After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - Inside the Paris Catacombs

Episode Date: June 5, 2025

Beneath the streets of the French capitol lurks a city of the dead: the Paris Catacombs.Why they were piled up there is a dark and fascinating story, that includes everything from the bloody days of the French Revolution, to the making of 'corpse candles' and a mystery man found amongst its passageways.Joining Anthony and Maddy for today's episode is the fantastic Cat Irving, Human Remains Conservator for Surgeons’ Hall in Edinburgh, to take us down to this underworld.Edited by Tomos Delargy, Produced by Stuart Beckwith. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.You can now watch After Dark on Youtube: www.youtube.com/@afterdarkhistoryhitSign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.

Hi, we're your hosts, Anthony Delaney and Maddie Pelling. And if you would like after dark myths, misdeeds and the paranormal ad free and get early access, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries with top history presenters and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello and welcome to After Dark. I'm Maddie. And I'm Anthony.

And in this episode, oh my God, I'm so excited. We are going down the bone and skull-lined corridors of the Paris Catagooms. I can't quite believe we've never done this episode. Here's Anthony to take us in. In the dead of night in 1786, a solemn procession moves through the narrow, gaslit streets of Paris. Cloaked figures, gravediggers, quarry workers and priests, carry carts piled high with the remains of the long dead.

Skulls and femurs clatter gently with each turn of the wheel, muffled by the damp night air. The city's breath is still, save for the echo of hooves and the low murmur of prayers. They reach the yawning mouth of the quarry, a dark, stone-lined descent into the earth. With torches flickering against the damp walls, the men step into the belly of the city. The limestone tunnels, once used by the Romans, are slick with moisture and cold as a crypt.

The air grows heavier with each step, thick with the scent of wet rock, decay, and the faint iron tang of old death. In the flickering half-light shadows dance across the rough walls. The workers move silently, reverently. The only other sound, the drip of groundwater, the scrape of wood on stone, and the soft click of a skull being set upon by a growing wall of bone. Latin writes, muttered by priests or swallowed by the labyrinth, centuries of Paris's dead are now buried not beneath sacred chapels, but beneath the city's skin, deep in a hidden, silent empire of the dead. This is After Dark, and these are going back under in a minute. I am so excited to do this episode and joining us today is a guest that

you might recognize from the film that Anthony and I made for History at TV about Birken Hair in Edinburgh, which was thoroughly enjoyable. You got to interview our guest today. I did and I loved it. It was on my highlights. To give the proper introduction, in case you've never seen Kat before, this is Kat Irving. She is the human remains conservator at Surgeons Hall in Edinburgh. Kat, welcome. I can't believe this is your first time on the podcast. I know. And that we're only just covering the Paris Catacombs as well. I know. We've been talking about them for a long time, but this is our venture down underground. Yes, if you haven't checked out Birkin Hare on HistoryHit TV, please do. Kat's on there talking about some of the more

kind of dastardly sides and skin on books and all that kind of thing. But when Kat and I were like between shots, we were in an old anatomy theater where you studied as an undergraduate, right? Yeah. In Edinburgh. And we were chatting away about all kinds of dark dastardly things. And we were then DMing about catacombs in Italy. So we'll talk about those at another time. But we're here today to talk about Paris. And what I want to know first, Kat, I suppose, just to give people a sense of where they are, if they don't know about this, or if they haven't seen it on TikTok, because it's doing the rounds there quite a lot. What is happening in Paris at the time when they decided to build the catacombs? Can you just give us an idea of Paris in 1786?

Okay. Well, this is Paris. It's very different from Paris today. There's no Eiffel Tower yet. Baron Haussmann hasn't rearranged the streets in the way that we know them today. There hasn't even been a revolution at this point. So it's a very, very different place. And it's a place that really, really, really has a problem with the dead. The cemeteries are overflowing. There's been burials going on there for over a millennia. And particularly crowded is a cemetery called the Cemetery des Innocents, the Cemetery of the Holy Innocents, which has just been having far too many bodies put into it. I think there's a story isn't there of cellars of the houses nearby that cemetery actually

collapsing because of the pressure in the ground for those bodies. Yes. So at that point, I mean, if you look at pictures of this cemetery, it's really different to the way that you would think of cemeteries today. You wouldn't actually think that it was an overcrowded place because you look at it and you think of them today, like particularly those Victorian cemeteries where there's just like grave markers everywhere. But here there's just a couple of them sort of spotted around and some buildings along the walls. But what was happening was that people were being buried in mass graves. You know, people, especially poorer folk, they did not have an individual grave like we would think of today. So the year before this incident that you're talking about happened. So, 1779, it was said

that there was a grave dug which contained 2000 bodies. Wow. You know, that's a huge amount. And then there was a big storm the following February, you know, the kind of storm that would, you know, get you alerts pinging on your phone today. Lots and lots of rain. And yeah, a basement wall collapses in the nearing street and bones just tumble higgledy-piggledy through into this cellar. And that's the point when they decide enough is enough. And that is fair enough.

Rightly so. A dead are literally bursting through the walls. It's time to do something about this. I'm sure Kat, you've been, but have you ever been to Whitby? Yes. Obviously there's the very famous church inspired Dracula on top of a hill and often the graveyard there, the cliff is eroding and some of the graves are exposed and do fall down into people's gardens. What, bodies? Yeah.

Oh, I didn't know that was happening there. Centuries old bodies, but yeah, I believe it's quite a common occurrence there. So it's really interesting. The other thing I want to say about this cat as well is I suppose, you know, we're in the latter half of the 18th century in France here and Europe in general and France and Britain in particular, for undergoing the Enlightenment, you know, it's this age of rationality and order of categorizing things and, and of hygiene and of putting everything into its proper place. And here in the city, we've got this chaos and I suppose those two ideas of organizing urban space for understanding

the world, they're coming into conflict, aren't they? So you can see why there's a desire, not just a practical desire, but almost an intellectual one to change how the data dealt with. Yeah, well, I mean, this is a time when there's starting to be a bit of a change in the way we think about medicine. But we don't understand bacteria yet. We don't have those kind of ideas of disease. So there is the idea that disease is spread through miasma or bad air. And obviously, when you've got overflowing graves, they're going to smell. So I mean, it's, you know, it was said that there was a stench that came up from this

graveyard and if you live nearby, then the wine turned to vinegar and milk went off very quickly. This was the idea that it was the bad air that was causing this. So we have this problem that we've set up and that we're kind of a little bit clearer on now. Then we talked about moving towards a solution. So when and where did they decide to take these bodies? Well, that's a really interesting question because Paris has another problem at this time. So to the south of Paris, there are quarries which have been used. It's effectively what Paris is built from, this stone, underground quarries. And then Paris gets bigger,

the suburbs are starting to expand, things are being built upon here. And then they start to fall into holes in the earth because the earth has been undermined by these quarries that are under the ground. So in 1777, so just before this problem is starting with the city's dead, they appoint a man, Charles-Exel Guillemot. He will become known as the man who saved Paris. And he becomes the man who's going to oversee trying to sort these problems out. And it's actually in the day that he was appointed into his position of inspector of quarries, what happens is on the Rue d'Enfer, and for those that I know you speak French, that's Hell Street effectively.

A house collapses into a hole. So this is a big problem. So he becomes known as the man who saves Paris because he starts to give retrospective foundations to the city. He puts pillars up in these quarries, which will support the land underneath. And you end up with, I think it's something like 150 kilometres of these tunnels created by these foundations being put into these old quarries. So I can see where this is going. We've got this problem with the dead and we've got these

quarries that are now being reinforced, made structurally safe, Paris is expanding on top of them. When does the decision come to start storing the dead down there? Really, really, really soon. You know, so there's an edict in 1780, which effectively allows that no further burials can take place in the city walls of Paris. So this will eventually lead on to the lovely sort of 19th century garden cemeteries, which are moved outside and you know, we all know and love today. But if you can't bury in this cemetery and it's considered a sort of rotting, unpleasant place, what are you going to do about it? And that's when this decision is made that they're going to dig all those bones up and some of them they don't need to dig up because they've been keeping, they've

been doing the digging up for centuries already, Like since the 14th century, this burial ground was overflowing. So to make room for new graves, they would dig the bones up and they would put them to channels along the walls. So some of those bones are already just there waiting to be put into a cart and shifted. So there's already a practice then of sort of processing people, but they're not just being put in the ground, they are sometimes then being taken out. And I suppose once the flesh has gone from them stored in that different way already, that's so interesting that that's happening, maybe not on a mass scale, but there is that way of dealing with the dead

already. Yeah. And this happened a lot. You know, this is not the only place this was happening. You know, it happens a lot. Certainly a lot of Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Bavaria, North Italy, these kind of ideas of recycling graves and storing the bones in the same place. Because obviously, you know, once you're dead, according to the Catholic faith, you're supposed to be on sanctified ground. So you can't just, you know, chuck them in the bin. So this idea of doing this and storing the bones has been around for a while. So there are lots and lots and lots of Austrians that have done this in other places. I mean, when I first got called up about doing this podcast, the

first date they gave me, I was just like, no, no, no, I'm going to be on holiday then going to look at Austrians in France. Because what else would you do on holiday? Because that's what I do on my holidays. So yeah, so this kind of storage of bones has been going on for a while. What's different with the Paris Catacombs is the scale. This brings up a question that we were talking about before you arrived. What is the difference or the relationship between Osseries and Catacombs? Like ultimately they're places for storing the dead, but there seems to be a distinction. Okay, so the Paris Catacombs is officially known as the Municipal Austria of Paris. It's

become known as the Catacombs because of the idea it's in these underground tunnels, which were reminiscent of the Catacombs that were in Rome, which had been used for a long time as a place of worship in the early days of Christianity, and also of burial. So they took the name Catacomb from those underground tunnels. It's very clever rebranding, isn't it? To go from the quarries, the perfunctory, you know, you're just getting the stone to build the city and now suddenly they're emulating the Roman catacombs. It's a nice reinvention us. Yeah, and it's a borrowing of tradition from elsewhere and a Catholic tradition no less. Yeah. So essentially it is an ossuary just on a very

grand scale and they're trying to inflict this tradition into it as well. Interesting. Tell us about the design down there about what the space actually looks like because presumably, to begin with, it's just the empty space from which the stone has been quarried. But if you were to go down today, it looks very different from that. There's sort of very obvious and explicit aesthetics really to it. So what was the process to begin with? Was it a sense of just stacking up the bones, maybe categorizing them as, you know, 10 skulls here, 10 femurs there. God, is that your dream job? That is effectively my job.

On that scale, I meant. Yeah, no, I don't have six million people, but you know, I do get to sort a lot of bones out and it makes me very happy. But yeah, it's a really interesting thing with the catechums because obviously Anthony gave us this description of them processing along with the bones, which is exactly how it happened. But once they got there, they effectively just had these kind of, you know, sort of like shafts, which they then just dropped them down. They weren't beautifully arranged as you see them today. And it was actually, they appoint a second inspector of quarries in 1809. His name is Louis Hercard de Tery. And he's the one who looks at

that, you know, he's now got responsibility for these quarries and the bones that are in them. And they're still putting them down there at this point, you know, transferring of these bones doesn't stop till 1814. You know, they'd had a few delays with that revolution stuff that was going on. Yeah, inconveniences, you know, public works a lot. So yeah, so he looks at that and thinks, you know, we need to have something a bit better done with these. So he's the one that arranges the sorting and the stacking, you know, putting the long bones together, you know, making the skulls into nice stacks, making them into crosses, things like that. It's quite decorative in a lot of ways. They're not as decorative as some other Austrians that you'll see around Europe.

And he puts little plaques in saying which cemetery the bones came from. So when you go there, you will see the bones that came from the Holy Innocent Cemetery. You will see that those labeled as such. And he's the one that gives us the aesthetic look that we see today. And also the person who starts inviting people down to come and have a look once he's done it. Mm. So this idea of tourism starts to come in.

And we'll come to that, but it's so interesting to hear that that's happening very, very quickly. What exactly, you've touched on it there already, but the French Revolution, 1789, starts to give this new sense of energy to this and changes things slightly. So tell us what happened when the French Revolution started then in 1789. Well, the French Revolution, I mean, obviously it slows down the movement of the dead. It's not the only thing that slows down the movement of the dead. Particularly in San-In-Nassant, one of the things they discover is, you discover is normally that the usual process of these things, you get buried in the ground, bacteria, decomposition, all that kind of thing happens

and you're left with nice skeletal bones. It's all lovely, all nice and clean and then they can dig them up. But the problem is that they were burying so many people together that people were so crammed many people together, that people were so crammed into those graves, there is no oxygen down there. And I mean, you would normally think there's not much oxygen under the ground, you know, certainly not for you or me, you know, we're not going to survive down there. But there's enough of the bacteria that are doing their little decomposition thing. But these bodies are so packed in, you don't get that. And so decomposition isn't happening in the usual way. So you're starting to get an anaerobic reaction, a reaction without

oxygen. So rather than decomposition, what you get is the fats start to go through a reaction which is called saponification, which is the same reaction with which you make soap. I don't think I'm going to love the outcome. Yeah. Saponification. Saponification. Is that where the word soap comes from then? Yeah, yeah. So the fats aren't getting turned into soap, but they're getting turned into this waxy material, which is known as grave wax or corpse wax.

Stop it. Yeah. And it's what? Coming together, congealing all together. It effectively will hold the shape of the body. Oh, I see. So if you go to the Mutu Museum in Philadelphia, they have someone there who's known as the soap lady because this had happened to her. And so her body is preserved in the shape. We're off now. Let's get out of here.

You keep talking. We're off. That's so interesting as well because of course, the French Revolution is the birth of wax works and we get Madame Tussaud like creating her works and eventually she goes to England. And there's something there about the kind of the imitation of human life and a living form and then in the ground there's these waxen, strange, transformed figures of the dead. It's a sort of, I don't know, an inversion of the world above ground and what's happening there in terms of art and also in terms of, you know, the death toll being added to the body count is going up the whole time during the French

Revolution, more so than ever before. And then underground, you've got this strange thing happening. Wow, I need a moment to sit with that. And that's really horrifying. It gets worse. Oh, go on. Yeah. So I mean, obviously, that's going to inconvenience you when you're just trying to perform. You know, you can't just stick them in your pile of bones. Yes, how do you deal with this?

Well, what they did was they collected up that waxy material and it did get used to make soaps and candles which were sold nearby. Shut up! They were selling, I mean we talked about, what was her name? Kate Webster. So this is the body that was found. This was a 19th century murder. Yeah. And apparently the Irish servant kind of boiled down her, her, the age she worked for, and then took her drippings to the pub and like had people eat the drippings or whatever. We think that probably didn't happen. But they are selling that. Yeah. I mean, they're not eating it. No,

they're not eating it. No, no. But you won't want to wash with it. I'd want that candle. Is that weird? Would you ever light it though? Yeah. Yeah. Would you use it? I think it'd have a weird smell sitting on your shelf. I think this wouldn't be like, you know, this wouldn't be one to relax in your bath with. No, it's not. No, we're going to like send this with it. Oh, that's grim. Only the French could do. Probably not only the French. That's probably other people did that too. But that is. You're going to get cancelled by the French. Well, I have a great fondness for the French. Think of the film Fight Club where in that they make soap out of human. I've never seen it.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So I mean, that's one of the things that's slowing this whole process down to begin with. They're too busy making candles and soap? Yeah. That is so bougie. It's like a cottage industry during the revolution. They're just like, the influencer is starting their own soap brand. Bougie is the French word for candle.

There we go. It's come full circle. Can you imagine the unboxing? Hi guys, come with me while I unbox Grandad from his grand- Bougie is the French word for candle. I have never made that connection in my entire life. My life has been changed. Yeah. Your door to big deals is on DoorDash right now. Sign up for DoorDash and enjoy a free Big Mac on your first McDonald's order of $20 or more.

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Wherever you get your podcasts. So we've got these bodies coming out of the ground. Some are nice clean bones, some have even been put in an ossuary before and they are just transported down easy peasy. We've then got the candle people who are being processed in a slightly different way. The bones that are making it down into the catacomb, they do start, as you mentioned, particularly after the turn of the 19th century, to be arranged in a more aesthetic way or a way that has some semblance of order to it. People aren't just being dropped down big shafts. Antony, I'm going to make you describe a picture now. Antony Payne Sure. Antony Payne Off you go.

Antony Payne Right. You probably are familiar with this. It's a room in the catacombs, I presume, that has a cross in the back middle of the room. So if we're looking at it like there, then on the wall behind it is, I don't know what kind of bones they are. Like it looks like it's some kind of long leg bone potentially, but it's head into the wall. There is no head because it's a leg bone or whatever an arm bone, long bone. But then there's like, yes. Then there's like skulls in waves around the wall. And then there's like a skull lining around the bottom. So it's basically like, you know, those grottoes in those, in the 18th century. I hate shell grottoes. I also hate this. I don't like it. And it's not because I'm squeamish,

because if these were just bodies displayed in kind of the way they are in Italy or whatever, that has its own ghostliness to it. But this to me seems, I don't know, I just don't like this. It's not necessarily a moral thing. I think it might just be an aesthetic thing. It seems, it's aesthetic, it's artistic, it's architectural almost. That it's, you describe it as a room in the catacomb and those are the walls of a room. It's almost like a temple that's been built with bones. My question, Cat, is who is this for? Because are these bones being arranged in an aesthetic way to honor the dead? Does this have religious meaning? Is this for the new tourists that are coming in? What's going on here?

Because this is quite a change from the disposal of bodies into mass graves with very little care, especially the poorer people of Paris. And suddenly, we're still seeing them en masse arranged together, but in a very different way. And it's a way that's very deliberately done. Yeah. Well, as I said, there are ossaries where bones are being stored across Europe. And you see this quite a lot in the 18th century. You see a lot of these ossaries starting to do something a bit more aesthetic with the bones. You know, you will still see there are many places that I go to where you do just have pure stacks. You know, this is a practical storage solution.

It's nothing else. But you start to see a lot more places. You know, this is a practical storage solution. It's nothing else. But you start to see a lot more places. You will see it in Milan. You will see it in Evora in Portugal. There's quite a lot of them in Portugal. And in the 18th century, they start to do these kind of very decorative arrangements, sometimes putting them into crosses,

sometimes making them into architectural elements where you'll get like skull-cornicing, things like that. And it will have it sort of, you know, it's pinnacle with the Capuchin crypt in Rome where they have chandeliers made out of bones and entire scenes. And then later on- I love the bone chandelier. Yeah. That would look nice with your dead peasant candle. Very bougie. You know, later on you will get Sedlik, you know, the second most visited

Austrian in the world, which is in the Czech Republic, where they have an even bigger bone chandelier and these amazing stacks. And there was a purpose behind it. There was an idea of kind of remembering the dead, but also the idea of remembering that you will die. So this was to remind you that this is something that's going to come to you as well. So I mean, in the Austrian Ovor in Portugal, over the doorway, they have a sign which the translation basically says, we borns that are here, we're waiting

for yours. And this comes out of an older idea, you know, that kind of dates back to sort of medieval times. You know, you would get the three living and the three dead, so it's again reminding you that you will die. You will get the Dance of Death, the Dance Macabre. And in fact, the first visual representation of the Dance Macabre is along the walls of those charnels at the side of the Holy Innocent Cemetery. And the Dance of Death, if you've never seen a Dance of Death, they're often amazing. You have a figure representing death who's often quite skeletal or decaying, and he'll be leading off a living person. And they're usually shown with everyone, you know, from the Pope and the King down to the peasants.

So this is reminding you that death is coming to everyone. And that, of course, you know, we're thinking about this in Paris in particular, is being created during the French Revolution. Yeah. And there's that collapse of hierarchy and the collapse of the world order as people know it. Do you think that something that they would have understood going into the catacomb with that have been something on people's minds that death is the great leveler as it were? Yeah, this idea of death as a great leveler was very, very, very important at that time. And those ideas that were feeding into the revolutionary spirit, the equality. But this

is not this reminding people that are going to die isn't from, you know, I think today, like if you or I were thinking along these lines, you would be kind of thinking, well, that means, you know, I've got these bucket list things that I want to do. You know, that sort of idea, the kind of, going back to the sort of Roman Carpe Diem. But in that very Catholic mindset, this was not what it was about. This was about reminding you that you're going to die because you damn well have to live a really, really good life. I think I did. I must have missed the Carpe Diem thing and just gone straight to the lads. Straight to the panic.

Yeah. Better be good. Yeah, well that's it. There was no Carpe Diem for the Catholic. It was you must be good and you must follow the Bible because it's not about now, it's about what's coming in the next life. You'll get your heavenly reward. And if you do seize the day, you should feel bloody guilty about it. Yes. Yeah. So, and a lot of these kind of decorative ostriches, they were meant to be places where you would contemplate that kind of idea and where you could pray, you know, designated spaces to pray for the souls in purgatory.

Do people take issue in this period with the anonymizing of the bodies? Because bearing in mind they're already going into mass graves and then they don't have the individual grave markers like we see in the 19th century in the Victorian era. But is there a sense that something is being lost here that humanity is being lost, that personhood is being lost in these arrangements, that everyone just becomes a heap of bones that is indistinguishable from its neighbor? Is that a problem or are people just used to it? It doesn't seem to be a problem. There seems to be that kind of hyper individualism that

we're used to today seems to be a later idea and there does seem to be an acceptance that there is a sort of an anonymization death. Really, really interestingly, one of the most lovely Austrians that I've been to is in a place called Hallstatt, which is on, it's in the Alps, it's in Austria. And there they have the skulls, they were lined up, and they started doing a thing where they want to try and keep the skulls near your relatives. They knew they had to be dug up because this was a little town that's sandwiched between a big lake and a mountain, so they have very limited room.

So after 15 years, they dig you up and they put you in the Bine House. But so that your remains, your skull could remain with your family members, they start to paint them. You know, they would put names on, they've got beautiful flowers or laurel leaves, things like that to indicate valor. Love that idea. This is what I would like to have done with my skull. And so that, you know, there you're still getting this idea of the ossuary, but you're not getting that anonymization. But there does seem to be this sort of idea that yes, we have to accept that we are all the same in death. And you even get these things called transy tombs, which are like the world's biggest humble brag, where people will always very rich men, because these were very, very expensive,

they will have these tombs where they will be depicting themselves in the most abject state of decay. You know, some of them, you've got worms and frogs crawling out. And these are like sculptures. These are sculptures, often stone, there are a couple of sort of like painted wood ones. But as I say, to get that done in stone, you know, you've got to have an awful lot of money. But this is saying, Oh, look at me, I'm depicting myself in this way, you know, because I know that my earthly life is not important. But, of course. And yes, I'm rich enough to afford it.

But look at how rich I am. Let's go back to Paris then for a second. And just, we've talked about the origins and how it came about. When does work complete on the Catacombs in Paris? And how are they kind of viewed at the time once all of that comes to an end, they have a complete thing? Is this now just a tourist trap? What exactly does it mean once it's complete? That's really interesting because once it's complete, you do get people coming along. It's opened, not every day, but regularly, that people can come down and see. This idea, again, the momentum or idea reminding people that are going to die, you get famous people, you know, like, you get emperors coming along to go down. So it's

not seen as being particularly out there at the time in France. It's really interesting when you see things that have been produced in Britain at that time, where they're just like, look at those weird Catholics. There's a wonderful, a dance of death, there's an English dance of death produced. And again, it shows the skeleton and he's leading a tour group down into the Paris catacombs. It's an amazing illustration from 1815, but it's got a little verse with it and it shows that they're kind of going, yeah, this is odd. And there's a number of things in British publications of that time, which are just like, those people over there are doing

really, really strange things with the dead. Do you know what the weird thing about this is? What you've got me thinking. And we have a very kind of Catholic culture of the dead in Ireland still, where we will remain with the body that is open in the room. You guys are a lot more proximate to death than we are in England. And we have the wake and it's also all done within a few days, like two, three days, and the body is buried. And you're talking about, oh, you know, this English idea, British idea of going, oh God, what are they doing in France? There's a very similar thing now to the way

death is handled in Britain, in Ireland, where we go, why are you keeping those people above ground for so long after they've died? Like, because over here it can be a few weeks or whatever. And we think that's a bit strange, where it's like, where are they during that time? You can't be sitting with them for all the time. What's happening to your grieving process during that time? Do you have to go back and revisit the grief process? That was three days later, we have buried them and we're still grieving obviously, but it's a different process. It's just interesting to hear that that was seen as so strange, whereas we constantly even still now have that conversation in our head. Yeah. And that's one of the things that I've been researching recently for a different

reason looking at ways people are preserving the bodies. But I've been doing a lot of things looking at Italian documentation and comparing what was going into British press and British letters about preserving the Italian revolutionary heroes in the 1860s. And that's kind of exactly the same thing where you're getting these people going, but why are they doing it like that? We wouldn't do it like that. Yeah, I suppose as well with Britain and France, if you zoom out of the question of death as well, there's just huge anti-French feeling in the 19th century following the Napoleonic Wars as well. And so that might have been playing in.

And Catholicism, generally. Yes, exactly. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Some things just take too long. A meeting that could have been an email, someone explaining crypto, or switching mobile providers. Except with Fizz. Switching to Fizz is quick and easy. Mobile plans start at $17 a month. Certain conditions apply. Details at fizz.ca.

I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Eleanor Janega. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. Some conditions apply, details at phys.ca. and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History hit wherever you get your podcasts. Let's talk then Kat about the Catacombs today because we've been through their early history and their completion in the 19th century and those shifting attitudes. But what do they look like today under the modern city? What's their role within Paris' identity, French culture? How does that work? I mean, today it's very much, it's a tourist destination.

You know, it's still, it's one of the big tourist destinations in Paris. You know, if you want to go now, you know, you really need to book in advance. Turning up on the day might not get you in. So it does just have that kind of, you know, macabre tourist destination role today. It's also got other ideas going on because, you know, I said there's a lot of tunnels down there. The bones only occupy a small portion of what's going on down there. You know, there's a whole range of places which aren't accessible to the public. So there are people who like to go down there and explore, you know, urban exploration.

That's what you're seeing on TikTok, right? Just people saying, oh, have you been down? Are you going down? Are we going down tonight? Let's all go down together kind of a thing. And it's like, yeah, young people. Something so tantalizing is like going down into the underworld, right? It's a mysterious unknown place. Parties down there too, right? Parties down there. They discovered a bar at one point that had been set up. And again, even that, you know, in the late 19th century, they were having concerts down there. So, you know, it's these kind of things, you know, are, you know, there's nothing new under the sun.

But there have been things which the bones, the deads, they don't bother me. But there are things that really, really chill me, you know, like there was a, in the nineties, someone went down there and found an old video camera, which had a sort of Blair Witch type film on it of somebody who clearly lost their way and you see them kind of panicking. Oh wow. So that's real? Yeah. And even earlier, if we go back to 1793, there was a man called Filibert Asper, who was a door porter at one of the hospitals and he got lost down there. They thought he was looking for wine

or something like that and he just has a single candle and that goes out. We don't know whether it was made from a person. We don't know whether it was made from a person. And then 11 years later they find his body and he's identified by the hospital keys as well. There is nothing, there's no more French way to die than going to look for wine. That's the story that he was going to look for wine. But yeah, I hope he found the wine. I really hope he did. Is it true that there is a designated kind of police force for it? Or is that just urban? I've heard there is a catacopse who will... Short off! This episode is bringing all the goods. Catacopse, okay.

I cannot testify to the truth of that, but that's what has been mentioned. It's funny isn't it that a place that is primarily its function once the dead start to be stored there was to do with the afterlife, to do with sort of stillness and rest and yes, living human interaction with that space, but very much sort of calm and quiet. And into that void, all kinds of things have been imagined. And you know, there's stories about like cannibals living down there, right? And all kinds of, you know, sort of imagined tales and urban legends and then these truths on top of that. But I wonder, as someone who spends time with human remains, thinking about how they are stored, how they're preserved, how they're treated with respect, what are your feelings on the catacombs now and the access that people have to them? Do you think it's important that we still acknowledge

and interact with that part of history? Or do you think there are issues around some of that kind of dark tourism? That's a really interesting question because I mean, I, as you've probably guessed from everything I've said today, I love places like this. I mean, I'm endlessly fascinated by bones and what they can tell you about people. And I think there's something really quite amazing about the fact that you can go there and you can come face to face with these people who died so long ago. And I mean, that's the thing that, you know, I often get quite annoyed when you see sort of like on films or TV things and stuff like that and you will see like a pile of skulls and they're all the same skull. You know, they've clearly just made a mold with lots and lots of skulls because people think that

skulls are all just the same. She says clearly I probably am not noticing any difference at all, but of course. If there are skulls around I'm going to notice. But they're not. You know, skulls are, you know, all our bones are as individual as we are. So you go there and you can see sort of what somebody's face might be like. You can often tell, you know, I mean, it's a spectrum, whether or not they're male or female, roughly how old they are, you know, you can see those kinds of things. And we often can't know more, you know, you might be able to tell if they had some diseases or trauma or things like that. But just getting to those little glimpses of people's lives.

Coming face to face with someone who may have seen the revolution. Yes, yeah. And even earlier things like that, I just find it so very, very, very powerful. And you know, I think our body, I think our anatomy is beautiful. And I kind of find spaces which are outside of the kind of museum that I work in and outside of like the universities where they're used for teaching. I find places where you can interact with the dead in a way that's almost honoring the beauty of our anatomy really, really quite powerful. Well, if you want to know more about this and cat's work in particular, find her on Anatomical Cat, right? That's your socials. But tell us where we can read a bit more.

And there's also a podcast now, the Surgeons' Hole Museum has a podcast. Tell us about some of those places where people can explore a bit more of your work. Well, at Surgeons Hall we have some human remains on display, quite a lot of things on display. They range from full skeletons to the appendix that somebody had removed or the foot that they had amputated. Because again, all of our human remains at Surgeons Hall come from dead people because we're a surgical museum, so some of them are those bits that you get chopped out when you go into hospital. We're using them to tell the story of how medicine and how surgery developed. So there are some really interesting stories and there's

some really, really sad stories, but some also stories where we get to see how these kinds of things can actually make a positive impact on people's lives. I will be devouring that podcast. I'm very excited. Yeah, I absolutely will. What's it got? Under the Knife? Beyond the Knife. Beyond the Knife, there you go. So my issue of that podcast, I talk about the history of dissection and using dissection. It's a great museum. It's one of my favourite museums in Edinburgh. I'm not just saying

that because you're here and I've been quite a few times. It's because it's framed within that history of anatomy as well and surgical history. it's doing a lot of work in a relatively small space. I mean, I know your kind of archives are huge, actually, and we're only seeing a certain element of it on display. Thank you very much for listening to this episode. Do leave us a five star review wherever you can. If you have been listening to this podcast, you should note that you can also watch it on YouTube. Go to After Dark History Hit YouTube to find us there and you can see old episodes and new ones coming out every single week. We're so excited. A meeting that could have been an email, someone explaining crypto, or switching mobile providers.

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