Watching horror films, bungee jumping or eating spicy meals away from home… So many actions which, if you think about it carefully, have nothing rational about them. Except that man is the only living being who enjoys being scared. A masochistic side which undoubtedly explains the success of a video, published a few days on TikTok, about a secret and haunted metro station on line 2 of the Lille metro. Hoax, urban legend, hidden truth? The author does not lack arguments for us to believe in his story. And yet…
Posted at the end of last week, the video in question has already garnered nearly half a million views and more than 700 comments. “Did you know that there is a secret metro station in Lille,” asks a female voice in the comment. “Few people know of its existence and yet it is very real,” the voice continues. Adding, to support his point, that it is possible to find articles on this subject in the regional press. We can indeed find on the Internet several mentions of this famous abandoned station, which would be located between the “Porte de Valenciennes” and “Lille Grand Palais” stations, on line 2 of the metro. Articles talk about it recurrently, almost every year and at the same time, in October.
A traveler mysteriously disappears
Already intriguing in itself, this ghost station story is systematically accompanied by an even creepier story. One day, we don’t know when exactly, a metro train stopped for an unknown reason at the place where the mysterious station should have been. A traveler “around thirty years old” would have left at this stop and she would never have been seen again. Only his personal belongings were found in this station by the police. Since then, some travelers or Urbex fans have heard screams or whispers of women while passing in the area.
Despite the many plausible details Accompanying the different stories of this legend, several things should alert gullible souls. The date this story resurfaces to begin with, the month of October, or the month of Halloween. Then the fact that we are talking about an underground station while this portion of the line is overhead. At no time in the construction plans for the Lille metro was the possibility of the line passing underground at this location mentioned.
Fake off
However, the hypothesis of a metro station built to serve Saint-Sauveur station, between Porte de Valenciennes and Lille Grand Palais, is not based on anything. Work on line 2 of the metro, called at the time “line 1 bis”, was launched in 1985, one year after the vote of the council of the Urban Community of Lille for the adoption of its final route. And if this final route does not mention a Saint-Sauveur station, it was nevertheless mentioned in the basic project. The magazine “En direct du métro”, published several times a year throughout the duration of the project, also makes reference to it. on page 12 of its November 1982 issue.
The most suspicious will therefore be able to imagine that the station was still built in secret. Difficult to imagine when you know the scale of the project. On TikTok, an Internet user who has lived near the Porte de Valenciennes for decades confirms that he has never seen any station being dug in this location. An assertion that can easily be verified by consulting the aerial photo archives available on the IGN website.
To be clear about it, 20 minutes contacted Ilévia, formerly Transpole, formerly TCC, the Lille public transport operator. The mystery quickly fell away. “This whole story dates back to October 31, 2015, when the communications team at the time launched the rumor on the occasion of Halloween,” we are told. A rumor that quickly became an urban legend, especially since the original post, posted on Facebook, links to an article that is now inaccessible. Inaccessible like the ghost station.