But of all the places connected with the Evil One, Apchon seems to have been the centre…No wonder that it is haunted, the favourite resort of that Devil…
-Frances Marion Gostling
To the folklorists of Old Auvergne, meeting the Devil was a somewhat harrowing task. It involved a degree of ceremony and decorum, the same kind of cautious energy that nowadays goes into planning for a high-stakes summit with a visiting dignitary. Before entering into negotiations, however, the hopeful devil-conjuror also had to gift his infernal majesty with a black hen.
That was then, and perhaps — in some very rare and hush-hush cases — also now. It could be argued that the region of Auvergne itself has a special connection to the Devil. The amount of mountain peaks, caves, country lanes, and bridges (Pont du Diable, for instance) that reference him or his diabolic machinations in some way are almost too numerous to count. Yet there is one haunting place that ranks above all others: Castle Apchon.
Built in the twelfth century, the castle traces its origins to the D’Apchons, an ancient noble family whose leaders (called comptours) once ruled over vast swathes of the Auvergne highlands. Gaspard d’Espinchal, the muderous “Dracula” of seventeenth-century Auvergne, hailed from one of the family’s cadet branches. Tradition has it, however, that Castle Apchon’s ties the Devil go back the aeonic War in Heaven. An early published version of this myth appears in Henri Durif’s Guide historique, archéologique, statistique et pittoresque du voyageur dans le département du Cantal ancienne Haute-Auvergne (1861).
In Durif’s account, Satan plummets to Earth after losing a celestial battle with the archangel Michael. He lands on “Pré de la Guerre”, a field in the near vicinity of what is now Castle Apchon. From that point on, the field effectively becomes an embassy of hell, a liminal place where one can encounter ghouls witches, and the Devil himself. In a later tradition, recorded by the nineteenth-century writer Ludovic Soubrier, the Devil goes on to serve as an adviser to one of the medieval lords of Apchon, giving him supernatural soldiers to defend his castle.
Today, Casle Apchon certainly has the look of a long-vanquished Castle Dracula. Kept alive, perhaps, by the unseen hand of Hades, it seems unable to fully disintegrate into the land. And it may also may be that the Devil, who always yearns for good human conversation, creeps around its walls on cold, full-moon nights, looking for ambitious and roguish types. Accordingly, the traveller who dares to ascend Apchon’s heights under the veil of night may attain to a knowledge not of this world. And here one can imagine the Devil saying with a puckish grin: “All for the very low price of a soul!”
