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Underground (Miscellaneous: Tunnels, Roads, Bunkers Etc.)

Noone is intrested because, as i have noted in my own aria and with other posts on this thread, that there is a faint fraling of fear assosated with these passages.

there are tales of mysterious disapeaances, ghosts ect conected with some of these eartjhworks wich lead me to speculate (here it comes) that they are avoided because of our deeprooted fear of the dark. SWimlpe as that realy. Well meby not...

Anyone else got any ideas?
 
I'd 'a thort cavers would be keen on investigating such places - they ain't scared of the dark!
 
true but potholing isn't a well known passtime in Chapelhall (get the name?)
 
This is the biggest caving group in Scotland.

Edinburgh based, but they get about all over.
 
Sthenno said:
I was wondering if anybody else who has spoken about legends of underground tunnels and the like has experienced the same kind of strange apathy in the local community ....... Huh???? I for one couldn't live with that mystery! Anyway do apoligise, I've rambled, it's my first post you see, and now I look at it I realise it isn't really about anything fortean......oh well.
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I think jamesveldon is probably right. People are scared of the dark, but more importantly the bulk of the population is just plain apathetic with a "So what!" kind of attitude. That's what makes us forteans - we want to explore the mysteries. So your post is fortean after all. There is also the remote possibility that where these tunnels go through private property, the landowners don't want x number of weirdos* coming onto their land with picks and shovels.

*Their description not mine;)
 
Don't know how to do quotes properly but the bit about the weirdos with pickaxes I'd probably agree with if I lived anywhere but Devon..... those guys make up 90% of the population!
 
Perhaps in some of the cases people are worried that investigation of the tunnels might lead to them finding that their property was devalued because of the risk of subsidence.

David - thanks for that - its an easy enough book to find. Given the late date, I don't put much store in the truth of the Trollers Ghyll tale, but I'd still encourage people to visit the site, its pretty unique, and very atmospheric, especially in bad weather!
 
wintermute said:
Perhaps in some of the cases people are worried that investigation of the tunnels might lead to them finding that their property was devalued because of the risk of subsidence.
Click to expand...
On the BBC News today was a story about a house in Aldershot that collapsed following some council work, but it wasn't quite clear whether the work was in the house or nearby below ground work.

Luckily no-one was hurt.
 
Re: Who you gonna call?

wintermute said:
These guys look as if they might be up for it in urban locations -

http://www.urbex.org.uk/what/index.shtml
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Interesting site, wintermute. I liked the bit that said "some give it up altogether because they have to be more "responsible"."
There's nothing worse when you're jobhunting than a string of convictions for breaking and entering!
 
Tunnels? Oh, Yeah

Grew up in coal mining country in the Laurel Highlands of Western Pennsylvania and boy did we have tunnels. Some collapsed unexpectedly. Some ended up -- oopsie! -- hollowing ground they had no right to dig in. Some flushed acids into rivers. Some just gaped, waiting for unsuspecting kids and teenagers who wanted a toke.

Despite this veritable plethora of tunnels, we also had rumors of OTHER tunnels, more secretive ones, housing who knew what X-FILES-ish thing. Later turned out, sure enough, National Archives and other groups are now using secret tunnels built during the cold war for storage these days. So they WERE there. And there was also a huge batch of TB shots "found" in a tunnel in W. PA recently -- coincidentally just when the FedGov wanted to start manufacturing it.

We probably have underground cities we're not told about.
 
WW11 Tunnels

Our local leisure centre is set in a quite large green belt with embankments in some areas. I had always assumed that these embankments were intended to shield the grassy area from the noisy traffic nearby. However, last time I was there, my friend pointed out a green wooden door in the side of one of the embankments. Apparently it leads to an underground system which was built during the second World War. The leisure centre wasn't built until the 70's, so obviously these tunnels were preserved for a reason, else they could have been destroyed when the landscaping was done. Its probably a storage area for spare lawnmowers or something stupid like that. I just can't see the sense in preserving them once we reached the nuclear age.
If all the large towns have kept their WW2 tunnels there must be a veritable maze of them.
 
I hear that there are now subsidence problems in Blackheath, just South of Greenwich Park in London, due to chalk mining in the area, prior to the 20th Century.

The mine entrances were sealed after WWII & now no one seems to know their extent.

Since last year, there have been at least a couple of subsidences attributed to these workings...
 
of course, there's all the catacombs all over (under) paris...
i can't explain so someone who knows a bit more about them please do.
 
Don't know why I didn't mention it before, but in the 1980's I managed to get access (a female friend chatted up some maintenance blokes) to the WWII bomb shelters under the tube lines in Clapham. The sound of a tube train passing overhead is a memory I treasure.
 
Re: Who you gonna call?

wintermute said:
These guys look as if they might be up for it in urban locations -

http://www.urbex.org.uk/what/index.shtml
Click to expand...


I read an article in some Sunday supplement last winter about the sport of 'Vadding'. It detailed the rise of this past-time from the late sixties, initially amongst American college students.

Obviously a thriving underground activity...

DanHigginbottom sent me these links several months ago, thought you might like a look;-

http://www.infiltration.org

http://www.subbrit.org.uk
 
I've read a very good book about the holes, tunnels and hidden places, under London. It's:
London under London, by Richard Trench and Ellis Hillman.

Well worth a read!
 
thought i'd mentioned it here but it must be on another thread.............

Cusworth Hall, nr Doncaster, has one and i've been in it on a school trip about 13/14 yrs ago
 
i know this isnt in the area requested but interesting never the less.... When i was theoreticly still at school when i didnt wander off to London i quite often went for a walk in the country surounding St Albans. One of my favorite places to go was down the lanes and woods off Cooper green lane on the way to Hatfield... on one of these lanes there was a detached house. One day i noticed some very high tempory walls sorounding it. This attracted my attension cos they wernt normal builders fences but something u couldnt see thro at all. Some days it was prity obviose that heavy mechienery had used the lane but i didnt see them comming or going. A couple of months altter the walls came down. In the wood at the bottom of the garden was a square metal shed with big air vents on it and the whole house was surrounded by new turf.... Often as i walked i would see joggers circleing the house, joggers always in blue nylon track suits. track suits that you could see they carried something buky under thier arm pits (!) and they always seemed to be listening to walkmans!.... This was in the late 70's relay 80's and i belived that its was some kind of fall out shelter garded by armed joggers!...Fanatical fitness fans? goverment outpost?... odd very odd...
 
There is a government owned site in Nottingham that was originally built as a hospital during WW1 but is now occupied by a dozen or so government departments and a Navy base. Also on site is a large, solid, reinforced concrete monolith of a building, commonly called the Kremlin. (A bit of cold war humour, no doubt) It’s supposed to stretch for god knows how many stories underground and was obviously designed as a major nuclear bunker. Nowadays it’s cordoned off and abandoned. It’s not even used for storage. This is because the walls are chock full of asbestos to help protect the inhabitants from the nuclear blast. So you would have emerged from your safe haven, having survived a nuclear apocalypse only to eventually die of asbestosis. :D
 
There are some theories about underground tunnels and bases under Kit Hill in Cornwall - also in Plymouth there's a MOD munitions base on the Tamar estuary at Ernesettle.
I have spoken to grit-blasters who worked there and apparently the whole of this area of Plymouth is riddled with tunnels and stores which go on for miles - they didn't see it all, but they certainly got the impression that there was something big going on there. :eek!!!!:
 
Funny you should mention this.. I've been rereading my old FT's of late & spotted this in the letters pages.. (Hope FT don't mind me reprinting it :) ) *Dons typing gloves*

David Hambling's piece on lost underground stations & subterranean citadels which exist beneath London [FT108] reminded me of something a neighbour told me in the summer of 1996.
He was a maintanence & repair engineer for large heavy duty machinery and explained that once he had a repair job under the Palace Theatre in Manchester city centre. After finishing the job, he tended to wander around to kill time, or to duck out of other work required of him elsewhere. This time he meandered around many corridors and down stairways & was amazed at the length of the corridors & rows of doors facing him. He was further astonished to find some open areas resembling poorly-lit streets. Although it was difficult for him to judge their actual size, he noticed there were very large and very clean corridors and types of streets going of in all directions.
Feeling a little uncomfortable, he decided to head back up, but was confronted by two men who took him into a room and questioned him for over an hour. Both were dressed like military police, but somewhat dated in appearance. One of them searched his wallet for identification. Having nothing to hide, he answered all their questions, although they never seemed happy with his answers. To his relief, he was eventually guided up stairs and through doors and allowed to go on his way.
Expecting that a complaint would be made to his employer followed by a reprimand, and not having time to go to the next job, he felt disgruntled and went home - only to find his house had been broken into and ransacked.
 
There was a thread on the local Thames Valley newsgroup about this a while back.

You should be able to follow it here (hope this works, my first ever post!)

Underground Reading thread

Some interesting stuff. I'm sure there were more posts than are listed here so might be worth digging around in the google groups archive a bit.
 
Having worked in several MOD building in Central London and at building sites in Smithfield (in various previous incarnations) I can confirm that underneath London is an absolute rabbit warren

Although I have only seen small parts of it, It does seem that any large old building in the west end appears to have either access to (or the legend of access to) a long walk (Centre point to The Mall for example).
But as the infrequently used parts of it that I have seen, have always looked fairly disgusting, I never bothered venturing very far in
 
.
He was a maintanence & repair engineer for large heavy duty machinery and explained that once he had a repair job under the Palace Theatre in Manchester city centre. After finishing the job, he tended to wander around to kill time, or to duck out of other work required of him elsewhere. .............

There is a huge underground Nuclear Bunker in the centre of Manchester.. It was in a feature in the South Manchester Reporter or Manchester Metro - can't remember which..about 3-4 months ago... They had loads of pictures taken during the building etc. I think they were going to have an exhibition.. the underground streets were big emough to drive trucks through and there was hospitals and gymnasiums etc.

I'm sure someonelse on here will have seen it....
 
Similar to the tunnel network in Gibraltar, then? It's a bit run-down and the dangling cables and flickering lights give it a bit of an Aliens-esque feel. Of course, the public aren't allowed in to those bits, just the clean bits. There are whole buildings in some of those caverns...
 
As someone who likes exploring, these places sound great ;)

As someone who also becomes concerned in the dark, they sound quite alarming and I wouldn't go exploring alone without (A) lots of torches and (B) a group of people :)
 
I had a torch, a group of people and a large gun, but still wasn't very enthusiastic. There are some truly awful things that live out in the sun in Gibraltar; I shudder to think what lives in those tunnels.
 
In Bolton, in the North West, there were a few underground caves in quarries used by the army to store tanks/supplies etc during WW2 in case of invasion. Apparently the entrances were well concealed but accessible if you knew were to look, these underground stores were quite large. I'm not sure of their use now, but i do know something is still up there as, a few years back, an archeaological dig up there was suddenly stopped, rumours were that they were digging close to one of the old entrances. The area were these bases supposedly are also has a history of ufo activity, could possibly be a testing area for new aircraft, maybe...
 
Denver International Airport's Underground base?

Found a couple of interesting links on Denver International Airport, which includes a Top Secret 88.5 square mile, eight level underground high-security fortification. The airport is complete with weird art, Masonic symbols and rumours of unspeakable evil.
Theories range from it being a New Age Cathedral (scroll down half the page) or the new HQ for the New World Order .
http://www.anomalous-images.com/christo.html
http://www.geocities.com/Baja/5692/murals.html
http://www.geocities.com/Baja/5692/
 
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