Man exploring French Catacombs attacked and dragged of by someone/something.

He might not have been running from everything. Maybe it was stress induced dimentia. A glitch in ones "fight or flight" response.

I love things like this, being a Geologist ive spent a lot of time underground and it does after a while start to play with your head, remember when the movie the decent came out? almost all of my friends and myself included said those noises in that movie we have all heared them, but logic told us it was water running and the echo's magnified, and i have also seen it get to much for some people who do try and run which is hard in a confined space, but down there in those catacombes i can easily believe someone can get so scared they can run and get lost and never be seen again.

In the footage nothing seems to follow him.

Wow that is crazy. I had no idea there are over 400 miles of catacombs there??!
That is just nuts! What were they built for and when were they built?

Qe cant see what he was seeing, maybe he saw something in one of those little cracks in the wall, or maybe just got really paranoid that something was following him, cramped conditions can cause alot of terror, ecspecially in a place where millions of bodies have been burried, the old mind starts to play games.

[edit on 19-10-2007 by Opulisum]

That gives me the chills, though really I wish they would not embellish serious stories with creepy voice narrators like that, it discredits it a bit.

But still, I believe it, he could have just gone insane...but his fate if he didn't make it out would be terrifying.

Paris catacambs are known for strange disapearances and oddities. Read this story that happened to a woman from Paris in mid 40-s. I'm posting just a part of it.



In the May, 1967, issue of the Hollow Earth Bulletin we printed portions of The Messerschmidt Manuscript.' A French woman, thought to have been killed, returned to her home in the suburbs of Paris with a frightening tale of being kidnapped and taken into the dero's lair. An edited version of her
statement follows:

There are those who will claim I am insane ... They will testify that I am mentally ill and unable to remember those weeks in the caves. I wish I could erase those memories from my mind. But, the world must be warned. The monsters are down there. We must destroy them before they kidnap more
women for their horrible purposes ... I was a young woman of nineteen years of age in 1943, proud of my ability as a student, and eagerly
looking forward to marrying a young man who planned to be a physician.
One night we planned to meet at my fiancé's office building, join another couple, and have dinner in a small cafe. We were not worried about the Nazis. I arrived a few minutes late at my fiancé's office building and the old man who ran the elevator had left for the day. I decided to operate the lift for myself. I stepped inside to inspect the controls. There were no symbols to indicate whether the lift went up or down by moving the lever one way or
another. Light hearted and in love, I decided that if I ran the elevator into the basement, I could reverse the controls and go up to the other stories ...
I made an error and the elevator stopped in a dark basement. I reversed the controls, but my hand slipped. I pushed on the 'down' control.

The elevator suddenly plunged down below the basement, falling through space as if the cable had broken. After a rapid drop, perhaps several hundred feet, the elevator stopped with a sudden lurch. I was so frightened as I fell onto the floor of the cage, sobbing and screaming. Through my terror-stricken mind, I heard a loud, guttural noise on the other side of the elevator door. The elevator door was torn open with a vicious slam and I saw the most horrible beast in the world. The memory of that monster haunts my mind and, at night, I cannot sleep without sedatives or sleeping pills ...
His face was of a pale, whitish color. His short, twisted body was covered with thick, bristly hair. His eyes? piggish, insensitive to any emotion, and gleaming with evil lust. The creature was fat, almost bloated. There were terrible scars and running sores over most of his body. He had no neck, so his head was placed squarely atop his muscular shoulders.
The face was the most horrible portion of his terrible features. It was much too large for his body, totally devoid of hair. The skin was scarred and wrinkled. His nose was fashioned more like a snout. It was at least seven inches in length, a terrible thing hanging down over his lipless mouth. His nose ended about the middle of his chest. He was nude. His body looked as if he had never worn garments. A filthy, animal-smell filled the elevator. Mercifully, I fainted into unconsciousness. I have never known what happened in the elevator. Did they use that for an entry into the outside world? I have thought about it and those elevator shafts may go down far into the earth at certain points. When I recovered consciousness, I was lying on the polished stone floor of an immense cavern. There were several other women standing around in that dark corner and, as my eyes adjusted to the
dimness, I saw that we were caged into one corner of a large cave. A metal gate, and bars, rose from the stone floor up to the ceiling. I suppressed an impulse to scream, thinking this terrible nightmare would end any instant.
Across the way, the devil-men were fighting over a carcass. It was some reptile-like animal which they hunted in the caverns. I learned later that if these reptiles became scarce, they crept up into Paris at night and captured human beings for their food. There were giant hooks on the walls, quite sharp, where they hung the bodies to drain. They collected the blood as a drink, fighting among themselves for the thick, red drippings. There were about twenty women crowded into the cave. Most of them were totally mad; insane creatures who had lost their minds. They huddled in the cage, whimpering and crying. Others simply sat in mute catatonic shock. They were like living robots, with their emotions and human feelings
destroyed by the horrible existence in the caverns. I stood up, looking around for my clothing, which was gone. Trying to hide my nakedness, I walked to the front of the cage. Despite my fear, I shouted across the room to the group of monstrous beings. It was a moment of total unreality.
'The police will be looking for me,' I said. 'Release me, or I'll charge you with kidnapping.' My mind was like a taut string on a musical instrument, ready to snap at any moment.

The devil-man who had pulled me from the elevator grinned wickedly through his lipless mouth. He lurched up from where he had been gnawing on the carcass. I trembled with fear as he shuffled toward me. I moved back into the cage. He spoke in a guttural growl, almost grunts. This was a signal and the other women in the cage grabbed me. They pressed me against the bars of the cage. I passed once again into unconsciousness as the devil-man placed a dirty, hairy palm on my breast. ... I regained my senses once more that same night. I remember that seven or eight of the devilmen chased me round the cavern. They tossed me back and forth between each other, fondling my body, and - as they wished - carrying me off into a passageway for their private amusement. After that first night, nothing they could do to me would kill the spirit of life within my body. I learned! Oh! How I learned. I put my mind elsewhere when they pulled me from the cages. I survived
and retained my sanity by living in the past. When one of the lusting, evil monsters dragged me out of the cages for his pleasure, I went into a catatonic state. I relived the happy years of my childhood in my mind to retain my sanity. Or, I blanked out into unconsciousness. Most of the women who had been captive for some time were in horrible physical condition. They
picked up the various infections and sores from the beasts. They had skin eruptions and bruises were all over their bodies. Many had lost weight, due to the mental strain, and the food. The men-beasts often forgot to feed us and, when they did, they threw a large chunk of meat into the cage. I never
knew if the meat was human, or animal, and I became so hungry that I didn't care. About once a week, perhaps more often because time measurement was impossible in the caverns, we were given an armload of damp, moldy weeds. We were allowed a small fire in the cages, for
cooking, and to ward off the dampness. We took these subterranean ferns, mosses, and mushrooms, and brewed them into a stew. Once, we were given a dark, almost black, type of mushroom that produced hallucinations.
I must have been a captive of these terrible devil-men for two weeks, perhaps a month, when the gray men appeared from out of the tunnels. The devils scrambled in the opposite direction, grunting with fright, as the gray men shot them with gas guns. Several of the bestial men-animals were killed. Prisoners were released from the cage, given a toga-like robe for clothing, and taken through the tunnels for medical attention. They had a strange sort of vehicle, not like our automobiles, that was parked in the tunnels. A physician led us into a mobile laboratory....

Hi,

Do you know where I can find the rest of the story?
Thanks

Casu is part of a book I have in pdf: This Hollow Earth By Warren Smith.

If you are interested then u2u me with your e-mail adresse and I'll send it to you.

edit to add some information: The story is somewhere around page 80.

[edit on 19-10-2007 by Telos]

I think I'm going to have to agree with most of the others here, that this man's disappearance probably wasn't incredibly paranormal, although it does rather bring to mind Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere. Maybe that's just me. :3

I would also like to note that the "creepy" narrator in that YouTube video just reminds me of my grandmother trying to be scary. It doesn't make it any creepier; just makes it less credible, as Kacen already mentioned.

I would warrant a guess that this was just a poor fool who decided to go exploring the catacombs on his own. After wandering around for what can obviously be confirmed as several hours--given the information gathered by the team that followed him down later--he probably got freaked out, and in the best case, dropped his camera before eventually finding his way out, or in the worst case, dropped his camera before running deeper and deeper into the catacombs to lose himself so thoroughly as to have no hope of finding his way out again.

What I can't quite figure out is whether his only means of vision was the light on the front of his camera, or if he had a flashlight, as well.
It looks to me as if he ran off into the dark without any other kind of light, which really says something for his chances of survival. It doesn't say anything good, but it says something nevertheless. Am I missing something? Does anyone else see something I don't see here?

At any rate, if he did run off into the dark, abandoning his camera and his only light source, he must have been pretty terrified. Was it a terror that he mostly inflicted on himself, lost and trapped alone in the Catacombs, with a mind playing tricks on him, or was there something else that really did scare him enough that he only wanted to get away, light or no light?

I guess I'm not so sure what to think about it after all. o:

Complete load of doodoo. It's a stupid hoax it's one of those hoaxes thats like "YEAH THERES SKULLS AND BONES (AND THEN ELABORATE LYING) THERES CANNIBALS THERE TOO!"

If you catch my drifter

I dunno.

Whether there's really anything (besides corpses and endless corridors) down there or not, I still imagine it would be incredibly terrifying to get lost on your own.

Besides, it's an interesting topic; however morbid it may be, it still catches one's interest, or at least it caught my interest, and made me wonder.....

Things like this are the kinds of thoughts that have a tendency to creep into my head at night and make it difficult to get to sleep. With hundreds of miles of largely unmapped, pitch-dark corridors and tunnels in an insane labyrinth of underground confusion, I wouldn't need to find the gate to Hell. I think I would already be in it.

Originally posted by blowfishdl
Complete load of doodoo. It's a stupid hoax it's one of those hoaxes thats like "YEAH THERES SKULLS AND BONES (AND THEN ELABORATE LYING) THERES CANNIBALS THERE TOO!"

If you catch my drifter

dude, just imagine all the dread and death encompassing that place. Anything within the horrible, unfathomable depths of the human mind is possible. If a place is filled with human skulls and femurs, it's not a happy land where nothing bad happens. Like america.

What ever this guy hallucinated (which is obvious, nothing pursued him after he dropped the camera) either from mold, spores or fungus in the catacomb scared him enough to drop his only light source 238 feet underground and the only option was to run into complete pitch darkness, with no idea of where to possibly run to. A fear intense enough to abandon all hope of escape just for temporary fleeting, is enough for me to believe he definitely experienced something paranormal down there.

Telos, that story is amazing. Could you U2U me the full thing? thanks.

I think the video is real. Looks like the guy was alone and got lost and eventually worked himself up into a panic, which is why he starts running and discards the camera.

Oh, great. Now I'm afraid to go asleep. Thanks alot. [/joke]


It must be really scary. Running away from who knows what, without light, cursed to walk through a 100+ mile tunnel for the rest of your life.

I understood from the get go that it may or not be a hoax... I wish I could have found it on my own, so I could check it out before I posted. Anyhow, I'm glad I did now anyhow. It looks like we've got a pretty good conversation. After seeing it again, I've been thinking all day about what happened to him to cause him to totally lose it a tear off like that. I figure that if I were in his shoes, after a while I would feel completely claustrophobic, followed by intense paranoia, followed by the intense feeling that I'm being watched or something is after me. At the same time it did seem as if he dropped his only light source, which would be so absolutely stupid, that it makes me think that maybe he did run into something out of the ordinary down there. You couldn't pay me enough to wonder around down there on my own, but even if I was scared out of my mind, I wouldn't leave behind my only source of light. Without light that's an automatic death sentence. I guess if I were actually being pursued by something dropped my camera/light in a panic, I wouldn't go back for it. I would keep moving. I dunno.... the video is curious nonetheless. Sorry the thread title is misleading, before the video was posted I did recall him being dragged off. Strange stuff.

reply to post by Telos


Don't know how much I believe that story, but thanks for posting it, it was a good read, and food for thought.

I don't get it, the dude drop off his camcorder so they assume he's dead?is it?
What if he's had a flashlight in his back pocket ..or whatever

Something is fishy and the narrator voice(a kid?) doesn't help "the viewer" to make him believe more.

But that was entertaining and honestly, i wouldn't put a single toe down those catacombs, god knows what you can find ...or not find, any alive human sign, nothing but skulls and bones and rats, arghhh.

It's because of these catacombs that Paris has no skyscrappers, well that's what i heard.... very unpredictable ground with all these holes.










[edit on 20-10-2007 by themaster1]

Im not really sure what happend to make this guy take off like that. I have 2 ideas like many already posted here. He either just lost his way around and was getting scared, not knowing which way to go to get out and started to panic. The other thing that could of happend is that he saw something that wasnt on the camera and got freaked out by it and all he could think about is running away.

In my opinion, he problably didnt make it out. I mean its 400 miles of darkness and and corpses and bones, adding to more fear. Also, running thru a place like that, and being freaked out at the same time isnt all that good. If you missed one turn and ran into a new area of unknown, you problably wouldnt have enough battery in your flashlight, if you actually did have another flashlight in your pocket, to find your way out with the whole place looking pretty much that same, also while getting more scared and claustraphobic at the same time. You never know thought, he may of know where he was in there and looked at his watch and decided he was running late for dinner with the family and thought the camera was too heavy to hold and just took off without it. That problably didnt happen tho, so im pretty sure hes a goner. You can always have hope tho.

Thanks for that most excellent spooky tale!
I have no opinion as to whether its all real or fake, but it is very near all hallows eve and I enjoy a good spooky tale!

Here's my take on this:

1) Looks like someone's attempt at producing a film which has the feel of a real documentary AND includes producing the 'evidence' (the lost camera and the footage of a missing catacombian) to investigate.

2) The narration was just too much for anyone to take this film seriously. The voice was almost akin to the "Poltergeist" .... "Don't look at the light Carrol Anne!" If this was to be taken seriously that commentary would NEVER be added.

3) I question thier ability to actually find the path of this missing person as there is so many miles of the Catacombs even though that one guy was supposedly an expert of the tunnels below.

I'm sorry but when I saw the 'Z' and the arrow I busted up laughing as it could have been pronounced (with a French accent of course):
"Zeizway!" (This Way!)

I did see an ABC logo and I did see that referrance to that show hosted by Dan Akroyd as well! Those shows with Akroyd were very similar to: 'Ripley's Believe It Or Not" segments.

I believe the original poster mentioned that it maybe just squat .... BIG SQUAT!

If it is 'real' it looks like someone dropped the camera after getting spooked and took off or perhaps since there are so many holes they slipped, dropped thier camera and would disapear. How would one differentiate that person's bones from the rest of those anyway? .... perhaps remnants of thier Tommy Hilfiker boxers?

I just can't buy any of it. I say it's a HOAX. But thanks as it was very entertaining!!!!!!!!!