The “Devil of Mâcon” was an alleged noisy, speaking presence in the household of a Reformed minister in Burgundy in 1612. François Perrault, rendered Francis Perreaud in the English edition, described household objects being disturbed, an unseen voice answering visitors and stones thrown near his house. The account later acquired an endorsement from Robert Boyle and entered collections of supernatural narratives. Its documentary interest lies in the survival of Perrault’s own published account and its layers of editorial support. Those layers should not be mistaken for a modern investigation proving that a devil was present.
The account and its later publication
The original source consulted here is the 1658 English edition, The Devill of Mascon, translated by Peter, or Pierre, Du Moulin and printed at Oxford by Henry Hall for Richard Davis. Its title page identifies Perreaud as a minister of the Reformed church in the town. The account describes events more than four decades before that English publication. The dates of the events, the printing of the narrative and Boyle’s later involvement are consequently different parts of its history.
Perrault gives a definite opening sequence. On 14 September 1612 he left Mâcon with an elder for a church meeting and returned five days later. His wife and maid told him that disturbances had begun during his absence. The first accounts therefore reached him through other household members. His subsequent descriptions include things he claimed to hear or see himself, alongside stories told by visitors. He sometimes distinguishes those categories explicitly, a useful feature easily lost when a short modern retelling combines them.
His wife reported curtains pulled during the night, blankets disturbed and noises made with kitchen vessels. A bolted doorway and the presence of another young person in the house form part of the account. Perrault initially considered both fright and the possibility of an intruder. He says he searched the building and secured doors, windows and other openings before going to bed. The narrative presents these precautions as reasons to exclude ordinary interference; it does not preserve a complete plan of the house or independent observations of every entrance.
Searches and an apparent voice
After retiring, Perrault says he heard rolling, knocking and a clatter of plates, ladles and other kitchen equipment. He went to investigate with a sword while the maid carried a candle. Finding no hidden person, he returned to bed, only for the disturbance to resume. The failure of these searches persuaded him that a wicked spirit was responsible. That transition records his conclusion, rather than a demonstration that all possible human causes had been eliminated.
He informed church elders and a Catholic royal notary, Francis Tornus, who joined evening visits. For several nights the reported presence was quiet before the visitors. On 20 September, around nine in the evening, an apparent whistle and then an intelligible, somewhat hoarse voice were heard. Perrault placed it a few steps from the company. He described a short tune and repeated calls of “Minister,” followed by exchanges in which he invoked his religious office and rebuked the speaker.
The voice allegedly recited prayers and religious material, sometimes incompletely, and shifted into mockery, songs and imitations. Perrault’s account repeatedly treats its words as morally or theologically significant. It also attributes to the speaker private knowledge about visitors and family affairs. Such passages would require separate corroboration before being accepted as demonstrations of information acquired supernaturally. The book’s assertion that somebody recognised a detail is not an independent statement from that person.
What the visitors were said to encounter
Several episodes concern attempts to locate the speaker. In one, a visitor rushed to the apparent source of the voice, searched and returned with objects including a small bottle. The unseen speaker supposedly ridiculed the idea that it could be caught inside the bottle. Elsewhere it adopted the character of a servant standing in for an absent master, complained about clothing and wages, and offered to leave in exchange for something. These changing performances are central to the literary character of the account: its alleged presence behaves like a mocking conversational adversary.
Perrault says Tornus wrote and signed a relation which he retained. He also describes approaches from civil and ecclesiastical authorities, including inquiries associated with the local bishop. These are specific archival leads. The signed notarial relation and the bishop’s reported records have not been separately located and examined for this article. They remain documents claimed within Perrault’s narrative, rather than additional originals independently reviewed here.
The author himself limits some assertions. After relating stories of disturbances outside his home, he says he cannot speak of them with the same certainty as things he had witnessed. That distinction matters more than the number of people or places gathered into a later summary. A narrative containing named visitors, reported conversations and a professed eyewitness does not automatically become several independent surviving accounts.
Objects, prayer and the final days
The physical episodes include moved bedding, displaced books, twisted or knotted objects and bells removed from storage. Perrault says the bells could be heard without being seen, including during a journey with companions. These claims belong to the account’s expanding scope; no surviving bells or measurements were established in the material consulted. He also claimed the disturbances stopped during prayer and resumed afterwards, interpreting that pattern as a limit imposed upon the supposed spirit.
The speaking phase reportedly ended on 25 November. The household disturbances continued longer. During the last ten or twelve days, stones were said to be thrown about the house. Tornus allegedly marked one with charcoal, threw it away and recognised it when it returned. The account adds that it felt hot. There is no preserved temperature measurement or independently documented chain of custody for the stone in the sources reviewed.
Perrault places the final departure on 22 December. The next day, neighbours caught a large viper coming from the house and displayed it as the departing devil. His own text says an apothecary found it to be an ordinary, natural viper. That identification explains what the displayed animal was. It does not explain the earlier alleged voice or movements, and it should not be stretched into a conclusion that an animal produced the whole episode.
Endorsements and additions
Boyle’s prefatory letter says that meeting the author and making inquiries overcame his initial reluctance to credit such a strange narrative. It is valuable evidence of Boyle’s judgement and involvement in the book’s circulation. It is not evidence that he attended the events of 1612. The translator’s dedication likewise places the publication within a religious argument against unbelief, making its persuasive purpose explicit.
Du Moulin added an appendix containing two further stories conveyed through his father. One concerns an apparent rebuke of a minister’s earlier conduct; another describes a lawyer allegedly being spun and thrown down after questioning the speaker. These passages have a different reporting route from Perrault’s first-person household narrative. George Sinclair’s later collection, Satan’s Invisible World Discovered, retold the Mâcon story together with appendix material. Its compression can obscure those original divisions. Reading the 1658 volume makes it possible to keep author, translator, endorser and later compiler distinct.
Assessment and location
The outcome is Insufficient evidence. A substantial early account survives, but it is a religiously interpreted narrative published long after the reported events, containing a mixture of personal recollection, reported testimony and later editorial additions. The independent original records needed to test its strongest assertions have not been established here. Boyle’s confidence, a notary’s reported involvement and the eventual cessation of disturbances do not establish their cause.
The map uses a broad Mâcon town reference, approximately 46.3067, 4.8319, rather than an alleged haunted house or a position inferred from the narrative’s references to the town wall and river. The coordinate source is the linked Commons city record. No private building is identified as the minister’s home or presented as open for investigation.
Sources and further reading
George Sinclair, Satan’s Invisible World Discovered, sectionXXXI: Of the Devil of Mascon in France
PRDL: François Perrault bibliography and earlier French editions