“Paranormal activity”. The release of the clip of his first single, Adhuc stat, was to mark an important stage in the implementation of the musical project
Trobar Clus, by Lille musician Johan Pitrel. The filming, carried out last May at
Cathedral palace, in Saint-Omer, will indeed remain etched forever in the memory of the artist and the production team, which ensures that unexplained phenomena disrupted the production of the clip.
In his art as in his outfit, Johan Pitrel is a bit perched. He does not hide it and he even makes a little of his business. To qualify his project Trobar clus, he explains that we are “on the border between our sensitive world and the most total hallucination”. However, the eccentric side of the clip illustrating the song Adhuc stat had to stick to what was written in the script. It was therefore not to exploit the rumors circulating about the Cathedral Palace that this location was chosen: “We looked for lots of places for the filming but we were thrown from everywhere. Only Jean-Luc Montois, the owner of the Palace, agreed to receive us ”, assures the musician.
“The weird stuff started around 11pm”
The shooting took place at the end of May for two days. “The weird stuff started after dark, around 11pm. We heard footsteps upstairs when we were alone there, ”says Johan. The phenomena then multiplied: strange lights, moving objects and other inexplicable whatnot. Two events particularly marked the team: “As soon as you walked through the attic door, the electronic devices stopped working. The steadycam even began to shoot on its own, ”says the musician, who also evokes an“ appearance ”, like a white silhouette recorded by the camera during the filming of a sequence in the cellar.
Johan Pitrel ensures that no one had ingested substances. “The team was divided between those who believed in the paranormal and others, like me, more down to earth. It still ended in a kind of collective hysteria, ”he admits. Because the owner of the premises had warned them, in particular of the presence of a ghost called “Aunt Sophie”.
“She is one of the former occupants of the house, who died in the 1920s with the desire to stay within the walls”, assures Jean-Luc Montois, adding that we sometimes felt the scent of his perfume of violets. But the history of the Palace goes back much longer, part of the building having been built on an old cemetery of monks dating from the 7th and 8th centuries. The cellar, transformed in the 13th century into a prison, still bears the traces of the passage of the Templars.
“We owe the current configuration of the house, which dates from the 19th century, to the banker Etienne Neyrat, passionate about occult sciences”, continues the current owner. We find there the Freemasonry symbolism but also that of other mysterious brotherhoods
like the Rose-Croix, the
alchemists. “All of this contributes a lot to fueling rumors around this building,” recognizes Jean-Luc Montois. He himself lives there and does not fear the impromptu visits of “Aunt Sophie”. It is also possible to visit his home, during the day, by booking at the Saint-Omer tourist office.