Woman and chairs
© Unknown
The history of the paranormal is littered with mysterious individuals who at times seemingly came out of nowhere to baffle and beguile, before fading off into the mists of time. These people step out from beyond the fringes of what we know to demonstrate abilities or phenomena beyond our comprehension, tease us with answers to the unknown realms that lurk on the periphery, and then are forgotten to leave their mysteries swirling in the wake of their departures. Such cases are often murky, sometimes frustratingly lost to time, and always baffling. One such case of a particularly mysterious historical case of such a puzzling person is that of a poor peasant girl in France, surrounded by strange, ghostly phenomena, who would go on from her humble life to become a great unsolved mystery.

The tale revolves around an Angelique Cottin, who in 1846 was a young, 14-year-old peasant girl living in the village of Bouvigny, near La Perrière, France, when her life and that of those around her would be forever changed as she launched herself into the realm of legendary unexplained mysteries. In January of that year, Angelique was at work weaving silk into gloves on a large wooden weaving frame when the whole thing began to shiver and shake with increasing intensity, before actually sliding across the floor, despite is heavy weight and the fact that that no one was touching it except Angelique just moments before. It was noticed that when Angelique approached the frame it would seem to actually retreat from her, almost as if it were a living thing recoiling from her presence, which was all enough to unsettle the others who were with her at the time. The frightened witnesses to the inexplicable event told adults, but at the time no one believed them.

In the coming days more similar phenomena began to follow Angelique around, such as chairs moving out of her way and even at one point a table that seemed to levitate in the air in her presence. There were also papers that would flutter and blow away near her, as if by a gust of wind, and pens or other small objects would also dance about or retreat from her touch. Angelique's parents, as well as local residents, witnessed these incidents and rumors began to swirl that the girl was possessed by the Devil. Her parent's would subsequently bring her to a local priest for an exorcism, but her problem was deemed to be more of a physical phenomenon rather than the work of the Devil for reasons that are unclear, and she was sent home in a doctor's care.

The doctor in question went in rather skeptical of the outlandish stories he had heard, but he would soon witness these odd phenomena for himself, and they would indeed steadily grow in intensity. Objects would be flung from her lightest touch with great force, when she sat in a chair it would rattle and buck to the point that even a grown man couldn't hold it down, a heavy table was seen to lift and hover in the air in front of startled witnesses, and other furniture would also shake, quake, and move about when the girl was near it. On one occasion a heavy container flew through the air with a man sitting upon it. Angelique's bed would also often levitate, shake, or move about while she was in it, and the activity in general was noticed to be more pronounced and stronger at night.

For the rest of this tale, go here.
About the Author:

Brent Swancer is an author and crypto expert living in Japan. Biology, nature, and cryptozoology still remain Brent Swancer's first intellectual loves. He's written articles for MU and Daily Grail and has been a guest on Coast to Coast AM and Binnal of America.