A Follow-up on the Southampton Tunnel Cannibals

The other day I finally got a hold of someone from the Southampton Local Heritage group (http://southamptonheritage.org.uk/) who seemed to know something about the story. She had spoken to several people who had grown up in the post-war years, and while they were familiar with the story, they never knew where exactly in the city it was supposed to have taken place. The victims in it had varied greatly too, with some telling the story as involving a group of children becoming trapped, others saying it was British soldiers instead of American, and some even placing it in the interwar years, blaming it on a collapse during excavations.

However, she pointed out an interesting link I had completely overlooked myself. Southampton is not the only city with tunnels supposedly haunted by cannibals. There have been several stories across Europe, but the one she thought most relevant was a disturbingly similar story from Rome. Supposedly, way back towards the end of the Italian Unification in 1870, some of the city’s catacombs collapsed under artillery fire while troops inside were waiting to spring an ambush. As you can expect, it was said that the soldiers trapped inside fell to cannibalism, and had to be put down when they finally were unearthed.

Once again, there are no official records of this happening, but the story could easily have been told initially as an illustration of how close Rome was to collapse when it was “saved” by the Italian armies. It is also easy to imagine that these stories had a resurgence against the backdrop of World War 2, and it is there I see our most likely link. It is quite possible that some soldier from Southampton heard the story of the soldiers in the catacombs while stationed in Rome, either before or after the war. It is not difficult to imagine that this soldier, upon returning home to see the destruction of the underground tunnels, was reminded of the cannibals and decided to give the local children a scare at some point in the decade following the war.

Of course, as with any ghost stories the origins are difficult to pin down, but considering the evidence at hand, this explanation seems highly plausible. Therefore, sadly, I must conclude that if you were to dig up the tunnels under Southampton, you would probably not find the remains of a tribe of cannibals. All you would have done would be to dig the foundations of the city out from under it.