Lighthouse Horror Podcast - I Explored An Abandoned Mine And Found Something Terrifying | Scary Stories

Episode Date: August 23, 2023

You won't believe what I found... Merch is now live at ⁠⁠lighthousehorror.com⁠⁠ Story from TopMindOfR3ddit Make sure to check out more of their work at u/TopMindOfR3ddit | TopMindOfR3ddit                 Original Post: SLIVER : r/scarystories                     Original YouTube link: I Explored An Abandoned Mine And Found Something Terrifying   For more stories like this one, check out my YouTube channel: Lighthouse Horror | YouTube  Patreon: Lighthouse Horror | Patreon Sound Effects: Freesound Zapsplat  Music: Lucas King - YouTube Myuu - YouTube  Incompetech Thank you for listening to this scary story! If you enjoyed this new creepypasta story, please check out some of my other horror stories. We'll be uploading new scary stories, new true stories, and new creepypasta stories every day!

I was never so naive to think that our hobby wasn't extremely dangerous. In fact, deep down, I'd settled on the prospect of it killing me one day, but I would have never guessed it would be like this. After being nearly lost, on the dusty, untravelled roads of Death Valley for hours, we finally came across signs of civilization, some little unincorporated town. Not our destination, but it's a place with a name, somewhere we can point at the atlas, to get our bearings. It was my fault for making Jim the Navigator anyways. It's not that he's bad with directions. It's that he's bad at relaying the information to me, the driver. He'll

read ahead on the Atlas to himself, and then just watch out the windows as you pass turn off after turn off. Short attention. No, doing what we do, you need to have a good sense of direction. When you found yourself in a spaghetti bowl of tunnels 900 feet beneath the earths, you can't afford not to. We first started exploring abandoned mines when we were kids. Jim's folks owned property that had one on it. It wasn't a big one. It only went in about 40 feet and collapsed beyond that. Nonetheless, we'd spend all day in that hole. Since then, we've explored about 17 other mines for nothing other than the thrill and the history. I'm going to stop at this station, get something to drink, stretch my legs a bit before we head to the mine. I said. As soon as we got out,

Jim was already snapping pictures of his brand-new 96 Fort Bronco against the desert backdrop. He always had that Polaroid camera around his neck to document our travels. A bell on a chain jingled as I pushed the door to the nameless gas station open. They didn't have many options as far as drinks went. I figured they probably only stocked with the few people that inhabited this place to drink, since there's no way anyone from out of town was going to find this place, except us. I got a bottle of water. When I got back outside, Jim was staring at the window of the store with a stern but concerned

look on his face, like he was trying to solve a riddle. What's up? I asked, turning to see what he was staring at. Missing posters. Most of them kids, but some adults. Twelve of them. How the hell you have this many missing people in a town of what? Eight hundred people?

I don't know. And why do you think they need these posters? You think everybody in town would know about this? I stepped closer to the posters to read the details. Missing from Mahogany Flat Campground. Last seen Wild Rose Campground. Abandoned RV found on Nevada State Road 160. They're from all over the area, not just this town. Mostly campers. That's crazy. There's So many? Serio killer, maybe? Jim asked. Maybe, I don't know. Campers get lost all the time. I shrugged. Well, let's get going. We got to find the mine while it's still light out. I started walking back to the Bronco as Jim lifted his Polaroid and snapped a picture of the window. Entranced, he looked up and down from the phone to the window for a few seconds more before pulling

himself away from it, pulling off of one unpaved road onto another. more primitive one, we figured we were nearly there. Of course we didn't get the property owner's permission to come poke around out here. People are too afraid of liability these days. It did pose a risk of wasting time, however. We would know until we arrived if the mine had been sealed off, collapsed, or if it even existed in the first place. We only learn about these things from rumors, researching old mining businesses, etc. This one was a silver mine that we'd found pictures of in a friend's great-great-grandfather's personal effects. The guy's living relative told us where we might be able to find it, within several miles of desert, that is. It wasn't long

before we saw the headframe standing like a skeleton on the hill. Head frames are used on a specific type of mine, a vertical shaft. That means it drops straight down, sometimes 100 feet, sometimes 500 feet. This one is 900 feet, according to the old man's journal. We discussed the possibility of there being a back at it, another entrance at the bottom, on the side of the mountain, but they were always a pain in the ass to find and usually collapsed when he found him. Here we already had a beacon showing us right where to go. We parked the bronco behind the barely standing hoist building so it wouldn't be seen

from the road at the base of the mountain and began unloading our gear. Quite the amateur load out, really. Some climbing rope, flashlights, headlamps, and helmets, the Polaroid. Ha, check it out, it's a sliver mine. Jim said, as he pointed to the hoist building's door, the word sliver was scratched into it. Well, too bad they weren't mine in GLOD, or else they may have been able to afford an education. We wasted almost no time, before we were stopped up and heading down the cramped manway. A series of ladders and narrow platforms that followed the shaft all the way to the bottom.

We climbed for what seemed like in eternity, passing all kinds of dead animals that had fallen into the shaft. Stepping off into the first level, we figured we were maybe 500 feet deep. Jim looked over the edge of the cage shaft to see how much further. He couldn't see the bottom. I hated when he leaned over shit like that. We weren't even on solid ground yet. We were still on the 100-plus-year-old wood platform.

We looked around for a bit on the first level. Sedimentary lines streaked across the walls. Pock marked with pickax strikes. The ceiling is just high enough that you don't hit your head on the visibly strained supporting beams. It's easy to forget that there's hundreds of thousands of tons of rock and earth bearing down on these old beams at all times, a bent or broken beam. is always a chilling reminder. Old crates that probably contained dynamite at one time, an old bottle, and a pack of cigarettes that hadn't been sold in 30 years. Some spray paint on the

wall, said Nick 78. Let's keep going down, I said. Farther and farther down we went. The wood that made up the manway was more sturdy the farther down, to the elements not being able to reach it. But that's not to say it was safe. This whole thing could come down at any second for no other reason than we spoke too loud, or one of us sneezed or something. Damn near anything could cause a collapse. We passed another level, but we decided to just press on. Down, down, down.

Another level. We found a newspaper sitting on a crate. Date said 1934. The mind could still have been active then, but it was a good sign to find these less disturbed, the farther down we went. Another level, and the ladder is gone. Damn, there's still more down there, Jim said in a harsh whisper, way more than 900 feet. Maybe we can find a shoot and squeeze through it, I suggested. This was not only risky, but also terrifying. Shoots were often barely just big enough for a single person, and there isn't always a way to tell

if the bottom of the chute is clear, or if the miners just left a bunch of shit in it. Plus, we didn't even know if we'd find a shoot. There would only be one if there was a back added to this place. We got off on that level and looked around. Mine carts, pickaxes, crates that still had dynamite. This place looks like it hadn't been touched since they closed it down. It didn't take long before we found shoots that led into the darkness. below. I'll go grab a crate to give us a leg up. I said, Yeah, well, stay away from that one that still has done, might.

You know that old shit'll go up if you just look at it wrong. Jim said. Yeah, I'm the one that told you that. Jim laughed as I went in search of a crate. When I got back, he was holding something. A necklace, like costume jewelry. What the hell is that? I asked.

I found it hung up on one of those shoots, he said, holding it up to his headlamp. Looks like something a child would wear. He looked closer at it, and then his eyes got wide. He took his backpack off and started rummaging around for something. He pulled out a Polaroid picture and studied it. What? I asked, growing impatient. One of those kids from the Misson poster.

He said as he held up the photo to my face. That girl there. She's wearing this necklace. My throat squeezed, no doubt to keep my heart from jumping out of it. You think she's down there? Maybe. I don't know. Jim's voice became panicked. Well, there's no way she made it down here by yourself.

Some frickin psychopath had to have drug her down here and tossed her. her down the chute. Shit. It was becoming harder to keep my voice down. What do we do? Reported? Jim said, his eyes darting wildly around the man-made cavern. They'll know we were down here in trespass, and then. I mean, that necklace could have belonged to anyone. It's not like we found her body. I just stood there eyeing the shoot. Oh, no. No, no, no, he said, shaking. his head. I am not going down there knowing there's a pretty good chance I'm going to find a little girl's body. We could give her family closure, I suggested. Jim shifted his weight

to one foot and put his hand on his hip, still holding the necklace. He looked down at the photo in his other hand and let out a big sigh. Oh, shit. Stepping up onto the old crate, I peered into the chute. The darkness quickly consumed the light from both my handheld flashlight and headlamp, as if it were a black hole. The longer I looked, the more it felt like it was sucking me in. The darkness seemed to creep up the sides of the chute. It let me know that it wasn't going to let me escape if it got a hold of me. Shaken.

I stepped back down. There's no air moving through here, I said, taking more than a few steps back from the shoot. That means there's probably not a way out down there. What if we tied a rope around the mouth of a shoe so we can climb back out? Jim suggested. I nodded. That was the only way I'd agree to this after staring down its throat.

After securing the rope, we looked at each other as if to say after you. But after seeing Jim's paling face, I decided that I would go first. I strapped myself in, took my backpack off for Jim to slide down. after me. And I raised my legs into the chute. They disappeared into the black. I'll be in right after you, Jim said. His face hadn't regained any color, and now started to look like he even aged in the short time that I took to strap myself in. I let my body slide down a few more feet, as I felt the walls of the chute wrap around me. My shoulders barely made it inside, and there was no room to raise my head to look down where I was going. This is insane, I thought, but I also asked

myself what we were so afraid of. We'd done this more than a few times. This wouldn't even be the first shoot we'd slid down. I suppose seeing a dead body wasn't exactly something that either of us were eager to do, but I couldn't just leave her down here with her parents left forever wondering what happened. Plus, with a body, they can do forensics, and maybe even catch the guy that did this. Still, though, I was afraid. If not for the slope of the shoot, I would have been unable to move. It was irrational. There was no logic behind it. I've been in some sketchy minds. I've dropped my only flashlight hundreds of feet into pitch black, and I've narrowly avoided a cave-in. But I was afraid. My breathing became shaky, and my heart

Pounded so hard that it was thumping on the walls of the chute. I slid deeper. I felt that it was never going to end. Although the temperature was now a constant 54 degrees, I was sweating profusely. I may have even begun to cry a little. I'd been sliding down for so long that I just wanted it to end. Let me fall out onto a dead little girl. I don't care.

Just make it stop. And then it did. Although it was the goal to reach the bottom, and search for anything that may either confirm our suspicions or refute them as overactive imagination, I found myself unwilling to examine my surroundings for fear of what the oppressive dark had been hiding down here, to finally be illuminated by a single weak headlamp. I opened my eyes. There was nothing here.

There's no little body, no pile of corpses, no little. blood, bones, or gore. Well, that's it then, I thought. I'll just climb up so we can go home. But was it not our intention to come down here anyway? Wasn't it the plan to find a shoot to continue our exploration into the very deepest parts of this mine? It wasn't until that necklace that this mine seemed to change, as if that necklace had awakened the mine, or more accurately, awaken the darkness. All around me, the darkness seemed to be sentient, fingers of the black void reaching in from the edges of my headlamp beam, closing in, getting darker. My headlamp battery was running out. I turned back to the chute to yell for Jim to slide my backpack down.

It had extra batteries and my handheld flashlight. I peered into the shoot and yelled, but nothing. I waited to see if I could catch a glimpse of a tiny pinpoint of light to indicate that Jim was looking down at me. But there was nothing. Just black. I called out again and again. No response. At some point, I felt as though I weren't calling Jim anymore, but rather asking the dark, pleading with it. Just when I thought the blood in my body would surely begin to dry up, I heard something coming down the shoot,

The sound of nylon rubbing against smooth wood increased in pitch as it gained speed through the long tunnel before flying into my open arms. I opened the backpack to find that it only contained a Polaroid camera and some extra climbing clips among a few other things. This was Jim's pack. Mine had extra batteries and Jim's have the rope, which was being used as my safety line back. Another sliding noise. The rope began gathering at my feet. That was it. There's no way back up the chute.

It was far too narrow and steep to climb. It was going to be difficult even with the rope. But now, using the chute was impossible. I yelled again for Jim, screamed. Nothing. What was happening? Had Jim planned this all along? Had he planned on getting me somewhere I couldn't escape and just leaving me

to die? All that bullshit about the necklace. I ate it up and then all too willingly allowed myself to go first. What was his motivation? Why would he do this? If I ever make it out of this place, I'm going to strangle him, strangle him and toss him down this chute. See how he likes it. No, no. I'd lost myself in that moment. For the moment, I'd forgotten who Jim even was, other than a target for my anger. Something must have happened to Jim. Never in a million years would he do something like this to me. Would he? I turned off my headlamp to conserve what little battery it had left. The darkness slammed shut on me. At that moment, I was ensnared by it, as if the darkness was so powerful that I could actually feel it on my skin. I sat there in absolute black,

trying to gather my thoughts. I was at a complete loss of what to do. There was no ladder that connected this level to the manway of the upper levels, and there was no way up this chute. I had about three days left, I figured. In three days I would die of dehydration. I stood up and began walking, slowly, hand feeling along the cold stone wall, easing my foot out, step by agonizing step. The absolute darkness made the space seem both smaller, more enclosed, but also more vast. I felt as if I reached my hand out, I wouldn't be able to feel the other side of the tunnel. Sometimes I could, but other times it was just cold and empty darkness. It was no use. The tunnels and walls just seemed to go on forever, and my heart raced with every unsure step that I took. The ground was

becoming less even, and debris seemed to have become more prevalent, easing my foot more carefully. I traced out a ledge in front of me. I kicked some rocks in. It seemed to only be a few feet deep. And then the smell hit me. It was a familiar smell, but one that I've never come across this deep in a mine. Like old deaf, stale, mummified carcasses long dead and dried up. isolated from any natural means of returning its flesh to the earth.

And it was coming from beyond the ledge before me. My knees began to give, as if my body was physically trying to keep me from going forward. I felt dizzy, intoxicated by the disorienting darkness made worse by that fetid stench. I had to turn my headlamp on, if only for a few seconds, I had to see the disorienting darkness, made worse by that fetid stench. I had to turn my headlamp on, if only for a few seconds. I had to see what that smell was. I clicked it on. The dying light was so dim, it seemed as though I was looking through smoke, but I could

see them. Bodies. Human bodies dismembered in various ways and strewn across the pit. Skull fragments littered the tunnel from where I came. dead leaves on a forest floor. Dried gray skin stretched across silently shrieking skulls, each having an expression of absolute terror. I tried to back away, but my mind was breaking. Messages were getting mixed up. My body didn't know whether to run or stay put because I knew there was nowhere to go. I fell on my ass and I continued to scoot away from the pit, sliding unbroken skeletons as I did.

I backed myself up against a wall and I put my face into my hands. My sobs turned into screams and then into wretched groans, echoing off the walls of this hell. I pulled myself to my feet and turned away from the pit to find a different route. I kept my headlamp on. I couldn't chance not being able to see and I'd be able to move faster, but it did little to help my disorientation. Nothing looked the same upon a second glance. Parts of the stone walls seemed to move in the beam of my dim light. There were also artifacts here that I would have been thrilled about had the circumstances been different. Tools, tables, carts. Carts. If there are

carts, there must have been rails leading back to the main shaft. The rails seem to be gone now, probably pulled up when they closed the mine, but if I look closely at the ground, I can see the grooves where they once were. I began to follow. My headlamp seemed to dim with every step I took as I traced along the grooves. Eventually I had to feel them with my foot. I'd silently agreed with myself that if I couldn't make it up or down from the main shaft, I'd just jump.

I continued to slide one foot along and step with the other, until I'd suddenly. I noticed that my step had become louder. I stopped, and there was another step behind me. I slid and stepped, slid and stepped, then stopped. Another step fell behind me after I'd stopped. Someone's in here with me, and they're following me. I froze. The once dead silence of the mine was now filled with the pushing and thumping of blood and heartbeats, every creak of my joints echoed off the walls now that my safety depended on my hearing rather than my sight. Try as I might to steady my shuddering breathing. There was nothing I could do to dampen the sound of my nearly being alive. My headlamp had dimmed to the brightness of a lit cigarette, but instinct overrode logic

and turned to face the direction that the sound of a footfall had come from. As you'd expect. I saw nothing. At first. After several minutes, I took one more step. And then there was no doubt. Someone or something had stepped on a skull fragment several feet behind me, causing a snap to ring out. It might as well have been a gunshot. It seemed just as loud. My head snapped again to look behind me, and that's when I saw two dim orange lights, reflections, like those of an alligator's eyes peering out from a black swamp or a tiger's, as it lie in ambush while the rest of its body remain invisible, perfectly camouflaged in the grasslands and darkness of a Savannah night. Those two orange hints of eyes were all I could see,

only reflecting back the same magnitude of light that my dying headlamp could provide. They were still, motionless, soulless, and unblinking, surrounded in pitch black. The dark was alive, and it was watching me, following me. For a moment, my propensity for logic and reasoning offered an interpretation of the events transpiring. Perhaps Jim had found another way down, and he was panicked as well, seeing my own dim orange glow. I should call out to him, I thought. Jim, I whispered. Is that you?

Instantly shocked by my own words. Their spontaneity frightened me in the absence of any other sound. How could I have just done that, I thought, despite all the reasoning I'd done prior. I felt that I hadn't thought this through. And then the darkness responded, Jim, Jim, is that you, Jim? Is that you? Jim, is that you?

The voice seemed to be wholly unnatural, and I almost lost it for a second. I was several hundred feet below the earth's surface, in pitch blackness, surrounded by hundreds of dismembered bodies. in an enclosed space shared with something terrifying. And nobody even knew I was down here. I would die if I didn't act soon. Jim. Jim, is that you, Jim?

The voice continued. I ran. No longer concerned with the direction of my tracks. I resolved or running anywhere walls would allow. Arms stretched out in front of me. I ran blind. with footsteps following behind me. The footsteps now sounded like a four-legged creature, growing closer, closing in.

This was it, I thought. Glancing back yielded nothing, not even the orange reflections. My headlamp had completely died, and I would be soon to follow. I succumbed to the hopelessness. There was nothing I could do. There was nowhere I could turn. and bruised from running into walls, dazed from brain impacts from overhead beams, sick from the smell and unable to see.

I was only prolonging my own demise and torturing myself with a constant rise and fall of hope. I stopped running, and so did the other footsteps. Out of breath and dizzy. I struggled to understand what was happening. The termination of pursuit was completely unexpected. And then surprised by my own resourcefulness, I remembered I was in possession of Jim's camera. The camera had a flash on it. I could see once and for all my surroundings, options for escape, and most importantly,

the identity of my pursuer. Slowly, I pulled one arm through the strap of Jim's backpack and quietly swung it out in front of me. Following the length of the zipper, I found the tab. and began to open it. There was a quick scatter of debris from black as if the darkness flinched at the sound of the zipper. I froze, but no sooner had the noise started. It stopped. I reached my hand in and grabbed the camera, looped its strap around my neck, and returned the backpack, hands shaking and a trembling finger on the button. I raised the camera to my chest, aimed it into the void, and a flashing blind light went throughout the tunnel.

In an instant, everything was bright white, and the image appeared. Sharp shadows cast from jagged protrusions in the walls, reaching toward the center of the tunnel for about 20 feet before it curved out of sight. It stood on all fours. Its body was human in appearance, but its limbs were anything but. Its hind legs stood on a tall heel, much like most four-legged ground-dwelling mammals, and its arms were long, like that of a bat wing, but without the membranous skin that enabled flight. Both feet and hands had long, bony toes and fingers.

And its face. Oh, God, its face. A thin neck connected to an abnormally large chin. High cheekbones held its two glowing eyes like pedestals. It shrieked in the preceding darkness of the flash, and I heard it retreat back into the depth of the tunnel. During the flash, I could see that just to the right of where the creature had stood, there was a passage that led to a dark area with a narrow wooden platform.

That must be the man-way for the main shaft, I thought. I took advantage of the moment the creature had offered me. I booked it to the platform. I took the picture out of the camera's ejection slot and shoved it in my back pocket, then snapped another picture. It turned out it was the main shaft, but there were no ladders leading up. They seemed to all have been broken away. Platforms too. I turned my attention downward and I could see down about 25 feet. There was a tunnel that was glowing with the faint light of the setting sun. And at it? There was a tunnel. There was a back entrance after all. I took another picture. In the flash, I could see that there was

nothing below the platform I was standing on. There was no way down but to jump. So I did. Landing on my side, arms wrapped around my head. I immediately felt immense pain throughout my body. My ribs on the side that I landed on felt like they'd broken and shifted inward, making breathing difficult. My right leg was limp at the shape. shin, and my right forearm had a jagged protrusion that I suspected to be bone. I pulled myself to stand on one foot and began to hop toward the illuminated tunnel, bracing myself on the wall as I went. As I entered the tunnel, the faint evening light was almost blinding, but nonetheless, I could finally see outside. The desert air cradled my face, like warm, welcoming hands.

cooling the streaks of tears and sweat. I came upon a dead and withered mesquite tree and broke a branch off to use as a crutch. Walking still proved difficult for my inability to brace myself using my broken arm. The protrusion was indeed bone. I began walking, best that I could up the hill. From this angle, it looked totally unrecognizable as the point that Jim and I began our journey. After about two and a half hours of walking, night had fallen and I could barely make out what appeared to be a black scaffolding, like voids and the stars behind the top of the hill. It must be the headframe, I thought. Almost home. I continued hopping, sliding, and tripping up the hill. Every once in a while I'd hear pebbles falling from the incline. A rabbit would occasionally

jump out from behind a bush. Any other time, this environment, the plants, animals, the gentle breeze, the beautiful sky, it would have given me a feeling of peace and tranquility. But I was losing my nerve. I couldn't shake the sense that I was still being followed. Bright as the cosmic specks of light were. They did little to allow me the ability to make out what might have been that creature's white body against the sand behind me. Things moved all around me, and noises never seemed to have a source. I caught glimpses of movement out of the margins of my vision, but when I looked, nothing there. I made it up the last ledge of the hill that hid the mine in its belly.

I made it. I was nearly crawling at that point. Jim's Bronco seemed to remain the same distance, no matter how much ground I covered. I was slowly passing the headframe when I was blinded by light and caught off guard by a loud crunch of gravel and the gentle rumble of a truck engine. I put my hand up to shield my eyes, and then collapsed. Hey there, y'all right? A man's voice said as he approached me. He was silhouetted in front of his headlights. I couldn't answer. I was too weak and thirsty. What the hell you doing on my property? The man asked, before taking a closer look to see that I was wearing a climbing harness and a headlamp. You was in the mind, wasn't you?

I nodded. I, I, I, you must be crazy jumping off into there by yourself at night. No, no, not alone. Jim, there's someone else in there? He asked. I nodded again. But, but there's something else. There's something in there. I reached into my back pocket and pulled out the picture. The man reached down, took the picture, and studied it for a moment. Does anyone know you're out here? I looked at him to see if I could make out any expression that would indicate what he intended by the question.

I couldn't. He put the picture in his pocket and knelt down in front of me. That thing's got a name. He looked and nodded at the valley I'd just trekked from. It's sliver. No sooner had he said that. I felt my whole body being jerked away as if I'd been tied by the ankles to a bowl running full break.

The beams of the truck's headlights got smaller, and the man stood up and watched as I was drug away, kicking, flailing, and screaming. The metal bars of the headframe flew past my head, reaching for them to no avail. And then I was in the shaft, violently grasping the air and the earth and desperately shrieking, Watching as the window to the sky got farther and farther away. Darker and darker. Until finally, it went black.