The Prisoner of Château de Puymartin

After a husband caught his cheating wife, the punishment for her lasted into the afterlife. After she was discovered, the husband imprisoned her in the tower of Château de Puymartin, and according to legends, the wife is still haunting this French Château as a Dame Blanche, or the Lady in White.

The honey colored towers of this elegant castle in France called Château de Puymartin is like taken out of a fairytale romance. But the tales about this castle in Southwestern France, is by no means fairytale-like, but more of a horror story without a nice ending.

The Château de Puymartin was constructed in the early 1200s and the castle went through a lot of hands throughout history. In 1357, the castle was taken by the british before being bought back by the council of Sarlat. They didn’t stay though and the castle was left abandoned.

Read also: Check out all of our ghost stories from France

The castle was abandoned for a while and it wasn’t until the 1450s Radulphe de Saint-Clar rebuilt the Château de Puymartin and making it bigger that people started living in it. But can anyone really say they lived peacefully in it?

After a husband caught his cheating wife, the punishment for her lasted into the afterlife. After she was discovered, the husband imprisoned her in the tower of Château de Puymartin, and according to legends, the wife is still haunting this French Château as a Dame Blanche, or the Lady in White. — **The Prison in the castle:** The castle that used to be the Lady in White’s home at Château de Puymartin turned into her prison were she lived her remaining years in the tower and the rest of eternity walled up in the walls of her former prison.
Photo: Manfred Heyde source

Dame Blanches in French Folklore

All French Château’s must have its own legend of a Dame Blanche or the ghost of a Lady in White roaming around the castle halls at night. The Château de Puymartin is no exception from this and has it’s own twisted tale of the Lady in White. But really what is this types of ghosts that we always hear of wandering the castle halls?

One of the most pervasive supernatural mythologies associated with haunted castles and Château’s is the Dames blanches, or White Ladies. These mysterious figures are said to wander through fields and forests near the city, bringing with them both luck and misfortune to those who encounter them.

They are known way back from myths and folklore as well and quite well spread in European ghost stories. Tales of these enigmatic creatures have been told for centuries, inspiring many artistic interpretations and offering a glimpse into a fantastic world beyond our own.

Read Also: Check out more ghost stories about the Lady in White or la Dame Blanches in France like The Buried Alive Ghosts of Château de Trécesson in the Enchanted Forest or The Hitchhiking Woman in White in Palavas-les-Flots

There’s also a long-standing local legend involving the castle’s ‘Dames Blanches’, or ‘White Ladies’. According to folklore, these female ghosts are said to inhabit the castle and torment its inhabitants with misfortune, calamity, and sometimes even death in many stories in French folklore.

What used to be vague figures from old mythology and legends, now tells the tragic ghost stories about real women who died in horrible ways and have unfinished business in their afterlife. Such is the tale of the Dame Blance in Château de Puymartin.

The Legend of the Dame Blanche in the Castle

The legend of la Dame Blanche, or the woman in white that is said to reside inside of Château de Puymartin is said to be the spirit of a woman called Thérèse de Saint-Clar. She was married to Jean de Saint-Clar, the man of the Château de Puymartin in the 1500s. Her name is not set in stone, as the legends most often specify her name at all.

The husband could also have been Raymond de Saint-Clar who fought in the French Wars of Religion, a war between the Catholics and Protestants. He is well known to be the one who managed to get rid of the Huguenots from Sarlat. The timeline with the names in this legend can get a bit messy as we can neither confirm or deny all of the details.

But either way, the story goes that the man of Château de Puymartin was away at war and while he was away, the wife stayed home and took a lover.

Read more: Interested in haunted castles? Check out all of our ghost stories set in haunted castles around the world. What about readling about more haunted French Châteaus like The Haunted Château de Commarque, Haunted Nights in the Château des Fougeret, The Time Travelling Ghost Haunting Château de Versailles or Ghost Stories from Greoux-les-Bains and the Château des Templiers?

But the affair would not stay secret for long at the Château de Puymartin. After distinguishing himself in the battles, the husband was allowed to return home to his home and wife for what he thought would be a happy reunion and he would be recieved by his wife as a war hero.

The homecoming was anything but thought and when he went to her, his wife was found in her lover’s arm.

The husband went mad and ended up killing her lover out of jealousy in a fit of rage. His wife was also punished but in a much slower and torturous death. He ended up imprisoning his cheating wife in a tower in their Château as he no longer could trust her on her own and their marriage was in all sense of the matter over.

Imprisoned at the Tower of Château de Puymartin

For years the wife was trapped in the northern tower of Château de Puymartin, never allowed to leave or go outside, not even after her death. One could almost argue that she is still not allowed out in her afterlife.

The wife lived trapped inside of the tower until she died in what was called a ‘fifteen long years of repentance’. 15 whole years she stayed in the same little room never allowed to leave.

The door leading into her tower was supposedly walled up to keep her from escaping, only leaving a small trap door for the servants to bring her food while she was alive. She was stripped away from the fine living she was used to being the mistress of this grand castle and they only left a bad mattress for her to sleep on in a corner.

The only view she had was to look out from the window through the barrs they put up for her to prevent her from escaping. There she could see just how close freedom was, past the garden, over the hill and into the forests. This almost seems more cruel than shutting the window off completely.

It doesn’t say if she had any visitors, but over the years it looks like the husband never pitied her and let go of her anger. And if she spent 15 years inside the tower without anyone to talk to, she most likely went mad after the first few years.

According to legend her body was sealed inside the walls of the room when she died, trapping her there, even in her afterlife and she never got a proper burial in the ground, and was laid on the cold stones of the castle walls. Since then, she comes back to haunt the castle at night. At least now she can move outside the tower. She wanders the stairs, her room and on the pathways around the grounds.

Read More: Check out all of our ghost stories concerning women that were supposedly walled up inside of a building like The Evil Bishop Against the Maiden in Love – The Ghost of Haapsalu Castle, Dracula and Ghost Nuns in Whitby Abbey and O-shizu, Hitobashira — The Human Sacrifice of Maruoka Castle

The Château de Puymartin Today

Today you can visit the Château de Puymartin for a fee to try to get a glimpse of the sorrowful ghost that have been spotted by its owners and visitors over the centuries.

The Château de Puymartin have in its later years embraced their Dame Blanche legend and it’s a part of the experience when visiting the castle. They have even made the story into an escape room play during Halloween season. Would you like to play?