What happened
By the late 18th century Paris's cemeteries, especially the overflowing Holy Innocents, had become a threat to public health. It was decided to move the bones into old underground quarries beyond the toll gate known as the Barrière d'Enfer – the “Gate of Hell.” After a ceremony on 7 April 1786, wagons draped in black cloth carried remains there by night for years. Victims of the Revolution were also placed in the ossuary, and from 1810 inspector Héricart de Thury had the skulls and long bones stacked into the patterns tourists see today as they pass beneath the inscription “Stop! This is the empire of death.” The open section is a fraction of some 300 kilometres of tunnels. The most famous story concerns Philibert Aspairt, a doorkeeper at the Val-de-Grâce hospital who got lost here in 1793 – his body was found eleven years later just a few metres from an exit. Urban explorers known as cataphiles tell of whispers, the touch of cold hands and footsteps in empty tunnels, and a video from a camera supposedly found underground circulates online.
Witnesses
Visitors, guides and cataphiles who illegally explore the closed tunnels.
Explanations and hypotheses
Aspairt's death is the only officially confirmed death in the catacombs. Total darkness, silence and the awareness of millions of dead easily cause disorientation, claustrophobia and sensory illusions. The popular “lost camera” video has no verified origin and is considered staged, or at best footage stripped of context. Entry to the closed tunnels is forbidden, and police patrol the underground.
Legend A story handed down through generations – it can be neither confirmed nor disproved.
Sources
- Les Catacombes de Paris – More than 2000 years of history
- Natasha Geiling, Beneath Paris' City Streets, There's an Empire of Death Waiting for Tourists (Smithsonian Magazine, 2014)
- Atlas Obscura – Grave of Philibert Aspairt
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