Secret Passageways and Tunnels Finding secret passages and tunnels has always been intriguing, especially when you find them in places you never suspected. When I was a kid many of the scary movies had to do with secret panels in houses, walls that rotated and secret tunnels. As kids we enjoyed nothing more than watching Frankenstein’s monster coming out of a secret passage in a room where people were who had their backs turned to that area. You could hear the kids screaming and yelling “turn around”, but to no avail. One of the places in an old building which has constantly been occupied for hundreds of years, turned out to have a secret passage nobody today knew about. The passage was over 360 years old and existed in the House of Parliament in London. There was a tiny keyhole in a panel, in a hallway which almost nobody noticed over the years, and lately when it was noticed it was thought to be an old electrical cabinet. The Palace of Westminster is the home to the House of Commons and House of Lords and the oldest part of the building is Westminster Hall which has been in use since 1099. A group of historians were called in because the government was thinking about a restoration of the palace and these historians examined thousands of old documents in preparation for the restoration. They found it was indeed a keyhole, and as hard as it is to believe they had a key that fit it, so they opened it up. It was the entrance to a secret passageway. Secret passages have been quite common throughout history. In the United States, the underground railway or railroad system existed for smuggling slaves out of the South to the North. They used many secret passages and hidden rooms along their route. One home owner in Pennsylvania was very surprised to find a hidden room in his house. He had gone down to the basement to repair cracks but it was a bigger job than he thought so we hired a contractor. To repair the cracks the contractor had to dig and to his surprise as he dug, he found the secret room which had been placed 14 feet beneath the basement. Upon further investigation the homeowner found out his home had been part of the underground railway used to smuggle slaves to safety. Secret tunnels and underground passageways have a very long history, maybe even longer than we suspect. The ancient Egyptians utilized secret rooms and passageways to protect some of their dead from looting. It is said they even set up booby-traps in some of these places. They were also big on placing curses on passageways leading to the hidden bodies of their rulers and loved ones. In the early days of the Christian religion secret rooms and passageways played a very big part. The reason for this was the Roman persecution and murdering of Christians which made it important to find a place to gather and hold mass without the Romans knowing about it. It didn’t work all of the time, but worked enough to keep the religion alive and today there are over 1,000,000,000 Catholics, so they must’ve been doing something right. One of the fascinating places to have quite a few hidden tunnels and secret rooms is Chicago. A lot of them were created during the era of prohibition. The tunnels and secret rooms were used as clubs to serve booze and also as storage areas to store the booze. Tunnels and secret rooms worked so well, it became impossible for the federal government to wipe out the legal alcohol market. Supposedly there is a secret passage in the Vatican and probably more than one. In the old days the Pope was considered the head of the country and while today he is the head of the Vatican, he doesn’t have people trying to dethrone him or conquer his country. It turns out he had an escape route; it was a secret passage name the Passetto di Borgo. It had been used in 1494 for the Pope to escape from the French and again in 1527 when another Pope escaped from 20,000 troops which were sent from the Holy Roman Empire. Some very famous places have secret rooms and or secret tunnels. Let me give you an example of a place most people in this country have heard of. I am talking about Mount Rushmore. The presidents depicted there are George Washington, Theodore Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln and Thomas Jefferson. There is a secret room in the carving behind the head of Abraham Lincoln and over 3,000,000 people a year visit the structure and never realize it. The secret room was created by Gustave Eiffel the builder of the Eiffel tower and is at the very top of the landmark. There are many tunnels under Rome’s ancient Coliseum. These tunnels allowed gladiators and the transportation of animals to be accomplished out of sight. There are also elevators which transported animals and props and maybe an occasional gladiator to the surface of the Coliseum floor. The elevators used a system of ropes and pulleys and probably slaves to lift these heavy loads, all out of the sight of the audience. The Statue of Liberty is a favorite place for many people to visit, but I have to wonder how many of them know there is a secret room in the torch? This room has been closed since World War One. The room had been damaged in an explosion in 1916 caused by German agents who blew up a peer between, Black Tom Island and Jersey City. The blast had killed and injured hundreds of people. When one thinks of secret passages, I believe they can’t help but think about ancient castles. I have been in quite a few of the structures and I can tell you many of them were not built for people who were the size we are today. I remember one castle where I decided to go up to the roof. The hatch to the roof was not a secret passage, but I can tell you I am just an average size person and I had a really hard time fitting through the hatch. What better castle to talk about than Bran Castle because it is located in Transylvania? It had been renovated in 1920 and that is when a secret passage had been found which led to the third floor. Even better, you access this passage through a fireplace just like in the movies. It just so happens there are so many secret passages and secret tunnels they would fill a book on the subject and maybe even several of them.
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