Lourmarin castle's strange curse
And also
The tops
Swastika and Armenians
An industrialist (a rich one), Robert Laurent-Vibert, restored the castle in 1920! But before that, Lourmarin was a lair for gypsies, coming in the area for the pilgrimage of the Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer. The tradition says they drew mysterious graffiti on a wall…
The strangest drawing represents a boat with people on board, framed by a cross, a swastika, a 5-arms cross and the word “Armeny”. Pretty odd? Yes, of course!
But nothing proves that those drawings were made by Gypsies. Further, the Armény family really existed: they were Armenians living in Marseille since centuries, and they probably went one day in the castle…
Next to this drawing, we have an inscription above a door: Bois et t'en va 1513, meaning “Drink and go, 1513”. Probably an order gave to beggars: the lord of Lourmarin allowed them to drink to his fountain, but that was all!
A whole catalogue of strange deaths
Anyway, after that, strange deaths succeeded one another, like the one of the owner Laurent-Vibert in 1925… or even the death of the French writer Albert Camus (who had a house in Lourmarin)!
In total, a dozen of people (each one visited the castle) died of accidents between 1925 and 1960… Camus was the 13th one! And yet, he just laughed at those cock and bull stories… Well, that’s it, the curse of Lourmarin was born!