The following video is three separate lesser-known cave disaster stories.
In each of them, the circumstances of the disaster is different than the last.
In fact, they each take place on entirely different continents.
The one thing that they do have in common though is the deep dark depth
in which the horrifying events take place.
As always, viewer discretion is advised.
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On February 13th, 1965,
23-year-old Massachusetts chemist, James, arrived in Dolgeville, New York
to meet up with two friends of his from the Boston Grotto Club to do a bit of caving in the area.
The cave they had chosen is a cave known as Schroeder's Pants Cave,
which was initially discovered by caver Herb Schroeder in 1947.
During his first exploration of the cave, Herb ripped his pants on some rocks,
and so he and his friend jokingly gave it the name "Schroeder's Pants".
On the day that James' friends were going to explore the cave,
with it being February, there was a light dusting of snow all over the ground,
and it was below freezing, but it's usually a bit cold in caves anyway, so this wasn't a big deal.
They arrived at the cave owner's home to give him a heads up before they went in,
but he happened to not be home when they got there.
Thankfully, the plans had all been arranged in advance and they already had permission from him,
so they went to the back of his property into the cave entrance.
Unfortunately, had he been home,
he would've warned them about the ice-cold streams pouring into the cave in various sections.
After they made their way into the cave and down the pitch-black tunnels,
they came up to a massive opening in the floor.
This opening is actually a pit of 80 feet (24.4 m) of pure vertical darkness,
which is the only way deeper into the cave.
From where they were standing at the edge as well, they could see about midway into the drop,
there was a small stream of water shooting out from the side and down to the bottom.
Undeterred by the water, James and his friends got on their harnesses and fixed their ropes
and prepared to repel down to the bottom.
James then backed over the edge and started sliding down through the darkness.
Eventually, he got to the water, and as it poured over him,
he was immediately breathless because of how cold it was.
He kept descending through the water and then all of a sudden, he jerked to a stop
as his rope got caught in his equipment.
He tried to free it, but the way that it had jammed pinned one of his arms in place.
He tried to use the other hand to free the jam, but all of his weight was resting on the rope,
preventing him from pulling it out.
Worse yet, he'd stopped right under the stream of freezing cold water,
which was rapidly cooling him down and making it difficult for him to use his free arm.
Soon enough, he could barely even grip the rope with his free hand,
let alone attempt to free himself.
From above, his friends tried to haul him up, but with so little room to work,
he was too heavy to hoist back up.
James reassured his friends and tried to stay calm,
but as time went on, he started to have a hard time responding to their calls.
After 45 minutes of trying to pull him up, they decide they needed to get help fast,
so one of his friends ran back out of the cave.
By the time he left, James was severely hypothermic and was no longer able to speak.
In these early days of cave exploration, the rescue system was nothing like it is today
with the nearest rescuers being literal states away.
From the time the call was made, it took hours to fly a team and all the way from was Washington.
When they finally arrived and got into the cave ready to hoist James up,
James had already died hanging in the middle of the 80-foot shaft.
His body hung lifelessly, having died hours earlier from hypothermia.
This was a massive wake up call to cavers worldwide about some of the unrealized dangers of caving.
Contrary to what it might seem, the biggest threat to cavers isn't falling rocks or tight squeezes;
it's actually cold water.
Because water cools you down dozens of times faster than the air,
even moderately cold water can cause hypothermia very quickly.
Modern cavers wear several layers of fleece underneath waterproof clothing.
But at the time of James's death, it was normal to wear just regular street clothes.
With how cold the water from the stream was,
James never stood a chance in the clothing he was wearing.
Following his death, rescue teams tried desperately over the course of several days
to hoist his body up from the shaft, but due to the space they were working with,
it was almost impossible.
Eventually, they attempted to widen the space, but as they started drilling,
parts of the cave cleaved off and into the pit, making it incredibly dangerous to continue.
Reluctantly, they were forced to abandon the effort and James' Body.
The entrance was then blasted shut with James's body inside.
It would hang there until 2006 when the grandson of the original landowner
reopened the cave and finally retrieved the body.
By the time they did, it had decomposed to the point that it slipped through the harness
and down to the bottom of the pit.
But in the end, his body was recovered from Schroeder's Pants Cave
nearly four decades after he had originally died.
Khao Sok National Park in Thailand is home to a number of gorgeous geological wonders.
A limestone mountain range runs north to south through the park,
and beautiful sandstone and mudstone rocks rise almost 2,000 feet (610 m) in the air.
The monsoon season in the park is also significant
and as much as 138 inches (350.5 cm) of rain can fall annually.
Deep within the forest of the national park is a series of caves, including one known as Nam Talu Cave.
This cave is a 1,500-foot-deep (457 m) limestone cave that was slowly eroded by the water flowing through it.
A stream continues to run through the cave year-round,
but during monsoon season, the cave can become almost completely submerged in water.
During the hotter months as well, king cobras from the nearby forest take refuge in the cave to keep cool.
But despite these dangers, tourists flock to the cave and the Thai tour guides
are happy to take them through the dark passageways.
On Saturday, October 14th, 2007,
21-year-old Helena and her 24-year-old fiancé, John,
set out from a little bamboo house that they were staying in on their vacation in Thailand.
Helena and John had just gotten engaged and they had debated between putting a down payment on a house
or going on a dream vacation.
In the end, they figured that the house could wait, and so they took their dream holiday to Thailand.
When they got there, Helena couldn't believe her eyes.
She would remark that the area they were staying was the most beautiful place she'd ever been in her life.
That day, they were going on an excursion that would first take them on a boat tour of a lake.
After that, they would trek about an hour through the forest to the entrance of the famous Nam Talu Cave.
At the entrance, their two guides gave them some torches for light,
and then led them into the dark underground passages.
Along the way, they saw spiders and bats and cave walls that were lined with small waterfalls.
In the cave as well that day was the Fischer family from Switzerland
and a 10-year-old German boy who had been given permission by his mother to enter the cave
with the rest of the tour.
She then waited outside as the tour made their way through.
Now, the Nam Talu Cave is typically closed during the monsoon season
because it can flood quickly in heavy rain.
Official tours to the cave typically start at the end of October
and run all the way until the second week of May.
The day that they entered the cave was only October 14th -
slightly earlier than the official season.
In addition, there was rain in the forecast that day, and the guides had been warned
not to enter the cave, but because the weather was clear before their tour began that day,
the guides went anyway.
So at 2:00 PM that day, heavy rain started falling outside of the cave.
Inside the cave, roughly halfway through the tour, Helena heard a roaring sound off in the distance.
Soon after that, a torrent of water came flooding in where they were standing.
She and John immediately started climbing the walls to reach higher ground,
and as they did, they saw the guides and the 10-year-old German boy get dragged away by the current.
They kept climbing and saw the Fischer family get swept away next,
and as they climbed, Helena lost her grip and started to fall.
But the last second, John managed to grab her arm and pull her back up.
Eventually, they were high enough that they seemed to be safe, so they found a small ledge to rest on,
hoping that the water wouldn't rise any higher.
In the flood, all of the torches had been swept away, and so they sat there in complete darkness.
As the hours passed with no sign of the water stopping,
they sat on the ledge and began to discuss what they should do next.
John believed that they could follow the current of the water out of the cave to alert rescuers,
but Helena thought that they should stay and wait on the ledge.
She figured that all they had to do was wait, and the water would eventually recede,
and then they could escape the cave.
John, on the other hand, was convinced that they needed to try to escape,
and so eventually, he told her that he was going to try and that she could stay and wait.
She pleaded with him not to go, but John couldn't be convinced.
Soon enough, he slipped into the water, let go of the ledge, and then disappeared into the darkness.
Now all alone, Helena sat shivering on the ledge in the dark, listening to the torrent of water rushing by.
And the only light she had was the occasional firefly that flew near her.
Outside of the cave at 4:30 PM,
officials finally realized that the group was missing, and so a search was organized.
Shortly after that, boats and helicopters were mobilized to go to Nam Talu Cave and find the tour group.
As the search continued, Helena would spend the next 16 hours on the ledge
waiting for rescuers to arrive.
Once the waters had receded enough, rescuers descended into the cave to look for survivors,
and at some point, Helena saw one of the bright torch lights down below and cried out for help.
As they let her out of the cave, they informed her that they had recovered bodies eight hours prior.
The whole time they let her out, she was frantically asking if John was okay,
and eventually, they led her into a makeshift mortuary. And tragically, found out that she was the only survivor.
She would unfortunately find John's body among the others that have been swept away the previous day.
Unfortunately, the tours had started just two weeks early that year
and caught the tail end of the monsoon season, which led to the tragic events of October 14th.
On Sunday, March 22nd, 1959,
eight cavers from the British Speleological Association
entered a cave known as Peak Cave in Castleton, England.
Peak Cave is primarily a show cave that's open to the public for guided visits,
and it's also the largest cave entrance in all of England and is home to the Peakshole waterway
which is large enough that a small boat can flow through it.
The show cave areas have marked pathways and staircases that are well lit
so that tourists can easily traverse the tunnels,
but the day that the cavers entered the cave was only two weeks after a new passageway
have been discovered only a half mile from the show cave area.
Their goal was to reach a large opening known as Moss Chamber
where the new passageway had been discovered.
The passageway itself is a shaft that goes straight down from a small hole in the floor of Moss Chamber.
Four of the individuals in the group had been part of the initial explorations
so they knew what to expect and came prepared.
They figured that the shaft was about 40 feet deep (12.2 m) and potentially opened up into a larger unexposed area,
and so they brought a ladder with them that was about 75 feet (23 m) long just in case their estimates were off.
The first person who would enter the shaft was 20-year-old Neil Moss.
At 6' tall (1.83 m), Neil was thin and wiry and loved to explore caves.
So at 3:30 PM, he squeezed himself into the muddy brown hole in the ground.
As he went, he kicked the ladder along with him so that he could climb back up when he was ready.
The shaft first descends vertically for about 12 feet (3.66 m) into a corkscrew.
Then, it descends down at a 45-degree angle before dropping vertically again for another 18 feet (5.5 m).
As he descended, there was a boulder that blocked his path,
so he went into a small recess off the main shaft to try to push it out of the way
so he could continue descending.
He struggled to force himself into the recess, and as he did, he jammed the ladder down beneath them.
Eventually, all of the squeezing down and through the tight passages was tiring
and he was having no luck, so he decided to climb back up so he could switch with one of his teammates.
But when he went to climb up the ladder, the passageway was so narrow
that he couldn't lift his leg high enough to catch the rung.
It was also too narrow for him to get enough leverage to pull himself higher.
And so realizing he was stuck, he asked his teammates to try pulling the ladder up
while he held onto a rung in reach.
But again, with the passageway only 18 inches wide, his teammates started pulling on the ladder,
but the rungs were getting caught on all the rocks jutting out from the passage.
They only managed to pull him at a few feet before the ladder jammed and Neil stopped moving.
Now, these types of situations are not uncommon in caving,
and so he and his teammates weren't all that worried.
They figured they would just lower some ropes into the passageway and then he would be lifted out no problem.
However, once they got the ropes down and in position, each time they tried to pull him out,
the rope would either snap or shear off against the jagged edges of the shaft.
Even worse, the section of the cave that they were in had poor airflow
and the way his body was jammed was making airflow significantly worse inside the tunnel.
This caused carbon dioxide levels to start to build up in the chamber and in the shaft.
And so Neil started to become disoriented and his behavior started to get irrational.
He was becoming uncooperative because of the poor air he was breathing,
and he became so delirious that he stopped understanding how serious the situation was.
At one point, he even suggested that the group take a break and go get some food before continuing.
As the rescue continued even at the top of the shaft,
the rescuers also started to feel the effects of the rise in carbon dioxide levels,
and three separate volunteers lost consciousness while descending to where Neil was stuck.
A fourth individual did manage to get down to Neil and got a rope wrapped around his chest,
but as they pulled, it cinched down on his chest and made it even more difficult to breathe.
Nine hours later, desperately trying to pull Neil out, the rescuers got oxygen bottles delivered to the cave
in hopes of pumping oxygen into the chamber to improve the air quality.
The hope was that this would make Neil lucid again and they'd be able to get him to cooperate and pull him out.
Outside the cave, spectators had gathered at the entrance, waiting to see if Neil could be rescued.
One of these spectators was Neil's father
who waited much more anxiously than the rest of the onlookers.
Inside the cave, rescuers continue to be forced out because of the poor air quality.
At other times, they stood in waist-deep mud,
desperately pumping oxygen down into the chamber to keep Neil alive.
Eventually, this desperation was enough to warrant a call to any and all rescuers in the nearby area
who might be able to squeeze down to where Neil was stuck.
Finally, early Monday morning, an 18-year-old caver named June, arrived,
hoping to be small enough to help out with the rescue.
Media has since reported that she was given instructions to break his collarbones if necessary.
Although these haven't been substantiated, it's easy to see how this could have easily been said tongue in cheek
amongst the rescuers during the effort.
Then, on Monday afternoon, 25 hours after getting stuck,
Neil's labored breathing could still be heard from the top of the shaft.
From their vantage point, Neil was just a small muddy spot deep in the passageway.
Rescuers continued to blow compressed air into the shaft to try to displace some of the carbon dioxide
and work also began excavating the rock nearby
in hopes of finding another passageway that would give them access to Neil.
Tragically, that evening, heavy rain started to fall outside and threatened to flood the cave.
Authorities then made the tough decision to withdraw the rescuers until the rain subsided.
Shortly before they evacuated the cave was the last time Neil was seen alive.
He was still jammed down in the tunnel with one arm forced into a recess under a rung of the ladder.
When the rain finally subsided, rescuers returned to the opening of the shaft and heard nothing from down below.
A doctor formally pronounced Neil dead at 3:00 PM on Tuesday
and would say that it was the only time he had ever declared a death without seeing the person.
Outside of the cave, Neil's father requested that his body be left in place
so that no one else risked their life trying to retrieve it.
Rescuers then gathered up loose rocks on the Moss Chamber floor and filled the opening of the shaft,
entombing McNeil where he was trapped.
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