Mole People

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Mole People is a term used to refer to the indefinite number of homeless people purported to live under New York City in abandoned subway tunnels. Estimates of the number of individuals living in this way are hard to obtain and impossible to verify, but a 1989 survey suggested they numbered around 5,000. According to an unconfirmed report by a "sewer rat" (New York City sewer worker) entire families may exist in the drainage system under the city.

While it is generally accepted that some homeless people in large cities do indeed make use of accessible, abandoned underground structures for shelter, urban legends persist that make stronger assertions. These include claims that 'mole people' have formed small, ordered societies similar to tribes, numbering up to hundreds of people. It has also been suggested that these have developed their own cultural traits and even have electricity by illegal hook-up. The subject has attracted some attention from sociologists but is a highly controversial subject due to a lack of concrete evidence.

In science fiction, horror, or comic books, the mole people or mole men are an inhuman race or group of mutated humans who have adapted physical traits for survival underground. These traits often include strong arms and claws to dig with, blindness or eyes that are very sensitive to light, ability to see in the dark, vibration sense, and mole features: baldness, protruding eyes, and hairless wrinkled skin.

[edit] Portrayals

The Mole People is a 1956 horror film, starring John Agar. Here, they are mutant humanoid slaves of albinos underground.

Superman and the Mole Men is the 1951 pilot for the Adventures of Superman (TV series). A strange but peaceful race of underground people are released by a deeply dug oil well.

An episode of Jerry Springer's talk show, The Jerry Springer Show, featured this unusual society.

The video game Deus Ex features a level where the player, while hunting terrorists, must enter a subway station controlled by Mole People. In the game, the mole people are portrayed as friendly, kind people, but are afraid of "surface dwellers."

The Mole Man

The Marvel comic The Fantastic Four features a villain named "The Mole Man" who is the ruler of an entire race of (nonhuman) Mole People who live deep beneath the Earth. The Mole Man and his people were the first introduced in Fantastic Four #1. They are technically called "The Moloids." Marvel also featured a society of mutant outcasts called the Morlocks, named after the tunnel-dwelling creatures from H. G. Wells' The Time Machine, who lived in tunnels and abandoned bomb shelters beneath the streets of New York City.

The film Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970) shows a group of mutants who have been living for generations in what were once the New York City subway tunnels, after a nuclear apocalypse.

The 1987-1989 television series Beauty and the Beast featured Vincent, a lion-like man who lived among a group of the homeless in the tunnels of New York Below.

The film Demolition Man features a community of people living under San Angeles (a futuristic megalopolis consisting of Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, San Diego and the surrounding metropolitan regions), who have rejected the myopic and sanitised utopia created following a massive earthquake.

The film Extreme Measures featured Mole People.

The film Subway (1985) featured Mole People.

The animated series Futurama occasionally showed mutants living under New New York. Turanga Leela was the child of one couple.

The 2006 film Urchin (film) features a society of Mole People who call their home Scum City.

Neil Gaiman's novel Neverwhere depicts Mole people in their world of London Below.

Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child's sci-fi/horror novel "Reliquary" deals with the mole people, and the humanoid monsters also living underground.

The television show Law & Order: Special Victims Unit featured a community of homeless people living in New York City's abandoned subway tunnels. Among the group was a character named Samael ("Control," season five, episode nine).

The 1984 horror film C.H.U.D. features a society living under the streets of New York which is being preyed upon by an unknown killer.

The episode "The Woman in the Tunnel" of the TV series Bones featured the inhabitants of a maze of tunnel shafts beneath Washington, D.C., where the body of a documentary filmmaker is discovered.

Jennifer Toth's 1993 book The Mole People: Life In The Tunnels Beneath New York City was an account of her travels in the tunnels and interviews with tunnel dwellers. Parts of the book are controversial because they are essentially unverifiable.^{[citation needed]}

The episode "The Tick vs. The Mole Men" of the Tick animated series portrays mole people in a sympathetic light.