The Catacombs of Paris, Or What Lurks Beneath The City Of Lights
Hundreds of feet below the streets of Paris, thousands of former Parisians linger and give sightseers a visceral history of their former city—their bones line the rooms and passageways.
Centuries of Christian burials had left Parisian cemeteries overflowing with bodies and by the mid-17th century, conditions around the much-sought-after Saints-Innocence cemetery were unlivable. The government stepped in, exhumed the remains and transported them across the city to the city’s abandoned passageways at the befitting but now defunct Barrièrre d’Enfer (Barrier of Hell) city gate. Moving under the cover of darkness, carts of bones accompanied bishops sanctifying the path to their final resting place.
The catacombs now sits smack dab in Paris, with a delicious crêpe stand out the entrance and a sassy, if somewhat overbearing, woman running the counter.
Descending down a winding stairwell, we emerged into three square rooms depicting the history of the catacombs. Bypassing the pictures and explanations, we headed for what we thought would be the far more interesting tombs, but to reach them we first had to trudge through a long dank tunnel cut through the bedrock. The floor was slick with water trickling from the low roof and a single dim bulb illuminated our path every 30 feet. The ever present darkness pressed down around us between bulbs and we felt unnerved, especially since the tunnel never seemed to end.
We thought things couldn’t get worse. We were wrong.
Passing through an archway warning us, “arrête, c’est ici l’empire de la Morte” (stop, this is the empire of Death) and we soon found out why.
The walls were made of human bones, femurs stacked one atop the other and “decorated” with skulls, carvings and signs lamenting mortality.
“Death, Our Lady. Where is she?
Past, future, she is everywhere.
Always in the present she lives.”
The ceiling was oppressive, bearing down on our heads, we often had to stoop our way around pools of water collecting on the floor from the constant drippings from the ceiling. Periodically, the walls gave way to relief carvings done by the miners, a single deep well, dubbed the “Dead Water,” and gated passageways protecting us from the inky darkness that lurked behind their bars.
Tales abound of visitors who see ghostly forms and experience otherworldly happenings. Our own brush with the occult occurred toward the end of our trek through the dim halls of the dead. Sto
pping to take a picture of the vaulted arches stretching overhead the final leg of th
e tour, we discovered a ghostly haze overlaying our smiling faces. Subsequent photos and a quick inspection found a very earthly source; the change in temperature between entrance and exit had caused the lens to fog up. A quick swipe of the glove and we swept away the supernatural presence of the dead and erupted into a bright and sunny Parisian street a block away from where we began.
