Once upon a time, in the late 1700s, Paris had a problem.

A stinking, bloated, putrefying problem.

In the late 1700s, Paris had a problem — and not a subtle one. It was bloated, putrefying and impossible to ignore. The Cimetière des Innocents, the city’s oldest and largest cemetery, had been in use for over six centuries. Over time, it developed what might generously be called “features”: overflowing mass graves, walls that seeped decomposing matter into neighbouring basements and the occasional bone surfacing in a bakery courtyard.

The ground was saturated. People were getting sick. Contemporary accounts describe a stench so overpowering it seemed to settle permanently into the air.

Eventually even Louis XVI — this was, notably, before the guillotine — approved a radical solution. The dead would be relocated. Beneath the Left Bank stretched a network of abandoned limestone quarries, winding for kilometres under the city.

Beginning in 1786 and continuing for decades, an estimated six million remains were exhumed and transferred into those tunnels. It is difficult to fully grasp the logistics: wagon after wagon of bones, some long skeletonized, others reduced to something far less identifiable. Priests sometimes accompanied the process, offering blessings. Sometimes they did not.

At first, the bones were piled without much thought — skulls in one mound, femurs in another. But under the direction of Inspector Héricart de Thury, the Catacombs were transformed from a storage site into something far more deliberate. Bones were arranged into walls and columns, stacked into symmetrical facades and shaped into architectural forms reminiscent of chapels and ritual spaces. The result is strangely beautiful. That beauty, I think, is what unsettles people most.

Today, only about 1.7 kilometres of the nearly 300 kilometres of tunnels are accessible to the public. That means visitors — myself included — see less than one per cent of what lies beneath Paris. The rest is sealed, restricted or simply too unstable to enter. Officially, at least.

Unofficially, the underground belongs to the cataphiles — urban explorers who slip through manholes, abandoned buildings and fractured métro shafts to wander the forbidden sections. They map passages, leave phosphorescent graffiti, host underground dinners and sometimes hold concerts in hidden chambers.

The Paris police even maintain a specialized unit to monitor them: the Cataflics. Yet the cataphiles persist, drawn back by something difficult to articulate. Many describe pockets of air that feel inexplicably colder, corridors that feel wrong or oppressive and rooms where silence carries a weight that seems almost physical.

One of the most enduring legends among them concerns a man known only as Philippe L. In the early 1990s, a group of explorers allegedly discovered an abandoned camcorder deep in the restricted zone. The tape inside shows a man wandering alone through increasingly unfamiliar tunnels.

At first he appears calm, almost methodical. Gradually, however, his breathing quickens. His movements become erratic. The camera shakes. He begins to run, as if pursued by something just beyond the frame. The footage ends abruptly when the camera falls and spins into darkness.

No official record of a missing Philippe L has ever surfaced. The tape reportedly aired once on French television and then disappeared. Hoax or art piece, perhaps — but people have genuinely gone missing in the Catacombs, both officially and unofficially. That fact alone keeps the legend alive.

Beyond the curated ossuary lie chambers that bear no resemblance to the orderly arrangements created under Inspector Thury. Graffiti is common, but it is not limited to names or tags. Some walls display pentagrams in charcoal, Latin incantations and the Eye of Providence. Symbols associated with Freemasonry — the square, the compass and the letter G — appear in multiple locations. Given Freemasonry’s documented history of meeting in hidden vaults and underground spaces, speculation has flourished that certain chambers may once have hosted Revolutionary-era lodges.

Fringe forums from the late 1990s mention an alleged group called La Faim, or “The Hunger,” said to conduct ritualized blood ceremonies beneath Paris. Reports from explorers include discarded syringes, wine bottles and red residue — occasionally even medical coolers containing blood vials, presumed to be animal. Spectacularly unverified, certainly. Yet the Catacombs provide a ready-made stage for the theatrical, the disturbed and the spiritually experimental. Stories of satanic rituals, inverted pentagrams and demonic names scratched into walls echo the moral panics of previous decades, but the atmosphere of the tunnels makes such narratives feel oddly plausible.

There is even a scientific explanation for the pervasive unease many visitors report. In 2011, an unofficial acoustic survey conducted by a small university team recorded low-frequency pulses in parts of the ossuary. Subsonic vibrations, it is theorized, can influence human emotion, triggering anxiety and the sensation of being watched.

​One researcher described the feeling as though someone stood just outside their field of vision, even though the chamber was empty. Perhaps the Catacombs are not haunted by spirits but by architecture itself — by sound waves that stir ancient instincts.

It is easy to become absorbed in these legends. But beneath the symbolism and speculation lies an undeniable truth: over six million real people rest below Paris. Beggars, bankers, children, clergy, soldiers — individuals who once lived full and complicated lives. Many were relocated hastily, fragmented and nameless. Yet someone chose to give them structure. To stack bones into walls with symmetry and intention.

To install plaques reading Arrête. C’est ici l’Empire de la Mort (Stop. Here lies the Empire of the Dead).

The result is something that feels less like a storage site and more like a cathedral — a death cathedral carved from necessity. As you walk deeper, plaques mark dates of transfer where known. The farther you descend, the older the remains become. The atmosphere shifts from morbid curiosity to something almost reverent.

So the next time you stroll through Paris — past cafés, little shops and late-night omelette counters — remember that beneath your feet lies a vast and silent city. A place shaped by crisis, curated with care and still alive with stories. And if you ever have the opportunity, descend. Submerge yourself.

Go say hello.

On this anniversary of the Nuremberg Trials, it's worth revisiting the story of one of history’s most celebrated engineers—Dr. Wernher von Braun. Known as the visionary behind NASA’s Saturn V and the Apollo Moon landing, von Braun’s legacy is complicated by a darker chapter: his role in the Nazi V-2 rocket program, built on the backs of thousands of slave labourers in underground tunnels beneath a mountain in central Germany.

In the final years of World War II, the Nazis shifted production of their V-2 ballistic missile to a vast subterranean facility in the Kohnstein mountain known as Mittelwerk, supplied by the labour of prisoners from the Dora–Mittelbau concentration camp. These prisoners—political detainees, resistance fighters and people abducted from across Europe—were forced to work in inhumane conditions, enduring starvation, beatings, disease and death.

Over 20,000 prisoners died at Mittelbau-Dora, more than twice the number of civilians killed by V-2 rocket strikes. This grim death toll wasn’t a tragic by-product—it was intrinsic to the operation. American forces arrived just in time to prevent the tunnels from being sealed with the remaining prisoners trapped inside.

The Engineer and the Camp

Von Braun, a brilliant Prussian engineer born in 1912, was obsessed with spaceflight from a young age. His dreams earned him a job with the German Army in 1932. After the Nazis came to power, his team at Peenemünde developed the A-4 rocket, rebranded as the V-2—the world’s first long-range guided ballistic missile. After Peenemünde was bombed in 1943, the V-2 program relocated to Mittelwerk.

Von Braun later claimed ignorance of the atrocities at Dora, stating he only visited the factory occasionally and didn’t witness the horrors directly. But documents, testimonies and his own letters tell a different story.

One particularly damning episode involved Charles Sadron, a French physicist and resistance member held at Dora. Von Braun personally offered Sadron a transfer to better conditions in exchange for his technical expertise. Sadron refused. Von Braun then wrote to the Buchenwald camp commandant asking for the reassignment of “intelligent prisoner specialists” and requested civilian clothes and privileges for Sadron. He signed the letter with “Heil Hitler”.

These are not the actions of a man unaware of the system. They are the actions of someone working within it—using prisoners as technical assets.

A (Nazi) Party Man

Von Braun joined the Nazi Party in 1937 and the SS in 1940, rising to the rank of SS-Sturmbannführer (major). He later downplayed these affiliations, claiming they were made under duress. While it’s true many Germans joined the party to keep their careers, von Braun’s postwar attempts to distance himself raise ethical questions, especially given his documented involvement at Dora.

His attitude toward the suffering around him is captured in the infamous satirical song by Tom Lehrer:

“Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? ‘That’s not my department,’ says Wernher von Braun.”

While the Nuremberg Trials exposed Nazi war crimes, including the use of slave labour, von Braun never stood trial. He wasn’t even investigated. Why? Because his knowledge was too valuable.

By 1945, as Germany collapsed, von Braun and his team fled west, surrendered to U.S. troops, and were quietly ushered into Operation Paperclip—a covert American program designed to extract German scientific expertise while sanitizing war records. Intelligence officers scrubbed damning details from von Braun’s file, including his SS rank and knowledge of forced labour, attaching whitewashed summaries with literal paperclips.

President Truman had insisted no “ardent Nazis” be brought over. That promise was undermined. The Cold War had begun, and the Americans were eager to beat the Soviets at any cost.

The American Space Hero

In the U.S., von Braun became a citizen, advised Walt Disney on space-themed TV specials, and eventually joined NASA, where he spearheaded the development of the Saturn V rocket. When Apollo 11 landed on the Moon in 1969, he was hailed as a hero. Newspapers dubbed him “father of the Saturn V,” and the past faded into a footnote.

But back in West Germany, trials for war crimes at Mittelbau-Dora resumed. Von Braun’s name surfaced repeatedly. He was eventually asked to testify—by phone. His defence? He had no control over labour. He was “just the rocket guy.”

In the decades after his death in 1977, historians began re-examining Operation Paperclip. When Arthur Rudolph, another NASA engineer and former Mittelwerk manager, was denaturalized in 1984 for his wartime actions, the question naturally followed: what about von Braun?

Historians like Michael J. Neufeld combed through declassified documents, revealing von Braun’s deep entanglement in the Nazi system. Survivors of Dora told their stories. The narrative shifted: von Braun was no longer a symbol of pure scientific idealism but a case study in moral compromise.

Was von Braun a visionary or a villain? A victim of circumstances?

He helped humanity touch the Moon. But he also enabled a regime that enslaved and murdered thousands. He accepted rank and honours from the Nazis, then reaped fame and fortune in the U.S. The legacy of Wernher von Braun forces us to confront a hard truth: history often celebrates achievement without fully reckoning with the cost. As we remember the principles laid down at Nuremberg—that no one is above justice—we must also remember those who never got their day in court.

Although Sam was a precocious child, speaking in full sentences from the age of 18 months, his parents were stunned to hear him use a word like portal. They encouraged him to say more. They asked Sam if he'd had any siblings.

"I had a sister who got turned into a fish."

"Who turned her into a fish?"

"Some bad guys. She died."
Eerily enough, Sam’s grandfather had a sister who was murdered 60 years earlier. Her body was found floating in San Francisco Bay. Ron and Kathy gently asked, "Sam, do you know how you died?"

Sam jerked back and slapped the top of his head as if in pain. One year before Sam was born, his grandfather had died of a cerebral haemorrhage.