Underground Tunnels, The Maltese Cave Entrance
The Maltese Cave entrance is on the island of Malta. ...
On the northeast shore of Malta there are a number of large bays. One of these is known as Grand Harbor. This bay has a point of land extending into it upon which the capital of the Maltese Islands, the city of Valletta, is built. A few miles inland from this town toward the south, overlooking the plain which leads to the shore, is a large plateau known as the Corradino. The little village of Casal Paula is built on this plateau, and from the village one can view Valletta, Grand Harbour, the plain leading to it, and also look out to the sea.
In this small village of Casal Paula during the year 1902 workmen, who were digging a well, literally fell into the earth. They had once again uncovered the outer room of the Maltese Cave entrance. Since the well was to be dug for a house which was on the main street named "Hal Saflieni," and because this first cave was later discovered to be complex of caves, three of which were a series of chambers excavated out of solid rock on three even lower levels for each chamber, this entrance is known as the "Hypogeum of Hal Saflienti." A hypogeum is the Latin name for an underground structure.
Later this series of underground rooms was discovered to have been located in the middle of an ancient neolithic village. From the construction of the entrance stones, it is now assumed that at certain times a human sacrifice was chained before the entrance. The entrance and the walls and ceilings of some of the passageways and rooms have been found to be decorated with red ochre primitive art designs, but when first discovered the three caves were crammed with as many as 30,000 skeletons of men, woman, and children. After all these bones were cleared out, the primitive murals were discovered. They took the forms of diamond shapes, as well as oblated and elongated ovals, all of which were joined together with wavy lines and whirls. These decorations had been created solely from the application of red ochre, by the most primitive of methods. ...
Once past the entrance, a narrow passageway leads down into the first room. It is in this room, that the "Oracle" may be found. The Oracle is a hemispherical hole in the wall, a which is lower than the mouth of an ordinary-sized man. It is about two feet in diameter, and one can speak into it. A curved projection carved out of the back of the cave then acts as a sounding board. The voice is amplified and caused to resound throughout all the other caves. It creates an effect which must have frightened the primitives into sacrificing many of the members of their tribe to the being who spoe with the "Voice of God."
If you continue down through the narrow and low passageways, you come to another room. The center of this room has a circular stone altar with runnels on it, the use of which can only be guessed at. Carved in the walls of this room are many niches, the bases of which are like bunk beds. They have hollows scooped out for the heads and bodies, as well as the feet of four-foot-high individuals and some are even smaller.
Leading downward from this room is a small, narrow passageway, ending in another even larger underground room, which has narrow slit-like entrances into other small caves which surround it. One opening, however, is a window into another cave, the entrance to which is covered by a huge slab of stone. This window looks down into what was evidently a prison, but how beings only four feet tall were able to manipulate the huge stone slab must remain a mystery.
An opening in the wall opposite the entrance to this cave leads to a passage narrow and torturous, the entrance to the real caves. This passage ends on a pathway which extends along the side of a vast cleft in the earth, a pathway along the edge of a veritable chasm, a pathway which leads ever downward to the long underground tunnels and series of caves which are reputed to allow one to traverse the entire length of the island and even further.
Legend has it that these passageways at one time connected with the underground crypts from which the Catacombs of Rome were created. This may very well be true; for the reader must remember that the Mediterranean Sea was created after neolithic times by eathquakes and the shifting of the earth's crust. Therefore, while the ancient tunnels may have existed, they might have been closed by cataclysms of this type, with the knowledge of them coming down to us only in legends.
The tunnels under the "Hypogeum" have been sealed off ever since a school teacher took 30 students into the caves and disapeared, guide and all. It was stated that the walls caved in on them. Search parties were never able to locate any trace of these people.
It has been asserted that for weeks the wailing and screaming of children was heard underground in different parts of the island, but no one could locate the source of the sound. If the walls caved in, why the cave-in could not be found and excavated to free the children remains a mystery.
How the children could live to scream for weeks later is another involved puzzle. At any rate, the underground entrance to the caves in Malta has been sealed off, and nobody is allowed to investigate the site. ...