In the early nineties, explorers were walking around the dark underground areas of Paris, France, when they found a video camera on the ground. As would any other curious group of people, they took it and allize what they found. As it turns out, the video camera actually had footage in it. The questions they had took the best of them, and they decided to watch it, and they were all confused. Just noises, strange noises emanating from the recorded footage. That's when they were able to figure out what it was. The sounds were those of a man, and they were able to tell that he was lost and had no idea how to get out. Everything seemed to point out that the man was going mad at the realization that he would never be able to escape. The footage ends up abruptly when the man drops his camera. To this day, nobody knows who he was or if he ever managed to get out. Catacombs. When cemeteries became overcrowded and could take no more bodies, people had no choice but to go deeper underground, and they began to create subterranean passageways that were used to place dead bodies. But if you're imagining a simple tunnel in the ground, Well, it would be dead wrong. These places were elaborate, sometimes designed like mazes and chambers that included burial areas where no light could get in. The tale of the found footage in one of these is a legend that takes place in the catacombs underneath Paris. There's a whole series of them around the world. In fact, in a recent visit to South America, I managed to take a tour of the catacombs underneath the cathedral in a major city in Ecuador named Quenka, and I wonder just how elaborate could these places become? What lures explore us to dive into the underground to see such places. In this episode, we will go underground to explore the horrors that lie and die underneath. Are you ready? My name is Edwin and here's a dark memory. Underneath the busy city of London, England. There are four million kilometers of secret tunnels and chambers that have been discovered. The figure itself seems a bit high, but then we found out that a lot of these were telecommunication lines that were built by the Post Office or the Ministry of Defense and British Telecom. This is to say, for business purposes. These were made, whether to transport mail or people without having to go through the regular streets and buildings a direct access line of sorts. One of these is a Postmaster General's Tunnel, which is beneath Whitehall and was built to protect communications and machinery from atomic bombings during the Cold War era. And underneath Holborn there are tunnels and rooms that were built during World War II and built as an air raid shelter, it was later used by engineers. In fact, it became the endpoint for the world's first transatlantic phone cable, an achievement that today we take for granted. Today we forget that we still rely on cables and that not all connections are done via airwaves. This place had also become a restaurant. It had game rooms and a bar which claimed to be the deepest underground bar in the United Kingdom. But tunnels were still being discovered to this day and those well, those were kept secret and the public has not gained access to them just yet. However, Winston Churchill's Cabinet War Rooms are open to visitors. Other underground places, such as a Greenwich foot tunnel, also have ghost stories. The Greenwich Foot Tunnel crosses beneath River Thames in East London and it links the Royal Bureau of Greenwich with Millwall, London borough of Tower Hamlets, and it opened in nineteen oh two. People have also reported hearing voices, footsteps and sudden temperature drops when they are alone. For example, there is a story that says that a ghost couple, both dressed in Victorian clothes, holding hands walking together. They can be seen roaming through its cold, damp and long paths. Way is surrounded by cracked white tiles as they walked through the dripping water from the many crevices. This exact couple has been reported by witnesses that have walked through it, but the tails of the underground go much deeper and creepier than that. One specific account comes to mind when we think of London's underground Bethnal Green Station, located in the same location denoted in its name. It was late and he was getting ready to go home. Thankfully, the last train had departed and soon there wouldn't be much more to do. He did his usual rounds, secure the doors, put things back in place, and then went around the area to turn off the lights. One by one. Everything was running smoothly. Nothing ever, seemed to happen anyway. Nothing was out of the ordinary that night, but as always, there was something to do. He had forgotten to fill out the last remaining paperwork of the night, putting it off until the end, just like most of us are guilty of doing. And so he stepped into his office, the usual still darkness all around him, with the exception of his desk lamp. In his quiet space, focused on filling out the paperwork, he looked up briefly after hearing a strange noise. Now he was alone at the station. There was no reason for anything to be making such a strange noise, perhaps a rat, an animal of some sort. He continued writing and he was interrupted once again. This time he looked up and waited for the sounds to fill the underground station once again, and there they were. The sobbing children saw it. At first, he didn't know what to do and stood up, unaware of what was about to happen. The sound started growing louder, and suddenly the station was filled with female voices and screams, lots of people panicking, screaming for their lives. For over ten minutes he had to endure the sound. Stuck in an office by himself at night, terrified, he finally grabbed what he could and sped through the stairs and up to the booking hallway to get away from the sounds. When he told his co workers, it was not much of a surprise to them. These sounds were not that uncommon. Other employees had reported hearing similar sounds at night. What few people are aware of, however, is that during World War Two, when London was about to be bombed, people panicked and went down to this very underground station with complete chaos. One hundred and seventy three people were trampled during this incident, and among the dead were one hundred and twenty six women and children. To this day, even the passengers claimed to hear the screams of the women and children who died. Station still remains in operation today. In twenty sixteen, a paranormal investigator named Anthony Mark was watching the footage collected from an underground passage known as a Draglow Tunnels, and that's when he made a ghostly discovery. Right in front of him during a part of the film was a ghost's face. You see this area's elabyrinth of tunnels so of around three point five miles long, and it was built as part of a shadow factor for Rover that held contribute for the war effort. There is a rumor that says that seven people died due to a roof collapse that happen in those tunnels, as well as impact with a truck and for writing on a conveyor belt. Back when it was being built in nineteen forty one, and then once it was open to the public, people began talking about a ghost that lurk there named Oswald. It goes that is playful sometimes but has been known to be aggressive by shoving and pulling the hair of visitors. People have reported seeing dark figures, hearing screams, and being grabbed. Others claim that stones have been thrown. One might be able to safely assume that a city with such a long history would be haunted by ghosts and spirits of the past, but visiting them in their own turf underground, it's really something else. More strange tales in the history of the location where the hell Fire Club had their meetings. A next perhaps more notorious for its creepy ambients like that out of a film set is Brompton Cemetery in Catacombs. Percy Lambert, the first person to drive one hundred miles per hour, died in a car crash when his tire burst at Brooklyn's Racetrack in November of nineteen thirteen, and he is buried there. Another interesting thing to note about this cemetery is that one of the largest mausoleums there houses a time machine inside of it, or so the legend says. In an entire piece written by David Castleton, he describes just how strange this tomb is and why it has been a source of an enormous amount of urban legends throughout the years. The legend says that an eccentric Victorian inventor along with an egyptologist, discovered scientific secrets while decoding hieroglyphs on the walls of tombs. These two people who built a supposed time machine also rest in Brompton Cemetery. Those are inventor Samuel Alfred Warner and egyptologist Joseph Bunomi. In photographs, you can see that the mausoleum towers over the rest and as a neo Egyptian design. As you walk up the steps you see a huge bronze door with more hieroglyphs with many scare of beetles in them, which are symbols that mean the defiance of death and time as well as a tie to the eternal. But another cemetery worth mentioning before we go back underground is Highgate Cemetery and Catacombs that had a vampire scandal that it turned out to be fake. If you were to look up information on the place, you'll see that it attracted a lot of media attention, but all without any merit behind it. The place itself looks pretty creepy though. A man named Paul Whitehead was on his deathbed when he requested that his heart be stored in an urn in the mausoleum at west Wickham. His wishes were followed and his heart was placed to rest at its requested spot. However, out of nowhere, the heart went missing. It was allegedly stolen by an Australian soldier in eighteen twenty nine, and legend says that his ghost now haunts west Wickham Caves and search for his heart. In fact, multiple visitors and employees of the place have reported seeing an old fashioned man wandering around, and then when he turns to face you, he vanishes into thin air. But as it turns out, Paul Whitehead was a friend of Sir Francis Dashwood, the man behind the notorious health Fire Caves, the one who excavated a seat series of tunnels back in the seventeen hundreds. From what we gathered, the group was made up of Pagans and they held meetings there in an area dug directly beneath a church. Kind of ironic. It was said that the meetings consisted of pagan rituals and sacrifices, where they drank a lot of alcohol and performed acts perceived as sins by other religious groups. Eventually, once Sir Francis Dashwood died, the club simply faded over time in seventeen eighty one. The caves were later renovated in the nineteen forties and fifties, and then they were turned into tourist attractions. They're open for visitors in case you want to take a look for yourself. Just watch out for the famous ghost let us said to lurk at that very spot. A sixteen or seventeen year old barmaid named Suki worked at the George and the Dragon Inn in the late seventeen hundreds or early eighteen hundreds. She was known for rejecting many men she had a chance to do so because of her physical beauty, But she had a plan. She was not going to marry just anyone. She wanted to marry into high society. An aristocrat came around one time and they started dating. Late one night, a messenger arrived with a note for her, letting her know that she was to meet him in the caves. Wearing her best white dress as a wedding dress. Suki was excited. Her dream was finally about to become true. She rushed to get ready, dressed up as best as she could, and then made her way to the caves. But on arrival, she was met by three village boys about to burst out laughing she had been tricked. The boys began to tease her and torment her as she stood there in complete confusion. In a panic, she grabbed stones and threw them, and they threw them back. However, one of these stones struck her and knocked her unconscious. The voice panicked too when they decided to carry her to get help. They arrived at the Inn not long afterward, but there was little that could be done. The young woman never recovered and she died that same night. But today, hundreds of years later, visitors and employees claimed to see a girl in a white dress wandering into the tunnels, perhaps seeking vengeance, maybe simply lost and unable to cross over after a death that came so suddenly at night. They say, her footsteps can be heard, stones are thrown, and from the inner temple they can hear the eerie chance of a hopeful woman who died after a cruel joke. These events all take place in England, but like mentioned in the beginning of this episode, Paris and France is the first place that comes to mind when we think of catacombs, and within good reason. During our research, we found out about the legends that say that the walls begin to speak to you in there because the bodies were buried in the walls and not given proper resting place. The voices will tell you to go deeper into the maze until you become lost and trapped in the darkness. Such was the story of Philippert Asperit, a doorman at Valdegra's hospital. He went to grab liquor from the cellar and accidentally answered the catacombs with only a single candle on him. He tried to find his way out, but he became more and more confused, likely because of the alcohol. But then he became terrified once his candle went out. It would be eleven years later when his body was found by explorers. He was identified by his hospital keyring on his belt. In that same place that he died, He was buried and written in the tombstone is a story of his unfortunate death. Now every third of November, his ghost is said to roam the catacombs, still trying to escape. In two thousand and four, police officers came across a strange thing inside the catacombs. Two a PA system with prerecorded guard docks, three thousand square feet of galleries, phone wires for electricity, a bar, a living area, a workshop, lounge, and a cinema for twenty people carved into the stones, and even cameras were in the ceiling recording them. When the police came back a few days later to investigate more, everything they had discovered had vanished. The only thing they found was a note in French that translated to don't search as you walk along the dark tunnels, under the busy areas and streets, surrounded by complete darkness, with soulless bodies that were left behind hundreds of years ago. Your mind can begin to get filled with stories of those who departed before we arrived, Tales of those who lived joyful lives and those that were not so lucky, their stories held away by time itself. As you step deeper into the underground world of goodbyes, it is until you begin to hear them manifest, those who still have something to tell you that you start to wonder about what they would say if they were with you, and perhaps they are. How long can you manage to step further and further into the dark world memories. This episode of A Dark Memory was researched by metel Inguera and written by me Edwin Coomaras. You can find her contact information on the description of this episode. If you want to get in touch, do you have an idea for an episode? Check out our website at Adark Memory dot com for more creepy content. Be sure to find my other shows Scary Story Podcast and and True a Scary Story. Thank you for listening. Let's see you soon.
