S2E19: The Paris Catacombs | Into The Empire of The Dead

[00:00:00] Welcome to Mystery Date. This show was created first and foremost for entertainment purposes. While we do our best to research our topics, nothing discussed on this show should be taken as absolute fact. Opinions, theories, and interpretations are just that. Listener judgment is encouraged.

[00:00:15] Paris is known as the City of Light, but beneath its cafes, cathedrals, and crowded streets lies something far older, colder, and darker. A hidden empire built from the bones of millions.

[00:00:32] Twenty meters underground, the Paris Catacombs stretch through abandoned limestone quarries, where skulls stare from the walls, tunnels disappear into blackness, and one carved warning greets visitors before they enter. Stop! This is the Empire of Death. What began as a desperate solution to overflowing cemeteries became one of the most haunting places on Earth.

[00:01:02] A place where history, horror, and folklore twist together in the dark. And according to those who have walked its forbidden corridors, the dead beneath Paris may not be as silent as they seem. This is the Paris Catacombs. I'm Christian. I'm Kate. Welcome to Mystery Date.

[00:01:39] It's date night, meaning we get to talk about all things mysterious and weird. This season is called A Haunting, and it involves all sorts of paranormal and ghostly mysteries. Tonight's mystery is all about the Paris Catacombs. Get comfy, grab your favorite drink, and let's start the show. We're going across the pond for this one. No, I thought this would be a fun one to cover for this season, though, because again, we did so many haunted houses. This is more, honestly, just spooky, probably haunted location.

[00:02:08] Yeah, it's not a house, and it's not necessarily one particular instance of haunting. It's a haunted place, a place of haunting history and haunting truths and, like you said, just general spookiness, I think. I mean, yeah, when you take a bunch of bones and put them underneath the ground, odds are if residual hauntings exist, it's probably going to happen or appear there.

[00:02:37] I mean, yeah, because it's mostly like a mass, pretty unmarked grave. Yeah, essentially. It's not even technically a catacomb, which we'll get into in here. But the name is kind of a misnomer, to be honest. Yeah, all I really know about the Paris Catacombs is I've read, of course, Edgar Allan Poe's Cask of Amontillado, which takes place in the catacombs.

[00:03:02] And we watched that one horror movie where they get stuck in the catacombs. As above, so below. Yeah. Yeah, which is interesting. I can never remember these things, like the titles or names or stuff, so. It's a bad movie, but it's an interesting concept. And if you like found footage films, then you might as well just watch it because it's solid for that genre. But yeah, I mean, that's all I really know.

[00:03:25] So I know it is like a mass grave sort of tomb made out of a tunnel system type of thing underground. And I know we've watched some YouTubers who like have gone down there to do ghost hunts and things. Yeah, shout out Sam and Colby. If you want to watch a deep dive, they're a great episode or a series to watch. I think they've only gone down to the catacombs once, but that whole episode they did down there was amazing.

[00:03:52] Kate and I watched it and they basically break the law openly in the video several times because you have to in order to get to these certain areas. And then I don't want to spoil it. Go watch the video. But at one point they get trapped down there. Yeah, I mean, it's because they're like sealed off to the public and it's like some of them have been sealed off completely. So it's like the pyramids at this point where you've got tunnels that lead to nowhere and it's kind of like a maze. And then it's underground. It's dark.

[00:04:19] There's no light or electricity or cell phone signal or anything like that. So I remember watching that video and being like, yikes, dude, even if they find nothing ghostly, this is scary. Just the fact that they're down here. Just getting there. Just exploring these taverns or caverns. These taverns. The taverns. The taverns down there are quite nice. Yeah, the speakeasies, if you will. You know, we'll get into it.

[00:04:49] Yes. All right. All right. Let's go. All right. And before we get into the mystery, this is I think we have two more episodes left after this one of season two. We have the episode all about the Warrens and then we have our season two debrief. So if you guys like the show, please like comment, subscribe. Give us ideas for season three. What do you want to see? What are you interested in? What mysteries are keeping you awake at night? Call the mystery hotline. Reach out on social media.

[00:05:16] Anything like that to support the show goes a long way. And with season three coming up, we're going to be doing a giveaway with some new merch that we've designed all around the haunting theme that Kate's been working on. So keep an eye out for that on, again, all of our social medias. And please, if you like the show, like it, comment, subscribe. Tell your grandma. Tell your friends. Tell anyone you know about us because every little bit goes a long way for an indie show like us. Especially your grandmas. I really want as many grandmas as possible listening to this content.

[00:05:46] We're a grandma forward show. Yeah, that's actually, that was my main goal when we started the podcast was we need to reach the grandmas. See, when we came up with the idea, we had a whiteboard and I wrote mysteries and just circled it. And Kate came up, stared at it for a minute and wrote grandma's question mark and circled it right next to mysteries. So it's been in the foundation of the philosophy, if you will, would of this show. All right, enough about grandmas.

[00:06:14] To understand the Paris catacombs, we have to start with the city above them. Paris in the 1700s was not the romantic city we imagine today. It was crowded, dirty, loud and growing quickly. The Paris of perfect boulevards and elegant urban planning had not fully arrived yet. Baron Haussmann's massive reconstruction of Paris would not begin until the 19th century. So that meant in the late 1700s, Paris was still a dense medieval city in many places.

[00:06:43] With narrow streets, crowded homes, poor sanitation and burial grounds that had been used for centuries. For hundreds of years, Parisians buried their dead inside the city. This made sense when Paris was smaller. The dead were placed close to the churches and parish communities. But as the population grew and generations passed, the cemeteries filled. And then overfilled. And then became something closer to a slow motion disaster.

[00:07:12] The most infamous of these burial grounds was the Cemetery of Saints' Innocents. Often called Les Innocents. It sat near Les Halles, the city's central market district. For centuries, it received the bodies of ordinary Parisians. The poor, plague victims, and countless anonymous dead. The cemetery became so packed that bodies were not always buried in the individual, dignified way people might imagine. Many were placed in mass graves.

[00:07:41] And when one grave was filled, another layer came later. Then another. By the 18th century, the dead were no longer staying politely underground. According to modern histories of the catacombs, the problem became impossible to ignore in 1780, when a wall bordering the Saints' Innocents Cemetery collapsed and human remains spilled into the neighboring property.

[00:08:06] The official catacombs chronology marked 1780 as the year that the Saints' Innocents Cemetery was closed. The crisis came at a time when public health concerns were rising and authorities were increasingly worried about disease, contamination, and the effects of overcrowded burial sites on people living nearby. So imagine living next to that. Not just my neighbor is annoying next to that. Not just the garbage truck comes too early next to that.

[00:08:33] You're living beside a cemetery, so swollen with the dead, that the earth itself is pushing back. Cellars are threatened and the air is foul. The boundary between home and graveyard is collapsing. Literally. Paris had a problem. Too many dead bodies. Not enough cemetery space. And a growing fear that the dead were poisoning the living. But strangely enough, the solution was already under their feet. So imagine that.

[00:09:03] I don't like that. I don't like imagining that. Like you go in the basement and the walls are just oozing pieces of dead people and bones and stuff because there's too many of them buried in the ground in layers next to your house and the earth is just eroding them. That's just how they're dealing with the dead. They're pouring these bodies into these ditches. And when they get filled too much with other bodies, they literally throw a layer of dirt on and then throw more bodies on. Just layer the dirt higher and higher.

[00:09:32] Okay. And then, yeah, you literally have it bursting into people's homes where just so much pressure of these bodies have just broken into cellars. Yeah. Like no wonder there's plagues. They're not wrong to be worried that the dead are poisoning the living. Yeah. I mean, they probably were. Yeah. Yeah. Not in like a vengeful ghost. I'm going to come haunt you and poison you sort of way.

[00:09:57] But like when you're just breathing in, decaying, decomposition, like you're going to get sick. Yeah. Especially if it's getting in the water. Yeah. Which it probably is. I was going to say, it says that they were like backing up into the sewer system. So where do you think the water comes from? Long before the Paris catacombs became an ossuary, they were quarries.

[00:10:20] Paris sit on a layer of limestone, especially the famous Lutinian limestone that was used to build parts of the city itself. Much of the stone from Paris came from underground extraction. The New Yorker describes Paris as a city that was built from its own underworld. Blocks were cut from beneath the city, hauled upward, and used in buildings including major landmarks such as Notre Dame Cathedral, the Louvre, and St. Estachet Church.

[00:10:48] In other words, before the catacombs held the dead of Paris, they helped build the Paris of the living. Quarrying around Paris began very early. The official catacombs history lists open pit quarries as early as the 1st century AD, and underground quarries by the 14th century. Over time, workers tunneled into the limestone below the city and surrounding areas, cutting passageways and chambers.

[00:11:15] Some tunnels were only large enough for a man pushing a barrow of stone. Some chambers were held up by pillars intentionally left behind. Over centuries, this created a second city underneath Paris. A negative image of the one above. Which is why the name of that movie is As Above So Below. Because it's like, it's almost mirroring the street patterns and stuff, probably. Yes, yes, very much so.

[00:11:42] But that underground city was not carefully planned at first. It was mined, expanded, abandoned, forgotten, rediscovered, and often poorly mapped. As Paris grew above, the empty spaces below became dangerous. Then came the collapse.

[00:12:01] In 1774, a severe collapse occurred on the Rue Denfert-Rochere, which was one of several public squares, swallowing up 300 meters according to the official catacombs chronology. Other accounts describe the terror caused by sinkholes and subsidence as the old quarry voids began to threaten the city above. The danger was not symbolic. Paris was quite literally standing over empty space.

[00:12:28] So you literally had the city now falling into these open quarries that were mined. Yeah, that makes sense that you dig out the underneath of a city and create all these very haphazard caverns held up by little rock pillars and stuff. And I mean, look, even a house can't support itself without the correct structural beams and stuff in place. I was about to say, I wonder if the same people who built the catacombs built the Winchester house.

[00:12:53] I would love to see like a modern HGTV show where architects and designers just go into places like this and critique it. Like a historical goal? I'm sure there's a lot to critique, especially in like old castles. That would be fun for me. Like I've seen there's a lot of like welder TikTok stuff, if that's what you want to call it, where they'll go to like theme parks and they'll be like, look at this weld job. This is terrible. And they'll like zoom in on roller coasters and shit. And it's like, yeah, wow.

[00:13:23] I don't even know anything about welding, but that does look terrible. We need that. But for old buildings, that's just that's what I'm picturing is like one of those HGTV house reno people in these caverns and catacombs looking at these beams like this won't do. The city is going to come crumbling down any day. You got to reinforce this shit. Spoilers. No, that's a big expensive job.

[00:13:50] So I don't think Paris had the money for that in 1770 something. No, no. We'll get into that. King Louis the 16th responded with a series of measures. In 1776, he prohibited quarrying underneath public roads. And in 1777, he created the Department of General Quarry Inspection, also known as bear with me here. The Inspection Generale de Corrales or something like that.

[00:14:19] He inspects quarries. That's all you need to know. I don't know why they gave him that title. But he was to map, inspect and reinforce the underground quarries. The first inspector general, Charles Axel Guillemot, became central to the story. So by the 1780s, Paris had two separate emergencies. Above ground, cemeteries were overflowing. Below ground, abandoned quarries were threatening to collapse.

[00:14:49] The city needed to move the dead. The quarries needed a purpose. And that is how Paris found a solution so practical and so macabre that it feels like it came from a gothic novel. Remove the bones into the abandoned tunnels. Two birds, one stone. Especially back in the medieval time. It's like, yeah, that makes perfect sense. Or I guess more modern era. What do they fucking call it? The Enlightenment era. Yeah. Because this is like the 1700s.

[00:15:17] So this isn't medieval, but... But it's not far off in the way people lived. It was still pretty medieval feeling back then. Yes, for sure. I mean, yeah. Put yourself in the mindset of that times. The city is slowly sinking because hollow underneath. And there's people's dead bodies and bones floating into the streets and just pushing up daisies in your gardens.

[00:15:42] That's literally the first thing that I think people would start to think of. Like, why don't we just move the graves to this hollow space? Fill up the hollow space. Now graves aren't in our yards. And the hollow space is full of support. Right? I mean, yeah. They're already dead. No, it sounds like a perfect... We have them just in the gutters in the streets. So... Yeah, it sounds like a perfect plan.

[00:16:09] Like, it's only macabre because we look at it with our modern eyes that we're like... Macabre is also a weird word. It is. I know it can be macabre. Some people do pronounce it like that. Because I think it's a French word. So they drop the end of their words half the time. Yeah, but as I said it, I stopped for a second in my mind. And I'm like... I'm like, I just said it because I'm like corn cob. Yeah, corn cob. Give me my cob! Yeah, but no.

[00:16:37] The site chosen for the ossuary was the former Tome Isori Queries, located near what is now Place Denfert Rocher. At the time, this area was outside the dense heart of Paris, which made it a logical place to receive the remains removed from city cemeteries. On April 7th, 1786, the Tome Isori Queries were blessed and consecrated as a municipal ossuary.

[00:17:03] This is where the official beginning of what became known as the Paris Catacombs. The name catacombs was inspired by the ancient Roman catacombs, although technically, the Paris Catacombs are not catacombs in the same original sense. Like we said, they are an ossuary, a place where bones are stored, rather than a network of individual tombs. So that's the difference between the two, really, is instead of these all being individualized burials,

[00:17:33] it's more or less just, no, we shoved a bunch of bones down there. A catacomb is supposed to be the same thing as like a mausoleum. Yes, yes. And the Paris Catacombs are not. There's not really a lot of organization. The most organization they have was just the way they stacked bones. It wasn't about identification or separate burials or even like good Christian burials or anything like that.

[00:18:01] It was just how many can we fit here and what's the most efficient way to fit them here? Which even the like stacking of bones that we know now isn't what originally happened. Yikes. I didn't know that. I assumed that was just their efficient way of shoving them in there. No. The transfer of bones began in 1786. The work was not quick. It was not clean. And it was not simple.

[00:18:29] The remains from Parisian cemeteries were exhumed, loaded onto carts, covered, and transported through the city, often at night. The New Yorker describes the process as a ritualized movement of the dead. Horse-drawn funeral wagons, torchbearers, priests chanting prayers, and workers moving the bones into the quarry system. Yeah, you're trying to tell me it's not medieval anymore just because people know about the Enlightenment. Yeah, this is happening at night. Probably for weeks.

[00:18:58] Every night there's just like a little cult parade of dead people and religious people and torches and chanting and stuff in your streets. And you know what's happening. Yeah. See, I guess that was their way of trying to be like graceful and religious about it. They're like, let's keep honor for the dead. Like they were trying their best to not be macabre, but it just ended up making it worse. Horrifying sight, dude. Horrifying sight.

[00:19:29] Yikes. Was Paris okay? No. In short, it really wasn't. At first, the bones were not arranged in the decorative walls we see today. Many were dumped down quarry shafts, broken, mixed, and piled. Later, workers and inspectors transformed parts of the ossuary into something more deliberate, more philosophical, and much more visually haunting.

[00:19:54] The official catacombs timeline says bones were transferred from the Parisian parish cemeteries from 1787 to 1814. With the final deposits... Wait, hold up. 1787 until 1814? Yeah, I did forget about that. So yeah, this happened. So yeah, not one to two years. Like 30 fucking years.

[00:20:19] An entire lifetime of every night the cult of the dead parade. That's terrifying. That is some people's entire lives this was happening. Side note. When was Anastasia Romanoff alive? Is this the same time period that she was trying to come to Paris? No, far later. You're looking at like World War I times for that?

[00:20:49] I'm just picturing this is the Paris she's dreaming of. No, unfortunately, Paris is about to get into Napoleon, and they dealt with the revolution during this whole time. Yeah. So during all of this, the revolution was going on. So it's kind of scary. They had a rough go. Final deposits into the catacombs took place in 1860 after Hossmann's urban development projects.

[00:21:14] That means that the catacombs were used as a bone repository in major phases for decades, from the late 18th century into the 19th century. So for almost 100 years. Well, they weren't doing the same procession of moving all the bones over, but they actively used it to fill with bodies. I mean, it's just crazy.

[00:21:36] Like, imagine walking down downtown Cleveland or New York, and underneath the street that you're walking on are, spoilers, millions of bodies. Like, how do they even have that many people? How do they have that many dead? It happened over 100 years. How was the population that big already back then? I mean, you gotta think Paris was a major...

[00:22:02] And again, these are still just, like, everyday or common or poor or sick folk. Like, anybody with any sort of money or rank would probably still be getting, like, a proper religious burial ceremony somewhere. They wouldn't be getting dumped down these quarries. Yeah. No, you're right. So this is just no-name people in the eyes of society. Yeah. So that's insane to me. You also gotta think, though, they probably buried, like...

[00:22:30] Before they actively started putting new bones in there, they probably had to move decades of already bones that had been just stored. That's true. So, like, it's already compounding when you start it. So by the time they stopped, it's like, okay, well, there was probably already, like, a million or something that they had to move over for 30 years. And they just kept adding to it. That's just crazy. It's one thing to, like, know how many people die each year.

[00:22:58] It's another thing to picture a funeral procession happening for multiples of them every single night. Like... For 30 years. That's just insane. The figure most associated with the later arrangement of the ossuary is Louis Antoinette Herricart de Thurie, who served as Inspector General of Quarries in the early 19th century. Before the ossuary opened to the public in 1809, Herricart de Thurie oversaw an extensive rearrangement of the bones,

[00:23:27] turning the site into a kind of underground museum and memorial. The official catacomb's websites say he transformed the ossuary using a musographical and monumental approach. That phrase sounds very elegant, but what it means is this. Somebody looked at millions of bones in a former quarry and said, let's give this place some design principles. And somehow that's exactly what happened.

[00:23:54] So, like I said, when they first started it to 1810, there was no, like, walls or organized system going on here. It was just chutes where they would dump these bones down and they'd land in piles in these open areas. And then later this guy comes in and is like, what if we start organizing? Yeah. What if we make them look at you from the walls? Make it kind of like a museum, like he says. Yeah.

[00:24:19] So that way you can have people go down and see without having to be like, okay, well, I know exactly where my relative is buried. Unfortunately, you never will. But if you can go down there and at least maybe. Like make it like visiting a grave or like visiting a mausoleum type of thing. Yeah. That's essentially what their approach was. And also you just, you had to start cleaning it up at some point. I don't know. The way I heard it was this guy went down there and saw an art gala waiting to happen.

[00:24:48] I mean, with a fucking name like Louis Antoinette Hedicard de Thury. Yeah, of course. He's probably a pretty artsy guy. And he was like, I needed muse and museum features down here. And it's like, okay, you sound like a pretentious artist to me. Like it's this sounds like. It takes a pretentious artist though to make something that others can appreciate. Yeah, that's funny. I'm just picturing this guy coming down there with like a paintbrush.

[00:25:18] Like, you know what this needs? Just like splattering. Jackson Pollock was a great. Long bones were stacked into walls. Skulls were placed into rows and patterns. Inscriptions were added. And the site became both practical storage and philosophical theater. It was not just a dump for bones. It became a monument, a warning, and a sermon built from skeletons. So how many bodies are buried in the Paris catacombs?

[00:25:47] The most common estimate is that the Paris catacombs contains the remains of around 6 million people. Yeah. 6 million people are buried in the catacombs. And that's just an estimate. Yeah, which means there's probably a lot more. Yeah. Oh yeah. There's a lot. That number is repeated by many sources. Although modern researchers acknowledge that the exact number is difficult to pin down.

[00:26:14] A 2024 Le Monde report on scientific research in the catacombs noted that estimates can vary, with officials and researchers discussing a possible range of several million individuals. Isabel Nafau, the current administrator of the catacombs, described the remains as potentially representing the entire population of Paris between the 10th and 18th centuries. Facts, though.

[00:26:40] Because they were literally just taking old cemeteries and old other dumping grounds. Like, they basically exhumed every grave in Paris and moved everybody to these catacombs. Yeah. So yeah, I mean... At that time. Essentially, that is what happened. That is difficult to wrap your head around. 6 million is not a cemetery. 6 million is a vanished city. It is more than the population of many countries.

[00:27:08] It is generation after generation of Parisians reduced to anonymous fragments, then stacked into walls beneath the streets, where later Parisians would shop, argue, fall in love, complain about tourists, and spill coffee on themselves. The bones came from multiple burial grounds, including Saints' Innocents and other parish cemeteries. Some remains were also moved during the later urban development.

[00:27:34] Because the bones were transferred in mass and often separated from their original graves, most of the individuals cannot be identified. That leads to a common question most people ask. And you kind of hinted at it a little earlier. Is anyone famous buried in the Paris catacombs? The answer is complicated. Many famous figures were originally buried in Paris cemeteries, whose contents were later transferred to the catacombs. Because the bones were mixed, displaced, and stacked,

[00:28:03] it is usually impossible to identify specific remains with certainty. Some popular sources claim that figures such as Charles Perrault and Jean de La Fontaine and other notable French figures may have had remains transferred there, but in most cases, we are dealing with probable or traditional associations rather than labeled individual preserved bodies. An important caution involves French Revolution figures.

[00:28:29] Some accounts have claimed that people such as Robespierre or other guirtened revolutionaries ended up in the catacombs, but later reporting on the remains found at Chappelle-Exporteur has challenged parts of the accepted story. So the safest way to say it is this. The Paris catacombs almost certainly contains the remains of historically significant people, because they contain millions of Parisians from centuries of city life. But for the most important part,

[00:28:58] the dead there are anonymous, which honestly makes it heavier. The catacombs are not haunted by one king or one murderer or one tragic noblewoman in a dramatic gown. They are filled with the ordinary dead. Bakers, mothers, children, soldiers, beggars, priests, and merchants. People who owed money. People who told terrible jokes. People who thought their lives were enormous because to them, they were.

[00:29:27] Then time passed. And now their bones hold up the walls of a tourist attraction. Which is haunting. It is crazy. I always talk about how we want to go to Paris and we want to go visit France, but it's like, man, you got to think about that while you're there. Like every little romantic kiss picture in front of the Eiffel Tower. What's underneath you guys though? Millions of bodies.

[00:29:55] That's so, I'm still can't wrap my head around that amount of bodies in one place because like picture the largest cemetery you've ever been to. Arlington, probably for a lot of Americans. Probably the biggest one we've seen. It seems like it goes on for miles and miles. There's like rolling hills and you just, all you see is headstones. That doesn't even scratch the surface of how many people are in these catacombs.

[00:30:21] Yeah, to put that into perspective, Arlington has 400,000 to 430,000 people buried there. Yeah, so like a half a million, little less than half a million. Paris Catacombs has an estimated 6 million or more. 6 million. 6 million or more. But again, that's just like, that's like the conservative estimate. That's what they're willing to put the number on. People think that it could go a lot fucking higher. And I'm sure it does because by the time they're trying to get these estimates,

[00:30:49] how many bones have already completely decomposed? Or yeah. And aren't even there to find anymore. Yep, yep. There's no way of truly knowing how many bodies were buried here. How many bodies are they thinking it's one body, but really all those bones come from a different body? So that's 200 different bodies making up one skeleton. Exactly, yeah. You don't know. I think that's probably a very conservative estimate because like you said,

[00:31:15] they don't want to just be putting these wild numbers out there that they can't back up. So they're like, okay, well, from the evidence that's there, this is likely true, but it's also likely a minimum. So that brings us to the modern age of the catacombs. Today, the Paris catacombs are managed as a historic site and museum space. The official visitor route is only a small portion of the larger underground network.

[00:31:42] According to the official practical information, the public route is a one-way circuit of about 1.5 kilometers. Visitors descend 131 steps, climb 112 steps back up, walk through dim passageways, and experience a constant underground temperature of about 14 degrees Celsius or 57 degrees Fahrenheit. The visit typically lasts around 45 minutes. The broader network beneath Paris is much larger and mostly off-limits.

[00:32:11] Urban explorers known as cataphiles still enter illegal or restricted sections of the tunnels. Despite the dangers, these areas can be flooded, unstable, confusing, and extremely easy to get lost in. The New Yorker describes a large underground subculture built around exploration of the quarry voids with its own informal codes, maps, meeting places, and rituals. Recently, the catacombs have undergone restoration and modernization.

[00:32:40] A major renovation project began in 2023, and the site reopened to the public on April 8, 2026, with a new visitor route, updated exhibition design, immersive audio features, and plans of temporary exhibitions. The city of Paris framed the renovation as a way to preserve the centuries-old site while helping visitors better understand its complex history and spiritual atmosphere. There is also serious scientific work happening there now.

[00:33:08] Since 2023, researchers led by Philip Charlier of Paris-Ceclay Universities have been studying thousands of bones from a collapsed section of the bone walls. The research focuses on paleodemography and paleopathology, meaning scientists are trying to understand who these people were, what illnesses they suffered from, what their bones reveal about disease, injury, diet, and life in earlier centuries.

[00:33:35] The catacombs may be one of the largest historical bone collections in the world, spanning centuries of Parisian life. That is one of the strangest things about the catacombs. They are a tourist site, they are a memorial, they are an engineering solution. They are a forbidden playground for urban explorers, and they are a scientific archive. And depending on who you ask, they are also a haunted labyrinth where the past refuses to be quiet.

[00:34:05] So now that you know the history, let's go into a few of the ghost stories. Now, before we get into the ghost stories, I will say, obviously this place is probably haunted. I mean, yeah, when you have that many dead bodies in one place, especially they've all been moved, and so many of them were in an unmarked mass grave to begin with. They were floating through the streets when sewage and erosion was happening.

[00:34:28] Like, these were not bodies that were put to peaceful rest for the most part. So, not that always will result in some big haunting, but six million in that same circumstance, guarantee there's some spooky haunting shit going on down there. Oh yeah, oh yeah. Also, side note, I love that they call them cataphiles. That's hilarious to me.

[00:34:56] I get that it's catacombs, cataphiles, but it makes me think of like, like somebody who's obsessed with cats or something. I'm sure there's a different name for that. Cataholic. Okay. Cataphile should be what a person who is addicted to cats, I would say, or who loves cats. That makes more sense. But according to Google,

[00:35:26] a person who loves cats is called an eilorophile, which I guess makes somewhat sense. It's derived from the Greek words eiloris, which means cat. But again, it's not even feline. Like, and I just, eilorophile sounds, I don't know. Sounds like it's alluring. And it shouldn't be. So I like cataphile. It does say cataholic. Cataholic. I figured, yeah, I was like, it's probably cataholic.

[00:35:56] You're addicted to cats. But no, I do like the name cataphile. Yes. Cataphile. Like it made, you sound like cat woman. Like. Before we get into specific ghost accounts, we need to be clear about something. The history of the Paris catacombs is well documented. The hauntings are not documented in the same way. There are legends, guide stories, online accounts, paranormal claims, urban explorer tales, and internet folklore.

[00:36:24] Some are attached to real historical events, and some are modern stories that have grown in the dark corners of the internet. Some might be exaggerations, and some might be psychological reactions to being underground in a place filled with millions of bones. Some are just strange enough to make you keep the light on after you hear this. The most famous ghost story connected to the catacombs is the story of Filibert Esperit. Filibert Esperit was a real person, although the details of his story vary depending on the source.

[00:36:54] He is generally described as a doorkeeper or porter at the Val de Grasse hospital during the French Revolution. In 1793, Esperit entered the underground quarry system through a staircase connected to the hospital. Why he went down there is uncertain. Some versions of the story say he was looking for liquor stored in a cellar. Other versions are more cautious and say that his motive is unknown. What is documented is his tragic ending.

[00:37:22] Esperit disappeared in 1793. His body was reportedly found 11 years later in 1804 in the quarry galleries. He was buried where he was found. A tomb marker in the restricted catacomb network commemorates him, and its inscription states that he was lost in the quarry on November 3rd, 1793, found 11 years later, and buried in the same place on April 30th, 1804. So this guy goes down there for an unknown reason and gets lost.

[00:37:52] Goes missing. And is found 11 years later. And they're like, well, fuck. Figure that one out. That alone is horrifying. Not a monster. Not a curse. Just a man underground with a failing light. Imagine the moment he realized he was lost. At first, maybe it was frustrating. He turns left, then right, then left again. The tunnel looks familiar, or maybe every tunnel looks familiar. His candle burns lower.

[00:38:22] The air is cold. There is no sunlight to orient him. No sound from the street. No voices. No bells. No horses. Nothing. Then, the light goes out. And the darkness in the catacombs is not normal darkness. It is not bedroom darkness. It is not walk to the fridge at midnight darkness. It is absolute. It presses against the eyes, and it erases the distance. You can hold your hand in front of your face, and you lose it.

[00:38:48] Some versions of the legend say Esperit died only a short distance from an exit. Whether that detail is fully reliable or not, and has become part of the emotional core of the story. The idea that he might have been close to safety makes it so much worse. Over time, Philibert Esperit became more than a historical victim. In catacomb folklore, he became a ghost. Some say his spirit wanders the tunnels on November 3rd, the anniversary of his disappearance.

[00:39:18] Some call him a kind of patron saint of the catacombs. A lost man who now watches over those who go too deep. Others say he is heard in the darkness, still searching for the way out. There is no proof that Esperit haunts the catacombs, but as a ghost story, it works because the real story is already terrifying. He does not need chains, he does not need glowing eyes, and he does not need to whisper Latin from behind a skull wall.

[00:39:45] He was a man who entered the dark and never came back. And that's enough. That one is horrifying to me. Yeah, and that totally works as a nice, tidy story where, okay, man goes missing, dies in the darkness. Now his soul, quote unquote, haunts the place, but as like a protector where he like warns people not to go too far or helps them, helps guide them back to the exit so they don't suffer his fate.

[00:40:12] Yeah, they talk about him too in the Sam and Colby episode. I remember that. Yep. Which, ah, that's so, that's just perfect. That is the ghost story. Like, that is such a perfect little bow to wrap around something to, some lore for the catacombs. Yeah. Unfortunately, obviously, I'm not saying it's good that what happened to Philibert. I mean, no, yeah, it's not like, oh, heck, yeah, awesome life story, bro. It's like, no, that's obviously terrible and tragic. But as a ghost story, that shit works. Oh, yeah.

[00:40:42] One of the most famous modern stories connected to the Paris catacombs is the so-called missing man footage. The story usually goes like this. Sometime in the 1990s, a video camera was found deep in the catacombs. The footage allegedly shows a man wandering through the tunnels, becoming increasingly panicked, breathing heavily, moving faster, and eventually dropping the camera as he runs into the darkness. The man, according to the legend, was never found.

[00:41:12] It is an extremely effective story. It feels like the Blair Witch Project got trapped under Paris and had to pay for roaming data. But there is a major issue here. The authenticity of the footage and the disappearance have not been established. The site, the ghost in my machine, which examines folklore and internet legends, notes that it has not been determined whether the footage is authentic. And it has not been determined whether the alleged disappearance is real at all.

[00:41:40] That does not mean that the footage is worthless as folklore. It means that we should treat it as an urban legend, not a confirmed missing person case. Still, the legend spreads fear because getting lost in the catacombs is not impossible. Restricted sections are maze-like, dangerous, and largely illegal to enter. There are stories of explorers being rescued after getting lost, and modern authorities limit public access for good reasons.

[00:42:07] The official visitor route is controlled, but the wider underground world is something else entirely. The found footage legend works because it does not need a ghost story to scare you. The horror is the maze. The horror is the panic. And I actually have that video here. We can watch it briefly. Oh, shit. Yes. It is like from a news footage, so I probably won't be able to show it on the video for you guys. But go to our website or look at our socials, and I'll share a link on there for you all to see it. Yeah. So what did you think about that?

[00:42:36] Low-key, I would also react that way in the catacombs, even if nothing had happened to me. Because I get very panicked about feeling trapped. So I don't have, like, claustrophobia in the sense that I feel that way in a small, confined space. But if I can't see my exit, like, I can't go underwater because I freak out about it. I don't like going in caves that aren't big and open.

[00:43:04] Like, if it's one thing, if it's like, okay, we have public tours that we know are safe. We're going to lead you to the exit. You're never that far from an exit. I'll go. But I get really scared and really panicked in those situations. So I feel like if I turned one corridor that I was like, this doesn't look familiar. What if we're lost? I would instantly be sprinting around panting and scared as fuck just like that guy. And I would also be like, fuck this camera. We just need to get out of here.

[00:43:32] Like, what makes it so spooky for me, though, is no one's come out as said. That's mine. Yeah. No one has come out and said that this is their video. There has been no real disappearance cases to link to this. It's like, where the hell did this come from? Who made this? Why did they make this? Is it just like a short film? Where are they? And if it is real, they probably didn't get out. So we're watching the last moments of that person that have ever been documented by anyone.

[00:44:02] And then they just ran off and died in the catacombs somewhere. Yeah. That's horrifying. No, it definitely feels Blair Witchy. Oh, yeah. That's where the As Above, So Below got their inspiration. The whole thing came from that found footage. Yeah. Yeah. So the last thing we're going to talk about is something fun, but it's secret rituals, occult legends, and the underground imagination of the catacombs. The Paris catacombs have also become attached to stories of secret rituals, occult meetings,

[00:44:29] black masses, Masonic gatherings, underground parties, and hidden societies. Some of these stories are likely exaggerated. Some are probably rooted in real unauthorized activity. The larger tunnel network has attracted cataphiles, artists, criminals, partygoers, and thrill-seekers for decades. The New Yorker notes that after World War II, increasing numbers of people were drawn into the tunnels for concealment, crime, and pleasure.

[00:44:56] That access to the broader network was made illegal in 1955 except for the official ossuary route. Once you have a massive underground network filled with bones, hidden rooms, graffiti, illegal entrances, and generations of explorers, legends are going to breed down there like mushrooms. And yes, mushrooms are historically connected to the quarry voids too. Some abandoned quarry spaces were used for mushroom farming because they were dark and damp.

[00:45:24] So even the fungus has lore in the Paris underground. Which is wild. People are growing mushroom farms down there. From the dead. From the dead. You're using a cemetery as your farm. And they're selling those to festival kids probably. So if you've gone to a festival in Paris, there's a chance that you're taking dead people's shrooms. There's a chance your shrooms are a bit haunted, kids. Could you imagine taking a shroom?

[00:45:52] I've never done anything like that at a music festival. And you like start getting flashbacks of like a different life. The voice in your head is just screaming for the love of God, Montresor. People are revolution. One more day.

[00:46:23] One day more. Dude, I think those shrooms are hitting a little hard. There are also accounts of secret cinemas and underground parties in the tunnel network. Though those are not necessarily supernatural, they do, however, feed the myth of the catacombs the place where normal rules stop applying. So there are speakeasies. It was a 500 square meter complex.

[00:46:51] It had a restaurant, a movie theater. And when the police got there, there was a note left behind by the people that said, try to find us. That's amazing. Not that I am like encouraging criminal activity, but like low key. What a move. Isn't that crazy? Have a secret speakeasy in movie theater going on. And then the cops show up. You've just taken all your stuff and leaving a note like good luck, boys.

[00:47:20] That's like Joker shit right there. For real. That's why I'm like, that's kind of iconic. Like don't be a criminal. But if you're gonna be a criminal, be those guys. Do no harm. Take no shit. I like that. That's our, that's our method. That's our lesson for the episode. Do no harm and take no shit. Open illegal speakeasy cinemas underneath the ground.

[00:47:50] That's right. Don't let the police stop you. So in closing, the Paris catacombs began as a solution. A practical answer to collapsing streets, unstable quarries, and cemeteries so overcrowded that the dead were forcing their way back into the lives of the living. But over time, that solution became something else. It became an underground monument. A museum of mortality. A city beneath a city.

[00:48:19] A place where six million anonymous dead rest in the walls of bone while the living whisper, take pictures, tell stories, and wonder what might be whispering back. Historically, the catacombs are one of the most extraordinary public work projects in Paris. Spiritually, they are something harder to define. They sit somewhere between the graveyard and gallery. Between engineering and ritual. Between respect and spectacle.

[00:48:47] And the ghost stories, whether true or not, make sense. Of course people hear voices down there and imagine footsteps. Of course a man like Philibert Esperit becomes a ghost. Of course the internet creates cursed footage and missing explorers. And of course people look at those tunnels and think, something is still down there. Because the Paris catacombs are not just scary. They contain the dead.

[00:49:15] They are scary because they remind us that every city is built over something. Every street has a shadow. Every beautiful place has a cost. And under Paris, the cost is visible. Stacked, sorted, arranged, and staring back. So the next time someone calls Paris the city of light, remember this. The brighter the city shines above, the darker the tunnels feel below.

[00:49:40] And 20 meters under the cafes, under the traffic, under the romance, the empire of death is still waiting. So, do you think the Paris catacombs are haunted? I mean, with residual energy at the very least, yes. Because like we said, you can't have that many graves in one place with all of the tragedies that humans have seen in that many lifetimes. Like the way they were moved and buried in pile.

[00:50:10] There's no way there's not residual haunting energy there. I don't know if it goes further than that. Do you think Philibert? I'd like to believe that Philibert's a guardian spirit down there. I do like to believe that Philibert is like a guardian spirit. If I was going to believe in something like that, it would be Philibert. I do like that one. So I'll choose to believe it. If we go down there, I'll know he's watching my back. Honestly, this one, it feels less like a haunting

[00:50:38] and more like an exploration in true crime. Who knows what goes on in those caverns and catacombs. But it's not just a secret speakeasy who's then like, you'll never catch me, coppers. Here's my calling card. Literally, it's not just that shit. Like there's gang activity, I'm sure. It reminds me of, oh, what's that Jordan Peele movie where they have like everybody has a doppelganger living in a secret? Yeah. Us.

[00:51:06] That's what it feels like. I'm like, dude, that it literally is like a secret dark version of Paris underneath Paris. What if? Like, what if people were just live? What if it was a whole cult society down there? There kind of are. People don't know about like. I didn't dive into it too much in this episode because again, so much of it gets caught up in like internet legends and myths. And there's really no 100% documented proof of these things. But there are whispers and rumors of cults and gangs and

[00:51:36] organizations that have formed and live down there. I'm just saying. Especially if like, what if tourists or explorers, people who weren't supposed to be down there and the public didn't know they were down there, they're exploring. And then the public is like, we need to start sealing off some of these tunnels because they're dangerous. And we're just going to only let these ones be public. They don't know people are still back there. They seal it up. Now there's people trapped in there.

[00:52:04] They find a way to survive and just start a new cave civilization. Now we have dwarves. We just have mountain cavern people. It could totally be a thing. It's like the, it's like a, it's like an indigenous tribe. That's so far out that people kept, we like haven't really touched them. You know? I think I might've found your new Roman empire because while Paris and the catacombs are fascinating, this isn't the only city that has a complex thing like this. No.

[00:52:33] There are a group of people that you can look up several interviews by Vice, by channel five that live in the tunnels of Las Vegas. I mean, I know that already like living within, subway system tunnels in big cities is a thing. No, there are abandoned tunnels in Las Vegas that have complex civilizations with people that sell stuff. There's markets between them. They don't come out. Yeah.

[00:53:00] I'm very fascinated by like cultish behavior in societies. So anything like that, I'm like, Ooh, let me know. I got to know. Yeah. I definitely think that the catacombs are haunted for sure. Just, you can't have that, this much stuff going on. If I'm going to say any of these houses are haunted, then the catacombs have to be haunted. Yeah. With that, we'll go into our date night debrief, which this one will be pretty quick. I think I know your answer.

[00:53:28] Would you do a paranormal investigation into the catacombs? Oh, I would do whatever they're like public tourist tour is. I would do that. I would not venture into the parts that like, you're not supposed to go. No, I was thinking the same thing. I'm like, even if I told myself, yeah, we're going to do it. The second I'd get there and someone would be like, okay, there's a cop over there. So we're going to have to be really covert about, I'd be like, no, I'm too sketched out. I'm not going to do this.

[00:53:57] I'm not like, I'd love to believe I like have a rebel heart, but I don't, it's hard for me to break rules. So I can't do that. A, I don't want to have to do the illegal stuff to get there, but B, I'm a chicken, man. Like even if we did go over there, I'd be like, okay, well, we're going to, we're doing our whole investigation right here with the exit still in sight. We are not turning a corner to where we can't see our way out anymore

[00:54:22] because there's no way I'm getting lost and then dying down here because we got lost. So I'd do the public tour or if somehow we made it into one of the illegal entrances, I would not leave that. And like, we would be next to the doorway the whole time we're there. We get arrested probably because we would just be so cautious. I'd be too afraid to really be doing this. So we'd end up getting ourselves caught. Yeah.

[00:54:51] So no, we're not going to, don't expect that as an investigation for us. You might see a video of us going to explore the public parts, but that's about it. So do you have any personal updates or free talk? I think we're, I don't have anything. I don't think besides again, we're getting to the end of season two. So give us your ideas for season three or any mysteries that you want to hear or just any of your mysteries. You can always contact us.

[00:55:14] We did watch the La Llorona movie, the like American sort of conjuring universe one, not the Guatemalan one. It was okay. It was okay. It was better than I thought it would be. Yeah. They did have a lot more roots of the actual La Llorona that I thought. Yeah. Like I thought they kept to the original folklore more than I expected. Critics had said they Hollywoodized and dramatized a little too much.

[00:55:40] And of course they did that, but I was like, no, they still have like the exact folklore story as the origin here. So yeah, no, it was still, it was pretty solid. It was all right. It was better than I thought, but solid B. I'd say C. Yeah. C plus. Yeah. Well, thank you guys so much for joining us and be sure to come back every week for a brand new episode and a brand new mystery. We hope you enjoyed today's story and don't forget you can send us your own episode ideas

[00:56:08] or your own haunting stories, your own spooky stories, even if it's not about hauntings. If you've seen Mothman, you better call me. Anything you want, really just reach out. We want to hear your ideas, your opinions, your answers to our questions and theories and date night debriefs. You can hit us up on social media at mystery date podcast on all platforms. Go to our website, mystery date podcast.com. You could also leave a little voice message on there or shoot us an email mystery date

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[00:57:05] But in the meantime, if you want to share all of our episodes, we got a backlog now of nearly 40 episodes. That's probably like 50 hours of mystery date content and mysteries that you can just envelop yourself in for as long as you want. Maybe not the full 40 hours. You might go crazy. But hey, spend some time with us. We appreciate it. And share it with the family and give us a like and subscribe. Other than that, be sure to have a great rest of your day or night. And remember, every good mystery deserves a date. Bye.