mad scientists lived and breathed during WWII came to life before me as we walked up to the entrance. It was a breathtaking sight.
This almost looks like the doorway into hell. You must go through a tunnel to get into the fortress and the picture above is the entrance into that tunnel. It’s quite imposing and impressive on a scale I’ve never seen before.
I’ve been to so many castles over the years. I’ve never stood in front of something like this before! I literally got goosebumps walking up to the entrance of the tunnel. The next impressive entrance I have seen is at castle Eltz in Germany, but that entrance is more of a fairytale, romantic gothic style—the Bitche entrance above is more of the holy shit, we’re going to die! style.
Other than the lady who sold us a ticket and let us in, there was NO ONE else there! We were given full access to the public parts of the citadel to explore by ourselves. We were totally alone. But were we really?
It’s when we walked into the opening to the tunnel entry that we first saw something strange and unexplainable. We thought we saw something move ahead in the darkness of the tunnel. From my youth, I’m very familiar with shadow figures and although I thought it was something playing off the light coming in at the far end, it seemed unusually odd. It did remind me of a shadow figure. But I told myself it was probably just someone who works there.
In the photo above, where you see the light coming in from the door, to the right of that, along the wall coming our way is where we saw something move. When we finally rushed past that location, I expected to see a door in the wall where someone could have gone, but there wasn’t one.
When we first entered the tunnel, I took two photos and it was after I took the second one (next photo below) that we hurried through it. In the second photo, we caught something unexpected! We caught what is known as an ORB. I didn’t even know until I went through the photos later. It blew my mind and still astonishes me. I mean, wow! Many people believe orbs to be manifestations of spirits. After the experiences I have had, I’m inclined to believe this, too.
What makes the photos so compelling to me is that the orb is not present in the first photo. It’s only in the second photo which was taken maybe 5 seconds later. Meaning it appeared between shots. I also did not use a flash. However, you can clearly see the daylight coming in through the exit on the far end and that daylight is completely different and clearly shining on the wall as normal daylight would. So the orb is not a mere reflection, besides it doesn’t look like any kind of light I am familiar with.
What’s even more astonishing is that when I zoom in as close as possible, the orb appears to have a face. Furthermore, it appears as though the orb is emanating its own light!
Okay, I know that’s crazy. I don’t disagree. But it’s there. Other than some cropping and resizing for posting, the two photos have not been manipulated. I am open to having the photos analyzed by professionals.
Finally, the orb is exactly where we thought we saw someone move. I don’t know who or what the orb was, but so many soldiers, workers, and peasants died there over the years, it could be the lost soul of any of them, perhaps it’s still trying to defend the citadel to this day.
I have to be honest with you, I was glad to get out of the tunnel and back into the light of day.
As I’ve mentioned on this blog before, strange, unexplainable things do seem attracted to me.
Getting out of the tunnel and into the fortress was a relief. The tunnel leads up and out onto the top of the fortress. Once up there, you will find a museum, an old chapel where the soldiers held mass, and various other buildings. It was a military base and held all the things necessary to supply a garrison and maintain life if under siege. There was even a bakery with two ovens capable of baking 500 loaves a day.
The below photo is a view from the top of the citadel. You can see the back of the chapel in the middle overlooking the entrance tunnel and a beautiful view of the town of Bitche below. I point out the church specifically because it’s going to be important in a moment for what’s to come.
In the following photo you see the chapel from the front.
Now for the interesting part. Look at the white entrance door to the chapel, now below that and the stairs, you see another door and it’s open.
Joan (my wife) entered that door and went down a couple of steps but was stopped by a locked gate from going any further, and thank God the gate was there because it led into an open space, which she couldn’t entirely see.
While Joan was looking into the gate she said she couldn’t tell what was in there but it looked like someone was moving inside. She got creeped out and came back up the stairs. As she did, she heard something like a growl. It was weird, I know because I heard something too.
I was standing only a few feet behind her, as you can tell from the photo, and I heard something like a metal pipe scraping against a wall. It’s what sounded like a growl to Joan and she was closer than I was, but what we can both agree on is it was freaky. She came back up the stairs in a rush and refused to go back down.
What Joan didn’t realize and couldn’t know until I showed her on the LCD screen of my camera is that she had been staring into a vast open space below the church!
Using the flash on my camera I lit up the room for the photo. It was a shock. Just think about it, the chasm you see in the picture below is directly under the church! It’s even bigger than the church. I mean, seriously, this photo could be taken directly out of a horror movie.
What freaked Joan out, even more, is that she swore she saw something moving in there. But as you can clearly see from the photo there’s no one in there. However, in the bottom back there’s a door to a tunnel, so who knows? Maybe a worker was in there. Or, maybe it was another lost soul. I don’t know. But what I do know is that we both heard a blood-curdling sound that we’ll never forget.
We quickly left that area of the citadel. Maybe if other people had been there it wouldn’t have been so odd and creepy, but we were alone and maybe that intensified the experiences we were having.
There’s so much more to the citadel to see. It is enormous, and we spent so much time exploring the top side that we didn’t explore the passages that were open to us within the lower levels of the citadel. Perhaps it was a missed opportunity or a reason to go back. (I did return with Erik and shot video, which I will upload to my YouTube channel soon.)
Just look at the below pictures to see what was awaiting us.
It’s beyond words. It looked like there was mist forming in there! Look at the closest arch to the left where the mantle is. Look at the floor in both pictures, in the second picture you see the mist expand. It was forming out of nowhere right before our eyes. If you go between the photos back and forth, you can see it forming. Remember, keep your eyes on the floor until you see it.
If I had realized I was capturing it in action on camera I would have taken more photos!
1:
2:
3 Cropped:
Joan said she also saw a shadow figure in the photos. I’m not sure. Do you see a shadow figure?
We did not go any further and that was the last time we even considered going down into the passages. The photo evidence is really wild and compelling. Again, these are original photos, and the ones containing anomalies are ‘as is’ with only cropping and zooming for use here on my blog.
That’s all of our paranormal evidence from the citadel.
In a way, we were very fortunate to have the citadel to ourselves and it could be the reason we had these unexplainable experiences. If any paranormal investigators read this and want to travel to Europe looking for haunted locations, don’t pass up the citadel in Bitche, France, you won’t regret a visit.
And that really goes for anyone who wants to visit such an impressive complex, built centuries ago and has lasted the test of time and will likely last hundreds, if not thousands, of more years.
I leave you with one last photo of my wife, Joan, enjoying the view of the outlying area from the top of the citadel, saying, “Au revoir!”
We will always remember our visit and what we experienced there.
*Update: as I mentioned above, I returned to the fort with my friend Erik and we shot video within the tunnels, above and even inside the church, which I will post on my YouTube channel soon.
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