👻 HAUNTED PLACE · EXP. Nº9046
ACTIVE
Le Manoir de Paris
Le Manoir de Paris is a location reputed to be haunted in Paris, FR. Its reputation comes from reported apparitions, unexplained phenomena and eyewitness accounts gathered over time.
Where is Le Manoir de Paris?
- Location
- Paris, FR
- Type
- House / mansion
- Coordinates
- 48.875, 2.354
- Testimonies
- 0
- Last updated
LOCATION
Why is Le Manoir de Paris said to be haunted?
Le Manoir de Paris was never a haunted house. It was a horror attraction — a business that staged Parisian legends with paid actors and imported animatronics — and it is closed. It opened on Friday 6 May 2011 at 18 rue de Paradis, in the tenth arrondissement, inside a listed 1889 building: the Paris showroom of the Choisy-le-Roi faience works, later the city's advertising museum. Le Parisien counted thirteen Parisian legends across twenty-three rooms on the opening weekend; the attraction's own website later advertised seventeen. Some were documented cases, such as Philibert Aspairt lost in the quarries in 1793 or the unsolved 1937 killing of Lætitia Toureaux on line 8 of the métro. Others were novels, from Hugo and Gaston Leroux to Anne Rice's vampires, listed without apology alongside them. The venue shut during the pandemic in 2020, its monsters appeared one last time at La Villette in October 2021, and in October 2022 the building reopened as a business school. Nothing paranormal was ever reported there; the haunting was written, rehearsed and paid by the hour.
What is the history of Le Manoir de Paris?
The building came first, and it had nothing to do with ghosts.
In 1889 the faience works of Choisy-le-Roi — the house of Hippolyte Boulenger, one of the largest ceramic manufacturers in France — built a new Paris showroom and head office at 18 rue de Paradis, in the tenth arrondissement. The architects were Jacotin and Brunnarius. The point of the building was advertising: the street front, the vestibule and the balustered staircase were sheathed in the firm's own tiles, so that the premises worked as their own catalogue. That is why the Ministry of Culture listed the façade, the ceramic vestibule and the staircase as a monument historique on 6 October 1981. The rooms had already served as the musée de l'Affiche from 1978 and the musée de la Publicité from 1982, which moved out in 1990.
The neighbourhood carried older associations. The site stands on the edge of the former enclos Saint-Lazare, the walled precinct that began as a leper house outside the medieval city and ended as the Saint-Lazare prison, and the porte Saint-Denis with its cours des Miracles was a short walk away. None of that made the building haunted. It made it useful.
The attraction was the idea of Adil Houti, born in 1983 and raised in San Diego, who had worked on two Texas haunted houses — 13th Floor in San Antonio and House of Torment in Austin — before settling in Paris. His company, Le Manoir H, was entered in the French business register on 1 August 2010.
Le Manoir de Paris opened on Friday 6 May 2011. Le Parisien went in on the first day and described twenty-three rooms over two levels and roughly 1,000 m²; thirteen Parisian legends; three animatronics imported from the United States, one of them a gargoyle at the entrance; thirteen made-up actors; five levels of intensity; a route open to children over ten; and a ticket at €20 for adults and €15 for children, Friday to Sunday from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. “Paris est plein de mystères. L'idée est de les redécouvrir tout en s'amusant... et en se faisant peur”, the 27-year-old owner told the paper.
It grew. A third-floor route called Royal Hotel Paradis was added in 2016 and an escape game, The Skeleton Key, opened in the cellars. The public calendar on the website runs on, weekend by weekend, until 28–29 March 2020 — and then stops.
It never restarted. Le Parisien reported in January 2023 that the haunted house had “baissé le rideau” in 2020 during the health crisis, and that its monsters had appeared one last time at the Manoir Halloween Festival, a pop-up staged on more than 4,000 m² at La Villette from 22 to 31 October 2021. In February 2021 the company registered a new address at 65 rue Baron Le Roy, in the twelfth arrondissement; the rue de Paradis establishment was closed. The building itself was sold and rebuilt inside: on Thursday 20 October 2022 the Albert School, a data-and-business school whose investors include Xavier Niel, was inaugurated there, the Boulenger mosaics left in place. The old website froze on the 2021 festival, put up a maintenance notice in December 2023, and the expired domain was then taken over by an online-casino affiliate operation.
Timeline: the documented record of Le Manoir de Paris
- 1889 The Choisy-le-Roi faience works, the house of Hippolyte Boulenger, build their Paris showroom and head office at 18 rue de Paradis, to designs by the architects Jacotin and Brunnarius. The street front and vestibule are clad in the company's own ceramics.
- 20 May 1896 At three minutes to nine, during a performance of Hellé at the Opéra, one of the eight 700-kilo counterweights holding the auditorium chandelier breaks loose and falls, killing a concierge named Mme Chomette and starting a small fire in the roof. Le Figaro reports it in detail the next morning. It is the real event behind the Manoir's Phantom of the Opera room.
- 6 October 1981 The French Ministry of Culture lists the street façade, the ceramic vestibule and the balustered staircase of the former Boulenger premises as a monument historique (Mérimée record PA00086504).
- 1 August 2010 Adil Houti's company, Le Manoir H, is entered in the French business register under SIREN 524583077, with performing arts as its declared activity.
- 6 May 2011 Le Manoir de Paris opens to its first visitors. Le Parisien describes thirteen Parisian legends across twenty-three rooms, three American animatronics and thirteen actors, at €20 for adults, open Friday to Sunday.
- 2014 The attraction's own history page now advertises seventeen Parisian legends over nearly 1,000 m² — four more than the press counted in 2011 — and dates the Opéra chandelier accident to 1886, during Gounod's Faust.
- March 2020 The last dates on the website's public calendar are the weekend of 28–29 March 2020. France is already in its first lockdown; the sessions never take place and the calendar is never extended.
- 22–31 October 2021 The brand's last public outing: the Manoir Halloween Festival, staged on more than 4,000 m² at La Villette. Le Parisien later confirms the rue de Paradis venue had already closed in 2020 during the health crisis.
- 20 October 2022 The Albert School is inaugurated in the renovated premises at 18 rue de Paradis, with thirty-three students in its first intake and the Boulenger mosaics kept in place.
- December 2023 The official website, still frozen on the 2021 festival, is replaced by a maintenance notice. The domain later lapses and is taken over by an online-casino affiliate site.
Is there a rational explanation for Le Manoir de Paris?
There is no ghost story attached to 18 rue de Paradis, and that is worth saying plainly, because the address keeps turning up on haunted-Paris lists that slide quietly from "a haunted house attraction" to "a haunted house". Nothing in the record of the building — a ceramics showroom, two design museums, a horror business, a school — has produced a reported apparition. What happened inside between 2011 and 2020 was scripted, rehearsed and paid by the hour.
The interesting question is what the attraction did to the legends it sold, and the evidence for that is its own. Take its flagship, the Phantom of the Opera. The Manoir's page told visitors that “le 20 mai 1886, le grand lustre de la salle se décroche faisant une victime au cours d'une représentation du Faust de Gounod”, and that the victim had been sitting in seat number 13; by 2021 the same page had drifted to “le 20 mai 1986”. The documented event is neither. On the evening of 20 May 1896, at three minutes to nine, during a performance of Hellé by Alphonse Duvernoy, one of the eight counterweights that hold the auditorium chandelier — each weighing about 700 kilos, according to Le Figaro the next morning — broke loose and fell. It was not the chandelier. The one person killed was Mme Chomette, a concierge, and the falling weight tore out a circuit breaker and started a small fire in the roof. Gaston Leroux published his novel fourteen years later; the seat-13 detail belongs to the novel's afterlife, not to the newspaper.
The catalogue itself blurred categories. Some entries were documented Parisian cases: Philibert Aspairt, who walked into the quarries in November 1793 and whose body was found in 1804; the unsolved 1937 killing of Lætitia Toureaux on line 8 of the métro; the Nile crocodile taken out of the sewers near the Pont Neuf in March 1984 and sent to the aquarium at Vannes. Others were novels shelved beside them: Hugo's hunchback (1831), Leroux's phantom (1910) and — set out without embarrassment on the attraction's own page — Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles, an American series begun in 1976.
Even the count moved. Le Parisien reported thirteen legends on the opening weekend of May 2011; the Manoir's own history page advertised seventeen. Both figures still circulate. Only one of them came from a reporter who went in.
Can you visit Le Manoir de Paris?
You cannot visit Le Manoir de Paris. It closed in 2020 and never reopened; any listing, map pin or ticket link that suggests otherwise is out of date.
The building is still there, at 18 rue de Paradis, 75010 Paris. Since October 2022 it has housed the Albert School, a private higher-education campus: a working school, not a museum, with no public access. What is protected is visible from the pavement in any case — the tiled street front of the old Choisy-le-Roi showroom, listed since 1981, is the reason to walk down the street at all, and the ceramic vestibule can sometimes be glimpsed through the entrance. The nearest métro stations are Poissonnière (line 7), Château d'Eau (line 4), Gare de l'Est and Strasbourg–Saint-Denis; Gare Saint-Lazare, sometimes given as the location, is more than two kilometres away and was never the reference point.
One warning that matters. The former official domain, lemanoirdeparis.fr, expired and now resolves to an online-casino affiliate site with no connection whatever to the attraction or its owners. Do not treat it as a source and do not buy anything through it; the genuine pages survive only in the Internet Archive.
If what you want is the legends rather than the attraction, most of them are close by. The Palais Garnier, where the counterweight fell in 1896, is open to visitors, individually or with a guide, outside performance requirements. The catacombs at Denfert-Rochereau are a City of Paris museum with its own online ticketing. Père-Lachaise cemetery is open to the public free of charge. All three are the real places behind rooms that, for nine years, existed on rue de Paradis in plywood and latex.
Sources consulted
- Le Parisien, «Une maison hantée en plein Paris» — Le Parisien, 2011 newspaper archive
- Le Parisien, «Un manoir hanté fera revivre treize légendes parisiennes dès vendredi à Paris» — Le Parisien, 2011 newspaper archive
- Le Figaro, «L'accident de l'Opéra» — Le Figaro (numéro du 21 mai 1896), Gallica — BnF, 1896 newspaper archive
- Ministère de la Culture, Monuments historiques, «Anciens magasins de vente des faïenceries de Choisy-le-Roi — notice Mérimée PA00086504» — Plateforme ouverte du patrimoine (POP), 1981 report
- Le Manoir de Paris, «Le Manoir de Paris — sitio oficial archivado (L'Histoire, Histoire des Légendes de Paris, Visitez, calendario)» — Internet Archive Wayback Machine, 2014 archive
- Paul Abran, «Manoir de Paris : qu'est devenue la célèbre maison hantée de la capitale ?» — Le Parisien, 2023 newspaper archive
- Jeanne Paturaud, «Albert School, la nouvelle école de la data, a été inaugurée» — Le Figaro Étudiant, 2022 newspaper archive
- INSEE / Annuaire des Entreprises, «LE MANOIR H (LE MANOIR DE PARIS), SIREN 524583077 — fiche du répertoire Sirene» — Répertoire national des entreprises et des établissements (Sirene), 2026 report
Reviewed by V. Serrano on 2026-08-11 · How we verify our content
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