To meet Patricia Darré is to realize very quickly that we will not be able to place one. At least the first hour. Like a tornado, she tumbles into the summer furnace, dragging a large suitcase behind her: “I’m just popping over to Paris for the evening, tomorrow I’m going to Belgium for a series of conferences.” Tall, slender, slightly rock’n’roll lady, short jet-black hair, huge hazel eyes that devour you. A radiant smile. Lots of seduction. She laughs, gets carried away, jumps from one story to another. A submachine gun flow, a sip of water, a gulp of air and it starts again. And here we are talking about these “entities” who address her without warning. They invade it, pursue it, even, for months. It can be very sticky entities. Among them, anonymous people – a local squire, a Nazi officer, a peasant from the Middle Ages – and then also big names: Joan of Arc, Gilles de Rais [NDLR : tueur en série du XVe siècle], Napoleon… The latest: Jacques de Molay, the last Grand Master of the Temple, burned alive at the stake at the tip of the Ile de la Cité in Paris, on March 18, 1314. Many men-at-arms. Patricia Darré loves the military. Or, rather, they are the ones who love him, no doubt the result of “vibrational compatibility”. Of course, we are left speechless.
Me, my daily life is rather interviews with the top names from Bercy, the bosses of the CAC or the feathered economists… So Napoleon! Yes, but I am not a medium. Patricia Darré, yes. The star of mediums, even. If she touches on the invisible, the reality of her publishing success is very concrete. Since 2013, she has authored around ten books: A breath towards eternity, sold according to Edistat to nearly 260,000 copies (paperback and large format included), or even The lights of the invisible (140,000 copies). The latest, The Templar told me, released in October 2022, has already sold nearly 40,000 units. Its publishing house, Michel Lafon, claims nearly 850,000 books sold in a decade. Enough to make other publishers jealous, who have made Patricia Darré golden bridges so that she joins them.
The miracle recipe is always the same: a base of French history with real and very documented facts, a good dose of magic and the supernatural and an iconic character who has died for ages – the real hero of the book – who delivers his little ones secrets, obviously unverifiable. Napoleon assures us that it is not he who rests under the dome of the Invalides. As for Joan of Arc, she is formal: she did not die at the stake in Rouen.
Talking to the dead, it fell on him like that, says the medium. Kind of like catching a bad flu. Host at Radio France Berry Sud in Châteauroux, Cartesian, a communist father not really connected to the mysteries of the afterlife and holy water. And then one night in September 1995, an inner voice wakes her up and urges her to get up and write.
“The others hate me. Anyway, many are charlatans”
Favorite of writers
Patricia Darré is clever. From the outset, she imagines my somewhat mocking thoughts that her words arouse. And anticipate my questions. “Yes, of course, I thought I was going crazy, I even consulted a psychiatrist before realizing it and accepting this gift. But it took time. I was laughed at a lot .” Over the years, it has become the darling of intellectuals and Parisian writers who pride themselves on esotericism. The Goncourt Didier van Cauwelaert is inspired by his life, Bernard Werber uses him as a “secret archivist”. And Katherine Pancol is the crane foot in her beautiful bourgeois house in Villedieu-sur-Indre, about fifteen kilometers from Châteauroux. None of them wanted to answer our questions. No time. “Me, all this showbiz, it’s over. What interests me is working with scientists,” she says. Her friend, the doctor and psychotherapist Catherine Dolto advised her not to talk to us. And a renowned archaeologist, researcher at the National Institute for Archaeological Research and who prefers to remain anonymous, confesses to validating some of his intuitions with her by bringing her skulls or burial bones: “As to the sex of the person, she often wrong, but on everything else, sometimes it sticks”.
And then there are all those with whom she intervenes to drive the ghosts out of their homes. “Haunted houses are my favorite thing to do in life.” Each time for free. Patricia Darré breaks the market. And that, in the profession, we do not forgive him. The author and founder of the Institute for Research on Extraordinary Experiences Stéphane Allix no longer speaks to him. “The others hate me. Many of them are charlatans anyway. This mode of personal development, well-being, therapies of all kinds and reiki is extremely dangerous.” Clever. She prefers to cling to sacred geometry, alchemy, the transmutation of matter… “Feeling without knowledge makes no sense. And knowledge without feeling is dogma”, asserts- she.
TV series heroine
At the beginning of June, at the Domaine de la Pierre Ronde, in the Morvan, a sort of vacation center for tired urbanites who follow elven massages, she gave a conference. As a preamble, she confides that she was woken up the previous night by funny little beings with weird heads. Elves? Maybe. And why not hobbits, straight out of the brain of Tolkien, the author of the saga of Lord of the Rings. Great stories, then. Precisely, Patricia Darré could well become a fictional character. A TV series heroine. The production company la Belle Télé has acquired the rights to his first three books. “Patricia is an extraordinary character. The ‘girl next door’ who, one day, discovers superpowers, and does good around her. A very French heroine, not Parisian for a penny”, describes Sébastien Folin, the founder of Belle Télé. Better than a Marvel superhero with his tight leotard and ridiculous cape. The script for the first episodes is ready and the producers are already touring streaming platforms and distribution companies. After all, the French are very passionate about the series HPI and the slightly wacky stories of Morgane Alvaro, endowed with an exceptional IQ, played by Audrey Fleurot. They could well crack on the medium, ghost hunter. She herself is already writing the rest of the Templar.