SPECTRALWhat happened here
Paris was built with stone quarried from beneath its own streets, leaving hundreds of kilometres of tunnels. By the 18th century the city's cemeteries were overflowing — the Cemetery of the Holy Innocents had become a danger to health — and in 1785 the authorities decided to move the remains into the disused quarries.
The transfers began in 1786 and went on for decades, often at night, with carts of bones blessed by priests. In the early 19th century the ossuary was arranged into the walls of skulls and thigh bones seen today, and it opened to visitors in 1809.
The legends
The most famous story is that of Philibert Aspairt, a hospital doorkeeper who went into the tunnels in 1793, reportedly in search of a monastery's liqueur cellar. His body was found eleven years later, a short distance from an exit, and a tombstone marks the spot.
Cataphiles — the explorers who enter the huge network of tunnels closed to the public — tell of whispers, footsteps and the feeling of being followed in the dark. A video said to have been found on a camera in the tunnels, showing a man panicking as he gets lost, has become an internet legend of its own.
Fact or legend?
Aspairt was real, and his tombstone is in the tunnels. The found-footage video is widely believed to be staged. The rest of the stories come from the dark, the silence and the sheer number of the dead: the ossuary needs no ghosts.
Visiting
The Catacombs are a City of Paris museum. The visit covers about 1.5 kilometres of tunnels, with long staircases down and back up; tickets are timed and should be booked online in advance. Entering the rest of the network is illegal.
