The Smell of the Catacombs

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Celeste finnichau and others want to know are their catacombs still operating today and taking in bones like can I request in a will that after X number of years my bones get moved to a catacomb oh man. The smell is different than if you're literally flinking your body through tunnels of bones which is what he describes did you remember how he described it yeah he's got a whole section on it so this was a 2020 paper by Dr. Kevin Bingham of Barnes Lee College titled rethinking utopia. In it Kevin describes spelunking in the lesser traveled passages which are just littered haphazardly with skeletal remains. He writes it transported us

Let’s get spooky. Venture below Parisian streets and into the catacombs: hundreds of miles of subterranean tunnels housing millions of human skeletons, some fashioned into sculpture. Alie tracked down Dr. Erin-Marie Legacey – author of “Making Space for the Dead,” professor of French history and one of the world’s foremost experts on this eerie place. We chat about everything from miasmas to sinkholes, boggling cemetery history, smells, skulls, hidden chambers, (very) underground parties, and how we view our bodies post-life. Also: Alie takes a trip to see them herself.

Dr. Legacy’s book, “Making Space for the Dead: Catacombs, Cemeteries, and the Reimagining of Paris, 1780-1830” on Bookshop.org and Amazon

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A donation went to: Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas