Château du Quesnel, Castle in Le Quesnel, France

Château du Quesnel is a ruined château in Le Quesnel, Somme. Its surviving facade is pale yellow stone with a dark grey slate roof, three storeys marked by horizontal stone bands, and tall rectangular windows with grey-brown louvred shutters. Two brick-red chimney stacks stand at the roof ends, and a central dormer carries a rounded carved stone crest. Ground-floor windows are boarded and shrubs grow against the base.

The knightly Quesnel family held the estate in the 12th century; the Thirty Years' War left it looted and partly burned. After merchant Jean Le-Fort died in 1751, his son Jean Baptiste Le-Fort built the foundation of the present château, then only one storey high. In 1853 Charles Blin de Bourdon altered the facade, added a pavilion and a second floor. Seized and bombed in the First World War, it was restored by viscount Raoul Blin de Bourdon and given to his daughter Odette, countess of Lussac.

The château is also called Château Sécession. According to local accounts, sect members held occult ceremonies in the abandoned building from the mid-20th century, and this was suggested as a possible cause of the December 2018 fire. Shortly before the blaze, Russian video blogger Dima Maslennikov spent a night there and recorded lamps, a recorder and objects behaving oddly.

The grounds remain closed to visitors following the December 2018 fire due to collapse risk. The surroundings can be viewed from outside, but entering the courtyard or buildings is not possible for safety reasons.

A Russian video blogger, Dima Maslennikov, spent a night in the abandoned château shortly before the fire and reported failing spotlights, a malfunctioning recorder and objects that seemed to move; his video appeared on 10 December 2018, and the blaze broke out that same night. Local sectarians were also suspected of occult gatherings there since the mid-20th century.