Secret Tunnels and Passageways When I was a kid I was fascinated by secret passages. Perhaps this was because a lot of the movies in the 1940s and 1950s featured secret passages. They would show things like revolving walls when the monster or murderer was on one side and when our heroes pushed the wall and went to the other side it would bring the monster into view. Then there were the secret passages which led to unbelievable treasures or perhaps lead to an escape route in case the home was besieged. We don’t see much of this type of thing in the movies today, although it does exist in films on a limited basis. The reason I bring this topic up is there are a lot of secret passages in the real world. Some of them are built in what looks like ordinary homes, other are in ancient castles and still others actually out in woods and fields. One of the most famous places for this kind of thing is the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose, California. Writ Winchester created the famous Winchester Rifle along with other arms and his widow Sarah Winchester lived in the home. The home is a Victorian style house. It has been declared a landmark by the California Historical Society. The house was built in 1884. Once she moved into the house she continued its construction non-stop until she died in 1922. This has been disputed by some, but let’s get to the house. Why did she keep building this home? She was told after her husband and infant child died she had to built a house for the spirits of the victims of the Winchester guns and she had to continuously build it. The house has 161 rooms and 2 basements. There is only 1 working toilet. The house contains many secret passage ways, stairs and halls which lead nowhere. By the way, the house has many other toilets, but they are not real and were put there to “confuse the spirits.” One place where you would not expect to find a hidden passageway is in a public building. I can tell you I was present when a wall was erected at the courthouse in Jamaica, New York. The wall was put up, because a judge who had his chambers near the staircase didn’t like the idea of people going up and down near his chambers so he had the stairs sealed off. Someday this will be discovered again and perhaps someone will be excited over the fact they found a staircase behind a wall. Another public building with a secret is the National Library in Vienna, Austria. A group of book cases look quite normal, but they are not. One section opens and there is a hidden room behind it. The National Library of India also has a secret room. Before it was a library it was used by the government and it is thought the hidden room, which had no entrance might have been a room where Indian revolutionaries were put into and then the room would be bricked up and the prisoners allowed to die. This was a common practice at the time. Sometimes houses have closets and dressers which are much more. One house I saw has a closet which has an entrance behind the clothes which leads to another large room. Another house had a dresser which opened up into a child’s playroom. Then there was a home with a lot of cabinets, but one of the cabinets wasn’t a cabinet at all. It led to a staircase which went down to a large basement room. It seems bookshelves are the most common way to hide secret passageways and rooms. I am sure most burglars know this and will examine any bookshelf they come across. One home had a wine display which moved out of the way to reveal a large room. There is a famous no so secret, secret passageway in Vatican City. It connects Vatican City and Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome, Italy. Several popes have used secret passageways to escape attackers. Pope Alexander VI in 1494 and Pope Clement VII in 1527. Marie Antoinette in 1789 used one. In modern times one of the most successful countries at using secret passages during war time was Vietnam. They built secret passages in many different places to infiltrate their troop behind enemy lines. One of the old saws is the trap door under the rug. We see this a lot in television shows and in movies. This would not be much of a secret really since it would probably be the first place someone would look. Programs have trained us to look under rugs if we are searching for these things. Secret passages in castles are always fascinating. There is at least one castle which has a well outside its main structure. If you climb down the well there is an entrance to a tunnel which leads to a secret castle room. Nottingham Castle in England has its shares of secret passages. There is a secret staircase with over 300 steps which leads to a secret area under the castle. There are also quite a few caves carved out under there. There were many secret entrances into the castle from the outside. The legend of Robin Hood states he used these tunnels to escape the Sheriff of Nottingham. One tunnel is named Mortimer’s Hole. It seems a medieval Queen named Isabella had a lover named Roger Mortimer and they plotted to kill her husband and his male lover. By 1330 the two were living in the castle when the queen’s son used the secret passage to burst into his mother’s bedroom and arrest Mortimer and that is how this secret passage got its name. Warwick Castle also had its secrets. Four secret rooms were recently opened. It just happens that in the ancient castles of Great Britain it is thought there are many secret rooms and passages which are undiscovered according to some experts. An abbey which is high at the top of a French Mountain was having valuable books stolen from it and the authorities at the time couldn’t figure out how this was being accomplished until one day the caught the thief entering the abbey through a secret entrance he had found. A modern-day building which has many hidden passages is the Grand Central Terminal in New York City. A tunnel near track 61 leads to an elevator shaft which connects to a hotel above the platform. This passage was used by President Franklin D. Roosevelt so he could depart his train and secretly travel to his hotel room. |
