MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories - The Final Descent

Episode Date: January 26, 2023

Today’s podcast will feature 3 “underwater diving” horror stories. The audio from all three of these stories has been pulled from our main YouTube channel and has been remastered for today's episode.Story names, previews & links to original YouTube videos:#3 -- "The Descent" -- A man explores the most deadly dive site in the world (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUkAkMJ9c18)#2 -- "Drown or Glory" -- 10 people go looking for a secret tunnel inside a cave (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7cwHK5gVR8)#1 -- "10 Years Later" -- A daring rescue mission goes sideways (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VtvoYQzmuk)For 100s more stories like these, check out our main YouTube channel just called "MrBallen" -- https://www.youtube.com/c/MrBallenIf you want to reach out to me, contact me on Instagram, Twitter or any other major social media platform, my username on all of them is @mrballenSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey Prime members, you can binge eight new episodes of the Mr. Ballin podcast one month early and all episodes ad-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Today's podcast will feature three underwater diving horror stories. The audio from all three of these stories has been pulled from our main YouTube channel and has been remastered for today's episode. The links to the original YouTube videos are in the description. The first story you'll hear is called The Descent, and it's about a man who explored the deadliest diving site

in the world. The second story you'll hear is called Drown or Glory, and it's about 10 people who went looking for a secret tunnel inside of a cave. And the third and final story you'll hear is called 10 Years Later, and it's about a daring rescue mission that went totally sideways. But before we get into today's stories, if you're a fan of the strange, dark, and mysterious Delivered in Story format, then you've come to the right podcast because that's all we do, and we upload twice a week, once on Monday and once on Thursday. So if that's of interest to you, please line the floor of the Amazon Music Follow Button's bedroom with Lego pieces, then set off their fire alarm.

Okay, let's get into our first story called The Descent. Hello, I'm Emily and I'm one of the hosts of Terribly Famous, the show that takes you inside the lives of our biggest celebrities. And they don't get much bigger than the man who made badminton sexy. OK, maybe that's a stretch, but if I say pop star and shuttlecocks, you know who I'm talking about. No? Short shorts? Free cocktails? Careless whispers? OK, last one. It's not Andrew Ridgely. Yep, that's right. It's Stone Cold icon George Michael. From teen pop sensation to one of the biggest solo artists on the planet,

join us for our new series, George Michael's Fight for Freedom. From the outside, it looks like he has it all. But behind the trademark dark sunglasses is a man in turmoil. George is trapped in a lie of his own making, with a secret he feels would ruin him if the truth ever came out. Follow Terribly Famous wherever you listen to your podcasts, or listen early and ad-free on Wondery Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wondery app. Hello, I am Alice Levine, and I am one of the hosts of Wondery's podcast,

British Scandal. On our latest series, The Race to Ruin, we tell the story of a British man who took part in the first ever round-the-world sailing race. Good on him, I hear you say. But there is a problem, as there always is in this show. The man in question hadn't actually sailed before. Oh, and his boat wasn't seaworthy. Oh, and also, tiny little detail, almost didn't mention it. He bet his family home on making it to the finish line. What ensued was one of the most complex cheating plots in British sporting history. To find out the full story, follow British Scandal wherever you listen to podcasts, or listen early and ad-free on Wondery Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wondery app. On April 28th, 2000, a 24-year-old named Yuri Lipsky was standing in front of a cafe in Dahab, Egypt, overlooking the Red Sea. He had traveled all the way to the Sinai Peninsula from Moscow in order to film himself swimming through the arch.

But now it was looking like that probably wasn't going to happen. The arch is an 85-foot-long underwater tunnel that connects a massive sinkhole right on Dahab's shoreline called the Blue Hole to the Red Sea. To get to the arch, you need to enter the Blue Hole directly and descend straight down 181 feet, where you'll reach the top of the tunnel on the northeast side. But there's a catch. If on your descent you happen to miss the ceiling of this arch, which apparently it's pretty easy to do, you run the risk of going too deep. Now going too deep does not mean you're going to miss the

tunnel altogether. The arch actually starts at 181 feet but then goes all the way down to 393 feet. So it's a huge, huge opening. The risk of going too deep has to do with how your body responds to the type of gas you're breathing. For those who are unfamiliar with diving, generally speaking, you have two types of dives. There's recreational diving, where you breathe the same air that you breathe on the surface. They literally jam air directly into scuba bottles. You breathe that and you go down to 130 feet. That's the recommended bottom depth that you would go down breathing regular air. And then there is technical diving where you breathe a special mixture of gases. Typically it's going to be a mixture of helium, nitrogen, and oxygen that allow you to go below 130 feet. This type of diving is exponentially more dangerous and requires

all sorts of additional training. Because the minimum depth you would need to go to in order to access the arch is 181 feet, that puts you well in the technical diving range, which means you should be diving mixed gas and have special training and equipment. But year after year, people try to dive down to the arch and go through it on regular air. And year after year, people die doing it. When your body absorbs too much nitrogen, you can get something called nitrogen narcosis, which is a lot like being drunk. And in extreme cases, divers who get this have been known to remove their mouthpiece and inhale water, believing they are actually on the surface.

Below 130 feet, your body absorbs nitrogen much faster, and regular air is a whopping 78% nitrogen. So the risk of getting nitrogen narcosis is exponentially higher if you're breathing regular air below 130 feet. Also, oxygen can become toxic the deeper you go in the water column. It can lead to blackouts and convulsions that if you don't have someone there to literally physically move you up in the water column, you won't recover from it and you'll die. Regular air contains 21% oxygen, which is a lot of oxygen. So if you're diving regular air below 130 feet, you are at an increased risk of developing O2 toxicity. Now, to be clear, it is possible on regular air to dive down to 181 feet and make it through the arch and come out the other side and be just fine. But you're realistically at 181 feet pushing the

absolute boundary of what you can get away with on regular air. Below 200 feet, you're probably dead. So if you're attempting to swim through the arch on regular air. Below 200 feet you're probably dead. So if you're attempting to swim through the arch on regular air you need to be paying very close attention to your depth as you descend so that you don't miss the arch and accidentally drift down below 181 feet to the very deadly 200 feet and beyond. So earlier in the day Yuri had gone down to the edge of the blue hole and he had found one of the diving instructors that taught inside the Blue Hole. His name was Tarek Omar, and he asked him if he'd be willing to take him down to the arch to help him film himself going through the arch. And Tarek said, yes, but I need to train you for two weeks before you're going to be considered qualified to do that.

And you need a special setup with a special gas mixture to do this dive. to do that and you need a special setup with a special gas mixture to do this dive and yuri was like well i'm leaving in two days to head back to moscow so i need to do this dive now is there any way you can do it today or tomorrow even and tarik was like no that's not how this works and tarik understood this more than anybody else because in addition to teaching diving at the blue hole tarik's job was to dive down to the bottom and retrieve the dead bodies of inexperienced or overconfident divers that attempted the archway and didn't make it.

Although there is not an official body count of how many people have perished inside of the Blue Hole, locals believe it's as high as 200 people just in the last decade. After Tarek was unwilling to take him without properly training him and outfitting him with the right equipment, Yuri thanked him and went on to a couple different other diving instructors with the same request. Will you take me in the next couple of days? And they all said, no, we need to train you and you need special equipment. And so finally, after no

one was willing to do this, Yuri just left. Later that day, owners of cafes that overlooked the Blue Hole remember seeing a young man who was by himself walk to the edge of the Blue Hole. He puts on all of his scuba gear. He puts on a helmet and then straps a big camera to the top and ratchets it down. And then after he's got all his stuff on, he jumps into the Blue Hole and he disappears. That man was Yuri. A few days later, Yuri's family back home in Moscow did not see him get off the flight he was supposed to be on, and they reported him missing. Tarek Omar was contacted to go down into the blue hole and see if Yuri was down there. Tarek hopped in the blue hole, he went to the bottom, and sure enough, lying face down at the bottom was Yuri.

When they brought Yuri to the surface, they realized his camera had been running the whole time, and he had actually filmed his final moments. Yuri's final video exists online, so you can watch it for yourself, but here is a description of what happens. After situating his camera on his head just the way he wanted it, he hit record, and then he jumped into the water. It was determined later on that Yuri was breathing regular air out of his tanks. The camera submerges under the water, and then Yuri begins to sink very quickly into the blue hole. But his breathing seems normal, and he's not thrashing around, so it seems like it's a controlled descent. But at some point, you hear Yuri trying to activate his buoyancy compensator. Basically, it's this life jacket, to describe it simply, that sits on your gear that you have a demand valve

where you can inflate and deflate the air into it to neutralize your buoyancy. Or in an emergency situation, you can fully inflate it and stop yourself from sinking. In fact, you'll rise to the surface. But he's trying to activate his buoyancy compensator to slow down his descent, and the air is escaping his compensator. There's a leak. He can't slow down his descent. Now, Yuri was wearing a weight belt, which is very common in diving. In fact, I don't really know of all that many dives that you wouldn't use a weight belt. And any diver knows that there is a quick release function on your weight belt. Specifically, if you're in an uncontrolled descent or if you're in an emergency situation and need to get to the surface, you can jettison your weight belt and go to the surface.

But Yuri was panicking and he was fixated on his buoyancy compensator that he was desperately trying to activate and it was failing. And so he's not going for his weight belt. And then he rockets past the entrance to the arch. So he goes below 181 feet. He goes below 200 feet and he goes all the way to the bottom where he hits the bottom at 392 feet. And then he begins to slide because the bottom of the blue hole was actually at an angle and that archway went all the way to the bottom of the hole. And if you slipped out of the blue hole, it was a sheer drop off for thousands of feet. And you see on camera, Yuri rolls over and he's desperately clawing into the mud to stop himself from sliding out of the blue hole to definite death. Then he's trying to get himself to stop, and finally he anchors himself in the dirt.

And it's calm for a second, and he's kind of looking around. It's very clear he's confused, and then it goes still. And it's believed at this point he either removed his mouthpiece because of nitrogen narcosis, and he pulled it out and inhaled water, or he was dealing with O2 toxicity, and he blacked out and the mouthpiece came out. But either way, he drowned. I'm Peter Frankopan. And I'm Afua Hirsch.

And we're here to tell you about our new season of Legacy, covering the iconic, troubled musical genius that was Nina Simone. Full disclosure, this is a big one for me. Nina Simone, one of my favourite artists of all time, somebody who's had a huge impact on me, who I think objectively stands apart for the level of her talent, the audacity of her message. If I was a first year at university, the first time I sat down and really listened to her and engaged with her message, it totally floored me. And the truth and pain and messiness of her struggle, that's all captured in unforgettable music that has stood the test of time.

Think that's fair, Peter? I mean, the way in which her music comes across is so powerful, no matter what song it is. So join us on Legacy for Nina Simone. That's right. All your favorite Mr. Ballin episodes can be heard on Amazon Music ad-free, and you'll always be the first one to catch our new episodes. But that's not all. You get access to other amazing shows like Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries, Morbid, all things true crime and offers the most ad-free top podcasts, so we definitely have something for you. And it's already included in your Prime membership. To listen now, all you need to do is go to amazon.com slash ballin. That's amazon.com slash ballin, or download the free Amazon Music app.

It's just that easy. download the free Amazon Music app. It's just that easy. Our next story is called Drown or Glory. There is a remote cliff face in northern England that rarely gets tourists. If you were standing in front of it, you would see this little stream that went into a break in the limestone. It's this little tiny hole, and that stream is called the Mossdale Beck. If you crouched down and walked through that hole, you would be entering the Mossdale Caverns, which since 1967 have been permanently sealed off to cavers. Once inside the Mossdale Caverns entranceway, you could look down and see that little stream, the Mossdale Beck, would be going between your legs and then right

in front of you it would split in two distinct directions down respective tunnels. To the right, the water flows down seven miles of accessible passageway, however most of it is incredibly tight and it's prone to flooding. As a result, fewer people have seen the far reaches of the right side of Mossdale Cavern than have stepped on the moon. To the left, the water goes through these impenetrable rocks that no one has gotten past. In fact, no one knows what's beyond these rocks. However, scientists have determined the water that goes left at the entranceway will re-emerge 18 days later, five miles away, 900 feet lower in a pool called the Black Keld. The massive tunnel system that we know exists

but has yet to be explored that connects the entranceway to Black Keld is referred to as the Missing Link. You would think cavers from all over the world would be clamoring to get inside that accessible side, the right side of Mossdale Caverns, and try to find a secret access point back to the missing link to be the first person to discover that, to stake your claim and say, you know, that was me. But in fact, since the Mossdale Caverns was

discovered in 1941 until 1967, almost no one went in Mossdale Caverns. Endless, tight, water-filled crawls with names like Drown or Glory made Mossdale Caverns feel like too big of a risk to be worth it. But in 1967, ten extremely fit, extremely experienced cavers said, you know what, we are going in Mossdale Cavern and we are going to find that entrance to the missing link. So on June 24th, 1967, these 10 cavers entered Mossdale Caverns. They went right into the accessible seven miles of passageway and they began their descent. And it wasn't that long until two of the 10 cavers, the two least experienced of

the group, said, you know what? I don't want to do this anymore. I've got a bad feeling about this, but we don't know the way out. And so they needed chaperones to leave. And so two other cavers from the group had to go with them. So four cavers, they leave Mossdale Caverns. The other six are going to continue on. So when the four got back to the surface, it was about 5 p.m. They had been in the cavern for several hours at this point. And when they went in initially, the weather was great. It was beautiful. It was clear. Now they're coming out again and it had started to rain. Not significantly. It was more like a drizzle, but they were a little bit concerned because they knew the

other six were planning to be in the cavern until after midnight. So they were just hopeful that the rain did not get any worse. But just a couple of hours later, the skies opened up and it rained like it hadn't rained in years. Just torrential downpour and the four were really concerned about the other six. So they went back to the entrance hoping that maybe you know the other six would have heard the rain although it's very unlikely considering how deep they were going to be. But they were hoping that maybe they'd be coming out again and they would

see them and get them back to safety. But when they arrived there, not only were the six not out of the cave, but the actual entrance to the cave was completely submerged in water. Earlier that day, when the four cavers turned around and left, the other six cavers, they continued on, and they had made it about two miles deep into these caves. They had passed the fabled Drown or Glory Swim.

They had survived the Knee Wrecker Passage, and they had bit their tongue as they squeezed through the famously painful Umaguli Tunnel. Now located hours away from the only way out, so they are way into this cave, they were nearing the end of this distant section of the cave that they believed on the other end they would find this hidden entrance into the missing lake. All they had to do was pass through the far marathon section, which is a 900-foot tunnel that is only 10 inches high, 2 feet wide, and you have to wriggle through on your stomach with your face pressed against a stream that runs through it. And it takes a very long time to get through it.

It's incredibly claustrophobia-inducing. It's considered one of the most stressful things you can do in caving. But considering how experienced these cavers were and the fact that they had come down there specifically to get to this far point in the cave, you got to figure that their spirits were high. They were probably joking with each other as they're doing this awful thing. And then they made it about three quarters of the way through this tunnel when someone must have noticed the distant rumbling sound and said, hey, what is that? And as they sat there listening, trying to discern what the sound was, it must have dawned on them that their worst nightmare was about to come true. That was the sound of surging water. This tunnel is about to flood. They began crawling faster and faster down

the marathon tunnel. Not only was it very difficult to move quickly inside of this very tight tunnel, but they also knew there was nowhere to go. They're two miles underground. They must have felt like the world of sunshine and fresh air was suddenly an eternity away. The oldest of the group was 26. The rest of them were all in their teens. United now by fear, the water came rushing in as they're all pinned inside of the farm marathon tunnel and their face is already up against the river and now this river is surging with water and so they're all desperately trying to crawl through this flooding tunnel and the leader of the group the guy literally in the front john ogden who was 26 he managed to get all the way through the far marathon tunnel to the space where they anticipated finding that secret entrance into the missing link. That wasn't there, but he found above him, there was a small

fissure in the rocks. There was an air pocket. And he managed to get his head up into the space, right as the water in the Far Marathon cave completely submerged. So any of the cavers in there, they drowned inside of the Far Marathon. The bubble that he was in was a little bit bigger. And so some of the cavers managed to get in there and they tried to clamber into this air pocket as well but ultimately there was only enough room for one person and John was the only one up there and so as the water levels filled the room he was in up to his neck, everyone below John drowned. Now we don't know if John literally kept other people from getting into this air pocket with him. All we know is it could only hold one person, and ultimately John was the one who was left inside of this crevice. But this air

pocket was really just delaying the inevitable, because there wasn't very much air inside of it, and John's two miles below the surface. There is no way anyone is going to get to him in time. And so he ended up dying a couple days later, and when they found him, he was still in the air pocket trying to get one last breath. What I've not covered in this story that i would encourage you all to check out is there was this incredible effort to try to save these cavers before anyone knew they were deceased there was this hope that maybe they found an air pocket and they were still alive and so they basically created this artificial dam that was very precarious the water could at any moment spill

over and it provided just enough drainage inside of this cavern for some of the best cavers in the world to go into the cavern to look for them. And so they went into this cavern knowing at any minute that makeshift dam on the surface could break and they will 100% drown in here. No one's coming to get them. They had to crawl through the far marathon tunnel all the way down at the bottom to get to the lost cavers. And ultimately, when they discovered they were all deceased, it would have been impossible to remove their bodies. And so the decision was made to leave these six cavers where they died and seal off the cave permanently. So in 1967, they sealed it off and they now treat Mossdale Caverns like a gravesite, and no one goes in it.

The next and final story of today's episode is called 10 Years Later. For any diver who can stomach the risks, Bushman's Hole is a world-class diving spot. It's located on a privately owned game farm in South Africa. In the middle of the farm's 11,000 acres sits this massive crater in the ground that from rim to rim is hundreds of feet wide. If you hike down the crater to the middle, there's this little tiny basin of water that almost looks like an oversized puddle. This is the entrance to Bushman's Hole. Once you step into this little puddle and push your way through the very claustrophobia-inducing entrance, you open up into the biggest freshwater cave in the world that goes down to nearly 900 feet. For the people that have been in there, they say it's unbelievable and it's like spacewalking. For young South African Dion Dreyer, the pull to go to

Bushman and explore it was irresistible. Dion had always been a bit of an adrenaline junkie. By the time he was 17, he was racing cars and building motorcycles. And by the time he was 20, he had picked up a new activity, cave diving. Dion had logged about 200 dives before he was invited by a diving group to go to Bushman's Hole and explore it on Christmas break 1994. They were planning a descent to 492 feet, so about the halfway point of the cave, and they needed one more diver, and so Dion was thrilled to go. The dive was going great, but on the way up, as they were making their ascent, the diver ahead of Dion was thrilled to go. The dive was going great but on the way up as they were making their ascent the diver ahead of Dion looked back at him and Dion seemed fine. He gave the hand

signal that everything was going great. He had his flashlight out and then about 30 feet higher in the water that same diver turned around to check on Dion and Dion wasn't there anymore and in fact this guy saw his flashlight that was still attached to him basically wavering as it sunk farther and farther down Bushman's Hole. This diver immediately stops the group above him and he turns around and starts swimming as fast as he can down to try to get to Dion. But Dion was sinking so, so quickly that this diver realized that it's a suicide mission if I try to go down there. I will either pass out or run out of air. And so deeply saddened, this group of divers had to turn around and leave Dion at the bottom of Bushman's Hole.

Although the other divers didn't know for sure, they told Dion's parents that most likely he had suffered from a deep water blackout and then had drowned. When authorities were notified about what happened to Dion, they sent a robot down to the bottom of Bushman's Hole to just locate his body before they send a person down there. But they never could find his body. They could only ever find his helmet. Dion's parents are devastated. They're never going to see their son again. And since they don't have a body to bury, they decide to go down to Bushman's Hole and put a plaque up next to the entrance to commemorate their son. up next to the entrance to commemorate their son. Ten years later, Dave Shaw, who was a 50-year-old extremely audacious cave diver, was passing the 800-foot mark inside of Bushman's Hole, becoming the third person ever to reach this depth. Shaw touched down on the sloping bottom

of the cave. He detached from the cave reel, took out his flashlight, and began swimming around the bottom. As he was scanning around, he looked about 50 feet to his left, and he saw something he immediately recognized. It was a human body. They were on their back with their arms stretched out towards the surface, and when Shaw went over to them, he immediately recognized that this is Dion Dreyer. Ever since Dion died inside a bushman and had never been recovered, any diver that went in there was keeping their eye out in case they saw him. Shaw examines Dion to see if he's going to be able to be pulled to the surface, if he's solid enough to be pulled to the surface, and he can tell that his hands have skeletonized as well as his skull, although his mask is still placed directly on his skull. But

his wetsuit and his tanks had kind of kept the rest of his body pretty tight, which gave him some mass, which meant he'd be able to move him. But as soon as Shaw tried to move him, he couldn't get him to budge because his tanks were caught on something. And so Shaw stayed there for a minute trying to get him free, but he couldn't do it. And that's when Shaw started to think, okay, this is getting irresponsible. I'm going to die down here too if I don't start making my ascent soon. So he ended up tying a line to Dion's body so he could be located again. And then Shaw began the very slow ascent back to the surface. On the way back up,

Shaw felt an extreme sense of connection with Dion. He really felt bad for this kid and all he wanted to do was get him back on land to give back to his family, to give them some closure. And so when he got on the surface, he immediately contacted authorities and said, I'm gonna go back down and I'm gonna get him. And Shaw also called Dion's parents and told them,

I am gonna retrieve your son. And his parents were apparently overjoyed. They couldn't believe they were gonna get to see their son again. After lots and lots of planning, Shaw's recovery of Dion was scheduled for January 8th, 2005. The dive was gonna take 12 hours and it wasn't just gonna be Dave doing the retrieval.

It was going to be like a relay race. Dave would be the first one down and a couple minutes after he entered the water, another diver would go in who would stop about 100 feet above Dave and then a third diver would go in and stop 100 feet above the second diver and so on and so forth.

Dave would put the body bag over Dion and then carry his body up to the first guy who would turn around, bring the body up to the next guy, and the next guy to the next guy until Dion was out of the water. At 6.13 in the morning, Shaw entered the water with a camera on his helmet to film the operation. Shortly after he submerged, Dion's parents walked down to the edge of the water to watch. They showed up intentionally late so as not to put added pressure on Shaw. Shaw dropped very quickly to the bottom of Bush water to watch, they showed up intentionally late so as not to put added pressure on Shaw. Shaw dropped very quickly to the bottom of Bushman's Hole. He actually arrived about a minute and a half faster

than he expected to. As soon as he got down, he shined his light and he found Dion's body. He went over to him, he got the body bag out, and he got to work. 13 minutes after Shaw had submerged, the diver who was slotted above him, that would be the first to receive Dion's body, began looking for signs that Shaw was done and was moving up towards him. But when he

looked down, he saw Shaw's flashlight wasn't moving. This diver continued to watch the flashlight very intently to make sure his eyes weren't playing tricks on him. And after a couple of minutes and still no movement, this diver begins going deeper and deeper to try to get a better look at Shaw to see what's going on. And when he got a little bit closer, it became very clear that Shaw was not moving. This diver immediately goes into rescue mode and starts going straight down to get to Shaw to try to help him if he still can. And as he's moving down, he hears this fizzling sound and he looks at his wrist and he can tell that one of his gauges has broken. And this gauge was vital to the dive and it meant he would not be able to get down there and so with a heavy heart he had to turn around and go back up and because of the depth at which they were diving he could not just

go right to the surface and tell everybody what had happened he needed to stop at various decompression stops along the way but he had a slate and on it he wrote in his grease pen, Dave's not coming back. And he swam the slate up to the next diver who would have received Dion's body, but instead receives this slate. He takes the slate up to the next diver, to the next diver, to the next diver, all the way up to the surface. As soon as this message was read out loud to the group standing around Bushman's Hole, which included Dion's parents, there was 30 seconds of stunned silence. No one could believe this was happening. And then after the silence, Dion's parents are beside themselves. Not only are they not going to see their son probably ever again,

but they feel like they are somehow responsible for Shaw's death. Eventually, by the end of the night, all of the other divers that were in the water that day successfully exited the cave and were just fine. As for Shaw, much like Dion, there really wasn't a good way to get him out. And so everyone came to terms with the reality that he was going to be down there with Dion probably forever. The news was so devastating that the team decided to leave all their equipment in place. Eventually, they did need to go down and collect their gear. So everybody goes down to the edge of Bushman's Hole. before they begin retrieving all of the lines they sang Amazing Grace in memoriam for the lost diver. Afterwards they started pulling up the lines and as they're doing that they notice all these bubbles coming up from the bottom of the cave

and they looked a little bit closer and it was Shaw's body and Dion's body. Basically Shaw had been attached to this line and he had managed to free Deon before he had passed. And so when they pulled the line, both of them were freed and they floated to the surface. And so even though Shaw would die doing it, he was able to get Deon out of Bushman's Cave for his family. After the two bodies were taken out,

they noticed that the camera on Dave's head was still intact and it had filmed everything all the way through his final moments. And so they took the tape out and they watched it forward and backwards, slow-mo, frame by frame, and they analyzed it to the point where they understood what happened. When Shaw gets down to Dion, Dion's body that had previously been stuck, and that was the reason Shaw had not been able to free him the first time, somehow he's become unfree and he's now free-floating. And Shaw is having a really hard time trying to control this free-floating body, and his body is literally breaking apart in front of him. As Shaw is trying to wrangle his body, you can hear him start grunting, his breathing is getting elevated, and he's totally losing

control of the situation. And the bottom of this cave is slanted and it's all silty and muddy. And so in the camera, you see all this mud and silt getting kicked around and the visibility is very poor. And after it clears, you see Shaw has gotten completely tangled in some line that's also tangled on Dion. So basically Dion has become his anchor.

At this point, Shaw shifts his focus to try to get the lines off of himself. And you can hear his breathing now is becoming much more desperate. It almost sounds like he's gulping for air and probably at this point, although we don't know for sure, he's suffering from narcosis which is a condition that divers will run into where it's like you've drank a whole bunch of alcohol on an empty stomach. It's like you're totally drunk and you're confused and it's clear that he's becoming a little bit disoriented and instead of going away from Dion's body to try to go back up and save yourself,

instead he turns and starts fumbling with Dion's midsection. And then he gets out a pair of scissors, but he doesn't use them. He just holds them. Finally, he turns away from Dion because it's clear you're not going to be able to get him out at this point. And with the scissors in hand that he never used, because again, he's probably suffering from narcosis and he's confused, he starts beginning to make his way over to the area where you can go back up but he starts slowing down his breathing becomes tragically desperate and then it becomes silent and then there's no

more movement and Dave Shaw is dead. Ten days after the bodies were recovered from Bushman's Hole Dion's parents although they are absolutely devastated about what happened to Shaw, and they feel very guilty, but at the same time, they're so excited because they get to go to the morgue and see their son again for the first time in 10 years. They don't care what state his body's in. Just the fact that he's actually here, that their actual son is going to be in front of them, was just overwhelming for them. And when they went in, they were really fixated on the fact that he had underwear on that they both recognized.

Apparently they had bought him a set of jockey underwear and he was wearing jockey underwear. As strange as it is, it was like they got to bond with their child one more time. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin Podcast. If you got something out of this episode and you haven't done this already,

please line the floor of the Amazon Music Follow Buttons bedroom with Lego pieces, then set off their fire alarm. This podcast airs every Monday and Thursday morning, but in the meantime, you can always watch one of the hundreds of stories we have posted on our main YouTube channel, which is just called Mr. Ballin. morning. But in the meantime, you can always watch one of the hundreds of stories we have posted on our main YouTube channel, which is just called Mr. Ballin. We have a registered 501c3 charitable organization called the Mr. Ballin Foundation that honors and supports victims of violent crime, as well as their families. Monthly donors to the Mr. Ballin Foundation Honor Them Society

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completing a short survey at wondery.com slash survey. If you're listening to this podcast, then chances are good you are a fan of the Strange, Dark, and Mysterious. And if that's the case, then I've got some good news. We just launched a brand new Strange, Dark, and Mysterious podcast called Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries. And as the name suggests, it's a show about medical mysteries, a genre that many fans have been asking us to dive into for years. And we finally decided to take the plunge and the show is awesome. In this free weekly show, we explore bizarre, unheard of diseases, strange medical mishaps, unexplainable deaths, and everything in between. Each story is totally early and ad-free on Amazon Music.