Tonight, we’ll read the first half of The Petit Trianon, adapted from An Adventure by Charlotte Anne Moberly and Eleanor Jourdain, first published in 1911. This episode is part of Snoozecast’s 7th annual Spooky Sleep Story series, where we share true and imagined encounters with the strange and unexplained every October. The two English women, both Oxford academics, recorded their uncanny experience while visiting the gardens of Versailles in 1901. What began as an ordinary afternoon outing soon became one of the most famous “time-slip” mysteries in modern folklore.

Their book recounts the event through two separate testimonies, each written without the other’s influence: first that of Miss Morison (Moberly), then Miss Lamont (Jourdain). The pair describe wandering from the lively palace grounds into an oddly still corner of the estate—the Petit Trianon—where they encountered figures, fashions, and a mood belonging to another century. Later, their impressions would be linked to the last days of Queen Marie Antoinette, whose private retreat once stood on the same path.

This episode presents the first half of their written accounts. Next week, in Part Two, we’ll continue with the remainder of their story—and the discoveries that followed, as they began to investigate what truly happened that August afternoon.