Tunnel man

The term tunnel people (English. Mole people , literally translated "mole people") refers to an unknown number of homeless people who live in abandoned subway tunnels in New York City . It's hard to tell how many people live there; in a 1989 study, the number was estimated at around 5,000.

While some homeless people have been known to use accessible, abandoned, underground structures, modern myths exist with further claims. These include that tunnel people formed small tribes of several hundred people and developed their own culture. The television series Beauty and the Beast ( Beauty and the Beast , 1987-1990) had this urban legend about.

A broadcast by Jerry Springer introduced the group of tunnel people.

Others

In the television series Extreme Ghostbusters , tunnel people appear in episode 33 "Spuk bei den Tunnelmenschen" (The Mole People) . The film Subway by Luc Besson plays mostly in the Paris metro and is a living there parallel society .

In the Marvel comic The Fantastic Four, there is a villain by the name of "The Mole Man" who rules an entire race of tunnel people who live in the depths below New York. The Mole Man and his people were first introduced in Fantastic Four # 1 .

The computer game Deus Ex has a level in which the character has to enter a tunnel people village while he is hunting terrorists. In the game, people are portrayed as friendly and fearful of surface dwellers.

literature

Non-fiction

• Margaret Morton: The tunnel. The homeless in New York underground . Schirmer Mosel, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-88814-802-2 .
• Sarah Schwed : My adventure Downtown. How I met and become a molewoman . Tinkerbell Press, 2004.
• Jennifer Toth : tunnel people. Life below New York City . Dtv, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-423-30564-9 .

Fiction

• Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child: Attic. Danger from below . Knaur, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-426-61823-3 .

Movies

• Documentation of the station Discovery Channel : Mole People: Life in the World Below [1] (English)

Web links

• Fantasy in The Mole People - A review of the book by Jennifer Toth (" Here's the problem in a nutshell: every fact in this book that I can verify independently is wrong. ")