A night living with the dead: Airbnb offering visitors to stay in Paris Catacombs for Halloween

No one has ever woken up alive in Airbnb’s latest rental offer, but then again, no one has ever spent the night alongside six million dead Parisians in the city’s Catacombs.

For Halloween, the home rental website is offering brave travellers a night in the sprawling tunnels filled with skulls and bones that is one of Paris's most popular - and ghoulish - attractions.

The competition launched on the website offers two people a night in the Catacombs on October 31, with a “real bed”, dinner with private concert and breakfast.

“Before bedtime, a storyteller will have you spellbound with fascinating tales from the catacombs, guaranteed to produce nightmares. Finally, enjoy dawn with the dead, as you become the only living person ever to wake up in the Paris catacombs,” reads the listing.

Town hall sources said the California-based Airbnb paid up to ¤350,000 (HK$3 million) to privatise the tunnels.

The transfer of human remains from Parisian cemeteries to the tunnels began towards the end of the 18th century when authorities realised that the decomposition of bodies in the city’s cemeteries was not particularly good for public health.

“It was said that the wine was turning bad and the milk was curdling,” Sylvie Robin, the site’s curator, said in an interview last year.