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VIDEO: Bikini-clad American 'surfs' Paris catacombs

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VIDEO: Bikini-clad American 'surfs' Paris catacombs
Photo: Alison's Adventures/YouTube screengrab

A YouTuber has turned heads after taking her surfboard into the flooded tunnels of the Paris catacombs.

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Call it daring or call it disrespectful, American YouTuber Alison Teal knows how to get the internet talking.
 
Her video of her "surfing" adventure in the Paris catacombs has quickly gone viral, racking up over a million hits in just a few days. 
 
The video sees the Hawaiian, who calls herself a "female Indiana Jones with a cause", taking her pink surfboard deep into the lowest levels of the catacombs beneath Paris. 
 
 
Together with anonymous (and unseen) guides, the YouTuber says she spent the whole night traipsing through the mines of the city in the search of a channel of water to paddle her surfboard along. 
 
Eventually she finds a water-filled tunnel, where she "surfs" before escaping into the day light. 
 
The response to Teal's underground exploits has been mixed, with many taking aim at the 30-year-old for disrespecting the deceased. 
 
Watch the spine-chilling video here. 
 
 
On the way, she clambers over countless bones, even sitting on a throne made of skeletal remains. 
 
Teal, the daughter of adventure photographers, responded in the YouTube comments below:
 
"I had no intention of surfing a grave," she wrote, adding that the discovery of bones was "very unexpected and shocking". 
 
She added that she hoped the film raised awareness and that the deceased could be "given a proper burial and resting place". 
 
"This clip is part of a larger film with an important message - human beings depend upon fresh water for survival AND the sea creatures depend upon a healthy ocean for survival - not to mention if the oceans die, we die," she wrote. 
 
 
The catacombs of Paris are one of the top tourist destinations in the city, and are said to hold the remains of six million people through some 250 kilometers of tunnels.
 
The network of tunnels is off limits to the public during the nights, but has become popular with some groups who sneak inside for secret meetings, parties, and even movie showings. 
 
But it is far from safe. In September, a 45-year-old man died in what is understood to have been a drug-fuelled party in the tunnels. 
 
 
In 2013 it emerged that authorities in Paris were also having to battle a particular group of unwanted visitors wandering through the underground tunnels.

Nude models, photographers and erotic film-makers had been joining the six million skeletons hidden around the city's famous underground chambers, much to the chagrin of those in charge of the catacombs. 

“We receive at least one request [for permission to film or take photos] every week,” a spokesman for the Musée Carnavalet, which manages the catacombs, told French daily Le Parisien.

Famed Paris catacombs draw erotic visitorsImage copyright of the artist, courtesy of Waterhouse & Dodd (waterhousedodd.com)

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