The Return of NYC’s ‘Mole People’: Three Men Slip Into a Manhattan Manhole

It was just after midnight on Sunday when the 911 operator heard a panicked voice report three men climbing into a manhole on West 141st Street, between Hamilton Place and Amsterdam Avenue. By 1 a.m., NYPD officers, firefighters and EMS crews were at the gritty opening, flashlight beams cutting through the stale air.

Witnesses say at least one of the trio was later seen scrambling out, hopping into a silver‑colored vehicle, and disappearing into the night. The police department called the report “unfounded” after a brief investigation, but the moment has already been added to a growing dossier of underground sightings that have been haunting New Yorkers for months.

It isn’t the first time city officials have chased ghost‑like figures through the labyrinth of tunnels beneath the streets. In early May, five men emerged from a manhole on the Upper East Side’s 82nd Street and fled in a truck. A month earlier, two men—identified as Kevin Rodriguez and Samuel Reveron—were caught rummaging beneath a hotel that hosted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the UN General Assembly.

Summer brought another eerie episode: a trio dressed in overalls and headlamps crawled out near Madison Square Garden on 32nd Street and Seventh Avenue. And back in September of last year, three people were seen climbing out of a Brooklyn manhole at Bay Ridge Parkway and 17th Avenue before police could even reach the scene.

City officials are left to wonder why anyone would venture into the darkness below the city that never sleeps. The leading theory? Scavenging. Lost wallets, coins, scrap metal, even jewelry sometimes end up flushed away, and the underground could be a clandestine treasure hunt for the desperate or the daring.

For now, the three men who slipped into the 141st‑street manhole remain a mystery. Their motives, destination, and whether they belong to an organized “mole” network are all questions that New York’s streets—and sewers—will keep whispering about for a while longer.