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.

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.

[edit] Portrayals

The 1994 short documentary film by Steven Dupler, Outside Society, went underground in New York to cover the homeless community living in the Amtrak tunnel, as well as the NYC subway system. It was awarded the Nombre D'Or Prize for Best Documentary in 1995 by the International Broadcasting Conference's Widescreen Film Festival in Montreux, and also received the United Nations' UNESCO Prize for Best Direction, Human Rights Programming, at the 1995 International Electronic Cinema Festival in Amsterdam. It was one of the earliest verite documentaries shot in HDTV.

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 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 Extreme Measures featured Mole People.

The film Subway (1985) featured Mole People.

The 2006 film Urchin 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.

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. The book has met with criticism, primarily for the inaccuracy of geographical information, compounded by numerous factual errors and an apparent reliance on largely unverifiable 'urban myth'.

The NBC show "ER" recently featured children who lived in tunnels underneath Chicago.