Lore - Episode 141: Stains

Episode Date: April 27, 2020

Humanity has always been very good at making the best of a bad situation. Either by burying the past, or at least by building distractions that take the focus off of it. But no matter how beautiful those distractions are, our past always leaves a mark. ———————— Lore Resources:  Episode Music: lorepodcast.com/music  Episode Sources: lorepodcast.com/sources  Lore News: www.theworldoflore.com/now  Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com Access premium content!: https://www.lorepodcast.com/support See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

They had no idea it was down there. There had been rumors, of course, but they were the sorts of stories that were too difficult to believe. But in the spring of 1984, one distraught phone call kicked off an amazing discovery. A local team of firefighters was dispatched to the Pont Neuf Bridge in Paris to verify claims of something monstrous and otherworldly in the water. I can't blame them, really. The caller had claimed the creature was over three feet long, with vicious-looking fangs

and a tail that whipped about. Hearing about something like that in the middle of Paris must have been frightening. Commander Goddard and his crew, however, found nothing in the river's scent. They even inspected the area around the bridge, but still nothing. That's when they decided to look someplace else. Some place most people tend to forget about. The sewers. And when they did, they walked straight into the monster's lair.

But this monster turned out to be something less than supernatural. Was it unexpected? Absolutely. But it was a creature that just about everyone in the world has seen before. A crocodile. Thankfully, they were able to capture it without anyone getting hurt, and it was later taken away to the Paris Zoo. In doing so, these firefighters also illustrated a powerful point.

No matter where you might live, beneath the city you know, is a whole other world, a world of hidden secrets and dangerous legends, and that even though we might carry on our normal lives in relative safety, the past is always lurking just below the surface. Like the shadow of a monstrous creature. And what better place to dig for the lost and forgotten than Paris, the city of light? Because where there's light, there's also a whole lot of shadow. I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is Lore. It was over before it even began.

In 259 BC, a Celtic tribe called the Paris Sea settled on the banks of the River Seine. Two centuries later, the Romans came and killed them all. Of course, it was a lot more nuanced than that. Yes, the Romans washed over them like a tidal wave, but the settlement the Celts had built there was burned by their own hands, rather than allow the Romans to take it. But that didn't stop them from taking the location, and soon enough, the Roman city of Laotitia was growing alongside the river. Over the centuries, the name of the city changed a few more times.

Laotitia eventually became Parisius, and then finally Paris around the 4th century. And of course, those years were filled with many stories. One of the most popular from the time, though, is that of St. Dennis, a Christian martyr from the 3rd century. It's said that Dennis refused to renounce his faith, and was beheaded for his crime against the Empire. But somehow, against logic and the laws of biology, the executed man bent down, picked up his own head, and then walked several miles north of the city, preaching the entire way.

When his body finally fell to the ground, he was buried in that very spot, a spot that is now the location of a Grand Basilica built in his honor. Now, look, there's absolutely no way that I can cover the entire history of the city of Paris in a brief span of time. Entire books have been written on just small portions of that history. Then each of them is full of a tremendous amount of detail, drama, and a complicated list of rulers and cultures. So think of my brief survey of it all as more of an appetizer.

And if you love what you taste, go read some books. But at the heart of all of that complexity is the city. The location and people and countless lives that have lived and been lost in this one specific place. Lives that have acted like instruments in an ongoing symphony, playing a song of not just strength and beauty, but also tragedy and pain. After all, when a city has been around as long as Paris has, there's no end to the stories it might collect.

Many of those stories, though, are filled with death. 1337 saw the beginning of the Hundred Years War, and then a decade later, when Paris was the most populous city in all of Europe, the bubonic plague arrived on her doorstep. Between disease and war, it's estimated that two-thirds of the city's population was lost, but the death toll would keep rising over the coming centuries. During the 16th century, the rift created by the Protestant Reformation led to more deaths in Paris. In France, the Protestants were known as Huguenots, and they were violently attacked by Catholics

for what was perceived as heresy. Then on August 24th of 1572, things erupted. Thousands of Huguenots had gathered in Paris just days earlier for the wedding between King Charles IX's sister Margaret and her Protestant husband. Seizing the opportunity, Catholic mobs rose up and killed every Protestant they could find, sending waves of violence out into the countryside like an earthquake. When it was all over, several weeks later, it's estimated that upwards of 30,000 people had been killed.

Thankfully, the late 17th century ushered in a bright spot with the advent of the Enlightenment. Writers like Voltaire and Rousseau made people stop and think and brought social causes to the forefront of public conversation, but that sort of intellectual revolution was too powerful to contain, and by the late 1780s, it was fueling an actual uprising in the streets of Paris. What followed was a lightning round of political upheaval. The Bastille was stormed in July of 1789, and within four years, King Louis XVI had been executed.

Then, between 1793 and 1794, France saw the reign of terror, during which close to 18,000 people were executed by guillotine. Between that and the Napoleonic Wars, it's estimated that close to 7 million people lost their lives. In 1871, there was a socialist uprising known as the Paris Commune, who took control of the city for ten days. By the time the French army put the rebellion down, close to 7,000 lives had been lost. And then, in 1940, Nazi Germany began an occupation of France that lasted over four years, resulting

in even more deaths in Paris. And if you're exhausted after walking through all of that tragedy, I can't blame you. Lives torn apart by religion and politics, waves of disease and warfare, it sounds so overwhelming, even if most of it is buried deep in the past. Partly because of how complicated it all is, yes, but also because it serves to remind us of how temporary and tenuous our peaceful lives can be. But all of that darkness serves as a sort of foundation to the present. A city can't endure that much death without it leaving a stain, a dark mark that can still

be seen today. And if you know where to look, Paris is a treasure trove of unsettling tales. To explore them, though, we need to follow the dead, because if there's one thing Paris has an abundance of, it's graves. And if the stories are true, the dead still hold their sway. It's easy to think of Paris as a city for tourists. The Eiffel Tower, the River Seine, and Notre Dame are magnets for visitors, and they are all as charming and beautiful as the books tell us, but two centuries ago, Paris wanted

to attract another sort of clientele, the dead. To understand why, we need to slip backward in time. To the year 1804, that was when the Père Lecheze Cemetery was established outside the eastern edge of the city. Paris was growing and becoming more and more crowded, and so the city government felt it was better to move future burials outside the city. But there was just one problem. The people of that era preferred to be buried inside the city.

It was fashionable, and as we all know, Paris has long been a city where fashion takes priority. So the city government got creative. If the people of Paris weren't attracted to the location, perhaps they'd be drawn to the neighbors. In 1804, after opening to lackluster interest, the folks in charge of the place arranged to have some famous remains transferred to the cemetery. The first to make the trip were the bodies of Jean de la Fontaine and Molière, two famous French poets.

A few years later, it was the remains of Abelard and Eloise, a pair of legendary lovers that had captured the public's imagination for centuries. And it worked. The more long-dead celebrities they moved to the cemetery, the more attractive the place became for future customers. The people of Paris began to set aside their preference for burial within city limits in exchange for an eternity in close proximity to greatness. Over the years, though, the city itself expanded, as major cities always do, and eventually

the Père Lecheze Cemetery found itself incorporated into Paris after all. Today you can find the graves of nearly an endless list of significant personalities. Gertrude Stein, Oscar Wilde, and legendary composer Chopin. But if the stories are true, visitors can see more than gravestones. Jim Morrison's ghostly figure has been spotted walking through the cemetery upon occasion, as has visions of Marcel Prost. It's not clear whether they're looking for a way out, or just taking a stroll to enjoy the view.

But the Père Lecheze Cemetery isn't the only place in Paris where the dead are connected to tourism and fame. Another location in the city has just as much power of attraction, but it's a lot more complicated and difficult to explore. Plus, it's full of millions of human bones, so it's not exactly for the faint of heart. What most people don't know about Paris is that it has a long history with mining. As the city was growing, there was a never-ending hunger for building materials, so people would dig down to the limestone and extract what they needed.

But keep in mind, when this was happening in the 13th century, Paris was much smaller, and people weren't necessarily thinking long term. Some historians view those early days of mining as a sort of do-it-yourself enterprise. If someone owned a bit of land and needed a quick buck, they could just dig straight down and start cutting limestone. But all you need to do is look at a modern map of Paris to know how bad that could be. Because today, all of those mines are right beneath the city. That became a problem in the latter part of the 1700s.

In fact, in 1774, one abandoned tunnel collapsed from the way above it, taking an entire house with it. So King Louis XVI set up a service called the Inspection of Mines, a government agency of sorts that was tasked with exploring these mines to assess the dangers they posed. And then something happened that kicked off a historic change. On May 31st of 1780, the wall of a building collapsed, but it wasn't due to the mines below. It was actually a mass grave next door, just beneath the surface that had destabilized

the earth, causing the wall to give way. And so for the rest of the year, burials inside the city were put on hold until they could find a solution. It turns out that the man in charge of that cemetery problem, Alexandre Lenoir, was also in charge of the Inspection of Mines. And he looked at both challenges set before him and had a sort of chocolate and peanut butter moment. What if the solution, he suggested, was to put them together?

So that's what he did. His team of engineers went throughout the mines and reinforced them with stonework to help support the city above. And in the process, they were also preparing that endless network of tunnels for new occupants. When they were ready, the remains of over 6 million dead were transferred down below. And just like that, the infamous catacombs of Paris were born. Of course, a place like that has a way of attracting attention. Today, public tours are offered to portions of the catacombs, although much of the tunnels

are still off limits. But that hasn't stopped people from trying their luck. In fact, an entire culture has grown up around exploring them. And those people who participate are referred to as catafiles. Don't let the popularity fool you, though. The catacombs aren't entirely safe. In fact, within a decade of their creation, at least one person disappeared inside them. His name was Philibert Asper.

And he worked as a doorman at the Val de Grasse Hospital. But on November 3rd of 1793, the 62-year-old man went missing. Because his post was near one of the entrances to the catacombs, many people assumed that he had wandered down to have a look. It was a rather new addition to the city, after all, and I wouldn't blame the man for wanting to take a peek. Others have speculated that Asper believed the tunnels below could lead him to a nearby brewery where he might be able to steal some beer.

But there is no proof that's the case. After the attraction was, he stepped inside and was never heard from again. It would be another 11 years before anyone would discover what had become of the lost doorman. In the spring of 1804, someone new ventured into the same part of the catacombs and stumbled upon the remains of someone in the middle of the tunnel. It was Asper. He had apparently lost his way and then lost his light before finally passing away on the

cold stone floor, alone, in the dark. But for as horrifying as that might sound, it's made all the more worse by the irony of where his body was discovered, just a few feet away, from the stairs to the surface. When you think of Paris, there is a good chance you might think of pastries. Although if we're honest, I probably think about pastries more than most, but that's beside the point. Paris, as a city and a culture, has a long history with tasty treats of all shapes and sizes.

Back in the early 1400s, a pâtisserie once stood at the corner of the Rue des Marmoussées and the Rue des Dues Hermites. But before you go looking for them on a map, those street names have changed over the centuries. After you hear the story I'm about to tell you, you'll hopefully understand why. It's said that this particular pâtisserie was located in a busy neighborhood. The Paris has always been a bustling, growing place, so it's easy to imagine, even back in the 1420s, just how crowded and alive the place must have felt. Dirt streets littered with refuse, the constant murmur of conversation and shouts from merchants.

All of it would have created a rich tapestry for our story. Next door to the pâtisserie was a barbershop, the sort you might expect to find in that era. These shops performed a few of the duties you might still find today, like shaving and trimming, but they were also a place for those with medical needs. Herbal medicine, ointments, even primitive dental work, like having your teeth pulled, all of it could be found at the local barbershop. Which sounds perfect, right? You could swing in and have a little bloodletting done, and then go next door to the crowded

pâtisserie for a pick-me-up. And you wouldn't be alone, either. It's said that this particular shop was so popular that priests and monks from Notre Dame would regularly visit for a bite to eat. Even King Charles VI was known to be a fan of their delicious meat pies. And it turns out that the men who ran those shops, the barbershop and the pâtisserie next door, were well acquainted. So well acquainted, in fact, that they shared a lot of customers.

But when I say share, it's a lot more dark than you might first assume. You see, the barber often met people at their most vulnerable. Whether they were suffering from a painful malady or just needed a sharp razor dragged across their face, his customers had to put their trust in his skilled work. And the barber had been using that trust to get a little richer. Every now and then, it seems, he would welcome in a patron, lock the door, and then slit their throat when they least expected it. After his customer had expired, this barber would drag their corpse to his cellar, where

he would strip them of all their valuables and clothing. Then using what I can only imagine was a set of very sharp, very deadly looking blades. He would butcher them, package it up, and then push the bundle through a small door in the wall. A door that led into the cellar of the shop above. And if you've been paying attention, you know exactly what shop that was. That's right, the pâtisserie. It seemed that both men had been sharing resources, and no one in the city was aware that those

delicious meat pies were more than they appeared to be. The public did eventually catch on, though, and legend says that it happened around 1430. They say that one day, a man and his dog paid a visit to the barber. But while the man was welcomed inside, he was told his pet had to remain outside on the street. As fate would have it, though, that man never set foot outside the shop again, and his loyal dog stayed put. Eventually, it was the dog's constant barking that caught the attention of the neighbors,

who called upon the man's wife. She arrived completely distraught, not having heard from her husband for hours. The sight of their dog alone outside the barber's shop was enough to send her to the authorities. When they arrived, you can imagine what happened next. The barber's murderous hobby was discovered, as was his trapdoor to the pâtisserie shop above. Both men were arrested, quickly found guilty, and then executed for their monstrous crimes. I can't find definitive proof, but legend has it that both men were executed by being

placed inside large metal cages and then burned over massive fires. It certainly sounds like a fitting end for a pair of killers who spent years cooking their victims. Thankfully, their own bodies were reduced to ashes after being slow roasted, of course. The city tried to move on and bury the past after that. The shops were torn down, and for a long while, no one was allowed to build on that land. It's even said that Paris officials had a small monument placed on the empty lot, described as a tall pyramid-shaped stone.

No one knows where it is today, and most people seem to be alright with that. Which is ironic, if you think about it. In a city that has spent centuries literally digging up its past in order to add character and charm to its offerings, it feels odd that the story of the murderous barber wouldn't be given a more prominent place, if only for the boost to tourism. Instead, it's been knocked down and wiped clean, which is the more fashionable approach, I suppose. Historians often talk about the need to help the past come to life, because we have a lot

to learn from exploring it all. And while I think it's a wonderful sentiment in general, there are some exceptions to that rule. Clearly, some parts of the past are better left buried. Paris is, in many ways, the city of light. It's beautiful and charming and full of life and laughter in a way that has earned it a reputation as the romance capital of the world. Millions of people travel to spend time there every year, and all you really need to do

is look at a few photographs of the place to understand why. And have I mentioned the pastries? But light cast shadows. For all the places of beauty you can find in the city, there are dark counterparts. The towering monuments above are echoed below by miles of tunnels full of millions of human bones. The cobbled streets and beautiful neighborhoods are built on soil that has soaked up the blood of tens of thousands over the years.

Needless to say, Paris is complicated. And it's also a great metaphor for how we treat the past in general. Every city around the world has stains on the pages of its history. Every culture has a long list of tragedy and mistakes right next to its glorious achievements. Maybe that's the human legacy. We are capable of accomplishing so much, and yet it almost always comes with a dark cost. As I mentioned earlier, in the aftermath of the discovery of the grisly crimes of those shop owners, Paris officials prohibited anyone from building on the land where the crimes

took place. A century later, though, those rules were relaxed, and ever since, the true location of the bloody barber shop has been lost to time. But not the story itself. Most tales like that have a way of sticking around, don't they? There's a grim attractiveness about them, and while they might not be shared in the most public of places, they certainly become part of the rumor mill. Which is why, over the centuries that followed, that story spread, not just to the rest of

Paris or even the countryside around it, but outside of France as well. By the time it reached England, it was the perfect tale to include in one of the many penny dreadfuls that were printed and sold during the Victorian era. The basic elements of the tale found its way into a magazine called The People's Periodical and Family Library, who, in 1846, published an 18-part story called The String of Pearls. Of course, the details had changed of it by then, and a lot of the plot with it. To be honest, if you didn't know the connection, you would just think it was another bit of entertaining fiction.

Those who know have a whole new appreciation for the story, and for the infamous main character that it all revolves around, a man who, thanks to Broadway and Hollywood, just about everyone today would recognize. The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Sweeney Todd I hope you've enjoyed this tour through some of the less polished aspects of Paris. It's clear that there is a lot to discover, especially if one is looking for the darker side of the city of light. But I'm not done just yet.

I've saved one final tale that's sure to give you chills, and if you stick around after this brief sponsor break, I'll tell you all about it. You don't have to be a student of history to have at least heard the name Catherine de Medici. It's a name that stirs up images of intrigue and plots among the nobility of her day, but there's so much more to her than that. Catherine was born in Italy into the once prominent Medici family. At the time of her birth, though, things were becoming tense.

At the age of eight, she became a political pawn and was captured and held hostage in a convent while the older generation battled for control of Florence. There were happy moments, though, and for all the turmoil, much of her childhood was spent in the presence of family members who also happened to be dukes and popes and kings, so when she was married off to Prince Henry, the son of Francis King Francis I, it was a transition that was less of a shock than it would have been for most others. Catherine's husband Henry finally ascended to the throne in March of 1547, and for the next twelve years she would reign by his side as queen consort.

A couple also had ten children, three of whom would later go on to wear their father's crown at different points. So when people imagine Catherine de' Medici as a spider at the center of a political web of intrigue, this is why, because in a lot of ways, she was. In the forty-two years between 1547 when her husband Henry became King of France and 1589 when she passed away, Catherine wielded a powerful influence over much of Europe. Some of that power was visible and obvious, but there were also darker elements, and one of them involved a butcher named Jean Lycauchère.

When Henry died in 1559, Catherine had a new palace built along the River Seine in the Saint-Germain parish of the city. It's said that Lycauchère had a cottage on the palace grounds from where he conducted his business for her. By day he was the official butcher for the palace, and by night, when required, he was a butcher of a different sort. It's said that he worked as an assassin for Catherine, as well as the shadowy figure that pulled political levers when they were too dirty for his employer to touch.

But as the years went by, it became very clear to Catherine that Lycauchère knew too much. All of those dark tasks had armed him with power over her, and that was simply unacceptable. So Catherine hired someone else, a knight from out of town, to put an end to her butcher. Legend says that the new assassin found the old one working in his cottage at the palace and ran him through with the sword, and that, we would assume, was the end of a frightening situation for Catherine. But if history has taught us anything, it's that it's never safe to assume. Later that evening, the knight had a dream.

In it, Lycauchère appeared to him all covered in blood. The image frightened him so much that he told Catherine about it, but she dismissed his dream without a second thought, or at least it seemed that she had. Later though, she went to an astrologer and asked what he made of the dream, and his answer wasn't happy. It turns out he had also had a dream. Not of a bloody butcher, but of the ghost of a man surrounded in red mist, and in his dream the spirit had uttered a curse, a curse that said that Catherine would die near Saint

Germain. Naturally, that was an image she wished to forget, but it seems the palace never let her. Many times in the weeks that followed, it said that Catherine herself saw the red ghost inside the palace, taunting her like the light of an oncoming train. And being a superstitious person who valued control and power over anything else, she decided to take matters into her own hands. If death was going to come for her near Saint Germain, then she would simply move away.

If she no longer lived in the parish, she would be safe. Catherine lived on for many more years, and enjoyed a level of power that few in Europe had at their disposal. Then while she was very far from perfect, it's clear that she left her own particular marks on the pages of history. So when she passed away on the 5th of January of 1589, it's fair to say that the world lost someone unique. But that's not all.

As she lay on her deathbed in Chateau de Blois, struggling to breathe from the infection around her lungs that would eventually kill her, she found solace in the words of a Benedictine monk who had come to give her her last rites. When he was done, she smiled up at him and thanked him, and then asked him for his name. Loran, he replied. Loran, du Saint Germain. This episode of Lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Mankey, with research by Marseille Croquettes and music by Chad Lawson.

Lore is much more than just a podcast. There's a book series available in bookstores and online, and two seasons of the television show on Amazon Prime Video. Check them both out if you want more lore in your life. I also make two other podcasts, Aaron Mankey's Cabinet of Curiosities, and Unobscured, and I think you'd enjoy both. Each one explores other areas of our dark history, ranging from bite-sized episodes to season-long dives into a single topic.

You can learn more about both of those shows and everything else going on over in one central place, theworldoflore.com slash now. And you can also follow the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Just search for Lore podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button. When you do, say hi. I like it when people say hi. And as always, thanks for listening. I'll see you in the next one.