===TRANSCRIPT START===

Astonishing Legends Network.

Disclaimer, this episode includes the usual amount of adult language and graphic discussions you've come to expect around here. But in the event it becomes an unusual amount, expect another call from me.

Welcome back to Scared All The Time. I'm Chris Cullari.

And I'm Ed Voccola.

And this week, we're gonna explore the darkest, deepest crevices on planet Earth. The script here calls for a joke about Ed's butt, but I choose to take the high road and I will not, because we're not talking butts. We're talking caves. Damp, dark, mysterious, filled with all kinds of creepy crawly creatures, great and small. And the deeper you go, the harder it is to find a way out. Even if you're a seasoned Spolunker, venturing into a cave is a little bit like asking to be buried alive. You're tempting fate and all too often fate obliges. You might notice if you've been paying attention to season that I'm following a little bit of a thread here. We've been running into caves all season, from fears of being buried alive to fears about cannibalism, evidence of which has been found in multiple ancient caves. But caves are their own brand of beautiful and terrifying. They're awe-inspiring and deadly. And this week, we're gonna take a look at some of the myths, legends, lore, science and dangers of caves, up to and including a story that made headlines around the world for being the, quote, worst imaginable way to die. So steady your spine and strap on a headlamp. It's about to get dark down here.

What are we scared?

When are we?

Now it is time for. Scared All The Time.

Hey, welcome back to the show, everyone. It's me, not Chris saying welcome. How wacky is that? First, let's just say, love everybody who's been signing up for Premium. Just got some new people. So glad that you're here. So happy to have you. It's great to send out pins and buttons to new addresses. It's very fun for me. So if you get a chance, like, subscribe, all that stuff. We've been seeing a lot of new people on Instagram. That's been cool. And obviously, yeah, hit us up on Supercast. We'll be doing more interesting things there all the time, including, I think, if you're hearing this the day it comes out, I think tomorrow we're doing a live show. Chris, is that true?

Yes, we'll be doing the live show this month, Friday, July 26th, 2024 at 6 p.m. West Coast time.

9 p.m. East Coast time.

Yeah, 9 p.m. East Coast time, 6 p.m. West Coast time. They are, the past two have been a blast. We're still figuring out exactly the content that we do and that sort of stuff during the actual episode. It seems like it's more fun to just hang out and talk to people in the chat, cover a couple like follow-up articles on different stories that we've covered on the show, but it's always a blast. You get to hear us unedited, unfiltered, and we have a good time. So sign up and join and we'll see you there.

I think it's time for Five Star Review Corner.

All right. I'll start off with the absolute newest banger of a Five Star Review that was left July 18th, 2024 by Jerky Child. Or no, Jerky Chid. There's no L in Child, so I don't know what a chid is. I hope it's not a slur. Jerky Chid says male version of Let's Get Haunted. Just dudes hanging out. Makes you feel like you have real friends and they know you're all out of spoons, so they aren't asking you to respond in the discussion. They're more casual like Let's Get Haunted than Astonishing Legends, Five Stars. We do know you're all out of spoons, and as your real friends, we encourage you to go get some spoons. You need those little guys to eat your healthy breakfast.

Yeah, or your unhealthy ice cream like me.

Or your unhealthy ice cream. But thank you Jerky Chid, great Five Star review. Ed, would you like to follow up with the second Five Star review?

Sure, I've got a Five Star review from Kelsey Soprano from June of this year. Five Stars, subject is My toddler loves the cover art. And now it felt important to address this Five Star review because now they may give us a One Star review because our art has changed and a new art is coming. So again, we apologize about that. And to go back to the review here, My toddler loves the cover art. And they go on to say, I'm a huge Astonishing Legends fan. So I was introduced to Satt on their feed, instantly hooked, exclamation point. I love the banter, the stories, the facts, great writing and reporting. That's a Chris, kudos to Chris. I'm adding that part. Also, my two year old is obsessed with the quote, spooky house and the cat cover art. I promise he doesn't listen to the show. I'm not that terrible of a parent. I should have left that last part out because we don't think that makes you a terrible parent at all. If you have your kids listen to our show, it makes you an awesome parent. But if you don't have your kids listen to the show, also awesome parenting. So it's a win-win for everybody.

Truly, yeah. And you know what? Search online for other images of Scaredy Cat and you'll find more pictures possibly of our cover art.

Yeah, of our mascot. We have new art coming and it's probably gonna be two-year-olds will probably be into it. So don't worry about that. Thanks again, Kelsey. We usually do three. We should do one more. Here's a newer one. It's nice and long. It addresses tornadoes. So it's a pretty new episode. I'll just read it, I guess.

Yeah, read it.

I have no idea how to pronounce this name.

Yuin, Elsa, E-O-W-Y-N.

And then Elsa, Yuin, Yawan, I don't know, it's probably some Lord of the Rings thing. It's five stars. The subject is The Hat Man Cometh. And they go on to say, I just finished the Twisters episode, and I must say, admirable job cold reading Socrates Ed. Oh, pretty nice. Hope I'm doing this good job cold reading this review. I really enjoy the podcast, especially this episode, although Twisters aren't too high on my fear tier. And they put a trademark logo, Fear Tier TM.

Thank you.

Because I live in Kansas. The tornado siren is the signal to run out on your porch and look for it. It's always so fun to hear your banter, and Ed screams when he Googles insane spiders. No shame though. Spiders are terrifying. You both seem like you'd be great to hang out with, which makes the podcast easy to listen to. And I wanna be your friend, exclamation point. Well, you're our friend now. I mean, do you know how all friends don't know how to pronounce each other's names? So.

Yeah, exactly.

That means you're a real one. I'll close this out by saying that the highest item of my fear to your TM is you not making any more episodes. Oh, that's so nice.

Well, you'll never have to face it because we are chained to this podcast for life.

Yeah, and then they ended it with another parentheses here. Also, I have to say, Twisters, one more time to summon Glenn Powell so that he'll appear on the show.

God.

Pretty good.

I hope.

Pretty good.

I hope.

Yeah, that'd be the best. I love that I posted that thing from The Onion about how people are too distracted by politics to see what a summer Glenn Powell is having.

And then last thing I want to say, because Ed and I, we have a little bit of a mystery going here. We recently got some comments that people discovered our show through ATWWD, which we had no idea what that was until we Googled it. And it seems to be the acronym for popular podcast. And that's why we drink. But we couldn't find any mention of our show on the last few episodes of And That's Why We Drink.

Or maybe ever.

Or maybe ever. So if anybody wants to reach out and let us know, did an ad for us play during And That's Why We Drink?

Was it a dream a couple of people had all together, like that Nicolas Cage movie?

Yeah, I don't know. I don't know how it happened. But we're glad that And That's Why We Drink seems to be driving people to our show. They're a great show. And we're gonna probably email them and be like, hey, do you know us? And it'll be really awkward when they're like, we have no idea who you are.

But that seems like it may very well be the result. So we'll see. We'll keep you in the loop.

Yeah, but if you or anyone you know has an answer to this mystery, do your best Robert Stack and help us solve it.

Yeah, help us solve it, please. Anyway, the heat is on, the summer's still here.

We've got a hot episode for you today. So let's-

Let's just remember that no matter how hot it gets, do not seek refuge in the cool comfort of a cave. You will soon learn.

Do not. And without further ado, let's start the episode. Caves are a topic that I have almost no experience with. I did grow up with a fantasy that I'd find a cave in the woods near my house. I feel like probably reading Hardy Boys and watching Indiana Jones and all that kind of stuff. Those guys were always finding caves filled with adventures. So why not me? There was definitely one book, and man, Ed, I'm sorry, this is gonna be such a terrible description. I don't think you probably will ever have heard of this book. I'm hoping maybe someone in the audience has, because it has haunted me for years as something that's like right on the precipice of the tip of the back of my tongue. And I can't remember the title, but I think it had a purple cover. It was like a kid's chapter book. So probably like 100 pages or 150 pages. I can't remember almost any other details for the life of me, except it was something with kids finding a cave. It was sort of a journey to the center of the earth type thing, where the cave is a portal to another world. And I'm pretty sure they had a little dinosaur creature that became their sidekick. I don't know, it's a useless description. Maybe it wasn't a book, maybe it actually happened.

Wow, this is, yeah, this is not great. I don't know how, I mean, hopefully somebody smarter than us from that is able to find it and let us know. But I think you need more than just there was a cave one time.

Well, it was a purple book, purple. A couple words in the title. I don't think it was a one word title. Anyway, it doesn't matter. No one's gonna know what the fuck I'm talking about. But it made me think as I was thinking of like cave stuff, I do remember having like an obsession with that book and that being like a big reason that I wanted to try to find a cave. Ed, did you ever find a cave or visit one or read about one or ever have a thought about caves ever?

No.

Okay, great. So you're gonna love this episode.

Yeah, no, I never, I mean, Bat Cave, obviously, very exciting growing up, where in the 1960s show, he would drive the car out of the Bat Cave, past the little construction sign that would come down. Obviously, we'd get bigger and better caves as the movies and properties would get cool. But no, that's kind of, I think about the Bat Caves the most I think about caves. And then after that, I never really lived in an area where it's like caves abound, you know what I mean? Like there probably are caves in Connecticut, but I don't fucking know. I wasn't seeking them out. And then the only time I get excited about caves is when I drive across the country, there's always billboards for caves. But there's like one that I forget where it is, but like you can drive your car into it. And they've like made it a point to make like, to have like a light show in there and like it glows and stuff. And so I'm like, I kind of want to, I don't know, breathe in the exhaust of a drive-in cave experience. But that's kind of, I'm always alone and I'm not gonna like go alone into a drive-in cave experience. So, I don't know. But that's, yeah, I don't think about caves is what I'm getting at.

I kind of thought that might be your answer. So I was trying to think of any sort of like cave media, cave movies, and I hit on a few, obviously The Descent, very high on the scary cave list.

Yes, I won't watch, I've never seen that movie because I know it's genuinely a pretty scary movie, I think.

It is very frightening. I've seen it probably like five times with both endings. It's very good. Next year, it's gonna be its 20th anniversary. It came out in 2005.

Wow, I remember when it came out, yeah.

Yeah. I remember I went, when it came out, there was a girl in high school that had a crush on, and it was like right before we went to college, for some reason she wanted to go on like a trip to New York City, and we, so we went to New York City together, nobody else, stayed in a hostel, and went to see The Descent, and somebody was screening Purple Rose of Cairo, the Woody Allen movie.

That's one of my favorite Woody Allen movies.

Yeah, it was like, this is how bad, no, I know, but this is how bad I was at picking up signals and dating in high school. I went to see like a very funny, romantic, charming, classic, back to back with a like seat gripper, grab your date kind of movie, nothing happened. Never, never talked to that girl again, we both went to college. It was just like, literally anybody else probably that would have been Young Love.

Yeah, but what part did she dip on? Was it like middle of Purple Royce of Cairo, I hate this, the hostel was like, this guy's fucking cheap. Like what part of it was like, do you think she bailed on whatever it is you were trying to set up here?

So that's the thing, I wasn't trying to set it up. It was her idea and she was like, she was like, we could do it real cheap, we could stay at a hostel and all this stuff.

Had the film Hostel come out yet?

No, that didn't come out until we were in college. Cause I remember I saw it at the Lowe's there on the Commons. Anyway, she was super nice, lovely person, but I was a dense idiot. So The Descent, go watch it. It's really good, it's very scary.

Meet your future wife at The Descent.

As Above, So Below is not technically a cave movie. It's set in the Paris catacombs, but they are very cave-like. And I think it's a much better movie than I expected it to be. It's sort of a, I remember watching it being like, oh, this is like someone actually made a good Tomb Raider movie that just happens to be a little scary. So if you like kind of spooky, fun adventure, check that out. Temple of Doom, I mean, we could talk all day about Temple of Doom.

Oh yeah, we don't have time, yeah.

That's got the most consistent, scary cave action, maybe in any movie ever. And then some honorable mentions, The Empty Man, which if you didn't see that when it came out in 2014 or 15, super underrated, very frightening movie, for me at least, I really loved it. And it opens with a really creepy cave sequence. And finally, The Boogans.

Okay, there's one I've seen, finally.

One of my favorite horror movie posters of all time.

Great poster, better poster than a movie.

Yeah, better poster than a movie, not very scary.

As is often the case with Schlock, that's what they paid for the poster, they paid for the VHS cover.

There is, there's a very weird cave monster in that movie, if you can call it a monster. The aforementioned Boogans is the monster. And weirdly, I found out from our friend, Ellie Smolkin, who's a cinematographer, that the guy who directed the Boogans is now a very successful television director in Canada. So just goes to show, you don't have to make a classic right out the gate.

You do now, but not then.

Yeah, that's true, that's true. Back then, it was like, yeah, I know how to operate a camera. I turned the microphone on. And then I also, this is really the thing I wanted to give a special shout out to in terms of like cave fiction that's really scary. If you haven't, go online or you can go into the notes doc, which we've been trying to have a higher visibility for our notes doc, because we'll put a link in there. The first creepypasta I ever read was called Ted the Caver. I don't know if you're familiar with this, if you're listening and you aren't familiar with it, it's very creepy. I'd read it aloud a little bit on the show, but it's, you gotta go to the Angel Fire page that's still up. Oh, wow. Yeah, and you gotta read it on there. This guy, Ted, had a very, very early blog that detailed his exploration of a cave and the strange things that happened there and some of the things that followed him home. It's very spooky. Probably would only take you like 20 or 30 minutes to read it as originally published. So I would say if you are wondering why caves are scary, I feel like that would probably give you a pretty good idea. But for me, it wasn't scary cave movies or stories that inspired all this cave on the brain. I, like Ed was talking about earlier, I grew up in a state with a bunch of caves in Pennsylvania and I would see billboards for them when I drove in the summers and my mom drove us up to my grandparents in Springfield. There were billboards for Crystal Cove and Laurel Caverns, I think, and a few others. But the one I was most familiar with is a place called Indian Echo Caverns right down the street from Hershey. I only went there twice. The first time I was so young, I don't really remember it. The second time was for a birthday party in first grade and the kid whose birthday it was wanted to go to the Halloween event at Indian Echo Caverns. And I don't know if it's still like this. Ed, was it like this for you in elementary school where if you had a birthday party, at least until a certain age, you kind of had to invite the whole class so no one felt left out?

Yes, yeah, for sure, yeah.

So I didn't really know most of these kids very well because I was just one of the kids that got invited.

I never did it, because I'm Christmas Eve, so nobody's fucking coming to hang out and do Christmas Eve, but yeah, I did. It is, I remember being invited to these types of things.

Yeah, so I didn't really know most of these kids very well and I was very nervous just being there because the kid whose birthday it was, even in first grade, he was like a cool soccer player and I was like, oh, I don't know any of these kids. So we get there and they walk us down these steps to the front of the cave where there was a mining ghoul, like a guy, like a zombie with a hat on or whatever, and he was doing the whole, like, you're never gonna get out, turn back, blah, blah, blah. And the second all these kids step inside the cave, just straight chaos. I've never been back to this event. I'm sure in reality it is not that scary, but for first graders, it was way too fucking scary and we all just started running and screaming.

Wow, but it had like other actors in there and stuff or it was just kind of scary inside?

Yeah, no, it was like a walkthrough. It was just like a haunted house in a cave basically.

I don't do that shit as an adult.

Well, this is why I didn't for a very long time because I was so scared. I was running around. There were pathways, so it wasn't like we were spelunking. It's paved on the ground in there and everything.

All right, kids, this is how the harness works. Best of luck.

It was just, they were doing cannonball sounds. There was like some Civil War stuff. There were like more mining ghouls and I ran into this guy and I remember this poor fucking guy. He was just trying to help, but I was looking at the ground. I run into this guy and I look up and he's like, hey, hey, it's okay. But he had like an ax or like an arrow or like his face was all fucked up and I just was so fucking scared. I was just screaming and hitting him and trying to get out. Anyway, it didn't really shape any fears around caves for me, but like you just said, haunted houses, haunted mazes, I couldn't handle going to the most basic haunted ride, even like a cheap boardwalk. Forget it. I could not do it. I was terrified until I was probably like 25.

Yeah, I still don't do it. I still don't do it. And I don't even have whatever the fuck this horrific experience, world's worst birthday party. I didn't have that.

Yeah, Alexander and the Horrible, No Good, Very Bad, Scary as Fuck Birthday Party. So, Indian Echo Caverns on their own, outside of being a nightmare factory for kids, Indian Echo Caverns is actually really interesting. And I didn't know how interesting until I started researching this episode because I'd remembered these two pieces, these two little like myths that I'd heard as a kid about Indian Echo Caverns. And I assumed A, that they were probably both fake and I wasn't gonna come up with anything interesting, or that B, there wasn't really gonna be much there if there was anything to them. And I'm pleased to report that both of them actually have a lot of interesting shit. Oh wow. Both facts are very interesting. So, the first thing I remembered hearing about Indian Echo Caverns as a kid was that a hermit lived in them. Not while I was alive. Which I think is the implication from when I was a kid. Like, I think people talked about it like it was in the present. But from 1802 to 1821, a man named William Wilson, who became famous as the Pennsylvania Hermit.

Oh my God, that's such a massive state. And it's like, he's like the hermit laureate.

Yeah, he's the hermit laureate of Pennsylvania. They should have kept that going. So this guy, William Wilson, he lived in these caverns. According to Wikipedia, the room, quote unquote, that became his primary living quarters was 98 feet, so almost 100 feet inside the cave and around a sort of corner. So, you know, you can see in there, a natural daylight does get in there, but his spot was not really directly visible from the outside, so it was easy for him to hide. There's a ledge, a natural ledge, that was reputed to have been his bed, besides which stands a stalagmite, which we'll get into stalagmites and stalactites later.

One goes up, one goes down. I don't never remember which.

Yes, and essentially, well, we'll get into them later.

We'll get to it, yeah.

It's all from dripping. It's all dripping in water.

It's just a drip-based economy.

So this stalagmite bears marks that are attributed to a rope ladder that William would use to get into his bed. And there is a large recess near the floor, which according to legend, was used by Wilson. And the research I found said it was used by Wilson and others, although I couldn't find any information about like he's the Pennsylvania hermit. So maybe they just meant like prehistory or something. But according to legend, this research was a natural fireplace, but then they also note that it doesn't vent anywhere. So if you set a fire, it would basically just fill the cave with smoke. So it wouldn't work very well. William didn't keep much in the way of possessions. He had a straw mattress, a table and a stool, some cooking implements, a Bible and other religious books. He did write frequently, generally on religious topics. And there were a bunch of manuscript pages among his possessions. I think some of them were published later.

Wow, this guy, what an accomplished hobo.

Oh, but dude, it gets even better. In later years, he was noted for a long flowing white beard.

Being noted for a long flowing white beard is disgusting. So the beard makes more sense.

A long flowing white beard that probably made him look like the god of this particular cave.

How flowing could it be though? I mean, you live in a fucking cave. It's gotta be the stiffest, hardest, most gross unwashed beard imaginable.

I feel like a white beard in 1821 would probably be more of a filthy gray in modern parlance. That was as white as it would get back then.

Also, to become old enough to have your hair turn white in 1821. So that's why he was so famous. He's the longest living person in or out of a cave in 1821.

What a look for the hermit laureate of Pennsylvania though.

I'm sure he had a rope belt that ruled.

Yeah.

He took a bunch of rope belts to make his rope ladder. From hobos, he defeated to get ownership of the cave.

Yeah, because people knew about this cave for a long time. And that's one of the things, he was living in it a good, I think about 80 years before Hershey was properly settled. But there were still towns nearby. The state capital, Harrisburg, was just a few miles away. And so he basically was like a good neighbor, it seems like.

Like State Farm.

Like State Farm. He never really bothered anyone. There was apparently, it became kind of a local challenge to try to go catch a glimpse of him and his friend. He did have one friend. It was the farmer who lived on the other side of the creek. William made the farmer grindstones and the farmer would trade him for supplies. So all in all, seems like a pretty peaceful dude. But what's really interesting about William Wilson is not even that he was the Pennsylvania hermit. It's why he was a hermit in the first place. This story is nuts. And the record on all this is a little bit hazy. Some sources said to consider this more like historical fiction than fact, but the broad strokes of it are all documented and true. So William Wilson was born sometime in the 1760s or 70s to a farmer who actually sided with the British during the American Revolution.

It's a bad look.

So right there, I feel like if anyone really, I don't know, at the time, they were just giving out hermit laureate positions to fucking descendants of traders, but not anymore. The family property was confiscated by American forces and at 16, William was sent off to be an apprentice to a stonecutter and his either older or younger sister, depending on the source, his sister Elizabeth, went to work at a tavern called the Indian Queen near Philly in Chester County. Elizabeth, while she was working at this tavern, got pregnant by a lover who either visited or worked at the tavern. And since she was unmarried, as soon as she started to show, she was fired. She went back to her parents' home to give birth to twin sons. Shortly after the birth, she disappeared on her way into town to meet up with her lover. And when she reappeared a few days later, the kids were gone.

Oh, okay, you didn't want to leave them with anybody? Well, my unsupervised children, they've gotten jobs in the mine.

Well, no, they got jobs being dead. They were found buried in the woods.

Oh my God, wow, that's a tough job.

It is.

Easy to succeed at though.

Yeah. Elizabeth was arrested and charged with quote, the murder of her two bastard male children.

Wow, that's on the paperwork, huh?

It is, and two bastard male children, each of those words are capitalized. So she was then sentenced to hang a few months later. This whole time, William is working as a stonecutter and completely unaware of the trouble that Elizabeth was getting into. And then at some point, he somehow caught wind of her execution because one day he just suddenly announced he wouldn't be able to come into work and he shows up in Chester County to help her out.

That's a pretty good brother.

Dude, you have no idea the level of brother that this guy was, especially, and also it seems like something shifted real fast. He had no interest in her life or anything happening and then as soon as he finds out she's in trouble, he basically dedicates his life to trying to help his sister out.

It's a vibe.

So he gathered a bunch of high profile witnesses to hear a confession from Elizabeth. So she's already been sentenced to hang. He goes, whoa, this can't be right. Gets these like trusted citizens to gather and hear what really happened. And Elizabeth says this mysterious lover of hers told her to meet him in the woods and bring the kids with her. He killed the kids and swore Elizabeth to silence. So they then take this confession and present it to a panel, including Ben Franklin of all people.

Hell yeah, he's a Pennsylvania guy.

Yeah, he was everywhere back then. And so Ben Franklin and the other people on this judiciary panel agree to postpone the execution to allow for more time to investigate now that they have this new confession. At this point, William Wilson basically becomes fucking Sherlock Holmes. He tracks down his sister's lover and confronts him at his farm in New Jersey. The guy denies ever having known Elizabeth, which in this day and age is pretty smart because you can't prove that he did.

There's no photos of them together.

No, there's no photos, there's no cameras. He just goes, I don't know what you're talking about.

He said her name's Alonsobeth? I don't know about Alonsobeth. No, Elizabeth, oh, if I had known her, I would have known that, but obviously I don't. Get Alonsobeth and yourself out of here.

William then starts looking for witnesses who could link this guy with at first, just the city of Philadelphia, which I feel like is a little bit easier, but then specifically with Elizabeth. He got a list together and then got sick around Christmas. And when he got sick, he went to a friend's home to recuperate. When he gets better, he goes to the Chester jail to, I guess either check on Elizabeth or let her know that he's got this list and he's gonna help her. And when he gets there, he learns that Elizabeth execute, well, he doesn't learn, he learns that he's forgotten what day it was. Because when he learns-

He got so sick.

He got so sick that he got his days fucked up. And so her execution was scheduled for the following day.

Oh my God, okay, so he's not too late.

No, he's not too late. He's almost too late. But although at this point, I kind of feel like, I don't know what difference a day would make in this situation. You've either proven her innocence at this point or you haven't. But he goes to Ben Franklin, begs for the execution to be delayed. And Ben, I don't know why, but Ben felt that it wasn't his position to do anything about this.

It might not have been, like, I don't know.

Well, that's right, that's true. He might have just been like, you're the most famous guy I've ever heard of, Ben Franklin, please help.

Would you put down that fucking kite and listen to me?

Ben sent William to another guy named Biddle, who was like the second in command on this council. And Biddle writes a note. He's convinced by this list of witnesses or whatever. And Biddle writes a note that says, do not execute Wilson until you hear further from council. So William Wilson is like, fuck yes, I've saved my sister. All I have to do, because again, there's no phones. There's no way this information has to now physically travel. So he has to get this stay of execution to the people who are going to kill Elizabeth. But to do that, he needs to take a ferry back across the Schoolkill River, but it's the middle of winter, so the ferries are all jammed up with ice. So this unstoppable fucking maniac.

This Jason Voorhees for good.

He's Jason Voorhees. He took his horse and rode it straight into the water.

Oh, so he doesn't care about horses and their ability to not die from freezing immediately.

He drives this horse into the water and apparently almost made it to the other side. The horse, about 50 feet from the opposite shore, was struck in the head by a chunk of ice and died. William swims the rest of the way to shore, but by the time he actually pulled himself on the dry land, he was almost two miles downstream from where he'd entered the water.

Oh, currents, the currents fucked him.

The currents fucked him, and I'm sure he probably, in water that cold in the middle of winter, he was probably barely able to, even 50 feet in water that cold is-

And whatever document they gave him has surely all the ink has run, all the ink has run and smeared at this point.

Yeah, or he had a really hard time swimming because he was just holding it over his head with trying to swim with one arm.

Oh my God, Willie, old Billy, Billy Bean. What are you doing, buddy?

So Billy Billson gets spit up on shore. He finds another horse, which I assume at this point, he just probably straight up fucking-

He took someone's horse.

He stole someone's horse.

Yeah, he stole a horse.

Continued to ride to Chester.

What if he, out of to do a good deed, he's like, listen, I'll leave a note that I took this guy's horse, but then he gets all the way to where he's going and realizes that he used the back of that important document to leave the note. Like such an idiot, he was so crazy from being cold. No. I can't believe I did that.

I was so close.

So close. He does die at the end of the story, right? No. He has to become the hobo laureate.

Yeah, so I also just wanted to pause because at this point, as I was reading this story, I was like, they should teach this in a screenwriting class because what we're learning here is a great example of character through action. William Wilson, knowing nothing else about him, loves his fucking sister to an insane degree. Like this is Odysseus returning to Penelope levels of dedication and determination.

And never had to say it. We know this just from the shit he's doing.

Yeah, never had to say it. So he finally rides his icy ass into town on this stolen horse, or we assume stolen horse.

It's definitely, yeah.

And it was too late. William rode to the hangman's lot, calling, a pardon, a pardon! But Elizabeth was already swinging dead from the hangman's noose. His horse reared at the sight of the body.

A horse, Chris, a horse reared.

A horse, yeah, not his horse. Someone's horse reared, threw him to the muddy ground beneath his sister. The sheriff heard his words, a pardon, a pardon. He cut the rope and tried to revive Elizabeth, but it was too late to save her. Varying accounts state that William arrived anywhere from mere moments to 23 very specific minutes, too late to deliver this pardon and save his sister's life. According to the legend, when William finally rose from the mud beneath the gallows, his hair had turned white and his face was marked by the lines of old age and his speech was reduced to gibberish.

Wow, he got like, he's like the bullies in It level transformation.

Yeah, yeah, and that's when he began wandering the woods. That's how he became the Pennsylvania hermit.

Well, nothing else matters after that. After you do everything you possibly can and then it still comes up shit, and now you're wanted for horse theft.

Yeah, that's probably why he never, he couldn't rent property or anything because after all that, there's still like, I mean, you did steal a horse, so you're going to jail.

Yeah, no, he's a wanted man.

When he died, and it sounds like he was basically, he died fairly peacefully in his sleep. He was found in the caves by a neighbor, I assume the farmer. A local paper ran an obituary for him. It read, quote, died lately at his lonely hovel amongst the hills, 12 miles southeast from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Wilson, who for many years endeavored to be a solitary recluse from the Society of Men. His retirement was principally occasioned by the melancholy manner of the death of his sister, by which his reason was partially affected. He was observed frequently to be estranged and one morning was found dead by a few of his neighbors who had left him the evening previously in good health.

So he was still throwing dinner parties till the end.

I guess he was cooking on that fireplace in the cave. Everyone's choking on smoke and eating rat or whatever.

Yeah, entertaining guests till the end.

One last note on this guy before we go on to the second, also very cool piece of Indian Echo Cavern lore. When I was in high school, I had a friend, Tom Foley or Emily Weir, if you're listening to this, maybe we could talk and see if I can get more information from you because I only remember this in bits and pieces. But my friend Emily's dad was like a developer, builder type guy. And I remember one time she was telling me that he was convinced that a hermit had lived in the kind of like thick band of woods between my house and where Emily's house was. And then at some point in high school, she showed me this area in the woods that her dad had found that seemed to be where someone had either laid a foundation for like a stone home that either had never been finished or had maybe just been abandoned and reclaimed by the woods. And then when I read this story, I was like, I wonder if he thought if it was the same hermit, if it was the Pennsylvania hermit, or if it was like a different hermit that he thought had lived there.

There has to be multiple hermits.

Yeah, well, I just think it's cool to imagine that there was a time where you could just be a guy who just lived in the woods.

If you have an interesting enough backstory, you can be whatever you want. I feel like if his backstory was like, oh man, I'm done viciously abusing people in my neighborhood, I'm just gonna go to the caves, he might not have been put up with as much as a guy who's like, this is the most harrowing, sad story, let's just let him have what he wants.

Give him a little space.

You earned this cave in this solitude.

Yeah, exactly. So the other story I had heard growing up was that there was treasure in the caves, and while it's I think pretty unlikely that there's anything left undiscovered in there now, it turns out, like when I heard that there was treasure in the caves, I thought it was like, even more bullshit than the idea that a hermit was living there, because it's like, of course you're gonna find treasure in the caves, you're gonna tell kids there's treasures in the cave and the town where they grow up.

Like the Goonies or something.

Yeah, but it turns out there is a very weird story from 1919, where a group of boys in Central Pennsylvania were exploring Indian Echo Caverns. I don't think they were called Indian Echo Caverns yet, but they were exploring the cavern when one of them stumbled upon a small wooden black box hidden beneath a heavy rock. The box was covered in weird symbols. They don't match any known language or glyph set.

What?

And so the boy took it home. Inside this box, he found 17 coins from all over the world. There was a coin from China, a coin from Brazil, a coin from Egypt, Greece, Argentina, England, Guatemala, France and Austria.

Well, I'm sorry, so every coin was completely from a different place.

Yeah.

17 different nations.

At different times, one was dated 1298 from the Middle East and the oldest coin was dated 480 BC from the Roman Empire. And we know this because the contents were all checked by museum experts who verified the dates of the coins. And I know museum experts sounds like bullshit. I could not find which experts, but it does seem that they were verified at some point. There are stories about this as recently as the 1970s in local Pennsylvania papers talking about how weird the box was.

I mean, it's a weird box because like, as you said, it was 1919. That was the year they found the box?

Yeah.

Like that's still, like what the fuck? Like in order to even get all of those coins, to even travel to all those places to collect that many coins and then have it come across the ocean and end up in a fucking cave in William Penn's Woods over the hell it was called back then?

Well, we'll get to that in a little bit because the box also contains some other weird stuff too. There was some antique, though apparently kind of inexpensive jewelry, a small bottle of aluminum paint powder and more than a dozen moonstones in a small package labeled Diamonds in the Rough. And these sat next to a small block in the box, also with strange characters on it. And when the block was sort of played with and investigated, it turns out it was hollow. If you remove this carefully concealed little plug, a cylinder came out of this small block, and on the cylinder was a note with the description of how to turn the moonstones into diamonds using lightning.

Whoa, so this is like some fucking philosopher stone shit going on.

Yeah, this is, you know, there wasn't a homunculus recipe. I feel like there should have been.

I mean, you just haven't investigated far enough. There's probably another hidden trap door with a homunculus in it.

So some people theorize that this was something that maybe these kids' parents put in there for them to find or something.

Were parents nice to kids before, like 1981?

Well, that's true too. Yeah.

If they put anything in the cave for those kids, it would have been a job.

Yeah, true. Or some like poisoned little cakes so that they never come home.

Exactly.

I think the Moonstone alchemy thing is honestly the most interesting part because it is so specific and weird. Although maybe in the 19-teens, alchemy was a little bit more mainstream or a little bit more well-known, but it does feel like everything else you could see somebody putting in there as a goof, but the Moonstone alchemy thing is so weird.

I will say also, like craftsmanship was like a vibe back then because I watch a lot of antique road shows, especially when I'm home with my parents, like when I'm visiting home.

Yeah.

And there's constantly like this unbelievable craftsmanship of like woodworking where it'd be like, and this is a small desk for a Victorian child to have played at. But the interesting thing about it is there are no screws. It's all done with whatever. But if you look underneath and you press this leg, a hidden door opens. And then below that hidden door was whatever. And I'm like, there's no fucking screws. Like it's just unbelievable work was done, but also everything had a hidden door for like hundreds of years.

Yeah. It was fun. What else are you going to do for fun? You had to find the hidden door in things.

It's true.

Sort of like stop and smell the roses is a modern phrase. Back then it was probably stop and find the hidden door. Just take a closer look. So to this day, no one can say for sure where the box came from or who put it there. The wood was dated to around the turn of the century and the nails dated back to 1880. The note about how to turn moonstones into diamonds was dated 1917. And while Indian Echo Caverns weren't open to the public until 1929, the cavern was known to locals and could be easily accessed. Obviously, since this was like a hundred years after William Wilson lived there.

Yeah, caves famously don't have doors.

Yeah, well, this cave actually does have a door now.

Okay, so now, now, now, okay.

Yeah, now it does. They sealed off one entrance and put like a big door entrance. Anyway, it doesn't matter. My first thought was, well, maybe William Wilson had something to do with this, but it doesn't seem like if, you know, he died in 1821, so he wasn't dating letters 1917, I don't think, you know, before he died.

He was only post-dating his checks.

Yeah, I think he had financial difficulties, I would wager the bet. But yeah, it seems like he probably didn't have anything to do with the box. I also then think, well, like, did the kids fake it? Because it is weird. They found it in a rock pretty deep in the cave. And in 1919, there wouldn't have been any light in the cave. So assuming that they brought torches with them so they could see anything, what are the chances that they just happened to like, yeah, move the right rock and find this weird box? So for reasons like that, and because nothing in the box, so this is the other thing, the coins, some experts have chimed in and said that like, yes, the coins are collectibles, they're interesting. But in the 1910s, coin collection was already a well-established hobby, and it wouldn't be an unusual, even for someone in Central Pennsylvania to have collected coins from all over the world.

Oh, wow, so my theory was, this doesn't matter. It's trash, trash theory.

I mean, I had the same thought that you did. Like when I read about the coins, I was like, oh my God, it's a treasure. And I guess some people feel like it's not really that much of a treasure. I don't know, you tell me you have a coin from 480 BC in the Roman Empire, that sounds like it's worth something to me, but I guess it's not. Some of your comic books are probably worth more than that coin.

That's probably true. I'm gonna type in Roman coin on eBay right now.

Cause I guess they probably made a lot, right? I mean, they were.

Who knows, they're kind of pricey. If you want like a legit coin, it's like 1400 bones. If you want a, I mean, it's not a good sign that this eBay account has already sold 961 of these, but for $14.50, I can get you what they claim is a Constantine the Great era Roman coin from 330 AD. We'll get you this for $14.50.

Still, if it's 330 AD versus 480 BC, that's almost what, a thousand years later.

Yeah, you're right. You're right.

You know?

I'm putting in 480 BC coin on eBay. Oh, okay. Yeah, we're looking at, I mean, these barely look like coins. These are real smash and crummy, but we're looking at anywhere between $39 and 500.

Yeah, and that's now. So not an immense treasure. What I was gonna say is I did, this is kind of embarrassing, but I went to like downtown LA a few years ago. There was a sort of like a witch swap meet or something.

You have to swap witches?

No, it was like all these witches had different booths and stuff. Anyway, one person was selling plesiosaur vertebrae.

Oh, you talked about this in the show where you bought it for like $60 or something. And it's definitely not real.

Yeah, and then I felt really stupid. It's definitely a cow. I'm pretty sure it's a cow vertebrae, but you know, it's all about the sense of adventure. So the box might have been a hoax. No one's entirely sure. Some people think it might have been an attempt to drum up a little business for the caverns. I don't know about that because the box was found 10 years before the caverns even opened to the public. I don't know what date the box was then sold. So eventually the kid did sell the box and everything in it to one of the owners of the cavern, but I don't know when that happened. I also couldn't find the names of any of these kids or which of the owners they supposedly sold it to. So who knows? If you're curious and you're close, it's probably like $5 to go to Indian Echo Caverns and the box is currently on display in the gift shop of Indian Echo Caverns. And I included a link to it, a photo of it in the show notes. So go have a blast. Have a great summer day at Indian Echo Caverns. Let me know if you see any mining ghouls still lurking about. So yeah, that's a long wind up to say before we get into anything too depressing and scary and the worst death imaginable, I thought it would be good to take a quick tour through a couple of interesting stats and facts about caves to kind of give them a little bit of context. For instance, what is a cave? I don't know. It's a big tunnel in the ground.

That's what I would think, right? It's just like a tunnel in a mountain.

Yeah.

I don't even think of caves as being underground. I think of, which I guess they are, but I'm saying in my brain, it's like, you know, kind of an opening in like a wall, like an opening in the side of a mountain and a cliff.

Yeah.

But yeah, cave for me is like, you can get there from the first floor.

Interesting. I guess I always thought of them as more winding deeper passageways.

I know you're correct. But in my mind, it's like, if you drew a square and put like a mouse door into it, that's what I imagine like caves are mouse doors that earth made.

Okay, well, that's wrong. But not as wrong as my guess, which is that they were formed by tremors worms tunneling through the earth.

Yeah, you should never tell anyone that.

Science quote unquote tells us that's incorrect. We'll see. Science also says the earth is round. So jury's out on that. Much like I did last week when I wanted to check out, or maybe not last week at this point, but previously when I wanted some information on measurements and I went to like measuringstuff.com.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. How many alligators is a cave?

I don't know, but this week I hit up worldofcaves.com to help out my understanding of how caves are formed. There's so much to learn. I mean, obviously it's a whole branch of geology. So we're only gonna, we're gonna scratch the surface on this episode. But I think the most relevant, relevant?

I got the relevant in the room over here.

The relevant in the room is that I've had two margaritas.

We had margaritas before we came on here too. Me and my brother and our kids.

Dude, I love a margarita. But the most relevant information are the major types of caves and how they are formed. So there's four most common types of caves. Solution caves, lava caves, sea caves and glacier caves, which you would be forgiven for thinking are a list of levels in the Sonic the Hedgehog game. But solution caves are also known as karst caves. And they are formed by the chemical reaction between groundwater and bedrock composed of limestone or dolomite. The groundwater dissolves the rock, creating underground channels and caverns. And as the water continues to flow through the cave, it can create unique formations such as stalactites and stalagmites. Now, I don't know if these are the most common of the four kinds. I think they are. But this is probably the kind you're picturing when you think of a cave or when you see a cave opening, a solution cave, a karst cave is kind of the most traditional kind of cave. This is where my mind really starts to melt. So, listener, Ed, I want you to picture a cave.

I already pictured it and I said it out loud and you made fun of me.

That's true, you did. We'll picture it again, we'll picture a new one. Now imagine one even bigger. I want you to go as big as the Mulu Caves on the island of Borneo, home to the world's largest cave chamber by surface area as well as one of the largest cave passages on earth. The Sarawak Chamber in Mulu's Cave measures 166 million square feet. I'm sorry, what? I'm sorry, what? You're right, I fucked that up. The Sarawak Chamber in Mulu's Cave measures 1.66 million square feet. It's nearly 2,000 feet long and over 260 feet high. It's so large that it could hold 40 Boeing 747s in it.

I mean, after Boeing's gonna have to hide those broken ass planes soon.

I know, let's not test them. They might just start crashing them in there to see how many they can fit. My point was, I want you to imagine a cave, the biggest cave you can imagine. You can either imagine this 1.6 million square feet of cave or you could imagine something as large as the Mammoth Caves in Kentucky, which is the biggest cave system in the world with 365 miles of caves that we know of. Go as big as you want, but now imagine that entire space being carved out one drop of water at a time. And each drop doesn't just dissolve its weight in stone immediately. No, the water's gotta drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, a little bit at a time.

So you're saying that the earth might be more than 2,000 years old. Just in how long it'll take to make this cave.

Unless the Tremors worms are real, which I hold out hope that they are. Yes, the earth is fairly old and this caves are one thing that I think proves it. Like this takes millions of years, like a truly impossible to imagine amount of time to make caves by dropping water onto rock. Think about just going outside and dripping water onto a rock and thinking if you did it all day, if you would see a difference. You know, and multiply that times a billion.

I'm sure there's a lot of kids who were raised that way. Be like, go drip water on a rock and leave mommy alone.

I was almost raised that way. I never dripped water on a rock. I probably killed Samantha the magnifying glass, but I didn't know any better. Lava caves, number two, also known as lava tubes. These caves are formed by the cooling and hardening of molten lava. The outer layer of the lava flow cools and hardens while the inner layer continues to flow. As the lava flows out, it leaves behind a hollow tube. These caves can be found in areas with surprise volcanic activity. So Hawaii and Iceland, lots of lava caves. And then there's sea caves, which is sort of what you were imagining, I think, like a big opening that you can walk into. Sea caves are formed by the erosive power of waves crashing against coastal cliffs. Over time, the waves carve out caves in the rocks and these caves are particularly dangerous because the tides come in and out of them. So they might look empty.

Oh, boy, it's Mr. Disclaimer. We haven't gotten one of these in a while.

He's back? I thought he quit.

I don't know, he just had a kid. So hold on, let me grab this. Hello.

Hey, never wander into a sea cave.

Or any cave.

Or any cave, but a sea cave, just because you can walk into it at the time that you get there doesn't mean you're gonna be able to walk out of it a few hours later, so. Yeah, exactly, Chris.

So stay out of sea caves unless you're supposed to be in there.

Oh, for sure, unless it's your job, I'm pretty sure our recommendation here is just stay out of caves, all caves. Don't even go in, don't bother.

Yeah.

All right, well, talk soon. Thanks for the call. Heard it here first. Stay out of those caves, people.

Stay safe out there. And then finally, I never knew about these kinds, but glacier caves or ice caves, there are caves in glaciers formed by the melting and refreezing of glaciers, although I'm not sure how much refreezing glaciers are doing these days, but as the glacier melts, water flows through the crevices and tunnels in the ice creating unique formations, such as ice stalactites and stalagmites. Glacier caves can be found in areas with glaciers, such as Alaska and Switzerland. So with all of these hundreds and hundreds of miles of caves deep below ground, humans have been fascinated by what lives in these caves for as long as we've known they existed. And for one, we used to live at these caves, as did our occasionally cannibalistic hominid cousins, the Neanderthals. Human remains have been found in caves in sedimentary layers stretching back 78,000 years. A long ass time. Not as long as it took for that cave to form, but a long time. The world's oldest cave painting, which this is really interesting, it doesn't depict three humans surrounding a massive wild pig. It depicts three human-bird hybrids surrounding a wild pig. And that cave painting a few weeks ago was dated to be 51,200 years old.

They finally got those numbers, huh?

Yeah. It's possible that this scene was actually painted by Neanderthals and not Homo sapiens, which is sort of mind-blowing in and of itself. Can you imagine if Homo sapiens actually stole art from Neanderthals and then killed them all?

I think Neanderthals, you know, I mean art, I think everything, animals probably as well, just want to express themselves, so.

That's true, that's true.

I'm not saying a Neanderthal had like an opening, like a cave gallery opening, like where maybe a human would.

Right, who knows? Who fucking knows, man? But besides Homo sapiens and Neanderthals and our cousins, myths and legends are full of cave beasts. They're the hiding places of dragons, man-eating wolves, giant spiders, ogres, trolls, you name it, it's probably lived in a cave at some point. And that's not even touching the idea of Hollow Earth theory, which is the idea that caves are entryways into an entire ecosystem living in the interior mantle of our planet.

The like journey to the center of the earth type of thing.

Journey to the center of the earth type thing. That's a different episode. We'll get multiple episodes out of Hollow Earth theory because that shit gets crazy when you really start to dive into it. But for this episode, I wanted to focus on the very weird and gross creatures that have been discovered and cataloged living in caves. So trigger warning, if you don't like spiders and you don't like scorpions and you don't like slimy, disgusting things, you might wanna skip the next 10 or 15 minutes of this episode.

Can I skip the next 10 or 15 minutes of this episode then?

No, no, you're stuck here, motherfucker. worldofcaves.com. Once again, they come through. They have a pretty excellent primer on the non-monstrous kinds of animals found in caves. These creatures are broadly known as cave biota and they vary depending on the location of the cave, the type of rock and the depth of the cave. Generally, cave biota or biota, cave biology can be classified into three groups and they all sound like cavemen. Troglobites, troglophiles and trogloxenes. Troglobites are organisms that are exclusively found in caves and have evolved specialized characteristics to survive in that environment. So blind, usually white. They have what they need to be basically underground all the time. They haven't evolved any of the stuff that regular animals have. Troglophiles are organisms that can survive in caves, but also can survive in other environments. And trogloxenes are organisms that occasionally visit or live in caves, but cannot complete their life cycle in a cave. So everything. Some examples of cave biota include cave crickets, cave salamanders and cave fish. We're gonna get to some really insane cave fish in a minute. These organisms generally have adapted the cave environment by developing specialized features, like I said, so a lot of them have really long antenna. A lot of them have no pigmentation and enhanced sensory organs for everything except sight. So then I went from worldofcaves.com to treehugger.com.

Oh boy.

Because treehugger.com has a great list of all these weird, pale, often slimy, crawly things that you probably wouldn't love to reach out and put your hand on in the pitch-black darkness of a cave. I encourage you to follow along by either Googling these things as we talk about them or if you can find the show notes, we've got some images or some links to images in there. So first, Ed, have you ever heard of the Olm, O-L-M?

O-L-M, Olm, no.

It sounds like a Lord of the Rings fucking thing.

I think at some point Olms became fantasy creatures. I don't read a lot of fantasy.

They're like Ents.

Yeah, but I think at some point Olms may have migrated into a fantastic world, partially because of this. Olms in reality are, basically imagine an eyeless white salamander. It kind of looks like an axolotl, if you know what that is, but even weirder. These things, these Olms can get up to about a foot long, and they live exclusively in the karst caves, or again, the limestone, most common kind of caves in Slovenia and Croatia. And when it was first discovered, when the Olm was first discovered in the 18th century, many people believed that these Olms were baby dragons. And I kind of get it, like if you found one of these things just out and you didn't know what a salamander was, or you didn't know what an Olm was, and you were in a cave and you found one of these, and you already thought dragons lived in caves, you can't find a much better baby dragon candidate than an Olm.

You'd be looking for treasure at guarding.

Yeah, you'd be looking for the treasure, the Moonstones, so you can turn them into diamonds with lightning.

Hell yeah, bro. Lightning is, I mean, I hate to bring Ben Franklin into this again, but that guy was looking to turn Moonstones into diamonds.

He might have been. It's believed that the Olm is also likely the first Troglobite ever discovered, and to date, it is also the largest. So you got big slimy Olms. Then you've got cave pseudo scorpions, which are basically, again, look it up, but if you're not in your computer, you don't want to look it up. Imagine, let's call it a mullet style creature that is all scorpion party in the front and all spider business in the back. It is literally imagine like a front half scorpion and then the bulbous ass of a spider with a bunch of legs, but they aren't actually a scorpion or a spider. They are an arachnid order all to themselves. There are more than 3,500 species of these things, many of which call caverns home. And some species are so unique that they evolved to live in a single, just an individual cave and nowhere else in the world. You'll be pleased to know if you don't like scorpions that none of them have tail stingers. But in 2010, scientists did discover a species of pseudoscorpion living in the granite caves of Yosemite that have claws filled with venom.

Okay, close the fucking park.

Yeah, that's it. We don't know how big they get. No one else is allowed in here. Retreat, retreat, retreat. And then for our spider fans out there, one of the rarest creatures in the goddamn world, the Kauai cave wolf spider. It was discovered in 1971. And this is one of the few animals that lives in a lava cave.

Likes it hot.

Likes it hot. It lives in lava tubes on the Hawaiian island of Kauai. And researchers have never documented more than 30 of these things at a time. So they are, I mean, basically extinct. I think statistically, they don't live, they're not real. But they are, there's 30 of them. And it's favorite prey, the Kauai Cave Amphiopod, is equally rare with no more than 80 of those ever having been documented at one time. So these spiders and their prey are basically some of the only things that live in these lava tubes on Kauai. And don't go there, you won't get bit by them. They are some pretty thick, nasty spiders. And weirdly enough, you would think this spider is endangered because it lives near a fucking volcano. And it probably gets like blasted with lava. But no, this spider is endangered particularly because of humans who often use their cave habitats as a place to party on Hawaii or on Kauai. And apparently, this is crazy, but nicotine in cigarettes is a very potent insecticide. So from generations of kids partying and smoking in these caves, the toxic fumes have started to kill off the spiders. And then those people leave trash, which attracts non-native insects like cockroaches and ants that then attract non-native predators and native to the island, but not native to these caves. So cockroaches and ants come into the caves to eat the trash and then other things come in to eat them and then also eat the spiders. So who knew this is a very direct example of partying teens making the world worse?

Wow.

One of the few ways that they do, but they do.

That is not, I thought you were gonna say that humans, they're like, oh, the caves suck now because humans have been hiding like barrels of toxic waste or something.

No.

And you were like, no, it's just fucking dirt bag teens.

Yeah, doing donuts.

Just doing donuts in the cave, making out on top of a bunch of these fucking spiders.

Yeah, ripping darts.

Ripping darts.

Ripping darts in the air with nicotine. And just killing generations of spiders.

Dude, what happened to your whole family? We got vaped to death.

Yeah, basically.

Bunch of kids vaped on top of our web.

So the last animal I wanted to cover here is actually cute. And it is also mind blowing that this thing even exists. It's called, speaking of butts, it's called the Devil's Hole Pupfish. What? It's so rare that it's found not just in a single cave, but in a single pool within a single cave in Death Valley National Park.

Sure, it's hot there too.

So you were today years old when you learned that fish live in Death Valley. Treehugger states the obvious and says that this environment is unusual for fish.

What, being not in water?

Yeah, they don't just mean Death Valley itself. They mean the fact that in this one pool, within this one cave, the pupfish has evolved to live in 93 degree water with very little oxygen in it.

Well, they can't move, I guess. They're like Bane, they were born in the darkness.

Darkness. Well, we'll get to, well, I guess I could say this fact right now. Each generation of these fish only lives for about a year, but they got their name pupfish because they spend their time, apparently, frolicking like puppies.

Oh, interesting.

Which my thought was that I hope scientists have checked to see if they're frolicking or just suffocating from so little oxygen in the water, but we should look into that.

Yeah, I thought pup was gonna be because they didn't grow old, but yeah.

No, get this too. Their pool of water in this cave is a single limestone shelf about six and a half feet by 13 feet.

Oh, they're living in a very small apartment.

Yeah, and although I guess I should say, the actual text that I'm quoting here notes that they rely on this particular shelf for spawning. So there may be more water that they live in and they just spawn in this pool, but still.

It's a birthing tube.

It's 93 degree water in Death Valley in a cave, and they have traced the lineage of these fish back about 22,000 years.

That's before Jacuzzis. This is the only place they can grow up.

Well before Jacuzzis. So also, some of the most rare animals on Earth. I don't think they're endangered. I think the population of them is doing all right, but they're just in this one pool, in this one cave, in the middle of Death Valley.

Yeah, don't give them the internet.

It reminds, true. It reminds me of when I was location scouting for the movie I made during COVID. We were up on, we were in Southern California. We had to scout locations just outside Los Angeles. And we were looking for like a place with like a gorgeous desert-ish vista. So you could see mountains and stuff. And they took us up to this one place near where Steven Spielberg had actually shot some of Duel. So there's this grassy plain that rises up out of the hills of Southern California. And to go up there, there's all these gates and stuff. And at one point there's like gates and fences and we're scouting. And I joked at some point about, you know, like do they have these fences up because they're keeping aliens up here or something. And the lady who was the location scout was like, no, it's the shrimp. I was like, excuse me?

We're keeping shrimp in or out?

Turns out there are these shrimp in Southern California that are super rare because they burrow in the ground and then they come out and mate when it rains once every like whatever, 20 years or something.

I know that life.

And then immediately go back underground and NASA had fenced this area off because they were studying the shrimp to learn more about long-term hibernation.

In case you got to go to a planet a long time from now.

Yeah.

A lot far away.

It's because there's no water within miles of this and there's a population of shrimp that live there.

There's gotta be groundwater or something right there. They need water, right?

Well, they come up when it rains every gazillion years or whatever. I don't think they're living in groundwater. I mean, there might be water molecules in the ground or something, but it's dead and dry. It's like a big dry field. Looks like all the dead hills around Los Angeles. Now we know. So like I said, if you like cave animals, these are not the only animals that call caves home. I just thought they were some of the most scared all the time coded animals. They were very gross and strange. And as far as we know, none of them have ever killed anybody, but that is okay because we're gonna spend the rest of this episode talking about some of the most horrific cave deaths in history. Obviously, this is the fear that sits beneath all cave fears. The thought that you might find yourself trapped beneath the earth with no cell service, no light, no air and no way out. It's pretty much the same horror as being buried alive, except, and I don't want to victim blame, but you kinda asked for it. If you went into a cave, no matter how well trained you are, it's sort of like the fear of falling off Half Dome while free soloing it. There's only one way you're ever gonna have to face that fear. And spoiler alert, it's your fault. You're the one who put yourself up there.

Yeah, we're not looking at you 127 hours.

Yeah, no, that guy.

We're not looking at anybody.

That guy, you know.

He did what he had to do. He got out.

He did what he had to do. That said though, it doesn't mean that hearing the stories of these damned and doomed spelunkers is any less horrifying. So I'm pulling here from an article on Listverse written by Mark Oliver, and he has compiled some of the worst real life cave horror stories in history. I thought we would start with one that has a very Tales from the Crypt type turn to it. It makes me do my best Cryptkeeper cackle.

Oh boy.

So this was in 1967. It's the Mossdale Cavern Disaster. It happened in jolly old England, two miles underground in an unmapped part of England's Mossdale Caverns.

What year?

1967.

Wouldn't matter what year. You're not getting cell service down there, I guess.

No, and I'm, you know, this is one of those where it's like, what's about to happen is stomach churningly awful, but also they kind of lost me at two miles underground in an unmapped part of the caves. I don't want to go into a mapped part of a cave.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I would never go in two miles underground squeezing through little holes being like, ah, I'll find an arrowhead down here. No, thank you.

I think it's also England maybe. There's some like fucking mineshaft that they made a mineshaft that goes beneath the ocean.

No.

Like it goes so far down. And then goes, and then they, so basically they go down. And then they take a right and the ocean is there, but they're below where the bottom of the ocean is. So they're just like working down there. And at any moment, like all of that can just collapse on top of you.

Right.

If somebody put a wrong whatever. And I just think about that as being so fucking scary.

Yeah, well, because if, I mean, you would die the way that the guys died in that little submarine. Like if the ocean fell on you, it would be so instantaneous. That you probably wouldn't even know that it happened, but.

Yeah, but you would be born again as little shrimp with no, like those little shrimp.

You'd find yourself crawling out of the sand of Southern California going, what the fuck?

When's it gonna rain?

When's it gonna rain?

Okay, so Ed looked it up and the place he was thinking about was called Levant Mine in the UK. And it was in fact the site of a massive disaster. Guess the guys will have to do mines at some point. Both the shaft and weapon varieties, probably.

So for hours, this guy, John Ogden and five of his friends were crawling through the dark winding tunnels of the cave. I'm sure feeling great that they were exploring a part of the world that no one had ever seen.

And couldn't monetize it in any way like a stupid YouTuber would now.

Yeah, right?

They were doing it for the love of the game, dude. For the love of the game.

Most of these people, I think, were doing this for the love of the game, yeah. What they didn't know, although I feel like you could almost predict this because it happens every fucking day in England, it started raining outside.

Oh yeah.

So there, two miles below the surface of the earth, it starts downpouring, and the creek outside of the mountain started to rise. I can only imagine the horror of being down there, you're spelunking with your homies, having a great time, when all of a sudden you just hear the rumble of something coming towards you. And the rumble that they were hearing was rushing water.

Oh, it's fucking Die Hard 3, dude.

Yeah, except in a much more remote and dark place than beneath the Federal Reserve or wherever they're-

Well, this is when they were out, they've already gotten the money at that point. It's not under the Federal Reserve anymore.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. What happened is here, in this case, there was no John McClain, just John Ogden, this prick. Water, so the creek waters rose, they buried the entrance to the cave, not that it mattered, because these guys didn't even know, they weren't there to even see that it was being buried. The article describes essentially a rising lake that grew around the creek. Water spilled into the cave through every available pathway, and before they even had a chance to flee, Ogden and his friends were in water up to their necks. And this is where my skin starts to crawl, because I cannot imagine being, there's some nights I don't even like having my face between a pillow and a sheet. I can't imagine being in a cave with your mouth up against wet rock and cold water up to your fucking neck.

No, forget it. And then a shark starts swimming by you.

Well, we'll write that movie. That sounds great.

Cave sharks.

There was one shot at redemption here, or at safety. There was a small crack in the rocks in front of them. Motherfucking dicklips John Ogden.

Why is he dicklipped?

Because he forced himself into the fissure and pulled his head up to a tiny pocket of air so that he could breathe. But there was no room for any of his five friends. So the water filled up the tunnel. All five of his friends died, probably pulling at his legs. And John Ogden was down there, head above water, trapped in this narrow crevice. But this is where the tales from the crypt twist kicks in. Dick Lips John, thinking he's so safe and so good, was trapped down there for days. It took days for anyone to find them. And by the time anyone got there, John Ogden was dead too, still dangling and stuck in that narrow pathway.

So who told the story? How do we know that he took it from his friends and all that shit?

Well, I assume what the rescuers walked in on was a flooded cave with five bodies on the ground and one body with its head shoved into a fissure with an air pocket in it and went, hmm, I think I can figure out what happened here.

Yeah, and let's go tell the world what an asshole he was.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So rest in hell, John Ogden. You turned your back. I mean, I guess all of them probably would have done this to the others, so it's not really his fault.

So in that case, RIP, God bless.

RIP, God bless. This next one, I also, I love for a different reason because it is equally nightmarish, but it opens with one of, when I found this, I was like, this is so fucking cool. It is such a weird mystery to the beginning of this story. So in 2002, divers in Croatia found the body of a man reported only by his initials MK, so we're just gonna call him Mike.

Okay, of ultra fame?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That would be badass if your name was like Michael Kearns Ultra and you could go by MK Ultra.

There's nothing stopping you in this country. Go for like $7 and change your name.

That's, I'm doing this tomorrow. So Mike, MK, these divers found him 200 feet below the surface of the water at the bottom of an underwater cave. He was alone, dead, but his diving mask had been removed and there was a 12 inch knife lodged in his chest.

What?

Yeah. So a full on like locked room murder mystery at the bottom of an underwater cave. The suspect pool, it's a little obvious.

No pun intended.

Yeah, no pun intended. But it's a little obvious because it has, like this is a very difficult place to get to. This isn't like an alleyway in the city. Somebody else had to be down there with the skills, the wherewithal and the knowledge to just get there, nevermind the cave spelunking or whatever. It's also likely the police figure that whoever did this was someone that Mike knew, because who the hell else are you gonna be down at the bottom of an underwater cave with? If you swim down there, it's just like, there's not gonna be, all the cave hermits are living above ground.

Yeah, it's not like golf where like, you get paired up into a foursome.

Right, right. Yeah, I don't even think there's a tourist, I mean, maybe somewhere you could do this as a tourist thing, but it's such a specialized hobby that you can't just sign up with your frat bros at a boat and be like, yeah, let's go cave diving. And the thing is, they knew that Mike had gone cave diving with friends. So the police investigated, the police actually were investigating because I left this part out, but this is also really interesting. The friends who had been diving with this guy called the police and said, oh, hey, our friend never came up. We don't know what happened. So the cops showed up. This cave was so dangerous that one of the two cops who dove to examine the body died trying to get to the body.

Oh, that sucks.

So they ultimately had to pull up Mike's body and the cop who went down to try to get to him.

This is not the same at all, but I got into a car accident. It was like dead of winter. There was no one else involved. It was just like a hill in a rural area where I grew up and it was this fucking ice, this ice in the road, man. I wasn't going fast or anything, but slid off the road, hit this telephone pole thing and a cop showed up because people called it insane as a guy on the fucking side of the road. And the cop hit the same patch of ice and smashed it in the back of me. So, and I'm like, you're not giving me a ticket for shit, right? Like, this is what just happened here. Like, it wasn't bad. Like, he didn't like cause a lot of damage or anything, but it was just like, he hit the exact same patch of ice.

Yeah, yeah. Well, this poor cop hit the exact same patch of cave and did not come back up.

I said, it's not the same thing.

So, yeah, so the cops, their first thought was one of these friends killed this guy and threw him overboard or dragged him down there to like hide the body and then-

Yeah, the guy with the empty knife sheath.

But when they turned the case over to forensics, oh my God, it was actually worse. There's a link in the show notes. I feel like I've said that a lot this episode, but there's a lot of really interesting stuff in these links. If you've got the time, I would recommend you hit the link to the forensic report that I linked in the show notes. I've never read a scientific investigation that reads so much like a murder mystery. Like one of these scientists was a good writer or they want to write or something, because it's very well written for a scientific investigation, and the science involved is really cool, too.

The document opens with fade-in.

Yeah, it was a dark and stormy night. The science involved is really cool, too, but it's a very long paper, so I'm not going to get into all the details. But the long and short of it is that the investigators used a combination of electronic diving devices on the dead man's person and some math and some other science to basically figure out that even though they don't like fully rule out that somebody killed him, they're pretty sure that what happened is that he got lost in the caves and his oxygen ran out, and he knew it was running out. He started drowning, swam to an air bubble between these two rocks, sort of like Dick Lips Ogden, Sure. Tried to breathe in the air, but it was so little that it wasn't enough to save him. And when he realized that he was about to die a very horrible, painful death, he stabbed himself in the chest with his own knife.

Is it gonna be that? I don't know. I just don't think I have it in me to stab myself in the chest.

I think, I don't know this for sure, but I'm pretty sure drowning is very painful because your lungs start to burn, because you don't have any oxygen in them. So like in this case, the pain was coming from him probably trying to suck this air bubble that's like, you know, God knows how small.

Sonic did it all the time.

Well, you know.

Not to bring up Sonic again in this episode.

Sorry, Pat and Josh, we've got Sonic on the brain. So yeah, this motherfucker killed himself at the bottom of the cave when he realized that he was going to drown or suffocate in some other way. Totally bizarre case, super cool. I wish someone would make a documentary on it.

I thought it was going to be like a tide pool started, because you were like, oh, they used all this science. I thought it was going to be like, oh, a tide whirlpool started. It pulled the machete from his hip and that got caught in the whirlpool and like zipped around into him. Whatever. That I thought was more interesting than just a guy being like fucking wimp. I don't want to feel hot lungs.

I love this.

I guess I'll just stab myself.

No, the science that I skipped over, while it is cool, it is more, they were like measuring oxygen levels from his blood and then trying to figure out with math, how much it meant he was able to take in at this point and that point and when he really started to run out and all that kind of stuff. So RIP, God bless, Mike, MK, Ultra, Michael Kearns, Ultra. And then finally, we get to what I promised at the beginning of this episode, the story of John Edward Jones, a man who died, quote, the worst death imaginable, according to international headlines and particularly the headline of this article from vt.co.

According to internationalheadlines.org.

The most tragic thing honestly about this event is that it happened in a place called Nutty Putty Cave.

That reduces the seriousness by so much.

It sounds like a place that you'd go spelunking in candy land.

Yeah.

With like licorice ropes or something.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My God. They had like jelly bean carabiners and licorice rope and fucking their helmets were just like hollowed out whoppers.

Yep. Pretty much. It's going to be almost impossible to get through this without laughing, but I will do my best. So Nutty Putty Cave, home to the peanut butter king. Is approximately 55 miles from Salt Lake City.

A man died, damn it.

A man died when it was open and is now closed. It was considered suitable for beginner cave explorers due to its winding passages and relatively wide caverns. So here I am quoting from the article and I'm going to quote heavily from it because it does a pretty good job of laying out a somewhat complex story. In 2009, John and his brother Josh, which right there, this is already confusing, the two, the J boys lost in the nutty putty cave.

Sure.

Josh was an experienced cave diver. John was his brother who was not experienced. They decide to venture into this cave together with a group of people. They split up, which is their first mistake, so that the less experienced members like John could take on easier sections while the seasoned spelunkers like Josh could venture deeper into the cave. Things began to go very wrong when John decided to search for a narrow tunnel known as the Birth Canal.

I'll catch up with you guys later. I have to find the Birth Canal.

It starts to feel like a weird Charlie Kaufman-esque, like he's going to squeeze himself to the Birth Canal and become a baby again or something.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or just again, I got if I could write the obituary on this fucking people, because it's also like if you die in the Birth Canal, there's like an irony to that, you know?

Yeah, yeah. Everything about this story is like, oh my God, you pick... Maybe this is why they say it's so worth death imaginable because it's impossible not to clown on it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's extremely tragic, but you died in the Birth Canal of the Nutty Putty Cave becoming a peanut.

And it's just like, if this was like a Charlie Coffin movie or something, it would be like they're burying four peanuts they thought he turned into.

Yeah, exactly.

We know he turned into a peanut. We don't know which one. So we have to bury these all together. And anyone have any words they want to say about him? It was like, John died doing what he didn't know how to do.

He was the cream of the crop.

Now a few words from George Washington Carver.

So John decided to search for a narrow tunnel known as the Birth Canal, but he took a wrong turn, which led him to a different area of the cave where he foolishly, again, not as he didn't know, but foolishly attempted to navigate what the article calls a tiny crack in the wall, which he believed would open into a larger cavern. I'm just imagining a full grown man who, by the way, we will learn in a moment, he was six feet tall and 200 pounds.

Oh wow.

Like shoving his hand into a tiny crack in the wall, being like, oh dude, I can't wait, this is awesome.

A man died, Chris.

A man died. He attempted to navigate a tiny crack in the wall, which he believed would open into a larger cavern. He believed that because that's what the birth canal does, the birth canal tunnel, but this was not the birth canal, this was just a tiny crack in the wall. This was fuck city that he was navigating himself into. Unfortunately, he had miscalculated and became wedged inside the narrow crevice, 10 inches across and 18 inches high. So that is nothing. I think I saw somewhere else on the internet, they compared it to like the entrance to a small dryer. So imagine a six foot tall, 200 pound man getting stuck in a dryer, except he's way underground in rock and thinks that if he crawls forward, he will get into a larger cavern, except there is no cavern, which is really horrible and heartbreaking. His only option was to continue forward into the open cavern that didn't exist. And in the attempt to do this, he sucked his stomach in so tightly that when he released his breath, he became permanently wedged into this gap.

Oh no.

So he's not even, he like sucks in, which many of us know what that's like.

Yeah, anytime someone says, say cheese.

Yeah, exactly. But when he exhaled, he couldn't even exhale the whole way before there was just no longer space between his body and the rock. Incredibly narrow, incredibly tight. So John, at this point, again, put yourself in this man's peanut butter covered shoes.

Put yourself in his peanut butter cups.

I mean, you know at this point, you're pretty fucked. So he calls his brother to help. Josh eventually makes his way to this crack in the wall. Josh pulled on John's legs. Again, John is the trapped person. And that made the situation even worse because at this part, you can't really, you just have to Google and look or go in the show notes to a cross section of what this cave looks like. But essentially when Josh pulled on John, that moved John into an inverted position with his hands pinned under his chest and his head facing basically straight down.

Oh, so now he's fucking got blood rushing to his head. Can't move his hands. He's stuck between two rocks.

Yes. Josh apparently said a prayer saying, guide us as we work through this, to which John heartbreakingly added, save me from my wife and kids.

Oh, there's no atheist in a crevice.

No, I think these two were Mormon, I wanna say. I didn't shut it down. I mean, yeah, you're right. There's no atheist in a crevice. It doesn't really matter what they were. At this point, you're like, oh no. So Josh made the 400 foot journey back up to the cave to seek help and brought back a rescuer. I don't know who this woman is or where she came from, but he came back with the first rescuer, Suzy Mottola. And Suzy found John, again, in what is kind of an unfortunately hilarious image. She just found his feet sticking out of the hole. So imagine you go down to a cave and you just find two sneakers and a guy being like, help me.

Oh my God, you better bring the jaws of life. You gotta bring a dynamite or something. Like this guy's stuck in thousands of year old rock.

Yeah, he told Suzy per the Salt Lake Tribune, hi Suzy, thanks for coming, but I really, really want to get out.

This guy rules.

Suzy and a team of about a hundred people worked tirelessly to try and rescue John for the next 24 hours. But the task was made worse by the fact that he was in, quote, absolutely the worst spot in the cave. Rescuer Sean Roundy, who sounds like he chowed down on some of Nutty Buddy Cave.

Yeah, or he's a Cadbury egg.

Yeah, he told press at the time, it's very narrow, very awkward, and it's difficult to get rescuers down there. It's a really tight spot, but we've been able to get around him. We were able to hold his hand. See, we're joking about this because I'm going to get nauseous if I think about this for more than 10 seconds. After many failed attempts, and around 19 hours after he first got stuck, 19 hours stuck-

Upside down.

Upside down.

I've been upside, I've bad inner ears and stuff. Like if I'm upside down for 10 minutes, I'm like, fuck these people. Just bring the knife that killed the first guy. Just stab me wherever you have visibility.

Bring MK Ultra's knife down here and let's just get this over with. So the team eventually devised a complex pulley system to try to pull John out of the cave.

Fucking Archimedes this shit.

And again, tragically, the plan worked at first. John even managed to partially free himself. However, the pulley system broke and sent him plummeting back down into the hole. At which point he told rescuers, I'm gonna die right here. I'm not gonna come out of here, am I?

Don't ask us. We legally can't answer.

They're like, uh, can you use this against us in a court of law?

Yeah.

No, fine. Despite his own horrifying predicament, John was a gentleman till the end. He was concerned about one of the rescuers, Ryan Shirts, who had been badly hurt when a metal carabiner flew back and hit him in the face when the pulley system failed. John asked, is he okay? I think he's really hurt bad. The effects of the extreme stress and pressure John was under began to set in and the young father started to panic, understandably. So the rescuers in a, I guess, kindhearted attempt, but like again, so tragic, they put his wife, Emily, on the phone to calm John's nerves and he promised to get out so he could be there for her and their children.

Never promise.

No. Tragically, around 25 hours after becoming trapped, John became unresponsive after struggling to breathe while stuck upside down. He lost consciousness and a doctor who managed to reach him then pronounced him dead from cardiac arrest and suffocation. So, fuck man.

That is a horrible death. Don't go in caves. Definitely don't go into smaller caves within the caves.

Yeah.

And then also that doctor, I don't think he went through really any of the things we talk about in Buried Alive to confirm someone's dead. I think he was like, we're wrapping this up, right? Okay, I touched his foot. I felt no pulse. Let's all go home.

Well, I hope he was dead.

Well, here's a better question.

Yes.

Okay, so you've pronounced him dead. In some ways it's like, thank God. But it's like, we still have a man stuck in a fucking rock tube. Like, did you have to then, would you cut him up? How the hell did you get him out once he died?

Well, Twit.

Did you leave him there? Is he still there?

They left him there.

No.

They sealed the passage with controlled explosives and left his body entombed inside the cave.

You had, that is the most stuck anyone's ever had to be.

I know, dude, right? They weren't, they couldn't even be like, well, you know, even though if we used this drill, we would have broken his sternum or something. I guess we can do it now. Like, nope.

Yeah, that's what I figured. Like, listen, yeah, we can just cut him up. Like, it doesn't matter. Like, are people, did his wife go down there and mourn him?

Like, I don't know. She vowed to have his body rescued from the cave.

No kidding. If anything, I'd be like, it's the least you can do.

The authorities said no way, but I gotta say, in defense of whoever made these decisions, I don't know, if your choice is between sealing off the cave and putting up a memorial plaque or cutting your husband up with a band saw, and pulling him out of a hole that's gonna squish him even more as you pull him out.

I kinda just want the body.

The more honorable thing. Or just take his feet at that point and bury the feet.

I mean, just, I don't know. So people, a guy got a carabiner to the face. Like fucking, we all did a lot of work here. Like we could have on hour one walled the motherfucker up. And then we'd all be home and no one woulda had a broken face. But so the fact that you do 25 hours in shifts trying to save somebody, just to be like, we didn't save him, wall him up. Like get him out. Get the motherfucker out. Also put up a sign that says the fucking cave is closed.

It is, the cave is closed. It now stands as a permanent memorial to John Edward Jones, guarded by the putty army with his name and a face on a plaque.

Are you talking about Rita's putties?

That's in my head, yes.

Yes, okay.

The nutty putty cave has been guarded by like Rita's putty patrol.

They make that ridiculous noise.

But they're all standing.

If you punch them in the chest, they disappear and they go into the hole with John.

They're all standing there like the terracotta army.

Oh my God.

But it's just putties.

John, what a fucking shit death. And it makes it so much worse that it's like, I don't know, he probably just wanted to have a relationship with his brother decided like, oh, my brother likes going in caves.

Yeah.

I guess I'll go down there with him. But also that's a little bit like, you know, you're new to caves. Why are you gonna go look for the birthing canal? It's your first day.

Well, this guy, he pushed it to the limit.

Oh, my God.

He pushed it.

This sucks. Really heart wrenching story. Definitely like, as a person who's constantly trying to like squeeze into booths at Mexican restaurants and stuff and already feeling like this is gonna be tough. Like I can't even like new fear unlocked here of what if I breathe out and I'm stuck?

Yeah.

Like in any situation.

Don't squeeze into anywhere tight. Well, pause.

If you can't walk through something.

If you can't pull out.

If you can't walk through, you're being gross. I'm not gonna fucking, I'm not gonna even.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm saying is if you can't walk through something fully expanded, like with your breath all the way, like if you have to suck in to get through something, just go around.

Yes, or over, if you can go over, maybe go over, but don't go through.

Or over.

Don't go through.

I just didn't know that you can expand yourself into a real problem, so don't, like, you know what I mean?

It's crazy, yeah.

Because it's like you couldn't just suck in again, you know what I mean?

Well, no, I think he must have been so compressed. Like I assume the suffocation and the cardiac arrest is because the pressure of the earth crunching down on him just stopped his heart eventually, I think.

Anything, the blood went all to his brain, so the oxygen, like the pumps, the blood probably couldn't get back to the heart. But also, it seems like every year a little kid gets their head stuck in the railings of Sarah Wells.

Maybe, this episode's not about that, so I didn't do the research to back you up, but probably.

But I'm saying people be doing that shit, people be doing shit where they get stuck.

Yeah, people are getting stuck.

Where you look at that baby or that little kid and you're like, how did you even? Because you can't pull your head out now. So it's like, how did you even?

But those babies get freed, right?

Well, you cut the fucking railings off or you put a bunch of grease in there or something, Vaseline or something.

Yeah.

This is a fucking heart wrenching story in the same way that waking up during surgery story was like difficult to hear because you just have this tremendous empathy towards that person. But I will say we laughed a lot more this time.

Yes, well, that's because the waking up during surgery lady didn't wake up in Candy Cane General would have been a lot funnier.

Yeah, they didn't put her under with fucking, oh, take these 13 good and plundies.

Right. All right, so anyway, RIP God bless John Edward Jones.

RIP God bless, you don't deserve it. Didn't deserve.

You don't deserve it. No.

Like you don't deserve it on the first cave entrance.

For sure, no. You don't really deserve this for anything, but.

Because he seemed polite and he seemed nice.

He seemed great.

It wasn't like God was smiting like a real monster with the worst possible death.

No, not at all. Well, Ed, if God were to smite us in a cave, where would you place this on the fear tier? Where would you place caves? Caves have spiders. They have pseudoscorpions. They have alms. They have cave-ins. They have hermits. There's a lot to be afraid of.

Pretty high, actually.

Yeah.

I consider caves pretty high. Again, as we always discuss, it's another one of those ones where it's like, I'll just avoid it, but here's the thing. I can avoid it, but the thing that I find interesting about caves is something that I willingly avoid, where it's not like, oh, I could avoid going in caves. It's like, no, I'm already actively avoiding going in caves because it's dark and there's spiders and there's cobwebs. They can flood and I don't make my living working in a mine.

And bats, I didn't even touch on bats.

There's fucking bats. It's just like everything about it. I would have to have such a guaranteed treasure map in my hand to even enter a cave. I would have to like steal a treasure map after someone already brought out like, I found this gold bar and there's 50 more where I found it. Like that, I'd have to be like, give me that, you idiot, I'm going in this cave. Everything else, there's just no fucking way. And now I find out that like in order to get to these gold bars, I might have to like, wriggle through something with my fucking not square ass.

No, no wriggling, no wriggling. If something requires wriggling, just say no, kids.

Just say no.

Say no to wriggling.

Kids, say no to wriggling.

That's a pin. Yeah, I agree. I would place caves somewhere middle on the fear tier.

I'm above middle, I'm above middle.

Oh fuck, okay, okay.

I'm not like middle of the road. This is above middle because I don't, I'm not going in.

Yeah, I'm not going in, and imagining going in is pretty frightening, and then imagining getting stuck is, you know, we are hitting top tier, hot piss and shit levels of the fear tier, imagining getting stuck in a cave, so.

Because getting stuck, I mean, unless you're with your buds or your brother or something, like, of course I'll never go in alone, but it is the like, I'll go get help. And it was like, it took us seven hours to get here. And now you're gonna go get help? But even, I'm not gonna see you for 14 hours.

Even still, I mean, it doesn't sound like it took this guy that long to get help, but like, that's part of the horrific tragedy of it, of like, you're stuck underground, you're like, this is so bad, this is so bad, I might die here. You finally get your brother, he's like, don't worry, we're gonna go get help. They go get a hundred people.

That's a ton of people.

I'd be down there like, oh, fuck, dude, I'm walking on sunshine. This is, they're gonna figure it out. It's a cave, it's 2009, it's not the Stone Age, like they'll tie a winch to my ankle and pull me out or whatever. And they didn't. He spent a whole day being reassured, we're gonna get you out of here.

This is 2009?

Yeah.

I thought it was the 70s.

No, no, this was 2009.

Which one was the 70s?

The 70s was the first, well, it was 67, was the Mossdale Cave disaster.

Well, so this is 2009, there could have been like a GoPro on this guy.

Yeah, no, this was-

This is probably YouTube footage of one of the hundred people being like, this guy's fucked.

Somehow Logan Paul got there and was like, whoops.

Yeah, exactly. Well, Logan Paul might have been there.

So anyway, yeah, high on the fear tier, probably gonna have a cave nightmare at some point. And yeah, this summer, stay out of caves. That's the real lesson here. We love you guys. We want you to stay around to listen to more of the show. That being said-

Our next meetup will be in a cave.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Next fan meetup.

ScaredCon 2025 will be at the entrance to Nutty Putty Cave. But no, for this week, I'm Chris Cullari.

And I'm Ed Voccola.

We'll see you next time.

Scared All The Time is co-produced by Chris Cullari and Ed Voccola.

Written by Chris Cullari.

Edited by Ed Voccola.

Additional support and keeper of sanity is Tess Vifel.

Our theme song is the track Scared by Perpetual Stew.

And Mr. Disclaimer is A*****.

And just a reminder, you can now support the podcast on Supercast and get all kinds of cool shit in return. Depending on the tier you choose, we'll be offering everything from ad-free episodes, to producer credits, exclusive access and exclusive merch.

So go sign up for our Supercast and scaredallthetimepodcast.com.

Don't worry, full Scaredy Cats welcome.

No part of this show can be reproduced anywhere without permission.

Good night.

We are in this together. Together.

===TRANSCRIPT END===