A Haunted House in the South of France

There’s so much to explore in the south of France! Beautiful beaches, fields of golden sunflowers and even swamps full of noisy flamingoes. We’ve been on a few road trips recently, cruising past the Alpilles in a little car that’s seen better days: it screeches every time we have to brake.

Saintes-Maries de la Mer

I really love horror films. There’s a part of my personality that is fascinated by anything and everything that’s just a little bit spooky or creepy! I used to stay up late listening to my grandparents tell hair-raising ghost stories and even now I love going to trips to the cinema to watch horror films and reading spooky books (I recommend Sarah Water’s The Little Stranger).

So you can imagine my excitement at coming across a haunted house on our road trip! Admittedly, it wasn’t an abandoned dilapidated house that we drove past on the road. It was a ride at Le Grau du Roi, where there’s a funfair called Amigoland which is open all year round.

The Haunted House

Seated in a little roller-coaster cart with noisy wheels, you bump along inside the pitch black house and swerve past coffins, vampires and skeletons, all of which are illuminated by a flickering white light. As we cruised around (swearing and screaming in French and English), we came to the scariest part of the ride: a man hiding inside the house with a mask and a deafening tronçonneuse (a new word I learnt that day – a chainsaw). À la Friday the 13^th, we were chased by this man as the cart careered out into the open air.

It was such good fun! We paid to go on the ride twice and afterwards hopped back into our little beaten-down car for the rest of our road trip!