Hello everyone. Something happened to me and I just need to talk about it. Usually, I wouldn’t tell anything about the catacombs. But I feel myself very uncomfortable and I want to make that out of myself.
I just discovered nosleep a few hours ago with a far-fetched story about the catacombs (https://www.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/wkuxyo/im_a_journalist_exploring_the_paris_catacombs/). I think this reddit is the appropriate place for me as my goal is not to be believed, but to make that out of myself. Throwaway account, by the way.
Short presentation of myself.
I’m a French guy, living in the Paris region. I’m not a big fan of the hobbies “at the surface”. Thus, I’m often underground, enjoying the deadly stilness of the former stone quarries that most of peoples call “the Paris catacombs”. These forbidden underground passages are often filled with tourists (and unfortunately even youtubers !) in need of thrills.
There are also some of us who come down more regularly just because it’s our hobby. Most of us try to keep a low profile to protect these places, and that’s a good thing. I hesitated before writing, but I really need to talk about this. And if I talk about it underneath, I’ll look like a loony. I’m not the one who spent the most time down there (1000 ? 2000 hours ? Approximatively), but I think I can say I already know this place “correctly”.
Now the facts.
A few days ago, I was there, enjoying my rest. I was alone, which is quite common for me. I wandered from gallery to gallery, from room to room, from empty space to empty space. The glow of my lamp drew the contours of spaces that were well known to me.
After some wandering, I decided to head to a port of an area that was not very busy and that I knew quite a bit about. It’s under a former hospital, in the northeastern part of the network. People knowing the Paris catacombs understand what I’m talking about. I had heard that a team had recently restored a room there. From what I understood, during the work (that is to say: while digging), they had found children’s bones.
“Children’s bones in the catacombs! How amazing!” you might scoff. But the fact is that even if the remains of six million people were buried in these quarries, there are not bones everywhere: in fact, only in some areas. The sector I’m talking about was clearly not one of them.
In fact, it is a rather particular sector, which does not resemble most of what can be found in the “catacombs”. This place is an old quarry whose oldest exploitation, according to “Paris souterrain (Emile Gerards)”, is lost in the depths of the ages, perhaps around the year 1000. Since then, the place has changed a lot. Several waves of consolidation work on the buildings above have filled this space with pillars through the ceiling, messy walls, and half-filled voids. The result is a maze that disorients even the most experienced: in this place, it is not possible to remember a route by memorizing a “left-right” as one can do elsewhere, in the straight galleries that look like corridors. No. In this place, all the passages are bent, huge voids appearing to be passages may turn out to be dead ends after a meter, and tiny holes seeming to lead nowhere may in fact lead to entire rooms and sub-networks. Labyrinth, but no bones.
A little clarification though: many stories about the catacombs talk about “several levels”; “several depths”… For Odessa, I don’t know, but for Paris, it’s a myth. There is only one level: the level of the good quality stone that the quarrymen exploited. In some well-known places, two levels were exploited. But that is all. In this area I am talking about, there is only one level.
After a little research and several dead ends, I finally found the place. I already came here before, but before the digging. It was a splendid “room”, or more frankly just a void bigger than the others, whose ground had been recently lowered by the digging of the team, revealing a beautiful architectural monument (I’m not being specific on purpose. I prefer to keep the place discreet and the nature of this monument is not important for the rest of the story.).
In a corner, indeed, some human remains had been delicately deposited. Some scattered bones whose size allowed to identify them as children’s bones. 10 years old, according to me. Also some pieces of pottery and remains of indefinable trinkets.
This monument was built during the XIXth century (much more recent than the large ossuaries), and it was unlikely that the bones were older than its construction. It is also important to know that children’s bones decompose faster than adult bones (they are smaller), and that in any case, bones decompose fairly quickly when they are buried and there is not a large pile of bodies producing substances that prevent them from decomposing (as is the case in large ossuaries where the bones keep each other).
In short, one (or more ?) child was buried on this spot without any sense, probably less than a century ago. And that is all. I couldn’t tell you more. Who? Why? How? Was there a tragedy behind this story? Probably all the people who knew something about this little guy are already dead, and these bones will remain silent until we forget them and the story they contain. Children’s bones in another place would make a fuss, but in this place… Anyway, you understand.
I admired the place, and took as usual the care to observe well the various galleries leaving the place. In front of the monument, there was a nice and classical wall of limestone, smooth and without any hitch.
I rested a little more, then decided to join more frequented sectors. So I started to go back, poking around as usual, wandering around a bit, looking for hidden sights. Not precisely knowing where I were, but not afraid, I decided to go to lower galleries, which eventually led to a “flat space”.
What is a “flat space” ? In short: a claustrophobic maze of nightmare. In this sector, which I described above, many areas were simply made inaccessible by filling them with sand, from the floor to the ceiling. However, over time, in many places, the sand has been compacted by time and the water running down from the ceiling has removed some of it. In whole areas, there is a thin layer of void varying between 10 and 30 centimeters: “flat spaces”. It is very hard to move around in it: when you crawl through it, crushed between the sand and the ceiling, you see huge open surfaces, which you know are very thin, and you don’t know if they are accessible or not. Crawling is technical, and you don’t want to jam a limb. When this sub-network is itself a maze, you have to progress slowly, and remember the outward journey: on the way back, trying another passage on the surface can lead you to a dead end where you will just be surrounded by spaces too small to move your body through. Spelunkers know this kind of places. Claustrophobia is forbidden.
I left here my bag (flat spaces are often dead end) and began to crawl. And what a flat space I just found.
After passing a few pillars and walls, crawling slowly, my lamp revealed before me a forest of new pillars and walls. Hiding one behind the other, to a height of a few centimeters and at least for tens of meters in all directions, they formed like a chaotic forest at the bottom of which the beam of my lamp was lost. I stopped for a moment, feeling dizzy.
I was amazed that there could exist such a “void”, such a space, without my having ever heard of it. I thought that maybe I had wandered farther than I thought. I hesitated to turn around to get my map (remained in my bag), and define precisely where I was, or if (an unlikely thing for such a remarkable place), I was in an unmapped space (the archives of Paris burned down in 1871 and almost all the maps prior to this period have been lost. The maps used today are made on the basis of later surveys). The laziness of turning around to come back then prevailed, and thinking to myself that this space could not be so big, I decided to move forward.
Fascinated by the place, I probably crawled like a larva for several minutes. Or more. Time did not matter and such a discovery hypnotized me (for those who go down often, unexpectedly discovering a new place is like a party). I crawled, not caring too much about directions, passing a few pillars and a few walls. Big mistake.
The flat space I was in was really huge. I had to admit it. It would not be possible for me to explore it completely without proceeding in a methodical way, and above all, without first consulting my map. U-turn, then. Still crawling like a larva, I tried to find my bearings on the way out: walls and pillars, in this cramped space where my body barely passed. Long story short, I took a path: dead end, turn back, tried another, then saw I mistake, tried again the first one, trying to remember and thinking that my body could in fact go through, and so on. Finally, I had to admit that I was lost in a fucking flat space I didn’t know, and that I was even unable to know which direction I came from.
I breath, took a rest, and decided to proceed with the “always right” technique: go straight until you’re blocked, leave here a stuff (a recognizable pebble, for example), go left, and make sure to always keep the impassable space at your right. It’s logical: either you turn around something and finally come back to the stuff, either your find a way out.
After maybe half an hour of this technique, slowly crawling (keeping my calm, I started to feel tired), I finally found what looked like a way out this maze. Proceeding, meter after meter, I left the flat space and my passage slowly became a small gallery carved into the rock as we find many.
One meter wide and one meter high, approximately. It’s not much, but I could finally rest in a position other than lying down, crushed by the ceiling too close. I certainly hadn’t passed through here when entering the flat space, but I was hoping it was another entrance to this subnet (and not a dead end): I could come back to known places, and I would have no trouble finding my bag. This small gallery did not seem to me to be long: a few bends, and after about twenty meters, I saw the light of my lamp caught by a large space on which the gallery opens. Finally fully reassured, I moved forward, getting ready to go out (finally on my feet!), and wondering if I would come across a known space by chance.
When I reached the end of the gallery, I stopped, flabbergasted. Oh yes, it was a known place. Right before my eyes was the monument I had previously left, maybe two hours ago. It is well recognizable, no mistake possible. This gallery, at the end of which I was, led to the room of the child’s bones. Trying to better understand where I was coming from only threw me into even more confusion: the end of the gallery actually opened into a hole in the limestone wall that I described earlier, and which was only a long surface without a hitch and a hole.
Maybe I made a mistake, and didn’t see such a hole. Or maybe someone just came and opened it.
I have a hard time understanding what happened then, and I can’t explain my feelings and reactions very well. So I’m just trying to describe them here as I remember them.
While thinking and trying to understand better, gathering my visual memories, I was moving the beam of my lamp on the different details of the vast room, and on the monument. Suddenly, seeing something moving, I oriented the beam of my headlamp. On the opposite wall, about 5 meters in front of me, overflowing on the monument, from the floor to the ceiling (about 3-4 meters), a whole zone was drawn which was impossible for me to light. For a few seconds, I moved my beam over it, and saw that the shape evoked a human shadow, in profile, but very deformed: the head was on the ceiling while the feet were on the ground. Two long arms stood out and floated limply. I think the shadow was moving to the side.
I couldn’t tell how long it lasted. I maybe looked at it for 3 or 4 seconds, just amazed. Then I ran my hand over the light of my lamp, so as to make sure it wasn’t just the shadow of a bug or something else walking around on it. Then I pointed my beam at it again. It was still there, moving.
That’s when, suddenly, my brain must have gone “on alert”. I’ve had some pretty big scares in my life, but I wouldn’t know what to compare to this. For a moment, the shadow seemed to fill my eyes and my mind completely. My ears were ringing as if a rocket was taking off next to me. I don’t know if these impressions were factual or just the symptoms of a sudden panic.
As if on automatic pilot, and at full speed, I turned back towards the flat space maze. My memories then became confused. I remember crawling, in all directions, then trying to regain my senses so as to proceed methodically again, fighting against the panic. I remember the anxiety, the fear, my sweat making the sand stick to my face, the fatigue, the thirst, then the panic again… I am not sure of the order of things.
Then, the blackout. I “woke up” (I remember what happened ever since) in another part of the network that I know quite well. I think I was wandering around aimlessly. After coming to my senses, I looked at the time: three hours had passed since I had entered the “flat space maze”. Considering that I had been there for a while, I don’t know how I got out and got so far so fast. Going fast, it usually takes more than two hours to get from the northeast to where I was.
I was sweating, thirsty and exhausted. But I had my bag. I don’t know how. I drank, rested for a few minutes, and then came out without difficulty through a well known exit.
Back on the surface, I studied my plans. No : there is no hole in the monument room. And behind this smooth wall, which you can in fact go around, there is a sub-network that I know well and that has nothing to do with the flat space I described to you. Besides, it is impossible to find any trace of this place on my plans. I can’t even imagine where such a huge space could be hidden.
I really don’t know what to think about this event. I know the catacombs well, and nothing like this had ever happened to me. Among those who often go down, no one serious reports such far-fetched stories.
Example: Once, an old man told me that he was in the cemetery ossuary, alone. He heard the laughter of little girls. He stopped, still amazed. Yes, it was indeed the laughter of girls. Intrigued, and afraid, he approached the noise… And the noise simply led him to a well that was rising to the surface, and over which children must simply be playing. Some weird acoustic phenomenon was just projecting the laughter into the ossuary. These are the kinds of stories you usually hear. Mine would be loony.
I’m not prone to hallucinations. I’ve never had one. I don’t smoke or take drugs. At the beginning of my walk, I had just had a can of beer, as usual. Light beer: no way that could be the cause of such a complete bad trip. I must have been hallucinating somewhere, maybe a good part of the time, but I don’t know from where. When I got lost in the flat space? Or did I completely imagine this place? I don’t know what to think. The shadow still haunts my memory.
Thank you for reading. I am confused, and I had to write about that.
If someone experienced something similar, I’m interested. Throwaway account, but I can stay with it for a while on this topic.