The Straight Dope analyzes the claims made in a book — The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City — about the people who live under the streets of New York, and concludes that it's probably true.
The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City details Toth's early-90s encounters with several dozen of what she estimated at the time to be 5,000 homeless people living beneath the streets of New York, mostly in subway and railroad tunnels. Particularly large populations inhabit (or inhabited, anyway) the multilevel labyrinths beneath Grand Central and Penn stations. Many tunnel people are solitary loonies not unlike the guys you see living aboveground in cardboard boxes in any large American city. In a few cases, though–this is where it gets truly weird–sizable communities have coalesced, some allegedly numbering 200 people or more, complete with "mayors," elaborate social structures, even electricity. Toth describes one enclave deep under Grand Central with showers using hot water from a leaky steam pipe, cooking and laundry facilities, and an exercise room. The community has a teacher, a nurse, and scampering children. "Runners" return frequently to the surface to scavenge food and such, but others–the real "mole people"–routinely go for a week or more without seeing the light of day.
Update: This guy makes a pretty good case for the mole-people story being so much bullshit
(via Futurismic)
