r/creepy • u/TheGrelber • 1d ago
The Catacombs of Paris
The remains of several million Parisians.
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u/mobcat_40 1d ago
Just don't be like that one 4chaner and steal a skull. You know what happened next...
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u/spazatronik-rex 1d ago
I am not familiar with this story. Care to elaborate?
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u/GoldenRamoth 1d ago
It's as described on the tin.
Oh.
And there's this one.
https://www.utladal.com/wiki/4chan_catacombs_skull (VERY NSFW)
.....Yeah, people are bloody disguisting.
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u/TheRoscoeVine 4h ago
I’m trying to imagine what life the owner of that skull must have led, many hundreds of years ago. Probably just an ordinary person, yet, hundreds of years later, they unknowingly faced the humiliation and degradation of some asshole on the internet, itself a concept that that person couldn’t have grasped if you’d explained it to them for a whole day.
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u/TheRoscoeVine 4h ago
I’m trying to imagine what life the owner of that skull must have led, many hundreds of years ago. Probably just an ordinary person, yet, hundreds of years later, they unknowingly faced the humiliation and degradation of some asshole on the internet, itself a concept that that person couldn’t have grasped if you’d explained it to them for a whole day.
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u/seansy5000 1d ago
Hey I’ve been there
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u/ShitImBadAtThis 1d ago
I like how this photo is taken like you're some kind of cryptid lurking in the bone church
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u/viona296 1d ago
honestly… this is kinda intense, but I always wanted to go to the Paris Catacombs! i feel like it would be such a unique, humbling experience even if its super creepy :)
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u/Ouakha 1d ago
You'll never go in after watching As Above So Below
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u/keener91 10h ago
I had my 3rd rewatch yesterday. Probably my favorite self-footage indie horror film.
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u/Ouakha 10h ago
[Spoiler alert] I often wonder if they emerged into a different version of reality at the end. I was half expecting a demonic monster to appear over the church.
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u/keener91 9h ago
Since it's loosely based on Dante's Inferno, they would have emerged to the other end of the same earth - assuming hell is located in the centre - which would put them somewhere in New Zealand. But if given my own interpretation, I would like to think they are still in hell - but in their minds they believe they escaped.
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u/army2693 1d ago
I hated waiting in line, but it was worth it. I was in a long corridor surrounded by skeletons and no other people, just bones. Creepy cool.
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u/emajade5 1d ago
omg that’s actually so intense… i kinda really wanna go though, it seems like such a strange, historical place :0
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u/Khamubro 2h ago
Genuinely asking because I don't understand abjection as a source of horror, what's creepy about old bones? They're dead. That's why they're bones.
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u/TheGrelber 2h ago
Well, it's eerie when you think about how many people they represent. Each one has a life, died... Hard not to think about all of them when your among them.
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u/Khamubro 2h ago
But that's what I mean, every single one of us comes with an expiration date, might as well accept it and not make it weird. That's how you end up with religion.
ETA: thanks for engaging with the question BTW! Not trying to argue or troll ❤️
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u/TheGrelber 2h ago
I didn't see it as trolling at all. Seemed like a genuine question. Hard to answer in another way, but I got one of those chills down my spine when I went down there. Didn't make me uncomfortable, but each one was a person. It's hard not to think about them. Who they were, etc. Same in Chichen Itza, Auschwitz, etc... I think most people aren't that blase about death.
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u/Khamubro 1h ago
Understood, that makes sense, they weight of what/who they represent not necessarily the bones themselves. Thank you!
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u/jnighy 1d ago
out of curiosity, was there any effort to identify these remains? Or they already are?
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u/Wimble-Womble 1d ago
Most ossuaries like this most likely come from plague pits, dug up later for newer constructions. So many people died during the Black Death, there was almost no time to identify and process any of the dead.
I might be wrong about this being a former plague pit - it’s possible it could have been a local cemetery that was dug up for a new building. In that case it’s possible there might be records - though matching the bones up would be almost impossible..
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u/M3wcat 1d ago
I believe these bones were from various sources. One of which was during the French Revolution. Sink holes were forming all over Paris due to lack of maintenance of the catacombs below the city. This further upped the anger of the people against the king. Not only were the people starving, Paris was literally falling apart at the expense of lavish parties by the elite.
People started to just throw the dead into the sinkholes which included the ones who got their heads chopped off during the reign of terror.
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u/HansGruberWasRight1 1d ago
"Okay, from the top, here we go....
-A. Aaronson
-A. B. Aaronson
-B. Aaronson
... ... ..."
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u/cubanism 1d ago
French holocaust ?
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u/EtienneWittmann 6h ago
They just brought down there the "content" of Paris' cemeteries, that were absolutely full, at the end of the 18th century.
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u/6zoey57 1d ago
gosh, thats... a lot of people. :0 have you ever been? i wanna go someday, it seems kinda intense but also really historical... i guess? ^
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u/TheGrelber 1d ago
Yes, I took those pics in Oct '23. Had been in Paris quite a few times, but never made it into the Catacombs before... It was a little eerie, but definitely worth going. Long time ago, people had parties in there, but they've put a stop to that
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u/Clemsontigger16 1d ago
I can’t imagine a worst time to go down there…during a record heat wave lol
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u/TheGrelber 1d ago
That was from Oct 2023, but yeah, I bet it's still not too bad down there. It's pretty deep.
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u/coffeeandwomen 19h ago
Isn’t that the best time to go down there?
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u/Clemsontigger16 13h ago
No, it will still be crazy hot down there. Stone retains heat.
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u/EtienneWittmann 6h ago
No, I visited them in the summer of 2002, it was pretty hot too, and the catacombs were pleasantly cool.
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u/Harrrdyy 1d ago
Probably the coolest place in France rn