Caving story

[Norman_Clyde]

That story was WAY creepy. It's amazing how effectively the web format and true story quality of the webpage drew me in. A story in a book or magazine could never have done that. I found that I was hooked without having had to suspend my disbelief first.

 

Any of you ever read the horror tale "In a dim room" where the protagonist is being pursued by a tiger in a cave? It has a very similar feel to this story.

Edited March 8, 2005 by Norman_Clyde

[J_Kirby]

Who knows what you'd find in there?

 

Cree Pee

[chucK]

H.P. Lovecraft "The Beast in the Cave"

[Lazyboy]

If you have some time to waste there is more information about the story at this web page

 

Someone who claims to be Ted even comments on the story.

[kenp]

WTF! I started reading the story yesterday...go out last night & tell everyone about it...they all look like I'm making it up. go back to finish it this morning...SO WHAT HAPPENS?? I'm a little creeped out here folks

[catbirdseat]

Can you make out the "face"?

[Alpine_Tom]

And people say climbing is scary? I'd go ice climbing, naked, with framing hammers for ice tools, before I'd put myself in this position.

Reading this story was a fabulous experience, about the best matching of content to the web experience I've come across.

It reminded me a lot of Jeff Long's novel, The Descent

[catbirdseat]

So is anyone willing to speculate on the signicance of the wind emanating from Floyd's Tomb and why it was so alarming to the protagonists when it suddenly stopped? The round stone was apparently a sort of door to another deeper section of the cave where presumably some unspeakable creature dwelled? So the wind stops when the stone is closing the entrance?

[klenke]

That was a good story to read. And it was entirely believeable...until the "Joe" incident. Then it took an up-on-two-wheels, hard, banking turn toward cliché. The story was just too perfect in the terror sense. The ropes being pulled into the cave, the post-event hallucinations and nightmares, the unlikely rendezvous with Joe at the city overlook, the desire for closure.

 

The ending was also a good read but quite obviously untrue (made up). Furthermore, in back reading (retrospective analysis), the foreshadowing events become much more apparent.

 

If it were a story like most of the first part where they're enlarging the hole, there would have been more ponderings on the writer's (and B's) part on plausible explanations for the strange goings on--more analysis, as it were, after the fact.

 

There is some interesting discussion about the story here. In particular, this guy seems to think he's proved it's fiction:

 

"Actually, I have proof that it's fake. I recently received this story, and was intrigued by how well-written it was. I stumbled across this site while looking for answers. I then had the idea to look for various versions of the page. I could only find two mirrors according to Google. I took those two mirrors and headed to the 'Way-back machine' at http://www.archive.org . From there, I learned the earliest version of those sites were in 2002, and if that was true, this guy either had to be lying, or was alive and well. Besides the idea that his friends/family had posted it, but why? You think they would have taken it to the news, not the Internet. So I kept looking and found a PDF version of the story (http://www.dougaustin.com/tlcaves/pdf/Hupman's%20Terror.pdf), but this time it had different names. Right-off I knew this had to be a hoax. But then I noticed an author, Mr. Thomas Lera, and a copyright date of 1987. Evidently, Mr. Lera wrote this short story in 1987 and just picked 2001 as a date in the near future (other stories of his point to 2030+ etc, I've found). Obviously someone simply thought it would be funny to post his story online and change the names, since the dates had finally occured. Afterall, we can never have enough spam in our inboxes, huh? lol. This also accounts for why the story was so well-written, and was able to keep my interest. It just seemed too good to be true lol."

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

I was interested to find out about this Floyd Collins person. There is a band called Floyd Collins. They named themselves after this unfortunate caver from 1925. I found this on the web (source):

 

Synopsis

 

(Taken from CD liner notes)

 

FLOYD COLLINS is based on true events which occurred near Cave City, Kentucky in the winter of 1925.

 

For many years, the farmers and landowners of this area fought a series of bitter "cave wars" in which they competed to discover and operate the largest and most beautiful caves in the region. Many farmers found expansive and decorative caverns on their own properties which they opened for tourism and profit. Floyd Collins, who lived nearby on his family's farm, was an avid cave explorer and had already opened his own Crystal Cave. But the enterprise never brought Floyd the recognition and wealth of which he dreamed. On a rainy January 30, 1925, Floyd set out to explore Sand Cave, hoping to find a new cavern or a series of underground tunnels which he believed linked all the caves of the region. Winding his way into the earth with only a dim oil lantern to guide him, Floyd uses the echoes of his voice to sound out the cave. As Floyd squirmed feet first through a tight passageway 150 feet underground, a small rock fell on his left foot, wedging in between him and the ceiling. Floyd was trapped in Sand Cave.

 

The rescue attempts at Sand Cave began with a handful of locals, including Floyd's family and fellow cavers ,who were confident that the trapped man would be quickly freed. But as night fell at Sand Cave, and Floyd's brother Homer crawled into the passageways to spend the night with his brother, it became clear to the growing crowd that the rescue operation would not be a simple one.

 

Although many tried to reach Floyd with supplies or comfort, few made it, turning back either because of the narrowness of the crawlways or the sudden fear the cave inspired. One of the few who reached Floyd was a cub reporter from the Louisville Courier-Journal named William Burke "Skeets" Miller. Because Miller was "no bigger than a 'squito," he was able to slide down the narrow chutes and sit with Floyd in his cell-like cave. In the course of eight visits with the trapped man, Miller conducted a series of interviews which relayed to a quickly growing readership a firsthand account of the experience of being buried alive.

 

As days turned to weeks at Sand Cave, the local rescue attempt soon ballooned into a national crisis demanding outside engineering, dozens of miners, the National Guard, and the Red Cross. In the midst of factions disagreeing about the options for saving Floyd, the Collins family tried to remain strong, with Homer continuing to lead efforts to get to Floyd's foot. Yet because of numerous factors including the weather, the crumbling walls of the cave, the tightness of the squeeze, and, at times, simple confusion and fear, no one could rescue Floyd.

 

Enticed by daily reports from a growing number of reporters at the site, an estimated 20,000 onlookers gradually arrived from all over America - some hoping to help, some hoping to get a glimpse of the now heroic Floyd, some hoping to exploit the crowd by hawking souvenirs or selling balloons. As the circus at Sand Cave reached its height with jugglers, medicine men, preachers and movie crews scrambling to get it all on film, Collins was all but forgotten. Around him swirled the first great media circus of the modern era. Although a series of cave-ins blocked the passageways to Floyd, cutting him off from the outside world, Floyd's sister, Nellie, dreamed of a way to lead her brother from his prison; Homer eventually clashed with the authorities and was banned from the site as a vertical shaft was begun to reach Floyd. With the rescue efforts entering their third week, Floyd remained alone, left to contemplate his own fate and impending death.

 

On February 16, seventeen days after he had entered the cave, a shaft finally reached Floyd Collins. He had died of exposure, exhaustion, and starvation three days earlier, on Friday the 13th. The carnival at Sand Cave packed up and went home.

[Off_White]

Klenke: The story behind the story gets wierder still if you read more of the stuff at that caving message board. It appears that Thomas Lera stole the story from Ted, changed things, wrote better, and simply claimed to have written it in 1987. He's since sold the story to a small indie movie production company. The real Ted and B have come forward on that message board. Ted of course admits it was just a story, though based on a real cave exploration, the photos (including the passage opening and the legendary Ted himself in that crawl) and most of the geography are real, from Interstate Cave in Utah which goes under a freeway. The suddenly changing wind, loud noises, moving rock, etc are simply embellishments.

Edited June 12, 2006 by jon

[Dru]

If you've read Jeff Long's The Descent you know this is just the hadals at play preparing their invasion of the surface

[Off_White]

I don't know about you, but as I read I kept hoping that The Descent was going to be a little better than it was.

[Dru]

Well let's not forget that in Angels of Light ol' Jeff mentions "bands of sandstone" high on Half Dome. My expectations were not so high to begin with.

[Ireneo_Funes]

Sweet Valley Sandstone!

[Alpine_Tom]

I don't know about you, but as I read I kept hoping that The Descent was going to be a little better than it was.

 

Yeah, it peaked early, and kind of lost momentum.