Oubliettes – places for being forgotten

An oubliette, as mentioned in my latest novel, The Night Dancers, is a bottle dungeon—that is, a hole in the ground, with no exit or entry except through the hole at the top. The name is French, and comes from the word oublier, to forget. It is a particularly nasty place to imprison people. The man who finished up in the oubliette deserved it.