Hi, we're your host's Anthony Delaney and Maddie Pelling.

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Hello and welcome to After Dark. I'm Maddie.

And I'm Anthony.

And in this episode, oh my God, I'm so excited. We are going down the bone and skull-lined corridors of the Paris Catecumns.

I can't quite believe we've never done this episode.

Here's Anthony to take us in.

In the dead of night in 1786, a solemn procession moves through the narrow gaslit streets of Paris. Cloaked figures, grave-diggers,

quarry workers and priests carry carts piled high with the remains of the long dead. Skulls and

femurs clatter gently with each turn of the wheel, muffled by the damp night air. The city's breath

is still, save for the echo of hooves and the low murmur of prayers. They reached the yawning

mouth of the quarry, a dark stone-lined descent into the earth. With torches flickering against the damp walls,

the men step into the belly of the city. The limestone tunnels, once used by the Romans,

are slick with moisture and cold as a crypt. The air grows heavier with each step, thick with the scent of wet rock, decay,

and the faint iron tang of old death. In the flickering half-light shadows dance across the rough

walls. The workers move silently, reverently, the only other sound the drip of groundwater, the scrape

of wood on stone, and the soft click of a skull being set upon by a growing wall of bone.

Latin writes, muttered by priests or swallowed by the labyrinth,

centuries of Paris's dead are now buried, not beneath sacred chapels, but beneath the city's skin.

...