Such a memorable line from Alice In Wonderland, when the deception is revealed. Off with her head, after white became red. But headless things feature much through folklore and Fairy Tales. Headless horseman, Creepy Heads, removable Heads and so on.

But this idea is for something slightly more real, or so I thought. I have written already about the Paris catacombs in One Thing Leads to Another, but have recently seen more footage of the tunnels. The ones that aren’t so neatly stacked and designed, just piles of bones filling up tunnels. It’s quite awful. And odd that they say around 6 million people make up all those bones, predating the time when that number was put forward around the first world war. And then wheeled out again for the second one.

Clearly, these people aren’t part of The Missing Dead, as we have them, albeit some of them in a state of jumbled confusion. I wondered though how it was that Paris came to be the dumping ground for so many bodies. Apparently, overflowing cemeteries and such were the reason and an expanding city.

But the reason my thoughts ended up back in the catacombs of Paris, wasn’t my usual route. I hadn’t realised that Madam Tussaud was a real person, so had a read. Reading that she took to wax works of heads (as we all know), and was specifically known for doing full body version of the revolutionists and the royalty who lost their heads. So, I wondered if perhaps, given how we are subject to much propaganda now, and the idea of a faux head to convince you. A dummy in place of the real thing, using the same special effects we use today, just of their time. A shocking public spectacle of royalty losing their head, or did they? It gets noted as a great revolution and of justice, like much they want you to think. Like in my article Guess Who, where we think we have seen something but the stage was set, actors placed and our eyes deceived us.

I don’t doubt that many deaths did occur, and they estimate that up to 40,000 lost their lives in various ways throughout The Reign of Terror and the revolution. Followed, we are told by the Napoleonic wars and much more upheaval for France. That dark and grisly end left for the future to lay witness to, millions of people who once walked the earth like you or I, now left In The Old Underground…

(c) MKW Publishing