mole people

Dark Days, a 2000 documentary feature film by British filmmaker Marc Singer, follows a group of people living in an abandoned section of the New York City Subway, in the area called Freedom Tunnel.{{Cite web |url=http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2000-11-10/screens_feature.html |title=Dark Days: How a Manhattan Homeless Community Helped Make the Year's Most Stirring Documentary |last=Debruge |first=Peter |date=10 November 2000 |website=The Austin Chronicle |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20021220135831/http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2000-11-10/screens_feature.html |archive-date=20 December 2002 |url-status=dead |access-date=20 December 2002 }}{{Cite web |url=http://www.indiewire.com/2000/08/interview-dark-days-the-ultimate-underground-film-81444/ |title=INTERVIEW: Dark Days: The Ultimate Underground Film |last=Goodman |first=Amy |date=30 August 2000 |website=IndieWire |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170613231328/http://www.indiewire.com/2000/08/interview-dark-days-the-ultimate-underground-film-81444/ |archive-date=13 June 2017 |url-status=live |access-date=13 June 2017}} Anthropologist Teun Voeten's book Tunnel People is also about the inhabitants of the Freedom Tunnel, where Voeten lived for five months.

Jennifer Toth's 1993 book The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City,{{cite book |last=Toth |first=Jennifer |author-link=Jennifer Toth |title=The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City |year=1993 |publisher=Chicago Review Press, Incorporated |location=Chicago, Illinois |isbn=1-55652-241-X | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=H7jfvdtA0hsC}} written while she was an intern at the Los Angeles Times, was promoted as a true account of travels in the tunnels and interviews with tunnel dwellers. The book helped canonize the image of the mole people as an ordered society living literally under people's feet. However, few claims in her book have been verified, and it includes inaccurate geographical information, numerous factual errors, and an apparent reliance on largely unprovable statements. The strongest criticism came from New York City Subway historian Joseph Brennan, who declared, "Every fact in this book that I can verify independently is wrong."{{cite news |url=http://www.columbia.edu/~brennan/abandoned/mole-people.html |title=Fantasy in The Mole People |first=Joseph |last=Brennan |year=1996 }} Cecil Adams's The Straight Dope contacted Toth in 2004,{{cite news |first=Cecil |last=Adams |title=Are there really "Mole People" living under the streets of New York City? |work=The Straight Dope |publisher=Chicago Reader, Inc. |date=2004-01-09 |url=http://www.straightdope.com/columns/040109.html }} and noted the large amount of unverifiability in her stories, while declaring that the book's accounts seemed to be truthful. A later article, after contact with Brennan, was more skeptical of Toth's truthfulness.{{cite news|last=Adams|first=Cecil|date=2004-03-05|title=The Mole People revisited|work=The Straight Dope|publisher=Chicago Reader, Inc.|url=https://www.straightdope.com/21343628/em-the-mole-people-em-revisited}}

{{See also|Storm drain#Residence}}

File:Vegas flood control.jpg tunnels]]

Other journalists have focused on the underground homeless in New York City as well. Photographer Margaret Morton made the photo book The Tunnel.{{cite book|last=Morton|first=Margaret|title=The Tunnel. The Architecture of Despair|year=1995|publisher=Yale University Press|location=New Haven, London|isbn=0-300-06559-0|pages=169}} Filmmaker Marc Singer made the documentary Dark Days in the year 2000, and a similar documentary, Voices in the Tunnels, was released in 2008. In 2010, Teun Voeten published Tunnel People.{{cite book|last=Voeten|first=Teun|title=Tunnel People|year=2010|publisher=PM press|location=Oakland, CA|isbn=978-1-60486-070-2|pages=320, includes one map and one 16-page b&w photo insert|url=https://archive.org/details/tunnelpeople0000voet|url-access=registration|quote=Tunnel People.}}

Media accounts have reported "mole people" living underneath other cities as well. In the Las Vegas Valley, it is estimated a thousand homeless people find shelter in the storm drains underneath the city for protection from extreme temperatures that exceeded {{convert|120|F|C}} in summer of 2024, while dropping below {{convert|30|F|C}} in winter.{{cn|date=May 2020}}{{Cite web |url=https://kffhealthnews.org/news/article/las-vegas-tunnels-homeless-street-medicine/ |title=Caseworkers Coax Homeless People out of Las Vegas’ Tunnels for Treatment |last=Hart |first=Angela |date=23 December 2024 |website=KFF Health News |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250106184649/https://kffhealthnews.org/news/article/las-vegas-tunnels-homeless-street-medicine/ |archive-date=6 January 2025 |url-status=live|access-date=24 January 2025 }}

According to media reports, the people living in the tunnels underneath Las Vegas have managed to furnish their "rooms". In one ABC News report from 2009,{{cite web |title=Under Las Vegas: Tunnels Stretch for Miles |url=https://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/las-vegas-strip-home-homeless/story?id=8652139 |website=abcnews.go.com/ |access-date=23 July 2020}} a couple, who had been living in the tunnels for five years, had furnished their home with a bed, bookcase and even a makeshift shower. The tunnels are prone to flooding, which can be extremely dangerous for the tunnel's residents. Most lose their belongings regularly, and there have been some reported deaths.

Many tunnel inhabitants have been turned away from the limited charities in Las Vegas. Matt O'Brien, a local author who spent nearly five years exploring life beneath the city to write the book Beneath the Neon, founded the Shine A Light Foundation to help the homeless people taking refuge in the tunnels. The charity helps tunnel residents by providing supplies, such as underwear, bottled water, and food.

According to the Clark County Regional Flood Control District, the valley has about {{convert|450|mi|km}} of flood control channels and tunnels, and about {{convert|300|mi|km}} of those are underground.{{cite news |title=I-Team: 'Beneath the Neon' -- Underground Las Vegas|work=8newsnow |url=http://www.8newsnow.com/story/6453397/i-team-beneath-the-neon-underground-las-vegas.html }}

• Avinguda de la Llum
• Sewer alligator
• Underground living
• Urban exploration, the exploration of man-made structures including tunnels as a hobby

{{Reflist}}

• {{cite news|author=Haughney, Christine |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/07/nyregion/the-fiery-end-of-a-life-lived-beneath-the-city.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=anthony%20horton&st=cse |title=The Fiery End of a Life Lived Beneath the City|journal=The New York Times|date=February 6, 2012}}
• {{cite book|author1= Landowne, Youme|author2= Horton, Anthony|title= Pitch Black|publisher= El Paso, TX: Cinco Puntos Press|year= 2008|isbn= 978-1-933693-06-4|url-access= registration|url= https://archive.org/details/pitchblack0000youm}}
• {{cite book|author=Morton, Margaret|title=The Tunnel: The Underground Homeless of New York City|publisher=Yale University Press|year=1995}}{{ISBN?}}

• [https://web.archive.org/web/20060820055749/http://journalism.nyu.edu/portfolio/books/book223.html NYU Portfolio Review: The Mole People] – Jennifer Toth, The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City – Chicago Review Press, 1993.
• [http://www.straightdope.com/columns/040109.html Straight Dope article: Are there really "Mole People" living under the streets of New York City?]
• [https://www.straightdope.com/21343628/em-the-mole-people-em-revisited Straight Dope article: The Mole People revisited]
• [http://www.columbia.edu/~brennan/abandoned/mole-people.html Joseph Brennan – Fantasy in The Mole People]
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20101015040941/http://www.tunnelpeople.net/ Teun Voeten – Tunnel People]
• [http://narrative.ly/the-truth-about-new-yorks-legendary-mole-people/ Narratively article]

{{Homelessness|state=expanded}}

{{Subterranea}}

{{Man-made and man-related Subterranea}}

Category:Subterranea (geography)

Category:Culture of New York City

Category:Homelessness in the United States

Category:Urban decay in the United States

Category:Underground cities

Category:Urban exploration

Category:Urban decay

Category:Squatting