Before we get into the secret world of these
mysterious tunnels under the city of Paris, we should probably explain to those who don’t
know what the catacombs actually are. And before you get carried away with your
imagination, these are not as has been depicted in cinema, with hordes of ravenous zombies
living down there. According to “Les Catacombes Des Paris”
website, the reason these holes in the ground got started was because in the 18th century
Paris had a major problem on its hands. The issue was the fact the cemeteries were
too full and a place was needed to put a lot of dead bodies, and we are talking about millions. Stuck with this morbid task the Parisian authorities
chose a site called the Tombe-Issoire quarries. Those quarries were no longer in use, having
been dug in the 15th century and onwards but abandoned some time later. These underground tunnels stretched for 800
hectares (over 3 square miles) under the city of Paris. The job at hand was called “bone transfer”
and the man responsible for emptying the cemeteries and moving the remains of once-moving/laughing/eating/procreating
and dying Parisians was a guy called Charles Axel Guillaumot. With his department, he started the moving-house
process in 1785 and the excavation of bones was done from the biggest cemetery in Paris
at the time, called the Saints-Innocents cemetery. It had been closed 5 years prior as there
was literally no space for anymore dead people. It had been taking corpses by that time for
10 centuries, which is a lot of bones. A no room at the dead man’s inn scenario
was not just a French problem. If you read Bill Bryson’s book “At Home:
A Short History of Private Life” you can read that France’s neighbor, Great Britain,
was having its own problems with getting rid of the dead. Back to France, and this operation of bone
transfer was done under a cloak of darkness lest people get offended by someone manhandling
their deceased family member’s bits and pieces. The bones were taken down to the quarries
and put into what are called galleries. Work stopped for a while and upstairs some
of the French were busy revolting and quite a lot were dying, making the burial situation
even worse. Following the revolution work commenced and
smaller cemeteries around Paris had their bones taken from them. While the site was officially called the “Paris
Municipal Ossuary” it began to take on mythical proportions and was informally called the
catacombs, after the tunnels under the ancient city of Rome. So there we have it, an abridged version at
least. Paris needed a place for bones because the
cemeteries were bursting at the seams, and that’s why those underground tunnels were
made. As you can imagine, such a place was kind
of spooky for the French, and back then people weren’t always opposed to stories of the
dead rising and other superstitious beliefs. If you get spooked by graveyards now, imagine
what the average Parisian thought back then of a place where millions of the dead were
buried, not all with content souls. In fact, it’s said the catacombs hold around
7 million people. You might even call it “The City of the
Dead”, so it’s no wonder that filmmakers have chosen it as a spot for horror flicks. Next time you’re in Paris you should take
your Ouija board down there, but remember not to say, “Is there anybody here?” because
the spirits probably won’t understand you. Instead say, “Y a-t-il quelqu'un ici ?” It might have been scary, but after 1809 when
the place was opened to the public it attracted a lot of visitors from France and abroad. It got even more visitors when well-known
people were sent to live for eternity down there, including the once President of France
Napoleon III – related to the bellicose Napoleon you all know well. At times the hordes of visitors got too much
for the authorities and they limited entrance or just closed the place to the public for
months on end. These days you can go down there any time
of the year and it’s said annually about 550,000 people do just that. Ok, so that’s the history, but what about
the mystery and intrigue. Well, one would think that an underground
place of that size would have an underground society. That it did, and we are told on August 23,
2004, cops went down there and had quite the surprise, finding a cinema. We must mention here that some parts of the
catacombs are closed off from the public, but it seems some people get past the barriers. This is what Gizmodo tells us about this discovery,
“They found 3,000 square feet of subterranean galleries, strung with lights, wired for phones,
live with pirated electricity. The officers uncovered a bar, lounge, workshop,
dining corner and small screening area.” When they found a metal container with fat
and wires in it they thought they’d come across a bomb and that something very ominous
was going on down in those holes, but the bomb squad said what they found was merely
a cous-cous maker. Who were these people? The cops didn’t know, and when they returned
a few days later with more authorities they found most of the equipment gone and a letter
left for them reading, “Ne cherchez pas,” meaning “Don’t search.” That kind of message obviously caused a frisson
of panic in the police as saying don’t search was what someone with bad intent might say. Soon the world’s media was speculating. Was there an underground movement in Paris-
it wouldn’t be the first time Parisians had machinated to attack the powers that be. This was serious, given that many of the closed
tunnels could be home to anything, and there are supposed to be about 155 miles (250km)
of passageways in total. But nothing sinister was going on, and later
a group responsible for the underground cinema said, “We are the counterpoint to an era
where everything is slow and complicated.” It was discovered the group called themselves
“The Mexican Consolidated Drilling Authority.” That’s the English translation. This was a serious outfit, given they’d
stolen electricity to power their cinema and got all that stuff down there without anyone
seeing. But others have been fascinated by the catacombs
for years, and these folks are often called “cataphiles”. Who wouldn’t be fascinated by a place where
the Phantom of the Opera hid and where millions of dead rest? But many real-life things happened down there
that have caused people to be intrigued. A group known as the Communards (not the 80s
British pop duo) killed a bunch of French monarchists in the tunnels. The French Resistance hid in them, while the
Nazis had a bunker down in the catacombs. More recently AirBnB paid a whopping $300,000
to rent some part of the tunnels for the night. What’s more interesting, especially to cataphiles,
is that there are many, many secret entrances to the catacombs. You might find a doorway to this underground
world of the dead in bar cellars, subway tunnels, and better still, in church crypts. Not surprisingly, sometimes these doors get
found and people go down there to explore. And let’s face it, you’re not a teenager
if you don’t enjoy exploring places you probably shouldn’t go. Well, perhaps modern teens do most of their
exploration in the digital realm and in games, but in the past the best thing about being
young was sneaking into places and quite often getting in trouble. Could there be any place in the world better
to sneak into for a bunch of teens than the Paris catacombs? Well, that happened in 2017 but as you might
expect, it didn’t go too well for the itinerant teens. Two boys aged 16 and 17 got lost down there
with the dead and were only eventually pulled out three days later both with a case of mild
hypothermia. Three days under the ground in the cold walking
around tunnels with no food and mostly in darkness takes sneaking into places to another
level. Still, they have a better story to tell than,
“I completed level 5.” Hmm, ok, so it might just be a little irresponsible
of us to promote this kind of adventure. We say this because someone died down there
in 2016. The person didn’t die from cold or being
lost, though, he died of a heart attack when he was partying hard down there. One thing you should know about the catacombs,
they have been a top spot for Parisian people who like to party. You could call these events the quintessential
underground party. The French media says a bunch of people took
some music down, along with a lot of booze and some substances not legal in the living
world. Things turned awry when a 45-year old man’s
heart had seen too much partying. There are other reports of people going missing
down there. In 2011, five people went down drunk but it
was a prank, and two ran away to leave the others. But they didn’t get out and spent two days
wandering around. In other cases, artists have gone to make
films and take pictures, some of them even with an erotic angle. One of the people who controls how many people
go down there says every week people ask him if they can visit and do something weird or
wonderful. “Obviously, we say no. This is a sacred place, which houses the remains
of six million Parisians. We only allow serious or scientific documentaries,”
he said to the French media. He says there is a growing problem with what
are called naked explorers, and many of them apparently come all the way from the USA. We are told that the modus operandi often
is for the people to go down there and pretend they are just tourists, but they then leave
lots of equipment and return later. But for the locals, there is still what you
might call an underground cult that visit the catacombs and discuss art, the end of
the world, or just take a swim where pools of water can be found. Free from the hustle and bustle of Parisian
streets and the pretension of café culture, some French folks just like to get down with
the dead and leave the rest of the world behind. But as you might expect, such a good hiding
place is also attractive to those people inclined to criminality. In 2017 there was a case which involved some
thieves drilling through walls to get to some rather special vintage wine that was secretly
kept underground. That wine was said to be worth over $280,000. That’s not a bad score for a place that
usually just keeps a bunch of old bones and dusty skulls. Would you go down in those catacombs? Do you think you’d be up for being a cataphile? Also, be sure to check out our other video
American Things Europeans Find Weird. Thanks for watching, and as always, don’t
forget to like, share and subscribe. See you next time.
