10/19/2026
Story time! 🤓
This may be our creepiest one yet!!
THE CAGE OF LA CORRIVEAU
Quebec’s most chilling legend.
Quebec, 1763. A woman is hanged, her body locked inside an iron cage and displayed at a busy crossroads. But death would not be the end of her story…
Her name was Marie-Josephte Corriveau. History remembers her as a woman convicted of murdering her second husband, Louis-Étienne Dodier. On April 18, 1763, she was executed under British military rule, and her body was suspended in an iron cage at Pointe-Lévy, across the river from Quebec City.
For weeks, the cage stood exposed to the elements, a grim warning to anyone who passed.
Then history gave way to something far darker. 👁️
Whispers spread through the countryside. Travellers spoke of a terrifying figure appearing after nightfall—a skeletal woman rattling inside her iron prison. Some tales claimed she begged passersby to help her escape. Others described a vengeful spirit wandering the roads, frightening the living and consorting with witches.
As the years passed, the story grew. One murdered husband became several. A condemned woman became a witch. And La Corriveau became one of the most enduring figures in French-Canadian folklore.
But here’s the haunting part: the cage was real.
Rediscovered in the 19th century, the infamous iron structure helped revive the legend. After travelling through museums in the United States, it was identified in Salem, Massachusetts, and eventually returned to Quebec. Today, it is preserved at the Musée de la civilisation.
So where does the truth end and the legend begin?
Was La Corriveau simply a woman condemned for a terrible crime—or did centuries of whispered stories transform her into something far more frightening?
Perhaps the most unsettling part isn’t whether her ghost ever walked the roads of Quebec.
It’s how a real woman’s name became immortalized in a story that refuses to die.
Would you walk past La Corriveau’s cage alone at midnight?
