Elton John is said to have been left terrified after his recording studio became plagued by unexplained paranormal activity, according to his longtime songwriting partner Bernie Taupin.
Taupin, who was with the hitmaker at the time, recalled the spine-chilling incidents, which occurred during their recording sessions at Château d’Hérouville near Paris in the 1980s, in his new autobiography, Scattershot.
The 18th-century property is where the musical pairing recorded John’s albums; Don’t Shoot Me I’m Only The Piano Player, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road and Honky Château.
In an extract from Taupin’s memoir, obtained by the Daily Star, he detailed a number of unexplainable ghostlike events that took place including hearing voices, being tugged and tapped on the shoulder by “invisible hands”.
The 73-year-old wrote: “There had always been talk of restless spirits and ghosts, strange unexplainable events that had filtered down from client to client.
“I’m by nature seriously sceptical about the paranormal, but put yourself in a spooky-a** château on a stormy night and confidence in practicality flies out the window.
“It started with a freaked-out cat and a self-igniting fireplace. I mean the fire literally started on its own and the cat looked like it had been electrocuted.”
Recalling one spooky evening, Taupin said he, John and pals were left terrified when the lights in the property went out before the songwriter noticed that the mirror has been “scratched from the inside out”.
And when it came time to listen back to the tracks they had recorded in the château, Taupin claimed there were “audible moans and groans” from spirits.
He continued: “What is the gospel truth is that when we were playing back tracks in the studio the next day, there were most definitely audible moans and groans on the tape that had disappeared when we replayed them later.
“The ghosts had obviously given up on a recording career and we were happy to get the hell out of Dodge. The château closed its doors for good in 1985, a year after its owner, plagued by debt, took his own life in a nearby hotel.”
