What is it about caves that gives you that pit in your stomach?
Is it the darkness, the tight squeezes, or just how easy it seems to get lost forever?
In today's video, we're gonna go over three stories that I think truly highlight
all of the reasons why we find caves to be terrifying.
As always, viewer discretion is advised.
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10 miles south of Bloomington, Indiana is the state's fourth longest cave, Sullivan Cave.
With a total mapped length of almost 10 miles (16.1 km), the cave is owned and managed by the Karst Conservancy
and is not an ordinary tourist cave despite its size.
Groups wanting to explore it have to apply to enter,
and are recommended to be expert or advanced cavers because of its difficulty.
Because of its size as well, the tunnels are not well lit
and you have to have all of the proper equipment like lights and padding to explore safely.
Sullivan Cave has been known about since at least the 1800s
because of markings that have been found in a room known as "Backbreaker".
This is a room that is essentially just a narrow tunnel so low that you have to crawl through it.
But despite a few squeezes, this cave is actually massive.
The largest room in the cave is known as the "Colossus room",
and this massive chamber is 120 feet (36.6 m) high and 200 (61 m) feet long.
In fact, in 1962, after a large area of the cave had already been mapped,
another 2,000 feet (610 m) of new passages were discovered in a single trip.
Then, four months later, a further 8,000 more feet (2,438 m) were discovered along with eight large chambers.
Unfortunately, over the years, vandalism became a problem
so in the 1990s, a large gate was put up at the cave entrance.
From then on, any group wanting to enter the cave had to unlock a door on the way in
and then lock the door behind them to ensure no one else could enter.
In 2017, 19-year-old Lukas joined the caving club at Indiana University
because he thought it looked like a fun way to meet new people.
Then, in September, the club organized a visit to Sullivan Cave,
which, despite its difficulty, was good for beginners, provided they had an experienced guide.
On the 17th, Lukas and 11 other members of the club,
including one staff member, drove to the parking lot of the cave.
Before they got out, Lukas took off his jacket and left in the car.
Then, he picked up his bag with his water and some snacks,
and then they all headed for the entrance.
They reached the gate at about 10:30 AM and then the staff member
unlocked the gate and all 12 of them entered the cave.
The first thing they did was divide into two groups,
and then they set off exploring for almost three hours in the expanse of tunnels and chambers.
On the way back, as they got to the Backbreaker section, Lukas was not having a good time.
So instead, he decided to just rush through it and catch up with the other group
that was now in front of his group.
As he quickly moved through the tunnels, he missed a narrow opening that led to the exit
and accidentally headed into a different section.
Upon realizing that he made a mistake, he decided to wait where he was so he wouldn't get lost further.
Then, after waiting for about a half an hour, no one came to get him
and he couldn't hear anyone calling his name.
So getting impatient, he searched around for a bit and found some air markings
that seemed to point in the direction of the exit.
He followed them and eventually saw light off in the distance, which thankfully was the exit.
But as he got closer, he didn't see anyone else.
Then, when he got right up to the gate, he realized the gate was locked.
And not only was it locked, when he yelled out for the others, no one came to get him.
What he didn't know is that they had already left and they didn't even know he was missing.
Now, about 3:00 PM or so, Lukas wasn't all that worried
as someone had to realize he was gone, and as soon as they did, they would come get him.
He quickly took inventory of his stuff, which was just two Clif bars,
two empty water bottles and his phone.
Next, he checked his phone and saw that he had no reception,
but he could hear some cars from a road nearby.
Without any other options, Lukas just started yelling for help,
but he would go on to call for help for six to eight hours,
and as the day went on and it got darker and darker,
it finally dawned on him that they must not have realized that he was missing.
It sent a twinge of panic running down his body.
If they didn't know he was missing, how long would it be until someone was at the cave next?
As the night went on, bats started to come through the cave entrance
and knowing that they could possibly carry rabies,
Lukas went deeper into the cave to find some place to sleep for the night.
Eventually, he was able to fall asleep where he would spend a long cold night.
On the second day, Lukas went over to the entrance once again
and waited desperately, hoping to see someone.
By this point, he was starting to get clvery thirsty and very hungry.
He had eaten his two Clif bars and he had already been out of water since the date prior.
Tragically, to pass the time, he wrote goodbye letters to his family
in case he wasn't found until it was too late.
Then, in the evening of the second day, his phone battery died as well.
In the damp cold cave, he walked around to stay warm
and as his thirst got worse, he resorted to licking the cave walls for any moisture he could find.
Then, finally, he went to sleep again for another brutal night.
When he woke up on the third day, now over 48 hours into his ordeal,
he was desperately thirsty and he could feel himself getting weaker by the second.
Without having eaten in so long, it was also increasingly difficult to stay warm.
He was getting so hungry that he even considered eating the crickets inside the cave.
As the evening drew closer, Lukas curled up into the fetal position and waited silently.
Then, he thought he saw light.
Initially, not sure if he was dreaming, he took a closer look.
When the light was still there, he ran up to the gate and watched
as one of the caving club leaders walked quickly towards it with the key.
This also happened to be the person who had locked him in there three days prior.
After unlocking the gate, the leader, who was also an EMT, did a quick medical check on Lukas
and found that he was in surprisingly good condition for having spent the last 60 hours in a cave.
The rescuers then asked Lukas if he wanted to go to the hospital,
but Lukas replied that he just wanted to go back to his room.
In a classy move, Lukas collected all of his garbage that he had with him,
which also inadvertently let rescuers know that his mental state was still intact.
Otherwise, they might have insisted on bringing him to the hospital.
An investigation into the events found that despite a pre-entry headcount and a buddy-buddy system,
Lukas was missed upon exiting the cave.
Because the people in the club weren't all that familiar with one another,
they also didn't realize he was missing.
It wasn't until that third day that his clothing was found inside one of the vehicles
that they realized someone was missing.
Lukas, again, a class act,
later stated that he actually felt bad for the person who had accidentally locked him in there.
Clearly, it had been an accident, even if it was one that could have gone much worse.
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First explored in 1941 by cave, Bob Leaky,
the Mossdale Caverns are located in Yorkshire Dales National Park in England.
This limestone cave system contains over 10 kilometers (6.2 mi) of underground tunnels and passages,
and a round trip through the entire system could take between eight and 10 hours.
This cave also has a fearsome reputation in the caving community
because it has a ton of passageways that are only big enough to crawl through
and others where you're neck-deep in water.
Because of this, it has an official UK rating of 5 on the cave difficulty scale,
which is the highest rating a cave can receive.
It also has a river that runs through it, called the Mossdale Beck
that flows into the mouth of the cave and then just disappears.
Using dye to color the water,
scientists know that the water reemerges 4 kilometers (2.49 mi) away and 738 vertical feet (225 mi) lower,
but the actual connecting route has never been discovered.
That connection is considered one of the greatest mysteries in the caving community.
On June 24th, 1967, a group of 10 entered the Mossdale Caverns
with the hopes of completing excavations of the cave to try to find the legendary connection
between the opening of the cave and where it emerge at the opening known as "Black Keld".
And although the cave had been mapped extensively by that point,
there were still several areas that seemed to be the most likely to hold the elusive extension
that cavers had been seeking.
In particular, their goal was to reach an area known as "Stream End"
to blast some of the boulders that blocked potentially unexplored areas.
At around 2:00 PM, the group entered the cave and split into two groups.
The first group comprised six very experienced cavers
who also brought equipment with them for their long journey to Stream End.
And then group two was four less experienced cavers
who were just making a sight-seeing trip as far as an area known as the "Rough Chamber".
There had been some rain in the area in the few days prior,
but the quantity of water flowing to the caves was well below normal, which was perfect for their trip.
The forecast for the day was mostly sunny with a chance of thundery showers in the evening,
but nothing that would've been concerning for the group.
At around 5:00 PM, after exploring the rough chambers,
the group of four returned back to the surface to an overcast sky and some light rain.
They then left the cave and went back to the area they were staying to have some food and get changed.
At around 7:30 PM, one of those members returned to the entrance of the cave
to find that despite the rain, the water levels were unchanged.
With that reassurance, she once again returned back to the place they were staying for the night.
Under the surface, the men passed through several easier sections
before coming to their first real challenge known as "Far Marathon".
Now, based on all of the caving content I've covered,
Far Marathon seems like one of the most challenging sections mentally of any cave,
because it's a tunnel that is 900 feet long (274.3 mi) and just 10 inches (25.4 cm) high by two feet wide (0.61 m).
On top of having to crawl through the passage for a very long time in those claustrophobic conditions,
the Mossdale Caverns have water flowing through them at various speeds in the various sections of the cave.
This passageway has water flowing through the bottom of it,
so in addition to crawling along their stomachs,
they would literally be pulling themselves through water the entire time.
But these men were cavers. This is what they lived for,
and it would bring them to their destination so they crawled onward.
Then, about midway through Far Marathon, the men would've heard a faint sound off in the distance.
Probably not thinking much of it, the men would've crawled onward.
The narrow passageway meant that they were forced in one direction even if they wanted to turn around.
Then, they might have noticed that the water beneath their stomachs was moving faster
and that the light rumbling in the distance might have begun to send more like a roar.
Mossdale Caverns is also fearsome in the caving community, because it has a tendency to flood.
Back on the surface, the light rain had turned into a torrential downpour
and in the course of just a few hours, inches of rain had fallen.
That same group member who had come to check out the cave earlier
hurriedly returned to the cave entrance at 9:00 PM
to find that where the entrance had been just a few hours earlier, there was now a swirling lake.
The entire entrance was now submerged in water.
She ran as fast as she could two miles (3.22 km) to a nearby farm and called the police.
By 11:00 PM, the cave rescue had begun.
Because of the number of caves in the surrounding area, the rescuers were very used to cave rescues,
but the Mosdale Caverns were different.
The size and water flowing into them meant that the local rescuers couldn't do it alone.
They had to call a larger cave rescue organization for help.
Within hours, hundreds of rescuers and other volunteers were at the scene.
To stop the flow of water, the rescuers had to dig a massive diversion ditch.
Then, after diverting the water, they had to build a dam to block the flow entirely.
By the following morning, between the dam, diversion ditch and 19 fire pumps,
the water levels began to fall.
And although the dam was shaky and needed constant repairs, a search team descended into the cave.
They crawled with pits in their stomachs and found flood debris everywhere.
Eventually, they reached the Rough Chamber and were able to peer over the ledge and see deeper into the cave.
Hours earlier, the men crawled as fast as they could.
The water flowed stronger and stronger beneath them until they eventually had a hard time keeping their heads out of the water.
They frantically tried to reach the end of Far Marathon
in hopes of a passageway that would offer them refuge from the surging water.
A man named John Ogden was in the front of the group and was the most experienced caver among them.
Recognizing the gravity of the situation and seeing no end of the tunnel in sight,
he found a crack in the ceiling they were in and climbed up into it,
but the crack was tiny. There was no room for anyone else.
And as John wedged himself further into the crack,
he likely would've known that all five of the cavers - his friends were drowning just a few feet below him.
And eventually, the crack he was in also filled with water
and John succumbed to the same fate as the others.
Hours later in the Rough Chamber, as the rescuers looked deeper into the cave,
they saw that the passageways were still entirely submerged in water.
This was already the afternoon of June 25th, 24 hours since the six had entered the cave,
and 12 hours since the rescue have been launched.
Unfortunately, we'll never know exactly when the six died
because no one is alive from the group to recount the events.
However, it's likely that by the time the rescuers even entered the cave, the men had been dead for hours.
Then, at 5:40 PM the rescuers found five of the six men, all were deceased.
That evening, exhausted rescuers decided that it was unlikely the six men had survived either
and postponed the remaining search until the following day.
Then, on Monday, June 26th, more rain delayed rescue efforts once again.
Then, finally, on Tuesday, June 27th, John Ogden's body was discovered in a crack in Far Marathon.
Unfortunately, despite finding the bodies, officials deemed the rescue to be too dangerous to attempt,
and so the cave was sealed with them inside.
Three years later, friends and family managed to move the bodies to a new area of the cave
safe from floods, now named "The Sanctuary."
Today, the Mossdale Caverns' disaster remains the worst in UK history.
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Gauteng is a province in South Africa that's known for its mineral-rich land,
and accounts for around a quarter of the total mineral production in the country.
In the late 1890s, limestone miners in an area northwest of Johannesburg
uncovered several fossils that looked to be human remains.
Except when the fossils were examined more closely, they seemed off.
The miners then brought this to the attention of scientists
who started a formal exploration of the area for any more remains.
Then, in the 1930s, serious excavation of the area began
as more and more resources were allocated to the discoveries.
As more work was done, they realized these were not human remains.
These were actually the remains of some of the earliest human ancestors known as Australopithecus.
These discoveries would later lead to an entire area being named the "Cradle of Humankind"
because of the numerous prehistoric remains found in that small area.
Some of these fossils have been dated to be over 2 million years old,
which are some of the oldest to have ever been discovered.
Part of the reason that so many fossils have been discovered in that area
is because of the caves in that area that acted as a shelter.
These offered a refuge that preserved the remains from animals in weather
that might have otherwise degraded them more quickly.
And since that initial discovery, significant paleontology work has been done in the area over the last century.
In addition to the scientific work, the caves have become a massive tourist attraction.
Because they're only 45 minutes from the largest city in South Africa,
tours run every 30 minutes, seven days a week.
Each of these tours goes down to the cave known as the Sterkfontein Cave,
giving tourists a closeup of the wildlife, the rock formations, and even an underground lake.
As with many limestone caves, water runs through the rock
and carves out deep winding tunnels in random directions.
The Sterkfontein Caves in particular, look almost like a massive spiderweb
because of how the tunnels branch out in all directions.
Many of them are completely submerged in water and are in pitch black darkness
because they're far from the entrance where any light could reach them.
And woven into these tours is the harrowing tale of Peter Verhulsel.
On September 29th, 1984, Peter and two friends arrived at the cave to do some scuba diving in the underground lake.
They each had a single aqualung, which is the type of scuba set and a single light,
and didn't require much else because of the depth of the water they would be going into.
The three of them then entered the lake and began exploring the spiderweb of tunnels.
Peter was the least experience of the three, and for some reason, he kept letting go of the line
and exploring side passages as they went.
Now, in cave diving, the golden rule is to never enter a cave without a guideline.
In addition to that, you're never supposed to let go of the guideline while you're in there
because generally, these limestone caves are impossible mazes.
There's no rhyme or reason to the way that the water carves out the tunnels.
If you don't have a line to find your way out, the chance of getting lost is incredibly high.
Each time Peter went off the line, his friends went to grab him,
but on the third time he let go of the line, his friends didn't see where he went.
Then, they went to search for him and found no trace of him.
Soon, not wanting to go too far off the line themselves,
they had to abandon their search for him and go get help.
Meanwhile, after exploring briefly, Peter searched for the way back and realized that he was lost.
He frantically searched for the tunnel back to the line,
but very quickly realized he had made a huge mistake.
If he didn't find a way out, he would eventually run out of gas and then drown.
He continued to search around desperately, looking for the way back,
when miraculously, he stumbled on an air pocket.
And inside of this air pocket, there was actually even a small sandy island at the end of a tunnel.
So Peter climbed up onto the island and figured out what to do next.
At the very least, now he wouldn't run out of gas and drown,
but because his air supply was limited and because he had no idea where to go,
he would have to wait until help came to get him.
And thankfully, his friends had been on the line when he last saw them..
They would definitely go get authorities and then help would come.
Peter just had to wait, and Peter did wait.
He waited first until he got tired.
When he was tired enough, he fell asleep for the night,
but when he woke up, help still hadn't arrived.
Then, Peter waited the entire next day and still, no help came.
Then, the next day, and then an entire week had gone by
as Peter sat in this pitchback room, deep under the earth.
Meanwhile, authorities scoured the tunnels, assuming that Peter had drowned,
not knowing there was a pocket of air he could survive in.
Days continued to go by like this, and although Peter had water to drink,
he was getting desperately hungry alone in the dark.
He also would have no way of knowing just how much time had passed
with there being no day and night cycle in the darkness.
Finally, weeks later, a light filtered into the room where Peter was and started searching the darkness.
Tragically, the light moved its way to the island where they found Peter's body
slumped over on some rocks.
After weeks without food, Peter had died of starvation.
Next to him was a message written in the sand that said I love you to his wife and mother.
From this message, it's clear that in his final days, Peter knew that the end was coming.
An autopsy performed on his body found that he died approximately three weeks after he'd gotten lost.
In that time, rescuers searched 900 meters (2,952.8 feet) of undiscovered passages,
mapping as they went to ensure they didn't backtrack.
After finding nothing for weeks, the search was essentially called off
when they discovered a small entrance close to the main section of the cave.
In this new lead, there was another series of passages
where they would eventually find a set of footprints.
Then, six weeks to the day that Peter got lost, his body was found.
Even more tragically, search and rescue teams had passed within a hundred feet of where he was on several occasions.
Unfortunately, either neither party heard the other
or if Peter did hear them, there was simply no way for him to call out through the solid rock.
So ultimately, he died alone in the dark.
To this day, he's the only person to have died in the Sterkfontein Caves.
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Hello everyone. My name is Sean and welcome to Scary Interesting.
If you're a longtime viewer of my channel, you may have recognized the middle story as one I've covered before.
It was actually one of my earliest videos when I was still on camera,
so I figured it was time it got a full upgrade to the new visual format,
in addition to a full audio remaster with some improvements to the script for the clarity of the story.
And because there are so many new subscribers, hopefully, it was new to many of you as well.
Finally, although I wish every story had enough available information to make a full-length video,
sometimes, the details are sparse and I had to combine them like this one.
In any case, thank you all so much for watching and hopefully, I will see you in the next one.