News - What lies beneath

The discovery of a 'cinema' below the streets of Paris has drawn attention to the ancient network of tunnels beneath the French capital - and those who haunt these hidden depths. (...) The "cinema" under Trocadéro is also something of a mystery. Police spoke darkly, at first, of a possible connection with ultra-right-wing groups or satanic rites. Then, more prosaically, the authorities began a formal criminal investigation for the "theft of electricity". Both police and cataphiles are now coming around to the conclusion that the "cinema" was a spoof, set up by a group of underground jokers - maybe the same group as the Santé prison jokers - to annoy the police and tug the strings of the media. A bad idea, the mainstream cataphiles say. A very bad idea. Every time something of that kind happens, it provides an excuse for the authorities to clamp down on cataphile activities and, worse, "inject" concrete, rubble and power-station ash into some of the tunnels to close them down forever.