When Victor Hugo arrived in Guernsey in 1855 he rented at first, then looked for a house to buy. Number 38 Hauteville, high above the harbour with a view to the other islands, had been empty for some years. Local talk said a woman had taken her own life there and still walked it. The sources that record this do not say whether the reputation lowered the price, and later writers disagree, so this record makes no claim about it.
Hugo spent the next years remaking the house from cellar to roof into a strange, dark interior of carved wood, tapestries and mottoes, with a glass lookout at the top where he wrote standing up. The interior itself has struck many visitors as uncanny, and one TripAdvisor reviewer called it "nearly haunted". None of this amounts to a modern haunting report. No published source used here describes the woman's ghost being seen after Hugo moved in.
The séances are a separate matter. In Jersey, from September 1853, Hugo's household held regular table-turning sessions at Marine Terrace, recording long conversations with spirits they believed included Shakespeare and Hugo's drowned daughter Léopoldine. They went on for about two and a half years, until Hugo left Jersey in 1855. Those sessions belong on the Jersey map. In Guernsey, Hugo's supernatural interests showed up instead in "Les Travailleurs de la Mer" (1866), with its Pleinmont "haunted house". Hauteville House is owned by the City of Paris and is open to visitors in season.
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