The Rodin Museum plans an after-hours night around The Gates of Hell on October 31, while the Hotel de la Marine hides playful spirits in its state rooms, making Paris the busiest city in Europe for the recently deceased
Ghosts With Excellent Taste
PARIS. Paris museums are offering a busy programme for Halloween, according to Sortiraparis’s guide to offbeat outings in Paris in October 2026. On Saturday, October 31, the Rodin Museum hosts an after-hours seance night themed around The Gates of Hell, the sculptor’s monumental work inspired by Dante. The same night, the Hotel de la Marine on the Place de la Concorde hides playful spirits in its state rooms for a ghost hunt, with tickets required. Further afield, the Chateau de Breteuil offers storytelling, workshops, a haunted night and murder parties from October 17 to November 1.
The result is that on October 31, Paris will host what may be the highest concentration of ghosts per square metre in Europe, almost all of them in buildings of exceptional architectural merit.
The Gates Of Hell
The Gates of Hell, which Rodin worked on for decades, includes many of his most famous figures, including the one that became The Thinker. Holding a seance night beside it is, observers agree, an inspired choice. An art historian specialising in Rodin explained. Rodin spent much of his life thinking about hell, she said. Now visitors can spend an evening there with a glass of wine. It is the most civilised version of damnation ever offered.
A visitor who attended a previous evening event at the museum said The Thinker had always looked troubled. Now I understand, he said. He has been sitting there for more than a century, thinking about the gates of hell. Of course he looks worried. Anyone would. I would have gone to get a coffee.
Spirits At The Hotel de la Marine
The Hotel de la Marine, an eighteenth-century building that once housed the royal furniture store and later the French navy, reopened to the public after a major restoration and now displays its lavish state apartments. Its ghost hunt places spirits among the gilded salons, chandeliers and silk wall coverings. A guide who has worked in the building said any ghost would be lucky to live there. If I were a ghost, she said, I would haunt this place. Good views of the Concorde, beautiful furniture, very quiet at night. Better than most apartments in Paris. And no rent.
The Ghosts’ Working Conditions
With so many events scheduled on the same night, Parisian spirits face a heavy workload. A union representative for museum staff, speaking with a smile, suggested the ghosts deserved better conditions. They work only one night a year, he said, but it is a very intense night. Rodin, the Marine, Breteuil, Saint-Denis. Some ghosts are probably working three venues at once. In France, that is not acceptable. They should be paid overtime, in candles.
A French Halloween
Although Halloween is not a traditional French holiday, the days around it carry deep meaning in France, with All Saints’ Day on November 1, when families visit cemeteries and lay chrysanthemums on graves. The playful Halloween events in museums and chateaux sit alongside this more solemn tradition, giving Parisians a chance to laugh at the supernatural before honouring their dead the next day.
The Last Word
Late on Halloween night, in the darkened state rooms of the Hotel de la Marine, a small girl dressed as a witch stopped before a gilded mirror. Her father asked if she had found any ghosts. She looked into the mirror for a long moment, then shook her head. No, she said. But I found where the ghosts would live if they were rich. Her father laughed. That, he said, is the most Parisian thing anyone has said all night.