A whole community had been created in a dark, abandoned section of train tunnel where they could live away from the world they either disliked or feared. They had created their own living quarters and their own little society, all while quietly living underneath the regular one. The two worlds were oblivious to each other.

My partner and I had gotten a tour of this alternate world after pronouncing a man from this underground community. With us was a man who worked for the train system that used these tunnels.

Mike, our guide to this underground city, told us that they occasionally made sojourns “upstairs”, as he called it, to get supplies. They searched for cans and cashed in their food stamps and then hurried back down. When enough cans were collected one person would get the deposits. They tried to complete these tasks necessary for survival in as few trips and as little time as possible. They no longer felt any connection to anything they found “up there” and took comfort in the darkness of the world below. He admitted there were conflicts that took place and personalities that clashed but for the most part, they felt that the ‘real’ world was too dangerous and required too many compromises and sacrifice. Down here, he said, they lived simply and helped one another. “Wasn’t it dangerous down here?” I asked.

“Yes,” he answered. “It was.” His sudden seriousness implied that it was worse.

As we toured their little complex of living quarters in search of information about our patient, who had killed himself, we noticed that most of the rooms were unoccupied at the moment and there were at least 30-40 separate ‘apartments’. Where was everyone?

“They all scattered when Eddie offed himself,” said Mike, speaking of our patient, who we had established was named Arthur Lundgren. “They knew a lot of people would be around. All of us down here tend to be anti-social. They’re probably further down the tunnel with the others.”

Who were the others? There were more?

Yes, apparently. There were several sets of “mole people”, a term Mike and his friends used to describe themselves. Some of them were transient and some of them didn’t like the rules at this encampment so they went about setting up separate groups. The alternative groups spent more time upstairs because they did their errands independently. Mike said there was no animosity between them but his face indicated he didn’t approve of them.

I was fascinated by all of it. They left regular society because they were ‘anti-social’ only to set up similar societies underground. I had no idea there were so many people who had turned their backs on the way of living most of us had been taught was the only way. They seemed to make it work for them. To me it was an incredibly undesirable life, surrounded by darkness, dirt and soot, rats running around, isolation, and apparently, danger. Mike admitted there were physical altercations and for women it was particularly dangerous. It didn’t say much for our world that so many people found this to be a viable alternative.

As we started to walk back to the train where our ambulance was parked, one of the less senior members of our representative tour group went over to Mike and whispered something to him. It led to a serious back and forth that I strained to hear, unsuccessfully. After a few minutes Mike just nodded and without saying anything, continued to lead us back out of that section of tunnel. The section we were in was long and dark and led to the small area where the train incident had taken place. That section was open to the sky and sun streamed in. You could look up and see buildings and faintly listen to the sounds of the big city the mole people shunned. But a few more yards further another, smaller, section of dark tunnel began and went on for about two or three miles.

When we reached the end of the dark section we were about to say good-bye when Mike stopped us and hesitatingly suggested we check out something in that other section of tunnel.

“There’s probably another body in the other tunnel that you might want to investigate for your records,” he said. “We know of a guy who lived there but we ain’t seen him in a while. We have a rumor that he’s still in his hole.”

What did that even mean?

“Are you saying there’s another DOA?” asked my partner. Mike lowered his head and nodded.

The active train route was set up on tracks on the east side of the tunnel area. The little city Mike had introduced us to was far west in the same structure. Several inactive tracks stood between the shanty town and the train that had stuck our patient. All of the people who lived down here were set up there, according to our guide. But now Mike pointed towards the east side, where the trains passed by semi-regularly. He said if we went down the tunnel we would find a “crypt” built into the wall and that it would probably be a good idea to check that out. He said he wasn’t going to take us there, we would have to find it ourselves. “But it’s there,” he said assuredly. “And, oh yeah, my name isn’t really Mike. Thought you should know.”

My partner updated the dispatcher, telling him that we were investigating another potential patient. We found a police officer and told him about the possibility of another body. He gave us a strange look but agreed to come with us. The man from the train company said he would “sit this one out”.

The three of us made our way down the tunnel. This side of the area seemed cleaner, almost. There was no debris and no mud, just gravel on the floor. It also seemed to get more light, not much more, but it was definitely better than the perpetual darkness of the other side.

The walls seemed to just be solid grey cement with nothing unusual noted. After walking what seemed like miles, we came across a square hole that had been built into the wall. It was high up, about 20 feet, so the passing windows of a moving train wouldn’t be able to see into it. There was a small ladder built into the wall as well, and my partner was eager to climb it. I went up after him and the cop followed me. Our flashlights lit up the small space and what we saw was both shocking and curiously interesting.

The space was small, about 15 feet by 15 feet by 10 feet. There was a small cot, a little table and a chair. In the chair, sat a man who had been dead for quite some time.

I have seen many dead bodies in various states of decay thanks to this line of work. I had brought many bodies to the morgue and witnessed even more states of decomposition there. I’ve seen skeletons, mangled bodies of trauma, the bloated slowly decomposing bodies, whose distinctive smell could make one retch and everything in between. But I have never witnessed someone partially decayed and in the process of petrification. I’ll admit, it was a little horrifying, especially because of the way the skin had decomposed around his mouth, which made his face to appear to be smiling, laughing almost. Yet I couldn’t take my eyes off of him. All of us just quietly stared, mesmerized by this unusual man before us.

He was fully dressed and looked very much like the zombies you see in the movies. Sitting upright at the table as if he had just eaten a meal he seemed almost posed, and fake. There were areas of his body where all that was left was bone but in many other places, including his face, skin and some muscle remained and where it remained it had become hardened. His eyes and nose were long gone. You could tell he had some gray facial hair and a missing front tooth. His socks, if he had worn any, had disintegrated, and his skeletal feet rested in his shoes. His hands were mostly bones but some grey-brown scaly skin also remained there, along with some long nails. He wore a blue jacket and a brown button down shirt with brown pants and he had on a vest with a pocket that looked as if there should have been the long chain of a pocket watch looped below it. He also had a blue train conductor type of hat on his head. He seemed very small but it was difficult to tell in his sitting position.

“There’s something you don’t see every day!” my partner said in awe.

The police officer had the look of regret that he had come with us. “I don’t even know where to start with all this,” he said. He rubbed his forehead as if he felt a headache coming on.

The man seemed to have scored some prime tunnel real estate. A penthouse, almost. The little room seemed very neat and tidy although there weren’t too many articles to displace. The cot was made up with a decorative pillow and didn’t look like it had been slept in. There was a plate on the little table but anything that might have been on it would have been eaten by the many rodents in the tunnel. How had he managed to get the table and cot up here? There was an initial intention to search for some ID but everything seemed to be delicate and the officer suggested that we not disturb the surroundings. A bigger investigation of the man’s living space would be carried out later, no doubt. I guess I was doing my “unknown” ambulance call report after all.

The isolation here must have been maddening. His fellow tunnel-dwellers lived far away. Perhaps he had joined them sometimes? I hoped so. It seemed like an incredibly lonely existence. But on the other hand, maybe he preferred it that way. It was hard to imagine that skeletal smiling face hadn’t wanted at least some, minimal social interaction.

We heard some noise and shined our flashlights down below to find two of the three men we had met when we first ventured into the other side of the tunnel. The two taller men had come to make sure we found “the crypt”. They seemed happy that we had.

When we came down the ladder the police officer asked them how long it had been since they had seen the man. They shrugged. “We don’t know what day it is.” There it was again, a blissful dismissal of something that seems so integral to the rest of us. They were never woken by the shriek of an alarm clock and were never late to any events. But there also were no events to speak of, or holidays and seasons.

They told us that they knew nothing about the man, except that they saw him come and go sometimes. They rarely went to this area of the tunnel but sometimes the man went past theirs. It seemed cryptkeeper led an incredibly solitary existence. I wondered if he really wanted it or if it was forced on him in some way, maybe by his own fears. I was curious if the two young men that were here were happy with this place or if they had just gotten used to it. “How did you know about this guy, that he was here?” I asked.

They said their neighbor kept very consistent habits, almost like a schedule, which was curious for people who don’t keep track of time, I thought. When they didn’t see him for a while they went over to look for him. One of their friends had climbed the ladder and saw that he was dead.

“So you didn’t report it to anyone?” The officer asked.

Once again they shrugged. “You mean other than to each other? How would we do that?” the tallest one asked. And then he said something both true and heartbreaking. “And why? No one was looking for him. No one even knew he was alive. Why would anyone need to know he was dead?”

The man had died as he had lived, anonymously, and perhaps that was all he had wanted.