The Poitiers Affair: A Harrowing True Crime Story

It was the end of May 1901. Reporters from all over France descended on the small city of Poitiers.
After receiving an anonymous tip, police discovered a 52-year-old woman, emaciated, completely naked, making strange noises and uttering incomprehensible words and phrases, in a dark room with the window shutters nailed and locked shut, a room that happened to be in the very proper mansion of the widow of a former dean of the university's prestigious Faculté des Lettres.
The woman was her daugh...