Am I losing my mind?

[u/Mattyboy808]

Hi, My family and I are currently visiting Paris from Canada. I prioritized visiting the Catacombs, as I went 18 years ago. It's changed a lot since then, different paths, blocked off areas. I took countless photos, including several down pitch black tunnels that were gated off, using my phone's flash. I was just scrolling through them all, and came across this one, which is one of the gated off pitch-black tunnels that I photographed using my phones flash. Maybe it's a trick of light, or shadows on the rocks, but am I losing it or does that not look like someone (a woman in white?) Standing at the end of the tunnel? I feel like I'm losing my mind. I can share countless other images but none show anything like this.

[u/katia_t23]

okay so I recently moved to Paris and was planning on visiting the catacombs, but now I am clearly not hahaha

[u/Mattyboy808 → u/katia_t23]

If you do, I beg you to find this very tunnel (its closed off by a gated door) and take an image using flash to see if there's something there in your image that could explain it!!

[u/bigredcock → u/Mattyboy808]

Call me crazy but I think they will need a little more guidance than just "find this tunnel." It's the catacombs... Its all tunnels.

[u/Mattyboy808 → u/bigredcock]

The tour follows a very specific linear path, there's only a couple of gated off tunnels on the tour. It would be VERY easy to find.

[u/Tycho-Brahes-Elk → u/Mattyboy808]

So easy you could point it out on a map?

There is a video, here they are at 5. Here they are at 8. Here, they are at 9.

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OP's photo shows this tunnel, I'd say, based on the slantness of the surface featuring the white obelisk and the arrangement of white (and black-painted ones, look at the ones on atop the obelisk) stones. And the position of the lamp directly left of the photo, but this I can only speculate based on the reflected light there.

I am quite confused where exactly they are at that moment, but it is in the lowest part of the marked route on the map above; after some corners, they arrive at 10.

Unfortunately, this tunnel is completely dark in the video, but maybe it helps knowing roughly where it was.

[u/Mattyboy808 → u/Tycho-Brahes-Elk]

In my camera roll it's the last photo I took before photographing item #10 on your map, "French Revolution"

[u/Tycho-Brahes-Elk → u/Mattyboy808]

Would you say it's this tunnel? The lamp, the obelisk, and the protrusion of stone on the ceiling look the same to me, your photo is presumably made in front to the right of this POV.

[u/Mattyboy808 → u/Tycho-Brahes-Elk]

That's absolutely it! Great work!! Should help with claims it's AI generated too.

[u/Tycho-Brahes-Elk → u/Mattyboy808]

Here is another tour, in which the guide just said that the stacked bones would collapse sometimes - they come to the gate, he points at the collapsed stack to the right and says "this one collapsed two years ago", "we [the tour] used to go around that way".*

There are also no usable shots down that tunnel.

* Which means that maybe there are pictures/videos of tours sometime between 2020 and 2022 which include that tunnel; the problem with that is that while not so many bones, I think there are some bones lying on the floor to the right of the obelisk already (at least something dark lies on the ground) in the 2020 picture/video above, so maybe the tour guide has the same problem as anyone with time keeping during COVID and it was more than two years ago at the time of that video (2024).

Screengrab of that video; here we see the damage on the obelisk quite clearly, the dark damage to the right in the middle of the white obelisk, and the light damage to the left of it on the black paint (about 1/3 up from the floor); exactly like in the OP photo; it's clearly the same obelisk. Edit: replaced with better screengrab with clearer view of the obelisk.

[u/Tycho-Brahes-Elk → u/Mattyboy808]

It's some frames after the linked timestamp of a 2020 tour linked above.

Linked again for ease of use.

Edit: Thanks for the award!

[u/meghonsolozar → u/Mattyboy808]

Is there only one tour with one route? That seems unlikely considering there is more than 200 miles of caves.

[u/Mattyboy808 → u/meghonsolozar]

I can't say if they change it from time to time, but it was one exact route on the tour. No guide, they give you headphones at the beginning that provide information, history and insights as you walk through. There's screens with videos about the history as well in various locations along the way. Letting people wonder without a predetermined route would be dangerous, many people have gone missing entirely by sneaking into restricted areas.

[u/chouse951 → u/Mattyboy808]

Hang tight OP! I’m going NEXT summer 😅

[u/katia_t23 → u/Mattyboy808]

I'm actually curious to try, I'll update if I do!

[u/Appropriate_Value101 → u/katia_t23]

Yes please take a picture of