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community weblog
Genuinely horrible vibes
The erdstall, medieval mystery tunnels. (Substack link)
posted by PussKillian on Jan 21, 2026 at 10:31 AM
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Some people just like digging tunnels.
The relative lack of "stuff" down there (at least as reported here) really is pretty weird, though. You'd think that if these were consistently used by humans in any capacity there'd be something to find.
posted by uncleozzy at 11:42 AM
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Indeed. At minimum, given the narrowness and lack of ventilation, you'd expect at least one set of remains to have been found.
posted by jedicus at 11:44 AM
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Did they rule out dead body storage until the ground thawed for burial? Seems like a worm-shaped sanctified space would work for short-term preservation.
posted by Brian B. at 11:48 AM
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I am reminded of this previous post on the Blue regarding the tunnels at Baiae, which seem to have been, as best as anyone can reckon, a sort of "vision of hell" or what we might now consider an amusement park haunted house.
posted by the uncomplicated soups of my childhood at 12:29 PM
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I like the people-like-digging answer, that and "guys being dudes" seems timeless. If it's super mysterious, with no records mentioning them, is the use of these maybe super boring? Something relating to food storage during winter, escaping extremely hot/cold weather for the elderly or infants, as a less terrible oubliette for misbehaving kids, maybe a space that gets opened in winter so that cold air sinks in, displacing milder air up into the church, etc?
posted by Slackermagee at 12:45 PM
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It would be really unpleasant to deal with taking dead bodies in and out in such tight quarters, that seems unlikely.
I gotta say, the criticisms of both major explanations seem valid. If it was some sort of church purgatory practice, it seems really odd that there's not a mention of it anywhere, either as an approved practice or people being punished as heretics. We didn't have a lot of records from that period, but of those we have, a lot are church records. And if they were boltholes , it seems odd that you would have a bolthole that many adults including pregnant women couldn't get in. Plus if people had ever used them that way, I'd expect at least a *little* debris, improvised latrines at least.
The fact that the only items ever found were millstones and a plough does make you wonder if it was a bit of old pagan urges being turned into some kind of Christian agricultural ceremony, but again, why no mention even of suppression?
posted by tavella at 12:48 PM
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They mention the tunnels were typically near churches or in them — could builders have been testing the ground to make sure it could take the weight of such a huge and heavy building?
posted by jamjam at 1:25 PM
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There's a lot of German language research, and this site says the current theories are that the chambers are storage places for dead bodies, as the 1000 era Christianity had no concept of purgatory and so the bodies would be stored there for the day of judgement. The slip-through rooms might have been spaces of initiation. There's also some pictures of very muddy researchers.
posted by The River Ivel at 1:42 PM
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I'm pretty sure Arthur Machen explained what those tunnels were for, and who emerged from them, in The Novel of the Black Seal. Academics don't read the relevant literature anymore.
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 3:18 PM
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The nope tunnels. Liked the stone vagina though.
posted by The Ardship of Cambry at 4:02 PM
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Guy who has only seen The Descent, reading about the erdstall: Getting a lot of The Descent vibes from this...
posted by mittens at 4:17 PM
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Gnomes.
posted by egypturnash at 5:34 PM
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don't bring a blacklight down there.
posted by mullacc at 5:34 PM
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Not even soot marks on the ceilings? (Which can generally be C14 dated, yes?) !!
posted by clew at 6:31 PM
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Phrase of the day: erdstall enthusiast.
posted by doctornemo at 6:49 PM
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"it was not uncommon to give in to the urge that the stone so invariably provoked and stop to squeeze oneself through."
Paging Joi Ito!
posted by doctornemo at 6:51 PM
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I'm also reminded of The Borderlands/ Final Prayer (2013).
posted by doctornemo at 6:53 PM
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"this site says the current theories are that the chambers are storage places for dead bodies, as the 1000 era Christianity had no concept of purgatory and so the bodies would be stored there for the day of judgement" It actually says that that is the theory of a couple of researchers, not consensus. And as above I'm extremely skeptical, both because trying to stuff decaying bodies through tiny openings seems unpleasant -- in summer, the gap between the end of rigor mortis and the start of bloating can be fairly brief -- but because apparently in all these erdstall they haven't found any human remains. And I simply cannot believe that even if funeral practices changed that they later removed the bone to move elsewhere, that not a single erdstall would be overlooked or knucklebone missed.
The Erstall working group says that "They frequently appear beneath old farmhouses, sometimes beneath churches or cemeteries, and occasionally also in the vicinity of castles and in open fields." which does point towards a domestic use. I guess I could see them as storage for aging cheeses or whatever and you just sent the kids down to get them, but again... why so clean? They also note that while artifacts have been dated from 9th to 12th century it's not clear if they are from the period of construction as opposed to later infill.
posted by tavella at 6:59 PM
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The slips are what seem to argue against any sort of mundane purpose. Our ancestors aren't any less lazy than us, why would you dig out any sort of storage/work area with slips.
As far as storage of bodies you'd expect decomposition fluid residues to be present even if the bodies were later removed. The erdstall would also often be pretty deadly because decaying organic matter gives off Hydrogen Sulfide and Methane. The first is poisonous, the second flammable and both displace oxygen.
I wonder if they are repurposing of some sort of natural cave. Either from water flow or some burrowing animal. It would make sense to put up with the slips, what ever the erdstall purpose, if it enabled avoiding 90% of the work of excavation.
posted by Mitheral at 7:14 PM
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A place you send the children in times of danger.
posted by Comstar at 10:07 PM
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Since cathedrals were built by Masons, I wondered whether there might be a tradition of secret tunnels in Freemasonry, and apparently there is.
The subsection on Master builders and masons of the Wikipedia article on "Construction of Gothic cathedrals" has some interesting information The key figure in the construction of a cathedral was the master builder or master mason, who was the architect in charge of all aspects of the construction. One example was Gautier de Varinfroy, master builder of Évreux Cathedral. His contract, signed in 1253 with the master of the cathedral and Chapter of Évreux, paid him fifty pounds a year. He was required to live in Évreux, and to never be absent from the construction site for more than two months.[5]
Master masons were members of a particularly influential guild, the Corporation of Masons, the best-organized and most secretive of the medieval guilds.[6]
[...]
The master mason was responsible for all aspects of the building site, including preparing the plans, selecting the materials, coordinating the work of the craftsmen, and paying the labourers. He also needed a substantial knowledge of Christian theology, as he had to consult regularly with the bishop and canons about the religious functions of the building. The epitaph of the master mason Pierre de Montreuil of Notre-Dame de Paris described him appropriately as a "doctor of stones". The tomb of Hugues Libergier, master mason of Reims Cathedral, also depicts him in the robes of a doctor of theology.[7]
posted by jamjam at 10:49 PM
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Thank you tavella! My German isn't that great and I didn't do a big dive into the website.
I think that this is one of those things where the majority of the research is not in English, so it seems more mysterious to native English speakers.
posted by The River Ivel at 1:31 AM
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Burrows of now extinct megafauna.
posted by neonamber at 4:39 AM
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Kobolds.
posted by rikschell at 4:50 AM
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so...mesofauna?
posted by mittens at 4:52 AM
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Since cathedrals were built by Masons, I wondered whether there might be a tradition of secret tunnels in Freemasonry, and apparently there is.
It's a promising theory, but the relationship between Masonic societies and the actual profession of stonemasonry is hazy at best. It's not abundantly clear that the guilds for the guys who did the stonework for medieval cathedrals were the same organizations which would later around the 17th century become conspicuous hermetic secret societies. There's a couple of centuries in there where the connection seems to be largely mythical.
posted by jackbishop at 10:56 AM
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Erdstall enthusiast
the reddest of flags?
posted by From Bklyn at 2:03 AM
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"hey, wanna come over to my cottage and look at my mystery hole?"
posted by mittens at 3:14 AM
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So I ran into an idea that finally made sense to me: a researcher posits that they were *symbolic* tombs for the souls of the family/community members that had died before the builders were converted. To give them a peaceful place to wait until the Last Judgement.These areas were only Christianized from 780 on, and I can definitely see new convertees being alarmed about the fate of their unbaptized ancestors, since 'obviously' they wouldn't have gone to whatever non-Christian afterlife their descendants had pictured. It would explain why they were mostly household based, and some church or cemetery based where the local priest agreed. Perhaps the rural ones appeared after the practice started to be looked down on.
It explains why no storage or body debris, and the peculiarities of construction become just a realization of whatever rituals or beliefs they had around this rehousing of souls, rather than obvious disadvantages to a purpose. Perhaps at times the living visited and the tight squeezes were to remind them of the rebirth that awaited them after the Judgement.
The one thing that confuses me is the idea that the fading of this was tied to the development of the idea of Purgatory. Isn't Purgatory for baptized who had to work off petty sins? Is it maybe a mistranslation of the idea of Limbo, where unbaptized babies and virtuous pagans were supposed to end up?
posted by tavella at 9:47 AM
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There seems to be practical and religious reasons people weren't buried immediately after death at different times in history, the latest being to thwart body snatching for cadaver dissection. Receiving vaults called dead houses* and mort houses explicitly allowed the body to safely decompose under locked conditions, only buried when the corpse is useless to an 18th century researcher or student who would seek to buy one from a grave robber. The Moravian aspect of waiting at least three days extends from the region we are discussing.
*Religious and medical concerns about accurate diagnosis of death were also reasons that all burials were delayed for at least three days for Moravians, not solely cold conditions.
posted by Brian B. at 9:53 AM
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