Samantha: Alright, I've got a question for you.
Lisa: Okay.
Samantha: If a city runs out of room to bury its dead, what do you think that they do with all the bodies?
Lisa: ⁓ I think they'd dig up the old ones and incinerate them to make room for new ones.
Samantha: ⁓ kind of, but not Paris. They just start stacking them. Basically Paris said, we don't have space. Just throw them downstairs like it's leftovers. Toss them into the basement.
Lisa: Great.
Samantha: Like, you know what? Most cities have traffic problems. Paris just stacked theirs.
Lisa: That's fucked up.
Samantha: So like 6 million people just waiting underground, not buried, not honored. They were just arranged like shelves in a warehouse, but with respect. you
Lisa: I don't know what's respectful about that.
Samantha: Well, I guess we will find out. Hi, I'm Samantha.
Lisa: All right. I'm Lisa.
Samantha: and welcome to Exhumed. Tonight we're gonna go underground, not metaphorically, not spiritually, physically. beneath one of the most beautiful cities in the world. But there's another version of it, a darker one, a quieter one. City made of bones.
Lisa: Whenever you're ready. Sorry.
Samantha: Have you ever heard?
Lisa: Okay.
Samantha: My water. Have you ever heard of the Paris Catacombs?
Lisa: I have, I don't know really anything about him.
Samantha: Well, to understand them, we have to imagine Paris in the Middle Ages. it was crowded, ⁓ dirty, with people. And like most medieval cities, the dead were buried inside of the city walls. Like the biggest cemetery in Paris was called the Innocent Cemetery. it's been used for over 500 years. Some say about a thousand years. So like imagine like you realize how small Paris actually is.
Lisa: Yeah, mean compared to America, Paris is part of... ⁓ god, I'm gonna get this wrong. Is it part of the UK? Kinda? Sorta?
Samantha: No, no. I mean, it's part of Europe...ish.
Lisa: Okay, I'm stupid. it's part of Europe. And Europe isn't that is it?
Samantha: ⁓ Europe is made up of a bunch of different countries, Paris is very small. It's a city in France.
Lisa: Yeah.
Samantha: So think about how small Paris actually is. For about 500 to 1,000 years, how crammed the city is to, what are they gonna do with all the dead? Especially from the plague, from wars. Kind of fills up fairly quickly.
Lisa: You don't ever really think about that. know, like making room for the dead.
Samantha: No. Well, by about the 1700s, it was overflowing, literally overflowing. Bodies were stacked in mass graves, sometimes 20 to 30 feet deep. When the pits filled up, workers up the old skeletons and moved the bones into galleries along the cemetery walls. ⁓
Lisa: Along the cemetery walls. What do you mean galleries along the cemetery walls? Like above ground?
Samantha: ⁓ the bones. Yeah. The bones were pretty much preserved in the houses. Often orderly piles. they're like resurrection on judgment day. So when some of the pits filled up, they brought the bones back out thinking that when resurrection comes. ⁓ They would be good. Yeah.
Lisa: They'll have a body. Okay.
Samantha: and this was especially done in churchyards.
Lisa: Okay.
Samantha: So over time, the cemeteries became a huge mound of like decomposing bodies. By the 1700s, the ground had risen several feet from all the burials. walking around a cemetery and it being so uneven and you know that.
Lisa: It's all bones.
Samantha: It's all pe- it's the dead rising a little bit.
Lisa: So there's no caskets, it's just holes with a bunch of bodies in them.
Samantha: Some were, lot of the mass graves were from plagues and wars. And got, a mass can be anywhere from like five bodies to hundreds of bodies. It was a combination between the two. But then of course, it's in the churchyards, they're gonna have some caskets, it all depends. It was a very different era. And there was very little like legal restrictions on how you bury the dead.
Lisa: Yeah. Yeah.
Samantha: only real restrictions were ⁓ of religion the way that the dead entered the ground. Meaning like last rites, a priest being present, words being said.
Lisa: Yeah. Would you say who you were? meant how you were going to be buried.
Samantha: Not necessarily.
Lisa: Okay.
Samantha: the higher status you are, the better that you're going to be buried. but it also didn't have anything to do with that. Yeah. Like kings were buried differently opposed to people with the plague. But I mean, that still goes for now. The president is going to be buried differently than we are.
Lisa: That's what I mean. Okay. Okay. Yeah, I guess you're right.
Samantha: Well, the smell was constant.
Lisa: I can imagine. They weren't buried deep enough.
Samantha: The residents complained about...
Lisa: They weren't deep enough and contained well enough to keep that smell away.
Samantha: Correct.
Lisa: to contain the smell.
Samantha: Well, the residents complained about rotting flesh, contaminated water, disease. Bread in nearby bakeries was said to absorb the smell of decay. A lot of the people had respiratory issues like vomiting and they even had delirium. I mean, it's getting into your body. Of course, you're going to have delirium.
Lisa: Gross. Yeah. Yeah. You don't think about it, but a smell isn't just a smell. You're smelling it because it's bacteria and you're breathing that into your body. So yeah.
Samantha: Mm-hmm. So in 1765, the Parliament of France condemned church burials for almost all the citizens and proclaimed that the burials taking place after January 1st needed to be in new cemeteries outside of the city limits. And that was a huge problem for people of faith who wanted to be buried in churchyards with their family. I mean, it makes sense.
Lisa: Yeah.
Samantha: and then you want to know what happened around 1780? ⁓ of course. What else don't we talk about?
Lisa: Okay. Probably something gross. We like to talk about growth stuff.
Samantha: A basement wall in a house next to a cemetery completely collapsed.
Lisa: ⁓ no. ⁓ no. Can you imagine walking down in your basement and there's like skeletons or decaying bodies coming out of your wall?
Samantha: That is exactly what happened. When inspectors came to investigate, found that gases from the decomposing bodies burst through the cellar walls and risen to the ground floor in least three homes. ⁓
Lisa: What did they do about that?
Samantha: Like a royal ordinance declared the Innocent Cemetery as a threat to the city and they completely closed it down
Lisa: Good, but what did they do about the bodies in the basements?
Samantha: cleaned it up?
Lisa: I would hope so. For some reason I feel like they just filled in the basement.
Samantha: Well, all of that. Yeah, really... considering this episode, really wouldn't be surprised.
Lisa: Yeah.
Samantha: But that moment completely forced the city to realize and admit Paris had a corpse problem.
Lisa: I would say so.
Samantha: Yeah. I'm let Lynx out. You're driving me nuts. Get out. Shadows like good, I don't want them in here anyways. All right, so where do you even put millions of bodies?
Lisa: I would think that a certain amount would have to be burned you recycle the graves. ⁓
Samantha: I'm sure somewhere. But at this point, the graves were constantly being recycled. mean, think about it. They were digging 20 to 30 feet down and stacking people. And that became too much. Yeah.
Lisa: Yeah, but that's just a mass grave. Yeah, but that's just a mass grave. What I'm saying is like nowadays, they'll take someone who's been there for like over a hundred years or something like that. They'll dig it up. Family's gone. Nobody's going to care. They incinerate that body so that they can use that grave for a new body.
Samantha: Well, that's nowadays now talking about like 1780 So let's throw them underground. That was their solution.
Lisa: Okay. Well, they're already throwing them underground.
Samantha: Exactly. Well, for centuries the city had been mining limestone beneath the streets. Like that limestone built the Notre Dame, the Louvre, and most of the city.
Lisa: Mm-hmm.
Samantha: So mining it left behind like millions of empty tunnels. Kind of like a giant underground maze.
Lisa: Okay. I see where you're going.
Samantha: Well, by the 1700s, those tunnels stretched for hundreds of miles. They're thinking probably about like 178 plus miles. But the problem was like no one mapped anything out. And the houses were starting to collapse inside of the inside of the tunnels.
Lisa: the tunnels were going under people's houses and the houses were kind of caving it in and falling in. Okay. ⁓
Samantha: Yep. In 1774, a street called, it's French, Rue des Enfers.
Lisa: Sounds all right.
Samantha: Rude. Yeah. It caved in below. But the translation of that street name is literally Road to Hell.
Lisa: ⁓
Samantha: I think it's very fitting.
Lisa: It is. We're probably going to get a lot of French names wrong. French is a very hard language and I skipped every single day of it in school.
Samantha: So... ⁓ yeah. I pretty much did too. Well, because the solution Paris came up with, they took the empty quarries and they filled them with bodies. I mean, okay. Makes sense.
Lisa: I mean that's one way to get rid of them I guess. I guess.
Samantha: So they just started moving the bodies underground and not quietly. Around like 1786, Paris became a very strange ritual. Every night after dark, covered wagons carried the bones throughout the city. and then priests led, yeah, well, mean, so-so, priests led the procession.
Lisa: like a parade. Okay, it kind of sort of reminds me of the that they have in New Orleans, where it's like a parade down the road, ⁓ people are following the hearse and they're playing jazz Of course, they weren't playing jazz music in Paris, but that's what it's reminding me of.
Samantha: Yeah, this might have been, mean. New Orleans has lot of traditions from Paris because the French Louisiana
Lisa: Yeah, that's a good point. I didn't even think of that until you just said that,
Samantha: But this was a little bit more quieter than what New Orleans would be doing. Because this was something holy. This was happening after dark. They knew that how kind of demented this was and how private it was as well to be done during the day. Because death was a very important thing in the religion.
Lisa: Okay. Yeah.
Samantha: like priests walked with them, prayers were read, the remains were blessed as they moved through the streets. It was to keep it a religious burial, just not like a disposal.
Lisa: Yeah.
Samantha: the 18th century, death wasn't just physical, it was spiritual. The remains ⁓ moved had already been buried once under the Catholic rites. Digging them up again ⁓ be seen as like disturbing the dead, interrupting the rest, even risking their souls.
Lisa: Okay, so basically what they were doing was they were digging them back up, but like the whole time they were moving them, they're basically like, sorry, sorry, sorry.
Samantha: So with the priest. Yeah, no, absolutely. It's like, by leading them with the prayers and blessings, they made the transfer count as like a continuation of the burial, not a violation of it.
Lisa: Yeah.
Samantha: Like, people genuinely believed improperly handled remains could lead to restless spirits. Disturbed graves might bring bad luck, hauntings, or divine punishment. It was a city trying to move millions of dead people without ⁓ God or the dead themselves.
Lisa: Mm-hmm. That makes sense.
Samantha: And then the bones were, yeah, and then the bones were like dumped into quarry shafts. So this was pretty much like a nightly parade of skeletons. and this was going on, I want to say for about 20 years.
Lisa: Wow. So were they putting new bodies down there or were they putting the old bodies down there?
Samantha: new bodies were being buried outside of city limits.
Lisa: Okay.
Samantha: so they're working on the old bodies.
Lisa: Okay, because I've seen pictures and it looks like the bones are positioned in specific ways. ⁓
Samantha: they are, we'll get to that.
Lisa: Okay.
Samantha: Well, after the bones were literally just tossed into a quarry, workers would descend into the tunnels to stack the bones. So like at first it was chaotic messes, but eventually they began like arranging them into patterns. The skulls were like put in neat rows, femur stacked like bricks, walls made entirely from bones. You want to guess what they did with anything that was broken?
Lisa: I don't know. mean, yeah, tell me. I have no idea what they'd do.
Samantha: just thrown behind the wall. So they're building this very architectural styled wall, like layers bones and femurs, then skulls. And the didn't fit, they just kind of tossed it behind it. It's artistic.
Lisa: Okay, that's gross. Gross? It's gross. It is very demented if you think about it. Like, Ms. Bones, you're solicit broke. These people have no idea. These people have...
Samantha: It is. Hahaha I can't just, I can't broke their leg. It's like, no, you're worthless. You're going back there.
Lisa: All these broken bones of people that don't even know each other just... Ugh. That's not right.
Samantha: No, it's not. Well, over the decades, the bones of more than 150 cemeteries were eventually moved underground into the catacombs. By the time that they were done, over six million people were in the tunnels. Six million people. Like that's the population of a small country.
Lisa: Yeah. Six million people, the bones of six million people are down there in the catacombs.
Samantha: Yes.
Lisa: Wow. mean if you think about how far those tunnels stretch, yeah I guess so but...
Samantha: No, but it's only one mile.
Lisa: That's only one mile.
Samantha: Yeah.
Lisa: Six million people's bones only covered one mile.
Samantha: Yes.
Lisa: Okay.
Samantha: So I mean, as I said, it was very artistic on how they did that. Fitting. The worst game of Tetris ever.
Lisa: playing Tetris. The most macabre way of playing Tetris.
Samantha: You watch all these bones start coming down like a Tetris board, it's like, oh this one doesn't fit, let's toss it behind the wall.
Lisa: Straight to hell.
Samantha: We're going to hell. Well, the tunnels became known as the Paris Municipal Oshuary. But then later, yeah, I said that word right.
Lisa: you wearing. What? OK, I've never heard of it before, honestly. And if I've read it somewhere, I read it wrong because I've never heard of it.
Samantha: later people started calling at the catacombs.
Lisa: Okay.
Samantha: So inside you'll find rooms names like the crypt, the barrel of bones, ⁓ gallery of the dead. There's one room where bones are arranged into a massive barrel shape. Another where skulls from pillars. And ⁓ a plaque that warns visitors with phrases like stop, this is the empire of death.
Lisa: So there's pillars down there made entirely of skulls.
Samantha: Mm-hmm.
Lisa: What do you mean bones arranged like a barrel?
Samantha: Like... Like a wishing well.
Lisa: That's what I was thinking.
Samantha: Like in a circular formation. Yeah.
Lisa: Yeah, but like the whole room was or it was just in that room.
Samantha: Just some parts. Like you walk into a room, here's a pillar of skulls. Here's kind of a wishing well looking thing.
Lisa: Okay, I'm thinking like a wishing well or like a fire pit and then it leads me to that thing you sent me on TikTok, the bones, the skulls you can put in your fire pit.
Samantha: they had to get creative. That's cool, I want that.
Lisa: Me too. that's besides the point. ⁓
Samantha: Well, by the 1800s, the tunnels had become a curiosity. ⁓ In 1809, the catacombs open to visitors by appointment only. So people like Napoleon can go and visit world leaders, diplomats, anyone that was high status. It was of course a tourist attraction because what if we learned from history anything ⁓ dark city is going to make money off of like. going back to like insane asylum episode. Tower of London. They're going to use that as a way to make money from it.
Lisa: Yeah. Yeah.
Samantha: But like here's the thing, the official tour is only a tiny fraction of the tunnels. The full underground quarry network is believed to stretch about 200 miles. So the catacombs people visit is essentially called the safe section. It's only one mile.
Lisa: Sick. OK, so at first only people of nobility could take tours of this, but now everyone can. Right? Is that what you're saying? OK. And there's only, yeah, I did know that, that you're not allowed to go past a certain point. But they say it's because it's dangerous and you can get lost.
Samantha: And now everyone can. Yeah. Yep, everything else is illegal to explore. Like, it's been...
Lisa: They also say it's cursed or haunted or something.
Samantha: Yeah, there is hauntings. every place that you go to, they say that there's hauntings.
Lisa: Yeah, I know. You don't know what to believe and what not to.
Samantha: So actually in like 1955, they made it illegal to enter the unauthorized areas. There's fines of roughly 60 to $135 if you're caught. They have a special police force called the La Catacombs Police. So the police of the catacombs.
Lisa: Yeah. Don't they have gates? Don't they have gates down there though blocking off those areas you can't go into?
Samantha: they patrol section of it. You know, I don't know that, but I would imagine so.
Lisa: I thought I saw pictures of like wrought iron gates blocking certain tunnels off. So that like when you do take a tour through there, you first of all don't get lost. And it's to block people off from going too far. That's what I thought they were for.
Samantha: Yeah, pro. No, probably. I didn't research that.
Lisa: I only saw pictures and I'm pretty sure that's what I saw in the pictures.
Samantha: But the, you know, I would assume that because there are hundreds of hidden entrances like manholes, basements, sewer access points. Like most are sealed, but not all of them. So it would make sense at this time for them to go through and do that.
Lisa: So are you saying that you can kind of accidentally end up down in the catacombs?
Samantha: I know not I don't think accidentally if you're looking for it if you're specifically looking to get into the catacombs there are people to talk to
Lisa: Okay. Okay, I'm just thinking about like hikers and stuff like that, know, crawling into little caves because people are dumb and they do that. And then you stumble upon all these bones and you realize you're in the catacombs, like in a section you're not supposed to be in.
Samantha: 100 years ago. Yeah, 100 years ago maybe, but I don't think so nowadays.
Lisa: Okay.
Samantha: And mean, it's illegal to go through these areas because you can easily get lost. Like the tunnels are a maze and you have no signal down there. There's flooding issues, there's collapse zones, total darkness and air quality is poor in the deep sections.
Lisa: Yeah, I'd imagine.
Samantha: But of course that doesn't stop people.
Lisa: that sounds like it's gonna get messed up.
Samantha: So these people are called the cataphiles. There's a specific group. Yeah.
Lisa: Cataphiles. Okay.
Samantha: There's a specific group of people, like an underground party that happens there. ⁓ It's like urban explorers seek the tunnels at night, historians, artists, and I guess like rebels avoiding surface life. So I'm assuming like the poor or the homeless or just assholes.
Lisa: Yeah.
Samantha: They hold secret parties, concerts, and even an underground movie theater.
Lisa: Are they allowed to be doing this?
Samantha: No, no, of course they're not.
Lisa: How do they get away with that?
Samantha: Who the hell knows? My mind isn't that creative to figure out how am I going to go down there.
Lisa: Okay. I don't want to go down there so I'm yeah
Samantha: No. So there's hidden cinemas, like there's actual projector screens and seating, graffiti galleries, underground rooms of furniture, illegal parties and gatherings. There was even rumor to be libraries, bars, and fully built out chambers all underground.
Lisa: I'm just trying to wrap my head around how that's even possible if the catacombs are guarded. How do they get away with that? And then what do they do? Just leave that shit all down there for the next time they want to go?
Samantha: Yeah, pretty much. it was, I think it was in like 2004. The police found the projector. They found the seedings. And they went down there with more forces the next day and it was all gone.
Lisa: How weird.
Samantha: Like if your hobby involves crawling into a hole full of human remains, like you might one day just end up there, staying down there.
Lisa: Your bones, you mean? You will become part of the catacombs.
Samantha: Especially in this place. Yeah. Well, I people still get lost down there. Even with maps, it's easy to lose your sense of direction. There are tunnels that look identical, passages that suddenly end, I said, like flooded sections, collapses. ⁓ And some of the other parts of it is actually filled with mushroom farming, storage, and was even used as a bomb shelter during ⁓ War II. Where do mushrooms grow?
Lisa: You'd think if bombs were going off, bones would be flying everywhere.
Samantha: Remember the catacombs are about 200 miles long all through Paris.
Lisa: Yeah, but like is it far enough underground to protect you from a bomb? To make it a bomb shelter? Because I would think that it would shake the ground enough to shake those bones loose or even send them flying across the room. People getting impaled.
Samantha: Party. Remember, only one mile of it is filled with bones.
Lisa: I was okay. ⁓ my God, I was thinking that the tunnels were full of bones all the way through. It's just one mile.
Samantha: ⁓ you got it. You're there. One mile. Six million people. One mile.
Lisa: Yeah, I know that. But I thought you meant by the time that they had a mile of it done, they had already had six million people down there and then they continued putting more down there. I thought all of the tunnels were lined with bones. Okay.
Samantha: No. But beer storage? They use the they use part of the catacombs to grow mushrooms and for beer storage as well as wine.
Lisa: Alright, gotcha. That's weird. I mean, yeah, it doesn't sound as demented now knowing that those parts probably didn't have a bunch of bones in them.
Samantha: I mean... Yeah. As I said, like in 1955, it became illegal for the catacombs to enter the catacombs without permission. Told you about like 2004, they found the movie theater. 2017, two teenagers got lost in the catacombs for three days before being rescued. Three days in tunnels full of bones.
Lisa: Well, I'll bet you that scared him enough to never go back.
Samantha: No, probably, yeah, exactly. But a pa-
Lisa: Good lesson learned, dumbasses.
Samantha: Apparently there's a video from a very famous video from 1990s. It shows a man running through the catacombs holding a camera. It drops, he disappears into the tunnels, and the camera was found but the person never was. No one knows who he was.
Lisa: I remember that story. I think that video was circulating on the internet for a while. I swear I feel like I've seen it.
Samantha: It ⁓ kind of rings a- I feel like I've seen it too, but we watch so many of these weird things that all start to run together.
Lisa: Yeah, we do.
Samantha: Then there was a man who was never found his way out.
Lisa: Yes.
Samantha: Like this is the most famous catacomb story.
Lisa: I think I know this one.
Samantha: His name was Filbert Asperet. Asperet? It's French. don't know. was... A-S-P-A-I-R-T.
Lisa: How do you spell it? You don't pronounce the T.
Samantha: Okay. Aspire.
Lisa: Okay, sounds close enough. Sorry.
Samantha: Yeah. We're trying to get things right.
Lisa: French is hard.
Samantha: Well, he was a hospital doorkeeper during the French Revolution. In 1793, he entered the tunnels through staircase through the hospital. I'm not even going to try to pronounce that name. And no one knows exactly why he entered. Some think that he was looking for alcohol stored in the cellars. Others think that he was exploring, which of course is a terrible idea in a maze. He never came back.
Lisa: Yeah.
Samantha: His body wasn't discovered until 1804, which was 11 years later. They identified him by the key ring on his belt. and he had just died in a short distance from the exit.
Lisa: ⁓ he was almost there. He almost found his way back. ⁓ that's...
Samantha: Almost. Today there's a tombstone where they found him. Right there in the tunnels.
Lisa: They put his tombstone in the tunnels.
Samantha: Yeah, that was nice.
Lisa: Did they bury him in the tunnel?
Samantha: Well, he was down there for 11 years, so I would imagine that his bones may have just become part of the tunnel? Question mark? I don't know. I don't know.
Lisa: Yeah, that probably makes sense. Yeah. Be like, well, he did the work for us. We just have to pick him up and put him over there.
Samantha: You know, every part of this episode, like, a demon is just etching out another letter of my name onto my door. Be right next to yours.
Lisa: You We won't be able to talk to each other still then.
Samantha: Thankfully my name is longer.
Lisa: You Good.
Samantha: Well, today part of the catacombs in Paris is part museum, part tomb, part surreal underground experience. Like, and honestly, like, it still feels unsettling in like a very real way. So today you can still take like tourists, be a tourist, go down there. But you want to know what it's actually like to go down there.
Lisa: Yeah, I kind of want to go. I want to see it.
Samantha: I I do. I've been to Paris and four people were in this group. Everyone wanting to go except one person. So we didn't get to go. The one, the only thing I wanted to do in Paris.
Lisa: Is it the person I thought? Is it the person I think?
Samantha: Well, of course. Yeah. So here's what it's actually like when you go down there. You start by walking down 131 steps down a spiral. So you're basically dropping five stories underground.
Lisa: What a buzzkill. What a dummy. Okay.
Samantha: So when we were talking about the bomb shelter in World War II, you're about five stories underground.
Lisa: Okay, are they stone steps? iron steps? ⁓
Samantha: I'm actually not sure. I'm assuming wrought iron.
Lisa: I would think stone, but I don't know.
Samantha: yeah, you're right. It's narrow, stone, and feels endless. So, stone stairs. Good job.
Lisa: That's what I figured. seeing how old it was, you
Samantha: Yeah, but I'm also thinking of like tourists making it safe, but I guess stone might be safer than broad iron.
Lisa: Yeah, maybe they have iron like an iron railing going down it. I don't know. We'll see if we ever get to go.
Samantha: I don't know. Probably. I don't know. I couldn't... I don't know. I couldn't go. The deeper you go, the quieter it gets until it just echoes in footsteps. This is where it stops feeling like a tourist attraction and starts feeling like something older. It's about 57 degrees year round. It's cool, damp, slightly earthy. So I'm assuming that earth smell that you get going into a cave.
Lisa: Mm-hmm. Yeah, you probably get some weird feeling like maybe I should turn around and get out of here. I don't feel like I don't feel like I'm supposed to be here.
Samantha: Probably. The lighting is dim, it's spaced out. So at least you have some light. It's not pitch black, but it's never bright. It's also like not rotting corpse gross, but it feels ancient and heavy like being inside the earth itself
Lisa: Mm-hmm.
Samantha: So suddenly the tunnels opened up into walls made entirely of bones. You follow a very strict about one mile route, which takes anywhere from like 45 to 60 minutes, depending on your pace. You can't wander freely. It's controlled and monitored. You can't touch the bones. No exploring the side tunnels. Then you go back up through a second staircase, essentially just spits you out into a gift shop. Because every museum needs a gift shop.
Lisa: Yeah. I wouldn't want to touch the bones I'm just kind of wondering if looking at the bones I if it's going to connect like in mind these were people or if it's just going to look like Halloween decorations. know, kind of to wrap your brain around that sometimes. ⁓
Samantha: Whoa! Hey, have you ever encountered real human bones?
Lisa: I've seen them before, yeah, but they were behind glass.
Samantha: ⁓ okay. I'm sure you would know the difference between human bones and like what you would pick up from a Halloween store, but it doesn't, it can't hit you until you actually see it.
Lisa: Yeah. Exactly, that's what I'm saying is how's it going to hit when I'm standing in there looking around at them.
Samantha: Yeah. But that's also like the psychology part of the catacombs. Like imagine being down there and it messing with your head.
Lisa: Yeah.
Samantha: The the tunnels stay around like 59 degrees all year round. There's no sunlight People talk about feeling so oriented paranoid and even watched Like even if
Lisa: Well, disoriented might be because of the air quality.
Samantha: Yeah. Even if like nothing supernatural is happening, your brain starts filling in the blanks. You're- you're right on millions of skulls.
Lisa: Yeah, kind of like legend dripping. ⁓
Samantha: your brain starts imagining things. So why do you think like people are obsessed with them?
Lisa: Yeah, I know. I just feel like... I don't know how I would feel going down into those. one hand, I feel like I would just feel like I was walking through a fucked up part of a Halloween store. I don't know if it would register to me right away, you know?
Samantha: Mm-hmm.
Lisa: Like it wouldn't hit me the way I feel like it would hit me. I don't know, I wanna see.
Samantha: I think people are obsessed with it because it's like a physical reminder of death. And it's also history.
Lisa: Mm-hmm.
Samantha: The bones represent centuries of Parisians, plague victims, revolutionaries, ordinary citizens. but everyone ends up the same.
Lisa: Yeah, that is true. No matter.
Samantha: So when you're down there. you're down there, all your bones are the same. ⁓ could be plague victims right next to royalty.
Lisa: Mm-hmm. Your stature in life does not matter because you all end up the same way.
Samantha: Yeah. ⁓ What did you find the most interesting part about this?
Lisa: ⁓ the houses caving in and the body is coming through the basements. That was was messed up.
Samantha: Imagine coming home to that. That's...
Lisa: I would not go down into that basement until it was fully cleaned up like it never happened.
Samantha: I'm trying to imagine walking around The 1700s, late 1700s, and your bread shops. Your bread just smells of decomposing body.
Lisa: Can you imagine eating a sandwich and smelling that with every bite?
Samantha: But we're talking about like this was this was before modern medicine. We're still talking about the era where some we had slowly gotten past bleeding people. Now they're probably using leeches and different things like that. But this was before modern medicine. This was before body snatching.
Lisa: Mm-hmm. and they weren't embalmed.
Samantha: No, and bombing didn't come until around the Civil War.
Lisa: Yeah, and yeah, like an unembalmed body will fill up with gas. and so many of them filled up with gas that it actually exploded through someone's basement wall.
Samantha: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Lisa: ⁓ and you just, and you can't, you can't even think of it as just bones spilling out. wasn't bones only. It was flesh. It was bodily fluids. I'm going to stop now.
Samantha: Thank you. It was everything. It was toxic and disease.
Lisa: Yeah.
Samantha: So you're burying the plague in mass graves and then the mass graves of the plague is now in your basement. Think of all the diseases that are going to come from that.
Lisa: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Samantha: That's why the city, like they shut down the cemetery. I actually don't know if... Anyone can now be buried in that cemetery. I have no idea. I did not look that up.
Lisa: What's it called? The Innocence Cemetery?
Samantha: Yes.
Lisa: Does the cemetery still exist?
Samantha: I know I want I would assume so, it's very historical.
Lisa: I don't think anyone's buried in there anymore unless they found a way to make it kind of a functional cemetery and maybe now there are recycling graves in it.
Samantha: It could be.
Lisa: I don't know. interesting I might look that up tonight. Just because I'm wondering now.
Samantha: Mm-hmm.
Lisa: So, okay. kind of what gets me about it is that they didn't give the dead peace. mean, I guess they tried to, but they just turned millions of bodies into literal walls.
Samantha: Yeah, and it wasn't about respect. was just like a problem they needed gone.
Lisa: You say that like they were trying to clean out a closet.
Samantha: I mean, they kinda did.
Lisa: with people.
Samantha: I yeah, I know. So, I mean, if you go down there, just remember, like, you're not walking through history, you're walking over people. People who didn't get a choice in any of it. It's almost, yeah, I hate to say this, but it's almost like the worst part of, like, the lava is floor.
Lisa: and they're all still there. The floor is lava, you mean?
Samantha: What? Yeah, the floor is lava.
Lisa: ⁓ my God. and they're still all there and they're just stacked like they don't matter at all.
Samantha: But I mean, no one's moving them now.
Lisa: Yeah. So yeah, if you haven't yet, subscribe.
Samantha: or don't.
Lisa: Yeah, or ignore us.
Samantha: I mean, that's kind of the theme here tonight, right?
Lisa: A little bit, yeah. Well, I guess that's all there is for tonight. So good night. And if you hear something walking... ⁓
Samantha: It's probably not your basement filling up from a cemetery.
Lisa: Hopefully not.
Samantha: You're not that important.
Lisa: I'm it.
Samantha: Alright, well, have a good night.
Lisa: Have a good night. See you next week.
Lisa: Okay.
Samantha: If a city runs out of room to bury its dead, what do you think that they do with all the bodies?
Lisa: ⁓ I think they'd dig up the old ones and incinerate them to make room for new ones.
Samantha: ⁓ kind of, but not Paris. They just start stacking them. Basically Paris said, we don't have space. Just throw them downstairs like it's leftovers. Toss them into the basement.
Lisa: Great.
Samantha: Like, you know what? Most cities have traffic problems. Paris just stacked theirs.
Lisa: That's fucked up.
Samantha: So like 6 million people just waiting underground, not buried, not honored. They were just arranged like shelves in a warehouse, but with respect. you
Lisa: I don't know what's respectful about that.
Samantha: Well, I guess we will find out. Hi, I'm Samantha.
Lisa: All right. I'm Lisa.
Samantha: and welcome to Exhumed. Tonight we're gonna go underground, not metaphorically, not spiritually, physically. beneath one of the most beautiful cities in the world. But there's another version of it, a darker one, a quieter one. City made of bones.
Lisa: Whenever you're ready. Sorry.
Samantha: Have you ever heard?
Lisa: Okay.
Samantha: My water. Have you ever heard of the Paris Catacombs?
Lisa: I have, I don't know really anything about him.
Samantha: Well, to understand them, we have to imagine Paris in the Middle Ages. it was crowded, ⁓ dirty, with people. And like most medieval cities, the dead were buried inside of the city walls. Like the biggest cemetery in Paris was called the Innocent Cemetery. it's been used for over 500 years. Some say about a thousand years. So like imagine like you realize how small Paris actually is.
Lisa: Yeah, mean compared to America, Paris is part of... ⁓ god, I'm gonna get this wrong. Is it part of the UK? Kinda? Sorta?
Samantha: No, no. I mean, it's part of Europe...ish.
Lisa: Okay, I'm stupid. it's part of Europe. And Europe isn't that is it?
Samantha: ⁓ Europe is made up of a bunch of different countries, Paris is very small. It's a city in France.
Lisa: Yeah.
Samantha: So think about how small Paris actually is. For about 500 to 1,000 years, how crammed the city is to, what are they gonna do with all the dead? Especially from the plague, from wars. Kind of fills up fairly quickly.
Lisa: You don't ever really think about that. know, like making room for the dead.
Samantha: No. Well, by about the 1700s, it was overflowing, literally overflowing. Bodies were stacked in mass graves, sometimes 20 to 30 feet deep. When the pits filled up, workers up the old skeletons and moved the bones into galleries along the cemetery walls. ⁓
Lisa: Along the cemetery walls. What do you mean galleries along the cemetery walls? Like above ground?
Samantha: ⁓ the bones. Yeah. The bones were pretty much preserved in the houses. Often orderly piles. they're like resurrection on judgment day. So when some of the pits filled up, they brought the bones back out thinking that when resurrection comes. ⁓ They would be good. Yeah.
Lisa: They'll have a body. Okay.
Samantha: and this was especially done in churchyards.
Lisa: Okay.
Samantha: So over time, the cemeteries became a huge mound of like decomposing bodies. By the 1700s, the ground had risen several feet from all the burials. walking around a cemetery and it being so uneven and you know that.
Lisa: It's all bones.
Samantha: It's all pe- it's the dead rising a little bit.
Lisa: So there's no caskets, it's just holes with a bunch of bodies in them.
Samantha: Some were, lot of the mass graves were from plagues and wars. And got, a mass can be anywhere from like five bodies to hundreds of bodies. It was a combination between the two. But then of course, it's in the churchyards, they're gonna have some caskets, it all depends. It was a very different era. And there was very little like legal restrictions on how you bury the dead.
Lisa: Yeah. Yeah.
Samantha: only real restrictions were ⁓ of religion the way that the dead entered the ground. Meaning like last rites, a priest being present, words being said.
Lisa: Yeah. Would you say who you were? meant how you were going to be buried.
Samantha: Not necessarily.
Lisa: Okay.
Samantha: the higher status you are, the better that you're going to be buried. but it also didn't have anything to do with that. Yeah. Like kings were buried differently opposed to people with the plague. But I mean, that still goes for now. The president is going to be buried differently than we are.
Lisa: That's what I mean. Okay. Okay. Yeah, I guess you're right.
Samantha: Well, the smell was constant.
Lisa: I can imagine. They weren't buried deep enough.
Samantha: The residents complained about...
Lisa: They weren't deep enough and contained well enough to keep that smell away.
Samantha: Correct.
Lisa: to contain the smell.
Samantha: Well, the residents complained about rotting flesh, contaminated water, disease. Bread in nearby bakeries was said to absorb the smell of decay. A lot of the people had respiratory issues like vomiting and they even had delirium. I mean, it's getting into your body. Of course, you're going to have delirium.
Lisa: Gross. Yeah. Yeah. You don't think about it, but a smell isn't just a smell. You're smelling it because it's bacteria and you're breathing that into your body. So yeah.
Samantha: Mm-hmm. So in 1765, the Parliament of France condemned church burials for almost all the citizens and proclaimed that the burials taking place after January 1st needed to be in new cemeteries outside of the city limits. And that was a huge problem for people of faith who wanted to be buried in churchyards with their family. I mean, it makes sense.
Lisa: Yeah.
Samantha: and then you want to know what happened around 1780? ⁓ of course. What else don't we talk about?
Lisa: Okay. Probably something gross. We like to talk about growth stuff.
Samantha: A basement wall in a house next to a cemetery completely collapsed.
Lisa: ⁓ no. ⁓ no. Can you imagine walking down in your basement and there's like skeletons or decaying bodies coming out of your wall?
Samantha: That is exactly what happened. When inspectors came to investigate, found that gases from the decomposing bodies burst through the cellar walls and risen to the ground floor in least three homes. ⁓
Lisa: What did they do about that?
Samantha: Like a royal ordinance declared the Innocent Cemetery as a threat to the city and they completely closed it down
Lisa: Good, but what did they do about the bodies in the basements?
Samantha: cleaned it up?
Lisa: I would hope so. For some reason I feel like they just filled in the basement.
Samantha: Well, all of that. Yeah, really... considering this episode, really wouldn't be surprised.
Lisa: Yeah.
Samantha: But that moment completely forced the city to realize and admit Paris had a corpse problem.
Lisa: I would say so.
Samantha: Yeah. I'm let Lynx out. You're driving me nuts. Get out. Shadows like good, I don't want them in here anyways. All right, so where do you even put millions of bodies?
Lisa: I would think that a certain amount would have to be burned you recycle the graves. ⁓
Samantha: I'm sure somewhere. But at this point, the graves were constantly being recycled. mean, think about it. They were digging 20 to 30 feet down and stacking people. And that became too much. Yeah.
Lisa: Yeah, but that's just a mass grave. Yeah, but that's just a mass grave. What I'm saying is like nowadays, they'll take someone who's been there for like over a hundred years or something like that. They'll dig it up. Family's gone. Nobody's going to care. They incinerate that body so that they can use that grave for a new body.
Samantha: Well, that's nowadays now talking about like 1780 So let's throw them underground. That was their solution.
Lisa: Okay. Well, they're already throwing them underground.
Samantha: Exactly. Well, for centuries the city had been mining limestone beneath the streets. Like that limestone built the Notre Dame, the Louvre, and most of the city.
Lisa: Mm-hmm.
Samantha: So mining it left behind like millions of empty tunnels. Kind of like a giant underground maze.
Lisa: Okay. I see where you're going.
Samantha: Well, by the 1700s, those tunnels stretched for hundreds of miles. They're thinking probably about like 178 plus miles. But the problem was like no one mapped anything out. And the houses were starting to collapse inside of the inside of the tunnels.
Lisa: the tunnels were going under people's houses and the houses were kind of caving it in and falling in. Okay. ⁓
Samantha: Yep. In 1774, a street called, it's French, Rue des Enfers.
Lisa: Sounds all right.
Samantha: Rude. Yeah. It caved in below. But the translation of that street name is literally Road to Hell.
Lisa: ⁓
Samantha: I think it's very fitting.
Lisa: It is. We're probably going to get a lot of French names wrong. French is a very hard language and I skipped every single day of it in school.
Samantha: So... ⁓ yeah. I pretty much did too. Well, because the solution Paris came up with, they took the empty quarries and they filled them with bodies. I mean, okay. Makes sense.
Lisa: I mean that's one way to get rid of them I guess. I guess.
Samantha: So they just started moving the bodies underground and not quietly. Around like 1786, Paris became a very strange ritual. Every night after dark, covered wagons carried the bones throughout the city. and then priests led, yeah, well, mean, so-so, priests led the procession.
Lisa: like a parade. Okay, it kind of sort of reminds me of the that they have in New Orleans, where it's like a parade down the road, ⁓ people are following the hearse and they're playing jazz Of course, they weren't playing jazz music in Paris, but that's what it's reminding me of.
Samantha: Yeah, this might have been, mean. New Orleans has lot of traditions from Paris because the French Louisiana
Lisa: Yeah, that's a good point. I didn't even think of that until you just said that,
Samantha: But this was a little bit more quieter than what New Orleans would be doing. Because this was something holy. This was happening after dark. They knew that how kind of demented this was and how private it was as well to be done during the day. Because death was a very important thing in the religion.
Lisa: Okay. Yeah.
Samantha: like priests walked with them, prayers were read, the remains were blessed as they moved through the streets. It was to keep it a religious burial, just not like a disposal.
Lisa: Yeah.
Samantha: the 18th century, death wasn't just physical, it was spiritual. The remains ⁓ moved had already been buried once under the Catholic rites. Digging them up again ⁓ be seen as like disturbing the dead, interrupting the rest, even risking their souls.
Lisa: Okay, so basically what they were doing was they were digging them back up, but like the whole time they were moving them, they're basically like, sorry, sorry, sorry.
Samantha: So with the priest. Yeah, no, absolutely. It's like, by leading them with the prayers and blessings, they made the transfer count as like a continuation of the burial, not a violation of it.
Lisa: Yeah.
Samantha: Like, people genuinely believed improperly handled remains could lead to restless spirits. Disturbed graves might bring bad luck, hauntings, or divine punishment. It was a city trying to move millions of dead people without ⁓ God or the dead themselves.
Lisa: Mm-hmm. That makes sense.
Samantha: And then the bones were, yeah, and then the bones were like dumped into quarry shafts. So this was pretty much like a nightly parade of skeletons. and this was going on, I want to say for about 20 years.
Lisa: Wow. So were they putting new bodies down there or were they putting the old bodies down there?
Samantha: new bodies were being buried outside of city limits.
Lisa: Okay.
Samantha: so they're working on the old bodies.
Lisa: Okay, because I've seen pictures and it looks like the bones are positioned in specific ways. ⁓
Samantha: they are, we'll get to that.
Lisa: Okay.
Samantha: Well, after the bones were literally just tossed into a quarry, workers would descend into the tunnels to stack the bones. So like at first it was chaotic messes, but eventually they began like arranging them into patterns. The skulls were like put in neat rows, femur stacked like bricks, walls made entirely from bones. You want to guess what they did with anything that was broken?
Lisa: I don't know. mean, yeah, tell me. I have no idea what they'd do.
Samantha: just thrown behind the wall. So they're building this very architectural styled wall, like layers bones and femurs, then skulls. And the didn't fit, they just kind of tossed it behind it. It's artistic.
Lisa: Okay, that's gross. Gross? It's gross. It is very demented if you think about it. Like, Ms. Bones, you're solicit broke. These people have no idea. These people have...
Samantha: It is. Hahaha I can't just, I can't broke their leg. It's like, no, you're worthless. You're going back there.
Lisa: All these broken bones of people that don't even know each other just... Ugh. That's not right.
Samantha: No, it's not. Well, over the decades, the bones of more than 150 cemeteries were eventually moved underground into the catacombs. By the time that they were done, over six million people were in the tunnels. Six million people. Like that's the population of a small country.
Lisa: Yeah. Six million people, the bones of six million people are down there in the catacombs.
Samantha: Yes.
Lisa: Wow. mean if you think about how far those tunnels stretch, yeah I guess so but...
Samantha: No, but it's only one mile.
Lisa: That's only one mile.
Samantha: Yeah.
Lisa: Six million people's bones only covered one mile.
Samantha: Yes.
Lisa: Okay.
Samantha: So I mean, as I said, it was very artistic on how they did that. Fitting. The worst game of Tetris ever.
Lisa: playing Tetris. The most macabre way of playing Tetris.
Samantha: You watch all these bones start coming down like a Tetris board, it's like, oh this one doesn't fit, let's toss it behind the wall.
Lisa: Straight to hell.
Samantha: We're going to hell. Well, the tunnels became known as the Paris Municipal Oshuary. But then later, yeah, I said that word right.
Lisa: you wearing. What? OK, I've never heard of it before, honestly. And if I've read it somewhere, I read it wrong because I've never heard of it.
Samantha: later people started calling at the catacombs.
Lisa: Okay.
Samantha: So inside you'll find rooms names like the crypt, the barrel of bones, ⁓ gallery of the dead. There's one room where bones are arranged into a massive barrel shape. Another where skulls from pillars. And ⁓ a plaque that warns visitors with phrases like stop, this is the empire of death.
Lisa: So there's pillars down there made entirely of skulls.
Samantha: Mm-hmm.
Lisa: What do you mean bones arranged like a barrel?
Samantha: Like... Like a wishing well.
Lisa: That's what I was thinking.
Samantha: Like in a circular formation. Yeah.
Lisa: Yeah, but like the whole room was or it was just in that room.
Samantha: Just some parts. Like you walk into a room, here's a pillar of skulls. Here's kind of a wishing well looking thing.
Lisa: Okay, I'm thinking like a wishing well or like a fire pit and then it leads me to that thing you sent me on TikTok, the bones, the skulls you can put in your fire pit.
Samantha: they had to get creative. That's cool, I want that.
Lisa: Me too. that's besides the point. ⁓
Samantha: Well, by the 1800s, the tunnels had become a curiosity. ⁓ In 1809, the catacombs open to visitors by appointment only. So people like Napoleon can go and visit world leaders, diplomats, anyone that was high status. It was of course a tourist attraction because what if we learned from history anything ⁓ dark city is going to make money off of like. going back to like insane asylum episode. Tower of London. They're going to use that as a way to make money from it.
Lisa: Yeah. Yeah.
Samantha: But like here's the thing, the official tour is only a tiny fraction of the tunnels. The full underground quarry network is believed to stretch about 200 miles. So the catacombs people visit is essentially called the safe section. It's only one mile.
Lisa: Sick. OK, so at first only people of nobility could take tours of this, but now everyone can. Right? Is that what you're saying? OK. And there's only, yeah, I did know that, that you're not allowed to go past a certain point. But they say it's because it's dangerous and you can get lost.
Samantha: And now everyone can. Yeah. Yep, everything else is illegal to explore. Like, it's been...
Lisa: They also say it's cursed or haunted or something.
Samantha: Yeah, there is hauntings. every place that you go to, they say that there's hauntings.
Lisa: Yeah, I know. You don't know what to believe and what not to.
Samantha: So actually in like 1955, they made it illegal to enter the unauthorized areas. There's fines of roughly 60 to $135 if you're caught. They have a special police force called the La Catacombs Police. So the police of the catacombs.
Lisa: Yeah. Don't they have gates? Don't they have gates down there though blocking off those areas you can't go into?
Samantha: they patrol section of it. You know, I don't know that, but I would imagine so.
Lisa: I thought I saw pictures of like wrought iron gates blocking certain tunnels off. So that like when you do take a tour through there, you first of all don't get lost. And it's to block people off from going too far. That's what I thought they were for.
Samantha: Yeah, pro. No, probably. I didn't research that.
Lisa: I only saw pictures and I'm pretty sure that's what I saw in the pictures.
Samantha: But the, you know, I would assume that because there are hundreds of hidden entrances like manholes, basements, sewer access points. Like most are sealed, but not all of them. So it would make sense at this time for them to go through and do that.
Lisa: So are you saying that you can kind of accidentally end up down in the catacombs?
Samantha: I know not I don't think accidentally if you're looking for it if you're specifically looking to get into the catacombs there are people to talk to
Lisa: Okay. Okay, I'm just thinking about like hikers and stuff like that, know, crawling into little caves because people are dumb and they do that. And then you stumble upon all these bones and you realize you're in the catacombs, like in a section you're not supposed to be in.
Samantha: 100 years ago. Yeah, 100 years ago maybe, but I don't think so nowadays.
Lisa: Okay.
Samantha: And mean, it's illegal to go through these areas because you can easily get lost. Like the tunnels are a maze and you have no signal down there. There's flooding issues, there's collapse zones, total darkness and air quality is poor in the deep sections.
Lisa: Yeah, I'd imagine.
Samantha: But of course that doesn't stop people.
Lisa: that sounds like it's gonna get messed up.
Samantha: So these people are called the cataphiles. There's a specific group. Yeah.
Lisa: Cataphiles. Okay.
Samantha: There's a specific group of people, like an underground party that happens there. ⁓ It's like urban explorers seek the tunnels at night, historians, artists, and I guess like rebels avoiding surface life. So I'm assuming like the poor or the homeless or just assholes.
Lisa: Yeah.
Samantha: They hold secret parties, concerts, and even an underground movie theater.
Lisa: Are they allowed to be doing this?
Samantha: No, no, of course they're not.
Lisa: How do they get away with that?
Samantha: Who the hell knows? My mind isn't that creative to figure out how am I going to go down there.
Lisa: Okay. I don't want to go down there so I'm yeah
Samantha: No. So there's hidden cinemas, like there's actual projector screens and seating, graffiti galleries, underground rooms of furniture, illegal parties and gatherings. There was even rumor to be libraries, bars, and fully built out chambers all underground.
Lisa: I'm just trying to wrap my head around how that's even possible if the catacombs are guarded. How do they get away with that? And then what do they do? Just leave that shit all down there for the next time they want to go?
Samantha: Yeah, pretty much. it was, I think it was in like 2004. The police found the projector. They found the seedings. And they went down there with more forces the next day and it was all gone.
Lisa: How weird.
Samantha: Like if your hobby involves crawling into a hole full of human remains, like you might one day just end up there, staying down there.
Lisa: Your bones, you mean? You will become part of the catacombs.
Samantha: Especially in this place. Yeah. Well, I people still get lost down there. Even with maps, it's easy to lose your sense of direction. There are tunnels that look identical, passages that suddenly end, I said, like flooded sections, collapses. ⁓ And some of the other parts of it is actually filled with mushroom farming, storage, and was even used as a bomb shelter during ⁓ War II. Where do mushrooms grow?
Lisa: You'd think if bombs were going off, bones would be flying everywhere.
Samantha: Remember the catacombs are about 200 miles long all through Paris.
Lisa: Yeah, but like is it far enough underground to protect you from a bomb? To make it a bomb shelter? Because I would think that it would shake the ground enough to shake those bones loose or even send them flying across the room. People getting impaled.
Samantha: Party. Remember, only one mile of it is filled with bones.
Lisa: I was okay. ⁓ my God, I was thinking that the tunnels were full of bones all the way through. It's just one mile.
Samantha: ⁓ you got it. You're there. One mile. Six million people. One mile.
Lisa: Yeah, I know that. But I thought you meant by the time that they had a mile of it done, they had already had six million people down there and then they continued putting more down there. I thought all of the tunnels were lined with bones. Okay.
Samantha: No. But beer storage? They use the they use part of the catacombs to grow mushrooms and for beer storage as well as wine.
Lisa: Alright, gotcha. That's weird. I mean, yeah, it doesn't sound as demented now knowing that those parts probably didn't have a bunch of bones in them.
Samantha: I mean... Yeah. As I said, like in 1955, it became illegal for the catacombs to enter the catacombs without permission. Told you about like 2004, they found the movie theater. 2017, two teenagers got lost in the catacombs for three days before being rescued. Three days in tunnels full of bones.
Lisa: Well, I'll bet you that scared him enough to never go back.
Samantha: No, probably, yeah, exactly. But a pa-
Lisa: Good lesson learned, dumbasses.
Samantha: Apparently there's a video from a very famous video from 1990s. It shows a man running through the catacombs holding a camera. It drops, he disappears into the tunnels, and the camera was found but the person never was. No one knows who he was.
Lisa: I remember that story. I think that video was circulating on the internet for a while. I swear I feel like I've seen it.
Samantha: It ⁓ kind of rings a- I feel like I've seen it too, but we watch so many of these weird things that all start to run together.
Lisa: Yeah, we do.
Samantha: Then there was a man who was never found his way out.
Lisa: Yes.
Samantha: Like this is the most famous catacomb story.
Lisa: I think I know this one.
Samantha: His name was Filbert Asperet. Asperet? It's French. don't know. was... A-S-P-A-I-R-T.
Lisa: How do you spell it? You don't pronounce the T.
Samantha: Okay. Aspire.
Lisa: Okay, sounds close enough. Sorry.
Samantha: Yeah. We're trying to get things right.
Lisa: French is hard.
Samantha: Well, he was a hospital doorkeeper during the French Revolution. In 1793, he entered the tunnels through staircase through the hospital. I'm not even going to try to pronounce that name. And no one knows exactly why he entered. Some think that he was looking for alcohol stored in the cellars. Others think that he was exploring, which of course is a terrible idea in a maze. He never came back.
Lisa: Yeah.
Samantha: His body wasn't discovered until 1804, which was 11 years later. They identified him by the key ring on his belt. and he had just died in a short distance from the exit.
Lisa: ⁓ he was almost there. He almost found his way back. ⁓ that's...
Samantha: Almost. Today there's a tombstone where they found him. Right there in the tunnels.
Lisa: They put his tombstone in the tunnels.
Samantha: Yeah, that was nice.
Lisa: Did they bury him in the tunnel?
Samantha: Well, he was down there for 11 years, so I would imagine that his bones may have just become part of the tunnel? Question mark? I don't know. I don't know.
Lisa: Yeah, that probably makes sense. Yeah. Be like, well, he did the work for us. We just have to pick him up and put him over there.
Samantha: You know, every part of this episode, like, a demon is just etching out another letter of my name onto my door. Be right next to yours.
Lisa: You We won't be able to talk to each other still then.
Samantha: Thankfully my name is longer.
Lisa: You Good.
Samantha: Well, today part of the catacombs in Paris is part museum, part tomb, part surreal underground experience. Like, and honestly, like, it still feels unsettling in like a very real way. So today you can still take like tourists, be a tourist, go down there. But you want to know what it's actually like to go down there.
Lisa: Yeah, I kind of want to go. I want to see it.
Samantha: I I do. I've been to Paris and four people were in this group. Everyone wanting to go except one person. So we didn't get to go. The one, the only thing I wanted to do in Paris.
Lisa: Is it the person I thought? Is it the person I think?
Samantha: Well, of course. Yeah. So here's what it's actually like when you go down there. You start by walking down 131 steps down a spiral. So you're basically dropping five stories underground.
Lisa: What a buzzkill. What a dummy. Okay.
Samantha: So when we were talking about the bomb shelter in World War II, you're about five stories underground.
Lisa: Okay, are they stone steps? iron steps? ⁓
Samantha: I'm actually not sure. I'm assuming wrought iron.
Lisa: I would think stone, but I don't know.
Samantha: yeah, you're right. It's narrow, stone, and feels endless. So, stone stairs. Good job.
Lisa: That's what I figured. seeing how old it was, you
Samantha: Yeah, but I'm also thinking of like tourists making it safe, but I guess stone might be safer than broad iron.
Lisa: Yeah, maybe they have iron like an iron railing going down it. I don't know. We'll see if we ever get to go.
Samantha: I don't know. Probably. I don't know. I couldn't... I don't know. I couldn't go. The deeper you go, the quieter it gets until it just echoes in footsteps. This is where it stops feeling like a tourist attraction and starts feeling like something older. It's about 57 degrees year round. It's cool, damp, slightly earthy. So I'm assuming that earth smell that you get going into a cave.
Lisa: Mm-hmm. Yeah, you probably get some weird feeling like maybe I should turn around and get out of here. I don't feel like I don't feel like I'm supposed to be here.
Samantha: Probably. The lighting is dim, it's spaced out. So at least you have some light. It's not pitch black, but it's never bright. It's also like not rotting corpse gross, but it feels ancient and heavy like being inside the earth itself
Lisa: Mm-hmm.
Samantha: So suddenly the tunnels opened up into walls made entirely of bones. You follow a very strict about one mile route, which takes anywhere from like 45 to 60 minutes, depending on your pace. You can't wander freely. It's controlled and monitored. You can't touch the bones. No exploring the side tunnels. Then you go back up through a second staircase, essentially just spits you out into a gift shop. Because every museum needs a gift shop.
Lisa: Yeah. I wouldn't want to touch the bones I'm just kind of wondering if looking at the bones I if it's going to connect like in mind these were people or if it's just going to look like Halloween decorations. know, kind of to wrap your brain around that sometimes. ⁓
Samantha: Whoa! Hey, have you ever encountered real human bones?
Lisa: I've seen them before, yeah, but they were behind glass.
Samantha: ⁓ okay. I'm sure you would know the difference between human bones and like what you would pick up from a Halloween store, but it doesn't, it can't hit you until you actually see it.
Lisa: Yeah. Exactly, that's what I'm saying is how's it going to hit when I'm standing in there looking around at them.
Samantha: Yeah. But that's also like the psychology part of the catacombs. Like imagine being down there and it messing with your head.
Lisa: Yeah.
Samantha: The the tunnels stay around like 59 degrees all year round. There's no sunlight People talk about feeling so oriented paranoid and even watched Like even if
Lisa: Well, disoriented might be because of the air quality.
Samantha: Yeah. Even if like nothing supernatural is happening, your brain starts filling in the blanks. You're- you're right on millions of skulls.
Lisa: Yeah, kind of like legend dripping. ⁓
Samantha: your brain starts imagining things. So why do you think like people are obsessed with them?
Lisa: Yeah, I know. I just feel like... I don't know how I would feel going down into those. one hand, I feel like I would just feel like I was walking through a fucked up part of a Halloween store. I don't know if it would register to me right away, you know?
Samantha: Mm-hmm.
Lisa: Like it wouldn't hit me the way I feel like it would hit me. I don't know, I wanna see.
Samantha: I think people are obsessed with it because it's like a physical reminder of death. And it's also history.
Lisa: Mm-hmm.
Samantha: The bones represent centuries of Parisians, plague victims, revolutionaries, ordinary citizens. but everyone ends up the same.
Lisa: Yeah, that is true. No matter.
Samantha: So when you're down there. you're down there, all your bones are the same. ⁓ could be plague victims right next to royalty.
Lisa: Mm-hmm. Your stature in life does not matter because you all end up the same way.
Samantha: Yeah. ⁓ What did you find the most interesting part about this?
Lisa: ⁓ the houses caving in and the body is coming through the basements. That was was messed up.
Samantha: Imagine coming home to that. That's...
Lisa: I would not go down into that basement until it was fully cleaned up like it never happened.
Samantha: I'm trying to imagine walking around The 1700s, late 1700s, and your bread shops. Your bread just smells of decomposing body.
Lisa: Can you imagine eating a sandwich and smelling that with every bite?
Samantha: But we're talking about like this was this was before modern medicine. We're still talking about the era where some we had slowly gotten past bleeding people. Now they're probably using leeches and different things like that. But this was before modern medicine. This was before body snatching.
Lisa: Mm-hmm. and they weren't embalmed.
Samantha: No, and bombing didn't come until around the Civil War.
Lisa: Yeah, and yeah, like an unembalmed body will fill up with gas. and so many of them filled up with gas that it actually exploded through someone's basement wall.
Samantha: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Lisa: ⁓ and you just, and you can't, you can't even think of it as just bones spilling out. wasn't bones only. It was flesh. It was bodily fluids. I'm going to stop now.
Samantha: Thank you. It was everything. It was toxic and disease.
Lisa: Yeah.
Samantha: So you're burying the plague in mass graves and then the mass graves of the plague is now in your basement. Think of all the diseases that are going to come from that.
Lisa: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Samantha: That's why the city, like they shut down the cemetery. I actually don't know if... Anyone can now be buried in that cemetery. I have no idea. I did not look that up.
Lisa: What's it called? The Innocence Cemetery?
Samantha: Yes.
Lisa: Does the cemetery still exist?
Samantha: I know I want I would assume so, it's very historical.
Lisa: I don't think anyone's buried in there anymore unless they found a way to make it kind of a functional cemetery and maybe now there are recycling graves in it.
Samantha: It could be.
Lisa: I don't know. interesting I might look that up tonight. Just because I'm wondering now.
Samantha: Mm-hmm.
Lisa: So, okay. kind of what gets me about it is that they didn't give the dead peace. mean, I guess they tried to, but they just turned millions of bodies into literal walls.
Samantha: Yeah, and it wasn't about respect. was just like a problem they needed gone.
Lisa: You say that like they were trying to clean out a closet.
Samantha: I mean, they kinda did.
Lisa: with people.
Samantha: I yeah, I know. So, I mean, if you go down there, just remember, like, you're not walking through history, you're walking over people. People who didn't get a choice in any of it. It's almost, yeah, I hate to say this, but it's almost like the worst part of, like, the lava is floor.
Lisa: and they're all still there. The floor is lava, you mean?
Samantha: What? Yeah, the floor is lava.
Lisa: ⁓ my God. and they're still all there and they're just stacked like they don't matter at all.
Samantha: But I mean, no one's moving them now.
Lisa: Yeah. So yeah, if you haven't yet, subscribe.
Samantha: or don't.
Lisa: Yeah, or ignore us.
Samantha: I mean, that's kind of the theme here tonight, right?
Lisa: A little bit, yeah. Well, I guess that's all there is for tonight. So good night. And if you hear something walking... ⁓
Samantha: It's probably not your basement filling up from a cemetery.
Lisa: Hopefully not.
Samantha: You're not that important.
Lisa: I'm it.
Samantha: Alright, well, have a good night.
Lisa: Have a good night. See you next week.
