The Legend of the Ghost in the Louvre Museum

Find out about the Red Man haunting the gardens that has reportedly been seen by visitors to Louvre Museum since before its opening and many strange and haunting rumors started to unfold from this world famous museum. But how many of them are actually rooted in other than fiction and fear?

Since its opening as a museum in 1793, Louvre Museum has had a mysterious supernatural entity lurking within its walls even before they started to bring all the historical artifacts inside. It is the most visited museum in the world and around 15 000 people visit this museum each day, many of them claiming to have seen a ghost or two.

It is said if you spend 30 seconds looking at each piece of art without any sleep or breaks it takes 100 days to see all the artwork they display to this day inside of the Louvre. The museum is covered in urban legends, everything that Mary Magdalene is buried underneath, That the Mona Lisa is bigger than she is and that the pyramid in the courtyard contains 666 panes of glass like the mark of the beast.

Read about more Haunted Museums across the world: Here

The History of the Louvre Palace in Paris

The building that Louvre in Paris is in has been a part of French history since 1190 when it was built as a fortress against the vikings by King Philippe Auguste. From the 1300s it worked as the official royal residence and was known as Palais du Louvre and saw kings and queens come and go for centuries.

Read about more Haunted Castles from the world

The Louvre palace in Paris was the palace where the royal family resided and held court until the sun king Ludvig XIV had built the Chateau de Versailles and moved there in 1682.

Too much Art from all over the World to See in one Lifetime

Putting all this culture and history into the same building kicks off the dust of the haunting these artifacts bring with them, and many of the haunted rumors in the Louvre come from stories about haunted objects or paintings or cursed artifacts from the ancient world.

One of the most iconic features of the Louvre Museum is its vast collection of famous paintings, including Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and The Wedding at Cana by Paolo Veronese.

Read Also: Cursed and Haunted Paintings

In addition to these celebrated works, visitors can also explore the museum’s numerous galleries filled with masterpieces from ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome; 18th century French art; and many more. Despite being known for its wealth of artworks, the Louvre also holds its place in history as one of Europe’s most haunted buildings.

Reports of visitors experiencing supernatural occurrences have been documented since the museum’s opening in 1793 after the French Revolution and the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture decided this was where they would show the masterpieces the nation had to offer.

Belphegor, Phantom of the Louvre – The Mummy Haunting the Museum

One famous story comes from fiction, just like the pyramid actually contains 673 panes, not 666. It is true that the Louvre Museum has a mummy inside, but the haunted legend that is about the spirit of a mummy at the Louvre comes from fiction.

Stories about mummies coming back to haunt or leaving curses at those who disturb their graves are plentiful, and the Louvre has one of them. Belphegor was a 1927 crime novel by the French writer Arthur Bernede and was made into a tv-series as well as a film later.

The Louvre museum actually does have a mummy embalmed and it is the only mummy there is in the Louvre. Throughout the years there have been more mummies displayed at the Louvre, but today this is the only one.

It is a man who lived in the Ptolemaic Period (305 BCE). The mummy is called the Mummy of Pacheri and has been at the Louvre since 1826. His name is either Pacheri or Nenu as the writing is hard to make out and his face is covered with a mask and many attribute the supposed hauntings to the mummy.

This story has made people actually think that the Louvre is haunted by a vengeful mummy. Or was it the haunting that inspired the novel?

Read the Khonsuemheb and the Ghost of Theban Necropolis for an actual Egyptian ghost story.

The Red Man Haunting the Gardens

Another supposed ghost that is often talked about in connection to the Louvre is the Red Man of the Tuilerie gardens that are adjacent to the museum. According to this legend there was a henchman of Catherine de Medici who was assassinated because he knew too many of the dark secrets of the royal family.

After his death he came back to curse the entire royal family and the people living there in the palaces that existed, including those living in the Louvre Palace.

Read the full story of The Red Man haunting the Jardin Tuileries in Paris