I’m a Janitor in the Paris Catacombs. The Four Rules Exist for a Terrifying Reason.

I Clean Skulls for a Living in the Paris Catacombs

My name is Adam.
I clean skulls for a living.

That’s the short version. That’s what the job listing said, anyway:
Skull Cleaner — Preservation Department, Paris.
No company logo. No contact name. Just an address, a time, and one instruction: Bring gloves.

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I found it on a forum dedicated to haunted tourism jobs—the kind of place where people joked about cursed castles, night-shift museum guards, and work that didn’t show up on LinkedIn. I didn’t expect it to be real.

But I showed up anyway.

I’d always been drawn to the past—not the romantic version, but the real one. The kind that smells like dust and rot. Places older than language. Objects that outlived the people who made them. I studied history, graduated with debt, and failed to land anything respectable. Teaching didn’t happen. Museums didn’t call back.

The only thing that felt alive was that forum.

So I booked a one-way ticket to Paris and told no one.

The entrance wasn’t marked. Just a side gate near the edge of the city. A man in an orange vest buzzed me in without looking up from his clipboard. No interview. No paperwork. That was it.

Now I live ten minutes from the catacombs, above a shuttered bakery that smells like burnt sugar and stone. My job is simple: clean the bones. Dust them. Check for mold. Report damage. I have a cart, a logbook, and brushes meant for marble that I use on femurs.

It makes sense, in a way. More sense than anything else I’ve done.

I met Lina on my second week. Management assigned us as night-shift partners—buddy system mandatory. Lina was short, tense, always clutching a notebook full of rules. She wanted to work in museums someday. This job counted as “experience.”

She went over the safety points fast:

No phones unless it’s an emergency

Don’t split up

Stay on marked routes

Never enter service shafts without clearance

And one she added quietly:
Never answer if you hear someone calling your name from an unlit corridor

The Paris Catacombs have two worlds.
The public one—clean lights, safety rails, tourists snapping photos.
And the rest.

The rest is a maze. Old mining tunnels. Collapsed chambers. Places no map agrees on. That’s where we work. Where people sneak in. Where bones get moved.

That’s where the rules matter.

A month in, Lina and I were pulled from our shift and summoned to a briefing in a sublevel not listed on any map. Six of us stood in a concrete room while men in black jackets watched from the wall. Their insignia was strange: a book and a hammer stitched in gold.

They told us the truth.

Something lives down there. Predators that use the tunnels to hunt. That manipulate sound, smell, layout. That draw people in when they forget protocol.

Then they handed us a sheet titled:
Tier 3 Protocols for Handling the Undead

One word was underlined in red.

Vampires.

The rules weren’t suggestions. They were survival.

Rule 1: Wear the Uniform

The uniforms look boring—gray, stiff, ill-fitting. But inside the seams is silver thread, woven into every inch. To us, it’s fabric. To them, it breaks our outline. Scrambles their vision.

I didn’t believe it—until I saw something blink from between the skulls in a wall.

Lina only asked one question:
“You’re wearing full gear, right?”

Rule 2: Never Be Alone

Sound doesn’t behave down there. Neither does smell.

The night Lina and I got separated, her voice echoed from places she wasn’t. I followed it into a dead end. She followed the scent of my cologne until it turned sickly sweet—like rotting flowers.

Something wanted us apart.

We found each other by chance. Shaken. Silent.

That’s when we understood.

Rule 3: Listen to the Animals

Cats. Dogs. Bats.

If animals are present, the tunnel is safe. They don’t stay where the vampires feed.

The day a new guide found a dead cat—drained, cold, marked at the neck—we sealed that corridor immediately.

I started carrying treats after that.

Rule 4: Don’t Get Bitten

You don’t become a vampire.

You become a spawn.

A thing that walks, obeys, suffers.

I saw one when a child went missing during a tour. Lina disobeyed orders and went looking for him alone. I followed.

The thing crouched over her wasn’t human anymore. I fired one silver round. It fled.

Lina survived.

The boy never did.

Lina quit soon after. She works in a museum now. Safe. Above ground.

I stayed.

I got promoted.

Now I go deeper. I map tunnels no one remembers building. I document anomalies. I follow the rules.

The catacombs are older than Paris. Older than maps. Older than records.

They shift. They hide things.

And there’s still more down there—more than anyone wants to admit.

I’m not done looking.