  Mystery
This week: The Catacombs of Paris Edited by: Jeff  
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"Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known."
-- Carl Sagan
Mystery Trivia of the Week: Mystery novelist Kyra Davis didn't start writing until later in life. Her generally well-received books (including Lust, Loathing, and a Little Lip Gloss and Sex, Murder, and a Double Latte are largely inspired by the stress that resulted in her divorce from her husband. Prior to becoming a novelist, she attended both the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising, as well as the Fashion Institute of Technology, and earned a degree in business and humanities from Golden Gate University.
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THE CATACOMBS OF PARIS
As I write this editorial, I'm sitting in my hotel room on the last full day of my eight-day vacation in Paris. The past week has been a blur of sightseeing, eating, walking, eating, museums, eating, taking photos, and... eating. As I look back on my time here, one of the most incredible things we did was tour the Catacombs of Paris, or Catacombes de Paris, as the French call it. The Catacombs are an underground ossuary that holds the remains of some six million people... and it's all under the very streets and buildings that Parisians and tourists currently frequent.
For thousands of years, the city of Paris used to bury their dead on the outskirts of the city. With the expansion of the city and the rise of Christianity, the practice of burying the dead in consecrated ground no longer meant areas outside the city, but within the city itself as Paris continued to expand outward. Combined with the practice of mass burials for those who could not afford a funeral, the bodies of the city's decomposing dead began to contaminate the Paris water supply (which at the time relied on underground wells). The decision was ultimately made to use the empty underground mining tunnels running under the city. It took them nearly three years to exhume all the remains and transfer them to what would eventually be known as the Catacombs of Paris.
The entire ossuary has been consecrated, and the majority of Paris' dead were buried there between the late 1700s and mid-1800s. Each section of the Catacombs features a decorative barrier built from skulls and bones, with the rest of the assorted remains held behind them. The result are narrow passageways bordered on either side by millions of assorted bones behind sheer walls of femurs and grinning skulls. The sections of the Catacombs are marked with which cemetery the remains were exhumed from (or what part of town they lived in, for those who died after the Catacombs were created), but other that that general marker, there is no way of telling who is buried where.
Stories of the Catacombs abound, including the tale of Philibert Aspairt, a hospital doorkeeper who wandered down into the Catacombs, got lost, died, and wasn't found until eleven years later. The French Resistance used the Catacombs during World War II, as did German soldiers who used it for a bunker. Although the Catacombs (the tunnels of bones that are consecrated) only cover a tiny section, the network of mines and tunnels under the streets and buildings of Paris extends for nearly 175 miles and includes countless ingress and egress points, many of which lead directly into existing cellars, store rooms, sewers, manhole covers, metro stations, and alleyways. People who illegally and unofficially explore this Paris mining network are referred to as "cataphiles," and there is a special branch of the police force dedicated to patrolling the tunnels and preventing intruders from suffering the same fate as Mssr. Aspairt.
Until next time,
-- Jeff
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I encourage you to check out the following mystery items:
Stephen followed her through the side streets of Paris as they hurried down a back alley between an already-closed hat shop and a brasserie entertaining its last few straggling guests of the night. Hand in hand, they raced through quiet streets, their laughter and footfalls echoing off the darkened buildings and old cobblestone streets of the 18th arrondissement. They had only met a few hours earlier at a concert in Montmartre, but he was already smitten and would follow her anywhere; including to an underground party somewhere in the Catacombs of Paris.
Tabitha wakes up in the hospital, having been attacked. She'd been camping with several friends. Most of the teens die before arriving to the hospital. Tabitha survives along with one other. She doesn't remember a lot. She's greeted by family. Questioned by cops. Tabitha doesn't know it, but she's been attacked by a werewolf. Terrible nightmares start the first night.
"What do you see?" Sean called out from above.
"It's some sort of underground cavern, I can't really tell." Mike replied as he shined his flashlight back up towards his descent.
Two days ago Sean was plowing his field preparing the soil for planting his sweet potatoes when he came across a large hole. The storms with it's heavy rains the week before must have opened it up. Thinking it was maybe a small sink hole he was astonished when he looked down to see it was more of a cave opening then a hole. Being curious he called Mike and asked if he would come out to look into it. Agreeing Mike told him he would be there in a couple of days.
Sarah's life in the Winchester Mansion.
I have had visions during those brief spells of sleep that I occasionally get, where I step into a dimly lit room and face a mirror in which I see a reflection of a dog, a big black dog staring back at me .The dream then slowly dissolves into reality and I land back to my wonderland called Insomnia. That black dog is enchanted by the night, by the mystery it holds.
It started just as a joke post, asking a simple question of "Who was phone." Most would just pass it off as a silly grammatical mistake as the whole thing was filled with grammatical errors and the such. However, I thought to myself, was it really just a grammatical error, or something else? Most would say that was an absurd question and I should feel ashamed even asking the question, as I was in college for a literary degree. I agreed with them, but I was still curious about it, ever since I thought about it. It was more of a "what I could have done to change that paragraph" feeling than just blind curiosity. So, I decided that, since it wouldn't leave my head, I would just search for it.
Slicing north and south through Oakville, I-205 roars over the east-west arterials. The Division Street exit slopes down to an intersection where drivers turning left stop at a light. At the corner of the off ramp and street, in a scrubby triangle of dirt and grass, Tobias King sat in his wheelchair. He’d been slumped there for five hours, rising only to grab the proffered cash from homeward bound commuters and mumble a, "Thanks," or "‘Preciate it." Feeling grimy inside and out, he dropped the cardboard that proclaimed him, "Homeless and Hungry." Standing he grasped the handles of the wheelchair and began a slow march across the intersection heading west.
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Feedback from my last newsletter about opposing forces:
Joto-Kai  writes, "A vigilante hunts down a lynch man who goes too far. An ecoterrorist struggles with his cohorts' plan to fumigate a city. A doctor races to cure a virus engineered to "cure human suffering for all time." Purposes match yet prescriptions differ. Will the mission succeed; will the price be too high? Often, near equals offend us more deeply than any random antagonist."
I completely agree. Sometimes the best antagonist is the person who wants the same result, but differs in their choice of means. One of my favorite rivalries in the comics world is Professor X and Magneto from the X-Men series. Former friends, both men want the same outcome... for mutants to be treated equally with humans. But Magneto's forceful approach differs from Professor X's mission of peace, which has created an enduring and ongoing rivalry.
Tornado Dodger  writes, "A very inspirational editorial Jeff. Great examples of extraordinary villains who stand out and excite their audience.  Makes me want to write!"
Promise?  
BIG BAD WOLF is Howling  writes, "Sometimes the Who, How, and Why are answered, like in my one Interactive; Terrorists unleashed the zombie virus to severely cripple resistance. Scientists unleashed a Counter-virus, one that turned people into half-animals, but preserved their humanity. The big questions are; Are the terrorists still out there and What's their next move? Can Science put and End to the Zombies?" (Submitted Item: "Anthros Versus Zombies" )
Interesting questions!
Quick-Quill  writes, "There you go again-reading my mind. I've just been reading everything I find on building a protagonist. I however do not have one main villian. Mine is a thriller and I am trying to find the villian. My MC has many who are opposed to him, but the 4 men who want to blow up the airport are the real villians. They aren't really part of the story. Who is my protagonist? I am struggling with this. How can you write a novel without a protagonist? Can you?"
I think it's very difficult to write a story without a character for the audience to experience the story through. If you're having a difficult time finding the protagonist, think of it in terms of the protagonist being not necessarily the hero, but the perspective of the audience and how you want them to see and understand the story. Look at The Great Gatsby. Nick Carraway is perhaps the least interesting character in the story, and completely reactive. Characters like Gatsby and Daisy and even Tom and Myrtle are all such interesting characters compared to the passive Nick. But Nick is the lens through which we view the story, which makes him the protagonist. So if your protagonist isn't a typical hero... maybe he (or she) is the audience's representative/observer in the narrative?
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Mystery: June 05, 2013 Issue [#5712]
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