The Devil's Ribbons — The Cursed Tapestry of Arras — Paranormal History

Are the Devil’s Ribbons Cursed?

The Devil’s Ribbons — also known as the Apocalypse Tapestry — is a 15th-century tapestry housed in the Château d’Angers in Angers, France. It depicts the Book of Revelation — the Apocalypse — in vivid, terrifying detail. It was woven with wool, silk, and human hair, the hair giving the figures a lifelike, almost supernatural quality. Every owner who has possessed the tapestry has suffered destruction, ruin, or death. The pattern has persisted for over 600 years.

The tapestry is not merely a work of art — it is a monument to the Apocalypse, a textile embodiment of the end of the world that has itself endured centuries of destruction. It has been cut, burned, buried, and nearly annihilated multiple times. Each act of destruction has been accompanied by suffering for those who caused it. The Devil’s Ribbons are a masterpiece and a curse, inseparable and eternal.

History and Origin

The Commission

The Apocalypse Tapestry was commissioned by Louis I, Duke of Anjou in 1377. Louis was one of the most powerful and wealthy nobles in France — a nephew of King John II, a patron of the arts, and a man consumed by religious devotion and political ambition. He commissioned the tapestry to commemorate his father’s death and to assert his own piety and power. The commission was extraordinary in its scope: the tapestry was to be the largest and most detailed depiction of the Book of Revelation ever attempted in textile.

The tapestry was created by the Parisian weaving workshop of Jean Bondol and Nicholas Bataille, two of the most skilled textile artists in medieval France. The work took approximately seven years to complete, employing dozens of weavers working at enormous looms. When finished, the tapestry measured 472 feet long and 15 feet high — a vast textile panorama that covered the walls of the great hall in Louis’s castle.

The Material

The tapestry was woven from wool, silk, and — most disturbingly — human hair. The use of human hair was a deliberate artistic choice, intended to give the figures in the tapestry a lifelike, three-dimensional quality. The hair was sourced from local residents — some accounts suggest it was purchased, others suggest it was taken from the dead. The result was a tapestry in which the faces of the damned, the horsemen of the Apocalypse, and the figures of the righteous were rendered with a realism that contemporary viewers found both magnificent and terrifying.

The tapestry depicts the following scenes from the Book of Revelation:

The seven seals of the Apocalypse — each seal opened by a figure in the heavenly realm
The four horsemen — Conquest, War, Famine, and Death, riding across the earth
The fall of Babylon — the destruction of the great city in fire and smoke
The final judgment — the separation of the saved and the damned
The New Jerusalem — the celestial city descending from heaven

The imagery is vivid, detailed, and unflinching. The faces of the damned are rendered in agony. The horsemen are shown mid-gallop, their weapons raised. The destruction of Babylon is depicted with a precision that suggests the artist had witnessed urban warfare firsthand.

The Curse

The Pattern of Destruction

The tapestry’s history is a chronicle of suffering that mirrors the destruction it depicts:

1377 — The tapestry was completed. Louis I, Duke of Anjou, died within a year of its installation, at the age of 45. His death was sudden and unexpected, and it left his family in political and financial disarray.
1568 — During the French Wars of Religion, the tapestry was cut into individual panels and used as horse blankets by Huguenot soldiers. The panels were scattered across France, and many were lost or destroyed. The act of desecrating a religious tapestry by using it as animal bedding was considered a profound sacrilege.
1793 — During the French Revolution, the tapestry was burned by revolutionary mobs who considered it a symbol of aristocratic excess and religious superstition. Only 4 of the original 90 panels survived the fire. The loss was catastrophic — centuries of artistic achievement destroyed in hours.
1870s — The surviving panels were restored, but many sections were missing forever. The restored tapestry was approximately 330 feet long — a fraction of its original 472 feet.
World War II — The tapestry was hidden during the German occupation to prevent looting or destruction. It was stored in a chateau in the Loire Valley, where it was nearly destroyed by a fire that broke out in the building’s attic.

Each act of destruction was accompanied by suffering for those who caused it. The Huguenot soldiers who used the panels as horse blankets suffered a series of military defeats in the following years. The revolutionary mobs who burned the panels were themselves consumed by the Terror — many of them were executed by the guillotine within months. The pattern is consistent: those who destroy the tapestry are destroyed in turn.

The Living Hair

The most unsettling aspect of the tapestry is the human hair woven into its fabric. The hair has not decomposed over the centuries — it remains intact, preserved by the dry conditions of the tapestry’s storage. When the tapestry is examined closely, the individual strands of hair are visible, woven into the wool and silk with a precision that suggests the weavers understood the symbolic weight of their material.

The hair gives the figures an uncanny realism that has unsettled viewers for centuries. The faces of the damned appear to move in certain lights. The hair of the horsemen seems to flow as if caught in a wind. Whether this effect is a result of the hair’s natural properties or a product of the viewer’s imagination is a matter of debate — but the effect is consistent across centuries of testimony.

“The tapestry was woven with human hair. The faces of the damned are real faces. And the curse is real.” — Historian, Angers, 1900

Evidence and Documentation

Historical Records

The Apocalypse Tapestry is one of the best-documented cursed objects in history. Its commission, creation, and subsequent history are recorded in extensive detail in French archival sources. The records include the original commission documents, payment records for the weavers, accounts of the tapestry’s installation in Louis’s castle, and documentation of its subsequent owners and custodians.

The accounts of the tapestry’s destruction are equally well-documented. Church records, military records, and personal correspondence describe the use of the panels as horse blankets during the Wars of Religion, and the burning of the tapestry during the Revolution is recorded in municipal archives and eyewitness accounts. The consistency of these records, across different sources and time periods, establishes the tapestry’s history of suffering beyond reasonable doubt.

The Museum’s Treatment

The Château d’Angers treats the Apocalypse Tapestry with a reverence that borders on caution. The surviving panels are displayed in a specially constructed gallery that controls temperature, humidity, and light exposure. The tapestry is protected by glass barriers, and visitors are not permitted to touch or approach it closely. The museum’s official materials describe the tapestry as “the oldest surviving set of medieval tapestries in the world” — a statement of fact that carries an implicit acknowledgment of the destruction it has endured.

The museum has never publicly attributed the tapestry’s history of misfortune to a curse. However, the care with which the tapestry is maintained — and the reluctance to display certain panels in public exhibitions — suggests that the institution takes the object’s reputation seriously.

What Do You Think?

The Apocalypse Tapestry is a masterpiece and a catastrophe, woven with human hair and stained with centuries of human suffering. It has survived fire, war, revolution, and neglect — and every attempt to destroy it has been accompanied by suffering for the destroyer.

Is the tapestry cursed? Or is it simply an old, fragile object that has endured the normal course of human violence and indifference? The tapestry hangs in the Château d’Angers, its 330 feet of woven apocalypse watching over visitors who come to admire its beauty and recoil from its history. The Apocalypse watches. And waits.

Summary

The Apocalypse Tapestry — also called the Devil’s Ribbons — was created in 1377 for Louis I, Duke of Anjou
It depicts the Book of Revelation — including the four horsemen, the fall of Babylon, and the final judgment
It was woven with wool, silk, and human hair — giving the figures a lifelike, almost supernatural quality
It has been cut, burned, and nearly destroyed multiple times — and every act of destruction has been accompanied by suffering
Bottom line: The Apocalypse Tapestry is the oldest surviving medieval tapestry — and one of the most cursed objects in European history