Inside Paris' terrifying 120-mile maze of catacombs littered with 6 million bodies… and some explorers NEVER come out

12/24/2024 05:44 AM

UNDERNEATH the bustling city of Paris lies a maze of abandoned catacombs that are as eerie as they are endless.

The Sun has spoken to those who have witnessed the over six million bodies lying in the depths for themselves.

Their stories included the inescapable claustrophobia they felt, the overwhelming existential terror, and how one explorer wasn’t far away from not making it back out.

One of the daring adventurers told The Sun how they got lost for an hour in the endless murky maze.

More than 200km of tunnels interlink under southern Paris despite numerous collapses and manmade blockades.

Two major networks interlink, providing a playground for daring explorers stretching from Montparnasse to Porte d'Orléans and beyond.

The catacombs are home to a mysterious yet grisly history, involving death, disease and decay, and have also inspired a wave of morbid curiosity.

A DARK HISTORY

The first-ever scientific study of the area undertaken has unearthed an estimated 5 to 6 ­million people.

It is thought that their bones were dumped down quarry shafts at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th.

Phillipe Charlier, who led the project, spoke of how the space was turned into a burial ground when there was no other option left for the city.

Phillipe said: "Our research is looking at 1,000 years of the history of public health in Paris and its suburbs, of the medicine and surgery people underwent and the illnesses they suffered.

"The story goes people would be drinking, eating or dancing in a ­cellar tavern or cabaret when a wall would collapse and decomposing bodies fall in on them. Just ­imagine the scene.

"It was then the authorities realised it was no longer possible for Paris cemeteries to absorb the number of dead being buried.

“They decided the miasma was dangerous for public health so a commission was set up to decide what to do with the bodies.

"The official justification was ­public health, but I suspect that with ­demographic pressure in Paris there was a real financial and ­economic interest in recovering the land for property.

"They were just dropped down the disused quarry shafts that had served to bring up the stone used to build Paris and left piled up where they fell.”

The only known case of a death down in the catacombs dates back to 1793.

Philibert Aspairt was a gatekeeper who heard there was a stash of liquor under a convent and was found 11 years later.

EXPLORING THE DEPTHS

Despite their ghostly past, it hasn’t stopped people from exploring the catacombs for themselves.

Parts of them are open to tourists, and a lot of frightening footage has shown just how disturbing the trip was.

Terrifying video has shown the twisty corridors and pitch-black darkness of the tunnels, with skulls lining the walls.

People who have filmed down there can be seen running scared down the winding paths, and mistaking simple lights for monsters.

One phenomenon to emerge from the caves is the “cataphile” movement – a group of explorers who go off the set track and explore them on their own.

The possibility coming back to the surface and being confronted by a sealed and inaccessible trapdoor back to the road is a real one.

This demands the cataphile possess an extensive knowledge of the hundreds of kilometres of networks and the different access points.

This act is also illegal, which creates an even bigger risk for those who like to wander down there.

They scrutinise from above and below ground the manhole covers which are opened by official and non-official means and once this information is confirmed, the entrance is sealed.

The different reasons for being a self-professed cataphile are as varied as the people who choose to take on the title.

Some have said it gives them a break from the business of the street, and some point to the sense of community it gives them.

URBAN LEGENDS

The perceived terror of Les Catacombes has sparked many popular internet theories, most of which involve someone disappearing down there for several years or never being found again.

This fear has even inspired a movie, As Above So Below.

The legend goes that in the early 1990s, a group of cataphiles walking through the dark chambers of the ossuary found a video camera on the ground.

The camera still had footage on it with disturbing noises.

From the video, they could tell the man holding the camera was lost and had no idea how to escape.

The more they watched the more it became clear: the man was going mad in the underground network of tunnels.

The video ends abruptly with the man dropping his camera to the ground. To this day, no one knows who he was or if he ever managed to get out alive.

Another involves what happens at midnight if you are still down there.

According to this legend, that's when the walls begin to speak.

It is said that disembodied voices will try to persuade you to venture ever deeper into the catacombs until you can't find your way out again.

A SURREAL VISIT

Diana Urban is an author who wrote Under the Surface based on her experiences of visiting the haunting tunnels.

She told The Sun that her experience visiting was surreal as she saw the millions of skeletal remains.

Diana said: "Experiencing it in real life is nothing like seeing pictures on the internet.

"You can feel the existential weight of it, of knowing each of those skulls—literally hundreds filling your vision at once—belonged to a living, breathing, person just like you, with their own thoughts, dreams, loves, pain, and everything in between.

“There's also a jarring anonymity of them all piled together, whether they were a revolutionary or noble or peasant; you realize that no matter how powerful or meek, rich or poor, gratified or depressed, we all meet the same end.

“You tend to think of Paris as this glittering, glamorous metropolis of light and romance, but underneath much of the city is a dark labyrinth with six million skeletal remains.

“Experiencing that juxtaposition for yourself is both thrilling and haunting.”

The author said that it didn’t take long for her to become inspired by the location.

She continued: “I got the idea for Under the Surface right then.

“I thought it would make for a terrifying story if someone in modern times got lost in that pitch-black maze with only a flashlight, its battery like a ticking timer.

“I also thought it'd make for a heart-wrenching romance if a couple falling in love gets torn apart when she gets lost in the catacombs and he's aboveground racing to find her without a clue where she went.

“I wanted to convey the awe of the magnitude of seeing all those skulls crammed in together, combined with fear, claustrophobia, and panic—elements that make for a page-turning thriller.”

Diana thinks readers respond to the thrilling nature of the location.

Diana commented: “Many readers have told me they read the book in one sitting because they felt trapped in the catacombs alongside the characters and had to know immediately if they make it out alive, otherwise they'd lose sleep over it.”