A French woman embarked on a day trip to northern Italy for what appears to have been a ghost-hunting trip. She never made it home.The body of the unnamed woman, 22, was found over the weekend in an abandoned church where she had been stabbed to death and drained of blood, according to a CNN report.Now investigators are trying to figure out if she was TikToker who was part of a ghost-hunting stunt or if her death was something more sinister, such as a consented sacrificial death.The woman had traveled from her hometown near Lyon, France, to La Salle in Aosta Valley, Italy, and had informed her family of plans to find a “haunted house believed to contain ghosts,” police told the outlet.The journey to the Italian town is estimated to take just over one hour from Lyon when driving, according to a Google Maps estimate.Witnesses in the town interviewed by police said they had noticed the woman was accompanied by a man hours before her death. Both had been dressed up as vampires, CNN reported.One witness described the woman as “emaciated” and looked like a “walking corpse,” while the man was described as having dark hair and olive skin, the outlet added.
A camping knife had been used to stab the woman, causing her to bleed to death, the report said. She also had two gunshot wounds on her neck and one on her abdomen, which police told CNN may have been inflicted after she was already dead.There was no sign of a struggle, CNN reported, though police noted that some of the blood from the floor had been removed when they arrived to inspect the scene. Police are still searching for the man who was with her, the outlet added.One theory that investigators are considering is that the woman’s death was a result of a “consented murder” or a sacrifice, the publication said.The woman also may have been taking part in a ghost-hunting challenge that’s popular among TikTok users in France, police told CNN.Though the details of this particular challenge were not shared in the CNN article, it’s worth noting that “ghost hunting” is a popular search term on TikTok.The US in particular has seen a rise in “haunted tourism” in recent years, as historic buildings cash in on the ghost-hunting phenomenon, according to a 2021 Bloomberg article.While the role of a TikTok stunt in the death has not yet been established, the platform has long been criticized for putting people in real-life danger.For instance, TikTok faced mass criticism in 2020 for promoting the “randonauting” challenge which encouraged users to download a separate app that would use their location to take them on adventures. One group who participated discovered a suitcase with human remains, Good To Know reported at the time. Then, in 2022, the “blackout challenge” resulted in the deaths of multiple users who attempted to choke themselves into unconsciousness.At the time, a TikTok spokesperson told The Washington Post that the “disturbing ‘challenge,’ which people seem to learn about from sources other than TikTok, long predates our platform and has never been a TikTok trend.”Representatives for TikTok, the town of La Salle, and local police did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
