Welcome internet travelers to this Wednesday’s FYB post that deals with the extreme psychological terror in the found footage originally titled Lost in the Catacombs. The found footage was part of a documentary which most notably aired as a Halloween Special on ABC Family, but the documentary in fact aired in various slightly different versions on Multiple Television networks in the early 2000s. The original film was directed by Francis Freeland and included segments of camcorder footage recorded in the vast and ancient Catacombs of Paris in the early 1990s. The footage was shot by an unknown man whose camera was allegedly discovered years later by an anonymous group of illicit catacomb explorers know as “cataphiles”. The group of cataphiles found the camera was found caked in dust and covered with mold but none the less still intact, and they claimed the footage on the video tape were both totally terrifying and sadly tragic.
For those who may be unaware the Paris Catacombs are a vast and extensive subterranean labyrinth that was created by building tunnels that connect a series of queries. The limestone from these quarries built Paris as it is known today, and eventually the city expanded to the point where the quarries and connecting quarry tunnel system lay below the busy metropolis. The Catacombs came to be back in the late 18th century (1787 – 1814) when the cemeteries in Paris became so overwhelmed with the dead it led to some serious problems. The over crowding of the cemeteries led to improper burials, open graves, and even unearthed corpses of the deceased, and this caused people living near/around the cemeteries to start contracting infectious diseases. To ease the over crowding and health problems and with tons of empty underground quarries at their disposal the police along with priests devised a morbid solution. They discreetly relocated the skeletal remains from older graves into the abandoned quarries effectively turning them into tombs. In the end the Paris catacombs came to house the remains of 6 to 7 million Parisians through out the estimated 187-200 miles of catacombs that lay below the city of Paris.
Let the insanity ensue………
So what the fuck?!:
While as you may imagine since the original airing(s) of the Lost in the Catacombs the creepy pasta crowd has run wild speculating what caused the unknown man to panic (and what possibly may have been his fate). It’s painfully obvious that the man’s flight or flight survival instinct wasn’t triggered by ghouls, ghosts, malevolent aliens, menacing monsters, malicious Mutants, psychotic madmen, or cannibalistic underground dwellers (C.H.U.Ds). As entertaining as it may be to propose outlandish circumstances to attempt to explain the footage, but these idle flights of fancy are nothing more than intellectual fluff.
The reality is far more disturbing and terror inducing than any imaginary beast or badman could ever hope to be. The brutal truth of the matter is the man started to experience growing anxiety as he realizes he may be in trouble. The Anxiety evolves into full blown panic as he comes to the conclusion that he is in a life or death situation and the life and death are his own. Finally the full blown panic activated the man’s fight or flight survival instinct causing him to completely lose his shit. He has realized at this point that his innocent adventure into the catacombs has gone horribly wrong, and he is now in the absolutely worst case scenario.
The man finds himself now effectively trapped underground in an expansive network of subterranean tunnels and make shift tombs and no way out. He apparently hadn’t thought to bring any sort of discernible supplies such as say food/ water, additional light source, or anything he could use to mark his path as he went in the event he in fact got lost. If the prospect of being trapped alone deep underground with the remains of 6-7 million dead people’s earthly remains, without food or water, blinded by the pitch blackness of the catacombs, confined in the cramped tunnels, and being utterly clueless on how to escape isn’t insanity inducing I don’t know what the fuck is.
Thus the Man’s catacomb adventure wasn’t an adventure at all it was a fatal mistake.
Until our paths cross once again,
Presented By Otto Control
By Les Sober