Man Entered A Bricked-Up Room In His House, And Uncovered An Eerie Shrine To A Fallen Soldier

Workers chip away at a wall of bricks, sending cement and rubble flying. Slowly, the outline of a door reveals itself. We’re in a grand house in central France, and its owner, Daniel Fabre, is watching eagerly; he’s never seen beyond the mysterious doorway. But as its secrets are finally revealed, Fabre’s in for a haunting surprise. He spots a moth-eaten military jacket. Service medals. Weaponry. The room appears to be some sort of secret shrine to a fallen soldier, still perfectly preserved after more than a century... and it’s a seriously unsettling sight.

Lurking behind the brick

Until Fabre opened up the bricked-off room in his house, he didn’t know exactly what was lurking behind it. And he was surely amazed to discover that the sealed entrance was hiding a sort of portal back to 1918. Though coated in cobwebs and dust, the room’s purpose was clear. Fabre’s house was hiding a hair-raising shrine to one of World War I’s many fallen.

Left untouched

Yes, the parents of the perished soldier had left the room exactly as it had been when he went off to war. Stricken by grief, they had resolved never to disturb it again. And to keep it untouched, they had bricked up the doorway. That way, they figured, the memorial that they had created for their lost son would remain intact. And that’s exactly what happened!

Magical place

The house is a fitting place for a shrine, as Bélâbre mayor Laurent Laroche told U.K. newspaper The Guardian in 2014. He said, “It is a magical place, which we believe was built using stone from the Middle Age ramparts of the village and has a superb little garden that is like something out of a fairytale.”

The soldier

But who occupied such a magical property and left the well-preserved tribute behind? Well, that would be the Rochereaus, a military family whose lineage traces back to the days of Napoleon Bonaparte. And given their history, it was almost expected that their son — born in October 1896 in the very same room Daniel Fabre would uncover decades later — ended up a military man.