La Fontaine hideuse
Our tale takes place in the village of Beuvry (Northern France). The area was not exactly welcoming (surrounded by marshes and ponds) but it was somehow the place some mysterious lord chose as his residence. The story tells that he lived here, in a gloomy castle overhanging the water, during 20 years. He never stepped out of it - and it seems fair to say that no one dared to enter it.
No one ever saw him in those two decades. Actually, no one ever saw a living soul around here, except for the men guarding the castle but the fact that they were unable to speak the common tongue only made things worse.
The only thing coming out the castle were some petrifying sounds on every Christmas Eve: you could hear people screaming, moaning and weeping, some others laughing hysterically. Everything was back to silence at midnight and stayed so until the next Christmas.
The villagers soon believed that the lord was conspiring with some evil forces, some even thought that he was the Devil himself.
Anyway, they carefully stayed away from this place, even avoided to look in that direction. Those who talked about this strange case mysteriously disappeared so no one dared to discuss it any longer.
On a certain Christmas Eve, the screamings and cries became particularly loud before stopping as they usually did. The villagers discovered the next morning that the castle had vanished into thin air. There was no trace of it but they found a new water spring at this exact location and named it la 𝘍𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘦 𝘩𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘶𝘴𝘦 (which you can translate as horrible fountain).
🖼️: 𝘗𝘦𝘢𝘶 𝘥’𝘢̂𝘯𝘦 (detail), illustration by Gustave Doré published in 𝘓𝘦𝘴 𝘊𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘴 of Perrault (Paris, J.Hetzel) 1862.
📚 Selected sources (in french):
Jacques COLLIN DE PLANCY, Dictionnaire infernal, Paris, Plon, 1863, p. 663.
René ALLEAU (dir.), Guide de la France mystérieuse, Paris, Sand, coll. Les guides noirs, 2005.
