Here we go; typing this on a French keyboard. Went into the catacombs for the first time with two cool Parisians I'd never met before named Phoenix and Rambo. They were very well equipped: hard hats, chest high waders, camo, ex-military bags, carbide lamps, etc. They were very friendly, but serious about the entry. I knew that if you were caught inside the catacombs you could get a 60 euro fine, but apparently getting caught just outside the entrance on turf owned by a certain unfriendly company can get you a 1000 euro fine. They instructed me to be very quiet and to cut my headlamp if they signaled me to. We approached the entrance very stealthily to discover a group of 15 to 20 high school kids taking their time sitting around pulling on their boots, snapping glowsticks, and blasting rap-reggae from a boombox.
We anxiously equipped the rest of our gear and crawled in. Following the plaques which declared the names of the streets we were beneath, our first stop was a graffiti-covered room called "la plage" because you have to wade through knee-high water and crawl through sand to get to it. There's a big painting on the wall inspired by Hokusai's "Great Wave off Kanagawa". We met some more people in there. Someone put on some Bob Marley. Someone else went off with a megaphone, pretending to be the police to scare the big group of highschool kids as a joke. Three guys decided to come with us to a room less touristy than the beach. I'm not sure what it's name was, but we stopped for a bite to eat:
Then, Phoenix's brother and a friend of his joined us, making our party eight. We went off to see a room that some of the guys are working on; they bring in tubs of cement and fragments of mirrors, and eventually the entire room will be covered in a mosaic. They had only just started on it:
I helped them put some up. To get to this out-of-the-way room you have to crawl on your belly for a while, pushing your bag ahead of you, or pulling it behind, through low crawlspaces called "chatières". After this, I took fewer photos, and the ones I did take are grainy and blurry or have horrible flash because we went on a whirlwind tour and I didn't want to slow everyone down. We walked, stooped, and crawled a long way, for a long time, at a very fast pace. We saw the "library", a small niche with mouldy books lying around. Phoenix pointed out a plaque, which instead of having a typical date from the 1700s or 1800s simply said "4R" - meaning "4th year of the Revolution". We saw a huge new mural from 2010 by a guy called Sorce, as well as the annual murals of the mining school. Throughout our journey, one of the guys played music ranging from terrorcore to synthpop to some kind of traditional Asian music through his portable speakers. At one point we passed this Latin inscription of a biblical quote from Ezekiel:
Finally Phoenix asked if I wanted to see some bones. I said yes, and he sent one of the guys running ahead down the tunnel to show me where they were, and told me to wait a minute before following. Then I went running after him. I turned the corner, and there he was, sprawled on a heap of human bones, grinning at me. At their time of burial, the bones were thrown down into a well or silo and then covered over at the top. Since then, a portion of the silo's side near the bottom has collapsed or been dug away, and a scree of human bones flows out into the tunnel that passes by it. If you crawl up this scree and through the tiny hole into the silo, you can stand up in front of a wall of human bones that goes vertically from your toes to your nose and then curves over your head to meet the wall behind you. Cross your fingers and hope it doesn't collapse on you. Or take a photo:
That's looking straight up over my head. The bones just look like they're made of wood. Sorry again for the horrible flash photo. I'm not actually sure which ossuary this is. There are several. It's one of the smaller ones.
There's one of the guys waiting for his turn to crawl into it. The blur to the left of his elbow is one of the others already in the process. I do feel bad now, like it was disrespectful. It's one of those stupid things you very occasionally do just because everyone else is doing it, and then feel bad about it later. But who can forgive me? Only people who have been dead for hundreds of years.
Speaking of dead guys; we also saw the memorial for Philibert Aspairt, who got lost in the catacombs and died. He is thought of as the first true cataphile.
Phoenix knocked on the grave and said, "Philibert, are you there?" and Philibert's ghost answered back! It was really just one of the guys who had crawled into a room behind the tombstone and was talking through the wall. One guy found a catatract. These are messages or cartoons hidden by previous explorers in cracks in the walls for other cataphiles to find. I had found one slightly earlier. The one I found was by Sorce, who is apparently quite a reputable cataphile. I will scan it when I get back to the states.
Moving on, we passed some people sleeping in a room with two huge guard dogs who came out barking at us ferociously. We passed them quickly, and later had to come by again. After we got by them the 2nd time, the guy in front of me dropped a couple heavy rocks he had been carrying, just in case. Everyone else was getting tired, so we decided to abort our journey to the Nazi bunker, and exit the catacombs. We passed through a short section flooded with sewage, and also heard some subway trains rumble overhead through the rock.
Then we reached ....
...Anyway, we got the signal, climbed out, and started hurrying down the street. I looked back and saw Phoenix trying to offer an explanation to two policewomen on bikes as five more filthy guys emerged at street level right beneath their noses. He gave up trying to reason with them and we ran for it. A couple blocks later, we changed our clothes in a park, said goodbye to some of our new friends, and had breakfast in a cafe. Phoenix's brother didn't believe that I don't drink, and forced me to have some pastis. We'd been 50 feet below Paris for about ten hours, and travelled from the very south edge of the system all the way to the north, miles away.
We anxiously equipped the rest of our gear and crawled in. Following the plaques which declared the names of the streets we were beneath, our first stop was a graffiti-covered room called "la plage" because you have to wade through knee-high water and crawl through sand to get to it. There's a big painting on the wall inspired by Hokusai's "Great Wave off Kanagawa". We met some more people in there. Someone put on some Bob Marley. Someone else went off with a megaphone, pretending to be the police to scare the big group of highschool kids as a joke. Three guys decided to come with us to a room less touristy than the beach. I'm not sure what it's name was, but we stopped for a bite to eat:
Then, Phoenix's brother and a friend of his joined us, making our party eight. We went off to see a room that some of the guys are working on; they bring in tubs of cement and fragments of mirrors, and eventually the entire room will be covered in a mosaic. They had only just started on it:
I helped them put some up. To get to this out-of-the-way room you have to crawl on your belly for a while, pushing your bag ahead of you, or pulling it behind, through low crawlspaces called "chatières". After this, I took fewer photos, and the ones I did take are grainy and blurry or have horrible flash because we went on a whirlwind tour and I didn't want to slow everyone down. We walked, stooped, and crawled a long way, for a long time, at a very fast pace. We saw the "library", a small niche with mouldy books lying around. Phoenix pointed out a plaque, which instead of having a typical date from the 1700s or 1800s simply said "4R" - meaning "4th year of the Revolution". We saw a huge new mural from 2010 by a guy called Sorce, as well as the annual murals of the mining school. Throughout our journey, one of the guys played music ranging from terrorcore to synthpop to some kind of traditional Asian music through his portable speakers. At one point we passed this Latin inscription of a biblical quote from Ezekiel:
Finally Phoenix asked if I wanted to see some bones. I said yes, and he sent one of the guys running ahead down the tunnel to show me where they were, and told me to wait a minute before following. Then I went running after him. I turned the corner, and there he was, sprawled on a heap of human bones, grinning at me. At their time of burial, the bones were thrown down into a well or silo and then covered over at the top. Since then, a portion of the silo's side near the bottom has collapsed or been dug away, and a scree of human bones flows out into the tunnel that passes by it. If you crawl up this scree and through the tiny hole into the silo, you can stand up in front of a wall of human bones that goes vertically from your toes to your nose and then curves over your head to meet the wall behind you. Cross your fingers and hope it doesn't collapse on you. Or take a photo:
That's looking straight up over my head. The bones just look like they're made of wood. Sorry again for the horrible flash photo. I'm not actually sure which ossuary this is. There are several. It's one of the smaller ones.
There's one of the guys waiting for his turn to crawl into it. The blur to the left of his elbow is one of the others already in the process. I do feel bad now, like it was disrespectful. It's one of those stupid things you very occasionally do just because everyone else is doing it, and then feel bad about it later. But who can forgive me? Only people who have been dead for hundreds of years.
Speaking of dead guys; we also saw the memorial for Philibert Aspairt, who got lost in the catacombs and died. He is thought of as the first true cataphile.
Phoenix knocked on the grave and said, "Philibert, are you there?" and Philibert's ghost answered back! It was really just one of the guys who had crawled into a room behind the tombstone and was talking through the wall. One guy found a catatract. These are messages or cartoons hidden by previous explorers in cracks in the walls for other cataphiles to find. I had found one slightly earlier. The one I found was by Sorce, who is apparently quite a reputable cataphile. I will scan it when I get back to the states.
Moving on, we passed some people sleeping in a room with two huge guard dogs who came out barking at us ferociously. We passed them quickly, and later had to come by again. After we got by them the 2nd time, the guy in front of me dropped a couple heavy rocks he had been carrying, just in case. Everyone else was getting tired, so we decided to abort our journey to the Nazi bunker, and exit the catacombs. We passed through a short section flooded with sewage, and also heard some subway trains rumble overhead through the rock.
Then we reached ....
...Anyway, we got the signal, climbed out, and started hurrying down the street. I looked back and saw Phoenix trying to offer an explanation to two policewomen on bikes as five more filthy guys emerged at street level right beneath their noses. He gave up trying to reason with them and we ran for it. A couple blocks later, we changed our clothes in a park, said goodbye to some of our new friends, and had breakfast in a cafe. Phoenix's brother didn't believe that I don't drink, and forced me to have some pastis. We'd been 50 feet below Paris for about ten hours, and travelled from the very south edge of the system all the way to the north, miles away.
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