The Mystery of the Paris Supermarket

by M.P. Pellicer | Stranger Than Fiction Stories
Straight out of one of the climatic scenes in the movie Poltergeist, remains that were supposed to have been interred in the Paris catacombs were unearthed under the basement of a Paris supermarket.

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Monoprix Supermarket in Paris

On the corner of the Rue Réaumur and the Boulevard de Sébastopol is the Monoprix supermarket. In January 2015, a mass grave was discovered while the cellars were being renovated. It was lined with 316 medieval skeletons.

Nearby there was a medieval hospital called the Hôpital de la Trinité, and it's believed this was part of the cemetery where patients were buried.

Isabelle Abadie led the team who excavated the find. She said, “There are babies, there are young children, there are teenagers, there are adults, men, women, elderly people. This was a mortality crisis, that much is clear."

Some graves had five bodies stacked in them, and the main pit had 175 skeletons aligned head to toe. Other graves were just full of jumbled bones, indicating perhaps this took place during an epidemic when there was no time to arrange the dead.

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The Queen's Fountain, the last vestige of the Trinity Hospital at the corner of Greneta and Saint Denis streets

Without the results of DNA testing or carbon dating, it's unknown if they were the victim of plague or famine. What is known is that violence was not committed against them, since they bore no trace of trauma. As of 2026 no DNA results have been disclosed.

The Hôpital de la Trinité (Trinity Hospital) was founded in 1202 by Wilhem Effacuol and Jean de la Paslee on the site of the former Croix de la Reine (Queen's Cross) in the Faubourg Saint-Denis. Its original intent was to take in pilgrims and poor travelers after Paris' city gates closed. In 1207 it was renamed Trinity Hospital.

In 1348, the Black Plague came to the city via the Silk Road aboard ships loaded with merchandise from Asia and flea laden, black rats that carried Yersinia pestis. Paris lost over a third of its population to the bubonic plague by 1352.

During the 14th century the building became the Confrerie de la Passion, which staged early religious plays. In 1545, it was repurposed as an orphanage for poor children and renamed Hospice des Enfants-Bleus, due to the blue uniforms the children wore.

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Passage de la Trinite (Passage of the Trinity). Across an enclosure formerly occupied by the hospital c.1858

In 1789, the hospital was suppressed during the French Revolution. During these years most medieval cemeteries were transferred to the Paris catacombs, and the buildings were sold at auction between 1812 and 1813.

​It's possible during the chaos of the French Revolution this cemetery was simply covered up by a new building. The church was demolished in 1817. Only few vestiges remain of the original buildings. 

Felix Potin opened a store at the site in 1860. In the 1990s, the location became the Monoprix.

​After this discovery how many customers of the Monoprix store made the connection between cold shivers, feelings of being watched or even feeling sick with what lay beneath their feet as they innocently walked back and forth making purchases?

​This is not the only time an unexpected archaeological discovery has been made in Paris. In 2023, the Saint Jacques necropolis, which dates back 2,000 years was unearthed by INRAP. It had been partially excavated in the 1800s, and 50 graves belonging to Gallo-Romans who lived in Lutetia were examined, and then buried and forgotten.

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Necropolis discovered under Saint Jacques train station c.2023

The recent discovery has confirmed the remains belong to men, women and children known as Parisii, a Gallic population who lived there when it was under the control of the Roman Empire. The wooden coffins they were buried in had disintegrated, and only nails were left behind. Coins were place in the coffin to pay Charon the ferryman of Hades. Inside the graves were shoes indicating some of the dead were buried shod, and others had the shoes placed on either side of the body.

Inside the pit was the entire skeleton of a pig and other small animals, since its believed animals were sacrificed to the gods.
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The mass graveyard sits beneath Saint-Jacques train station. Besides the skeletons there were coins, jewelry and pottery. Strangely the necropolis was never found during multiple road works throughout the decades.

It's not only ancient secrets that come to light during excavations in Paris. In March, 2025, about 1.5 miles outside the Gare du Nord train station, an unexploded WWII bomb was diffused. It was found by railway workers a little over 6 feet underground during construction work on a bridge. Its exact location was under tracks. The discovery halted train traffic for over a day, and about 200 persons in the area were evacuated.

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