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Exploring the Ghost Stories on top of Paris’ Eiffel Tower

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Take a journey through the haunted legends and myths surrounding Paris’ Eiffel Tower, thought to be haunted by the ghosts of a romance gone wrong in the city of love. 

Step into the world of mysticism and supernatural entities surrounding the iconic Eiffel Tower in Paris locally nicknamed La dame de fer, or Iron Lady. This popular sign of romance has many urban legends and tall tales surrounding it, everything from secret rooms, the meaning behind its shape and the history of its construction. It also has a ghost story or two.  

The rumored ghostly sightings, mysterious events, and local folklore paint an intriguing picture of this famous landmark. To this day, visitors swear they’ve encountered spirits surrounding the Eiffel Tower, perpetuating its reputation as one of Paris’ most haunted sites and a full stop on the ghost tours.

The Origin of the Eiffel Tower

The Eiffel Tower was built from 1887 to 1889 as the centerpiece to the 1889 World’s Fair to showcase a certain level of grandness and modernity. Because of its design and size it saw a lot of criticism by writers and artists in France for the design at the time and for a long time it was seen as an eyesore to the critics. But after the construction, people were amazed at the sight of the enormous tower. 

For 41 years it was the tallest human made structure in the world until 1930 when the Chrysler Building in New York was made. It was only meant to stay up a few years and it was designed to be dismantled after 20 years, but it is still standing today.   

Paris, the City of Love

“City of swarming, city full of dreams
Where ghosts in daylight tug the stroller’s sleeve!”
– Charles Baudelaire, ‘The Seven Old Men’, Part: ‘Parisian Scenes’, ‘The Flowers Of Evil

As the most visited city in the world, Paris has a mysterious air all around it. With its cobbled-stone streets and magical architecture, the city evokes romance and intrigue despite the very same picturesque cobbled stone streets that have been drenched in blood over wars, revolution and dark times. 

It’s no wonder that it’s considered to be one of the most haunted cities in Europe, complete with stories and legends abounding regarding unexplained activities occurring around iconic landmarks like the Eiffel Tower.

At the Eiffel Tower’s restaurants it is said they get at least two proposals a day from people that seek out the romance of the place. But it is not only romance and happy proposals at the Eiffel Tower as it is also a place where many people choose to take their own lives. And sometimes there are stories about how pure love turned dark pretty quick:

The Jilted Lover at the Eiffel Tower

Of course the ghost story at the Eiffel Tower must contain romance, passion and heartache. And contrary to the dreamy and whimsical notion of the romantic city where love is true and everlasting, it tells what happens when love goes wrong and not returned. When the color red turns to eternal black. 

According to local legend of the ghost story in the tower, a jilted lover who was heartbroken years ago still wanders around on the upper floors. In some versions, it is the heartbroken man who haunts the place. In other versions it is the woman who went to the tower with him to break up that is now trapped at this romantic landmark forever. 

The story goes that a couple agreed to meet at the top of the Eiffel Tower sometimes in the 1920s, when the tower was younger, but already the symbol of love and Paris. The man went down on his knees and asked his beloved to marry him in front of the famous monument, but she refused. 

She was there to break up with him and the shock of her rejection broke his heart and sent him into a fit of rage. He pushed his girlfriend over the railing and she fell to her death. In some versions she backed away, either in shock or pure disgust and fell over herself. 

The man was never seen alive again afterward, leading some people to believe that his spirit remains behind and continues to wander the grounds of where his hopes for love perished. What happened to him? Did he also end his life then at the tower? Or did the spirit return to the place long after as he never forgot?

The story has turned into an urban legend of both the Eiffel Tower and Paris and it is hard to track down a specific time or person. Some believe that this story can be traced back to the 1920s, and many claim to have seen a woman in clothes from that area wandering up in the tower before she suddenly vanishes. Some even say you can hear her nervous giggles as she is rejecting the proposal before her horrified screams at the anniversary of her death. 

The Haunted love

So there you have it, the dark side of romance and love in the heart of Paris. A reminder that not every love story has a happy ending and not all types of love are true love. And with that said, Happy Valentine. 

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The River Road Bridge Ghost

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In the night at The River Road Bridge in Idaho you can hear the sound of a splash without having dropped anything in the river. Stories about the ghost of a woman that hanged herself from the bridge keeps haunting the place. 

Stories tell a dark tale of this bridge. Apparently The River Road Bridge was once the place where a woman hanged herself. She is still said to haunt the bridge and the Boise river below in Caldwell, Idaho. 

The River Road Bridge that was once known as the Silver Bay Bridge was built in 1922 and has spurned several crazy legends of hauntings and scary stuff happening around the bridge. It used to be the place on the Boise river where the pioneers on the Oregon Trail crossed the river so it certainly has experienced its fair share of tragedy. But most of them either lead to or come from the legend of the woman that allegedly hanged herself from it. 

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The Hanged Woman of The River Road Bridge

There are several variations of who this woman was and why she did what she did. The most often told story though is that she was a mistress that found herself pregnant without anywhere or anyone to go to after she was cast aside. 

The identity of the woman is rarely discussed when speaking of the legend, but sometimes she is referred to as Mary, as so many female ghosts are. Was there really a woman that hung herself by the name of Mary from the bridge? Perhaps it was, although most likely not as it probably would have left some traces in history, especially considering it must have been at earliest in the 1920s.

In some variation she was the illegitimate daughter of the American author, Stephen Crane. There are also stories about it was a local pig farmer with a wealthy family that had her hung from The River Road Bridge to avoid any scandal. 

Paranormal Investigation

Either way, the paranormal rumors of the bridge draws visitors from the whole state to have a look and carry out different investigations. Many claim to have found proof of something supernatural going on. 

There are also talks about strange lights in a spot of a tiny island below the bridge that light up in the night without a known reason. There is also the sound of a splash as if something hits the water below without anything being dropped. 

An urban legend that lingers after the story is about how to spot the woman at night at The River Road Bridge. According to urban legend, you take your car and park it at night on the bridge and turn the lights off. If you do this, you will see the shadow of her on the side of the bridge. 

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River Road Bridge | Haunted Places | Caldwell, ID

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The Ghost of La Faraona Haunting the Agua Caliente Hotel

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Haunting the iconic Agua Caliente Casino and Hotel in Tijuana, the performer known as La Faraona remains like a ghost from the Golden Age of the Sin City.

During prohibition times in the US in the 1920s, people flocked to the borders to have a drink and a good time. The border towns also become a hot spot for smuggling activity and flourishing establishments that would quench peoples thirst. 

Tijuana was one of these border towns that saw a golden age and growth during this time. People came from the whole world to get a drink while gambling at their casino and watch horse racing and bullfighting. For the conservatives, Tijuana became known as a Sin City or was even called Satan’s Playground. 

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The demand for a good time was profitable however and attracted many people south of the border, and many resorts were established for this particular need. One of these places was Agua Caliente Casino and Hotel that opened in 1928. It was like the American Monte Carlo and Deauville that attracted American celebrities, Mexican politicians, diplomats, gangsters and gamblers alike during the 30s. This is the time that is remembered as Tijuana’s golden age. 

The hotel in Tijuana in Mexico in Baja California is said to be haunted now however, and the glamor it once held, is now under the layer of dust and only a footnote in history. It is now a high school and many of the reports of the haunting come from the students themselves. There are many stories, and especially about a woman walking past the student, whose feet don’t even touch the ground. The legend of this ghost has been called La Faraona.

The Dancing Ghost La Faraona

Agua Caliente is a place where performers had the chance of being discovered and making it big. Rita Hayworth was one of those while she was playing a show at the hotel. She went on to be a famous Hollywood star and a cultural icon. But there was not every performer that managed to get out of Tijuana. 

Satan’s Playground: The Agua Caliente was a famous tourist spot for a weekend away. It was also a place were many performers were employed and made famous. On the other end it was a place were many illegal activities took place. // Photo: Guy Sensor Landscape Photo, courtesy of San Diego History Center Photo Archive.

It is said that a female performer haunts the former hotel that was built atop of a natural hot spring. In many versions she worked as a singer, but in the most detailed stories, she was a dancer in one of the more popular shows. A flamenco dancer from Spain. The stories told at the school call her La Faraona, apparently her stage name as the star in one of the many shows at the casino at the Agua Caliente. 

She was supposedly also known as being somewhat of a good luck charm to keep at your side by the gambling tables at the casino. By her many admirers, she gained a lot of wealth in the form of diamonds and jewelry and there are rumors that she hid her treasures by the minaret which is the place her ghost has been spotted many times.

Crime of Passion

La Faraona: According to the legend, La Faraona laced her lovers drink with poison and they both ended up dead.

She was in a relationship with a man at the resort. Some call him Mr. Patrick, a British gentleman and a dealer that had made money on the alcohol smuggling business. In some accounts, he was even in Al Capone’s mafia. In all accounts however, it ended in tragedy when La Faraona killed him.

Why she did it differs from one version to the next, but it is usually by poison. In some accounts, she only poisons him, but in many versions, she does it to both of them. She supposedly poisoned her lover after stealing his money or after she realized he wasn’t intending to bring her back with him to England. In some versions it was because she saw him with another woman.

Apparently she laughed in his face when she poisoned him and even told him there was an antidote for it that she wouldn’t give him. He ran after her to get the antidote from her but didn’t get it. He then shot and killed her. 

This also meant that he would never find the antidote to the poison as well and he too died. Or they both died by the poison she laced their drinks with. Now they both haunt the former hotel where they ended their days. 

A Real Murder at the Hotel

When we look at the historical facts, there are only one murder registered at the Agua Caliente, although who knows how many that never made it to the public really happenend, we will never know. 

But a dancer working for the past four months at the Agua Caliente was found on 26. March in 1934. Named Esperanza López was found murdered in one of the bungalows at the premise that were kept for the artists at the casino. She had been shot by her husband who also worked at the hotel named Rodrigo Prieto. 

The hotel closed down in 1938 when the prohibitions were lifted in the states, and Mexico forbade gambling. Then the building was turned into a private school named Lázaro Cárdenas High School where the stories about the hauntings mostly came from.

And the students at the school keep insisting on seeing her ghost roaming about the place as she is never leaving the Agua Caliente.  

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Encyclopedia of Haunted Places, Revised Edition: Ghostly Locales From Around the world Av Jeff Belanger

Tijuana Was Once “Satan’s Playground” | KPBS Public Media

In Tijuana, searching for Al Capone – The Washington Post

La bailarina del Aguacaliente | Noticias de Tijuana | EL IMPARCIAL

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Okiku — The Haunted Doll of Hokkaido

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The Okiku Doll, is a legend of a haunted doll that grows hair in Japan and is preserved in a temple looked after by monks. Allegedly it is haunted by the ghost of a girl that once received it as a gift.  

There is something about dolls that makes us fall into a confusion about what is and isn’t real and we both love them and hate them in equal measure. The haunted doll trope is one of the most famous and creepiest. There is something about the almost lifelike object that takes us through the uncanny valley and makes us believe that maybe, just maybe, there might be something more behind those glass eyes. 

This is the case with the Okiku Doll (お菊人形), a type of Ichimatsu doll (市松人形) which is a type of traditionally dress up dolls in Japan, often clad in nice kimonos with dark glass eyes. The chubby cheek dolls are as cute as they are creepy, and perhaps the creepiest that has been named Okiku lives now in a monastery, well looked after by the monks. This haunted doll must not be confused by the ghost story of Okiku, the maid:

Read the full story:

Banchō Sarayashiki — the Ghost of Okiku

The tale of Banchō Sarayashiki (番町皿屋敷, The Dish Mansion at Banchō) is a well known Japanese ghost story (kaidan). It was popularized in the kabuki theater tradition, and lives on in popular culture and folklore alike.

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At first glance, Okiku just looks like an old doll, weathered by time with frayed hair and old clothes like so many dolls forgotten by their children. But there is a legend surrounding this particular haunted doll, and the legend keeps growing, apparently, just like the doll’s hair. 

The Two Girls

The Okiku Doll: This Ichimatsu doll is called Miss Shimane and is a Japanese friendship ambassador doll.
Photo: Daniel Schwen

There are some variations of this legend, as there often is when they happened a long time ago. The most told version of it, though, starts In Hokkaido, north in Japan, in 1918 at the Taishi Expo in August, bustling with life, people and stuff to buy, including dolls. 

A teenager named Eikichi Suzuki bought a doll for his younger sister in the shopping street of Tanukikoji in the city. Often, the girl is given the same name as the doll, but in most Japanese sources, they were not named the same, but the girls name was either Kikuko or Kiyoko. The seventeen year old brother was visiting Sapporo for a marine exhibition and the doll almost called for him to be bought for his dearest little sister. 

The two or three year old sister grew very fond of the doll that was a gift from her brother and they became inseparable. The porcelain doll had an okappa hair style which was common for traditional dolls with cropped hair around the jawline and a short fringe over the forehead. It was around 40 cm tall and dressed in a traditional kimono.  

She carried it everywhere and slept with it every night the following year, but the child-like play would come to an abrupt end. The little sister died however after falling ill the following year after some complications of a severe fever. Very likely to be Yellow Fever or the Spanish flu as it was ravaging across the globe during this time period of time. Or in some cases, Pneumonia is also mentioned as the cause of death.

The Haunted Doll at the Family Altar

The family initially wanted to place the doll together with their daughter in the grave but wasn’t allowed, or in some sources, simply forgot to put the doll in the coffin. The family mourned the loss of the daughter and placed the doll on the family kamidana altar instead, a practice common in some Japanese households to remember and honor the dead. There Okiku could look out at the mourning family that paid her tribute as if Okiku was their own daughter. 

They prayed every day by the altar and started to notice strange things about Okiku. According to them, they found out that the hair of the doll was growing just like human hair. And the short okappa haircut grew longer, just like the hair grows of a 3-year-old child would have grown.

The haunted doll at the altar: The Okiku doll who once was a little girl’s favorite toy, is now placed in an altar to appease the spirit inside. She is know known as the doll that grows hair in Japan.// Photo: Picture first found source/via TinEye

At night they dreamt about Okiku and when they woke in the morning, sometimes they would find the haunted doll sitting by their side without having put her there. The strange occurrences started to get more intense and scarier with light flickering, banging in the house and strange voices and noises. The scary manifestations were usually around certain dates, like their dead daughters birthday and the day she died. 

This led them to believe that the soul of their daughter was not at peace yet, and had entered the doll. They had shamans come to the house and meet Okiku and confirm it and believed they had to appease the spirit through the doll. 

Offered and Displayed in Mannen-Ji Temple

They kept Okiku on their family altar until 1938 when the family decided it was time for them to move away from Hokkaido. In some sources they moved even further north to Sakhalin, an island between Japan and Russia. They felt that the best for the spirit of Okiku would be to remain on the island where she had been born and spent her few years alive. 

It was then the family decided to offer the doll to Mannen-ji Temple located in Iwamizawa. The monks promised to care for the haunted doll and pay it the respect it had received at the family altar. The Okiku doll was given a special wooden box like at the home altar and placed at the altar with the monks looking after and taking care of her every need.

The monks at the temple noticed too that the hair of the haunted doll kept growing. When it was around 25 cm, they decided to cut it for the first time, and the doll’s hair was cut many more times over the years as the hair just continued to grow. Apparently, some of the monks at the temple had a dream that the doll wished for the hair to be trimmed regularly. 

And after the war, when many Japanese were deported from Sakhalin, the brother who bought the doll came back and saw for himself how the doll had changed over the years. When he saw what the doll had become, he asked that the haunted doll had to stay at the temple permanently.  

The Science of the Hair?

Dolls have always had some sort of an unfair reputation as haunted across the globe, and in Japan, this type of doll is no stranger to having supernatural and haunted rumors surrounding them. But this one is by far the most famous example in the country and of its kind. 

Some sources try to claim that the doll has been examined by scientific tests that the monks have sent out to have tested, showing that the haunted doll’s hair really is of a human toddler, and growing just like one, although no one can explain just how this is happening. The place of the supposed test was sent to Hokkaido University School of Medicine according to some sources. 

There are of course non paranormal theories as to why the hair seemingly grows from the haunted doll. The use of human hair on dolls is a well known phenomenon, especially before synthesized hair became the norm. One way they did it was to fold a long human hair, making it seem like strands of hair on the doll. Over time the strand of hair can glide out of place and look like it has grown. But then again, it is supposed to stop at one point in time, not just continue to grow indefinitely. So what is happening at the temple where the doll is still displayed? 

Visiting the Haunted Doll

You can still visit the Mannen-Ji temple in Japan to see the haunted doll whose hair is reaching its knee, but you are not allowed to photograph it as the doll apparently has told you that it doesn’t like it at all. We must simply just take the monk’s words for the strange doll. The legend of the doll is continuing to grow, and has been the base of many movies and horror tales as well as the traditional kabuki plays.

According to the legend, the power of the haunted doll is only growing, bit by bit, just like the hair grows. and another rumor surrounding the doll nowadays is that if you get close enough to the haunted doll, you can also now see the growing of human teeth. 

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Feature image: Ellie

Japan’s Doll Legends – Culture

Okiku – Hair kept growing out of this haunted doll! | MRU MEDIA

Okiku: The Haunted Japanese Doll That Grows Human Hair

Okiku: The Haunted Doll Worse Than Chucky

萬念寺 お菊人形

お菊人形 【昭和の心霊事件】 : 合気道月光流道場長・チョコ助と伊東健治の公式ブログ 「骸(むくろ)をつけていま一戦(ひといくさ)せん！！」

髪が伸びる恐怖「お菊人形」 – 心霊現象