MrBallen Podcast: Strange, Dark & Mysterious Stories - This Hole Has Killed 16 People

Episode Date: August 18, 2022

Today’s podcast is a Top 3 style episode that will cover the most claustrophobic horror stories I've ever come across. The audio from these stories has been pulled from our YouTube channel, which is just called "MrBallen," and has been remastered for today's podcast.Story names, previews & links to original YouTube videos:Story 1 -- “Tight Squeeze" -- A spelunking trip takes a sudden and drastic turn for the worse (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wz6F2rDngvA)Story 2 -- "Panic" -- Five men attempt one of the most dangerous dives in the world (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rWMEiC43pM)Story 3 -- "The Third Stage" -- There is a small hole in Australia that has killed 16 people (Original YouTube link -- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3yaednyAjI)For 100s more stories like these, check out our 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.

Today's podcast is a top three style episode that will cover the most claustrophobic horror stories I've ever come across. The audio from all three of these stories has been pulled from our 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 Tight Squeeze, and it's about a spelunking trip that took a sudden and drastic turn for the worse. The second story you'll hear is called Panic, and it's about the five people who attempted

one of the most dangerous underwater dives in the world. And the final story you'll hear, which is the top spot of today's list, is called The Third Stage, and it's about a small hole in Australia that has killed at least 16 people. 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 offer to take the five-star review button out to a beautiful restaurant outside of town, and then when you get there and they get out of your car, tell them you only said you were going to take them there, and then drive away. Also, please subscribe to the Mr. Ballin

podcast wherever you listen to podcasts so you don't miss any of our weekly uploads. Okay, let's get into our first story called Tight Squeeze. 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 Wanderie Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wanderie app. I'm Peter Frank-O'Pern. 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. John Jones and his family were avid spelunkers, which is a term given to people who explore underground caves. In November of 2009, 26-year-old John was back home in Utah celebrating

Thanksgiving with his family. During his visit, someone in his family suggested they go cave exploring like old times as a way to kind of reconnect. And so John, along with his younger brother Josh, who was 23 at the time, and nine other friends and family got together and headed off to Nutty Putty Cave, which was a very popular spelunking location in their area that no one in his family had actually explored. On November 24th, 2009, around 8 p.m., John and his brother, along with the rest of their friends and family, enter Nutty Putty Cave, and they make their way to the section called the Big Slide. It was not particularly challenging, and John, even though he had not been cave exploring in a really long time,

felt like he could do something more difficult. So he and his brother decide to split off from the main group and make their way over to the most challenging section of the cave known as the birth canal. So John and Josh start making their way over towards that section of the cave. They have a map and they're kind of trying to follow as best as they can and John who was leading the pair stops when he gets to this waist-high hole in the wall that he believes is the entrance to the birth canal. When John was growing up and he used to go cave exploring with his family, he was much smaller. He was a kid. Now he's a grown man. He's six foot over 200 pounds, but he still had the mindset of when he was a kid. And so like a child, he sees this hole and literally goes head first into it without any second thoughts. So John begins painstakingly inching his way down this tunnel that's completely tight on his body.

His arms are pinned under his body, and with every movement he's making, he's getting tighter and tighter. But he's convinced that this is the birth canal, and that it just takes certain people that are brave enough to push past that discomfort, that claustrophobia, that if you just push past this tight section, you'll get to a place where it opens up. So John, believing this is the birth canal, kept going farther and farther into this tunnel until he's completely wedged. He has a little bit of tunnel still in front of him that actually kind of bends down in front of him. And he thinks, man, that's it. I just got to go all the way down there and I can get into that opening. And so he's caught up against a lip of rock that's underneath his ribs. And so in order to get past it, he breathes all of the air out of his lungs and he pushes himself just past the lip. And then he breathes in again and his chest expands and his

rib cage is literally caught up on that lip because he's now moved past it. He can't bring himself back over the lip. And what's worse is as soon as he got over that little lip, he got a better view into this hole he was going down. And it dead ends. It just gets to a point. There was nothing there. It was not the birth canal. It was an unmarked tunnel somewhere in this cave. So he's trapped and he knows it. And to make matters even worse, John was almost completely upside down. John yells to his brother and says he's stuck. Josh starts going down this tunnel and he almost immediately gets stuck. And from where he is, he can barely see his brother.

It was way down this tiny little tunnel. And he knows that if he's stuck up here, his brother's really stuck. This is a very, very bad situation they're in. So Josh barely gets himself out of this tunnel and he yells to John that he's going to go get help. But it would take three and a half hours for the first rescue worker to arrive on scene because they are way down into this cave. This is not an easy to access area. Susie Mottola was the first rescue person and when she arrived, she said, hey John, how you doing down there? And Susie would sayola was the first rescue person, and when she arrived, she said, Hey, John, how you doing down there? And Susie would say that John sounded very distant, and he just said,

Hi, Susie, thanks for coming, but I really, really want to get out. Susie immediately reassured John that she will have him out in no time. Everything's going to be just fine. But when Susie looked down into this tiny little space that John was stuck in, she thought, this is going to take a really long time to get him out. I mean, just to set up a pulley system to try to pull him out is going to take a long time. And then inching a six-foot, 200-pound man out of this tiny space, that's going to take hours and maybe even days.

But unfortunately, John didn't have the time. The human body is designed to be upright, with gravity helping your heart pump blood to the rest of your body. When you're inverted, blood pools in your brain, and your heart cannot work fast or hard enough to get it out in time, and so it eventually causes your body to shut down. So when the trauma physician saw that John was inverted, and he had already been there for three and a half hours before rescuers even got to him, he told Susie and the rest of the rescuers that John maybe has eight to ten hours left to live.

The rescuers tried everything to try to get John out of the cave. They put a rope around his legs and tried yanking him out. Didn't work. They set up an elaborate pulley system. It barely worked, but they kept falling out of the wall, and so it was taking all this time just to get set up, only to move him a fraction of an inch. They got drills and chisels, and they went down into the tunnel and began trying to chisel John out. But again, it was almost negligible

progress, and it was just taking too much time. As the rescuers are doing everything they can to try to get him out, they noticed that John's breathing was becoming labored and his voice sounded nasally, indicating that more and more fluid was building up now inside of his lungs and that probably they were within the last few hours that he was gonna be alive. At some point, they finally got John

to move just a couple of inches using this really elaborate pulley system that they had found a way to stay anchored in the walls, but they saw there was a huge problem. No matter what system they were going to use to get John out of this hole, due to the angle of the cave he had crawled into, his legs would not fit. They would not bend in the right direction on the way out. They would have to break his legs in order to curve him around this bend in the cave. With John's breathing already labored and him being basically unresponsive at this point, they figured that if they broke his

legs, that would just send him into shock and kill him anyways. So they realized that they cannot get John out of this cave. He's going to die here. 27 hours after John had become stuck, he became unresponsive and he was declared dead. The 26-year-old medical student would leave behind his wife as well as their one-year-old daughter, and his wife was due with their second child in June of the following year. Following John's death, Nutty Putty Cave was sealed off with cement, and John's body is still inside Nutty Putty Cave to this day. with cement and John's body is still inside Nutty Putty Cave to this day.

The next story, which is our number two story on today's list is called Panic. In the early morning hours of February 6th, 2014, a van carrying five men finally came to a stop outside of a farm in Norway. After a miserable nearly 15-hour drive, these five men who were from Finland were finally ready to begin their real adventure. They were going to be attempting one of the most dangerous underwater dives in the world. attempting one of the most dangerous underwater dives in the world. It is called the Traverse, and it is a two kilometer subsurface dive from one entrance of the Pleura Cave to the other. The entrance they were going to start in was inside of the frozen pond next to this farm. Two of the five men had actually done this so-called traverse before because they were

the ones that discovered these two entrances were actually connected. But no amount of experience was going to limit the amount of physical risk they would have to take in order to complete this dive. The dive was so long, over two kilometers, that you actually needed a specialized underwater scooter that could propel you through the tunnel, because you wouldn't be able to swim fast enough before you ran out of air. Which also meant if your scooter broke down in the middle of this pitch black underwater cave, you were screwed. The majority of the dive was going to be through this really tight tunnel where all along the ground were these limestone rocks that kind of poked up. Where if you weren't careful, if you dragged your dry suit along them, you could tear it open and then freezing water would go into your dry suit and you would die.

Also they were going to be using a diving rig known as a rebreather. So as a Navy SEAL, we used rebreathers. Basically it takes your air and rebreathes it. So you're not breathing air into the water, you're breathing out into the system that scrubs your CO2 and then pumps it back into you. And you also combine that rebreathed air with pure oxygen. So you have a continuous cycle where you're just breathing pure oxygen. It makes for a really cool dive because you're looking around and there's no bubbles. But it's also very dangerous and your body doesn't really adjust well to having pure oxygen pumped into it. In fact, you can be poisoned from pure oxygen.

And when you're diving at depth with a rebreather on the way up, you can't just rock it to the surface. There are these things called decompression stops along the way up, where depending on how long you were at a certain depth, you need to wait at certain stops along the way back up to the surface and let your body decompress. If you don't do that and you just rush to the surface, you can get something called the bends, which is decompression sickness sickness and it can be fatal. Not to mention there's a couple other nasty side effects of using a rebreather like if you get water inside of your breathing loop it can actually get into the co2 absorbent that sits inside of your rig and that can cause this acidic mixture to go back into your mouth but you can't take the mouthpiece out because more water will get into it and it'll

flood your rig and then you'll just drown. So you need to just accept that there could be acid in your mouth and you need to either get somebody else to give you their mouthpiece or get a standby rig and breathe off of that because there's no solution to this. You just got to have acid in your mouth. Also, if you panic for any reason on a rebreather, you'll be breathing really heavy and your system will not be able to scrub the CO2 fast enough and you'll have a buildup of CO2 in your body and you'll get hypercapnia, which can lead to disorientation and even passing out, which can be lethal underwater. This dive was famously dangerous to the point where the best divers in the world wouldn't attempt it. They called it a death wish. But these five divers from Finland were determined

and they were eager to make the traverse. So shortly after they arrived they take a quick nap and then they get up and they're ready to start the dive. They decided to break up into two groups. They had a pair that was going to go down first and then two hours later the other three would follow. Once the first pair was in the water there would be no way to communicate between the two groups. So the pair cuts a triangle into the ice with a chainsaw, they hop into the beautifully clear water, and very quickly they start descending down into this tunnel. Once they got down to the tunnel, they turned on their scooters and started heading out. After a couple of hours, the pair reached the most dangerous part of the dive, where the tunnel basically nosedives and goes straight down to about 130 meters,

and as you're going down, you have to be very cautious that you're going the right way, because there's all these dead end tunnels that look exactly like the way you're supposed to go. And they go pretty far out. But if you were to accidentally take a wrong turn and go down one of these dead man turns, you wouldn't have enough oxygen to complete the dive. So it's a slow process of making sure you go down the exact right path and then when you get to the bottom at 130 meters there was this plate that had been left there to signify you've gone the right way and then you turn and go right back up again and you're pretty much at the exit at that point but it takes quite a while to cover that last little

bit because there are necessary decompression stops along the way. The first group descended with no issues and didn't get sidetracked. They got to the bottom where that plate was. They turned and began going back up the ascent to their first decompression stop. The lead diver got through a particularly tight spot and then noticed that his partner behind him, his flashlight which was normally right up against him, he couldn't see it anymore. And he turned and he saw that his partner had gotten wedged in this one section of the ascent. So the lead diver turns around and swims down to the trap diver, who he can tell is panicking a little bit because he's trying to get himself free and he can't move. And the lead diver looks and he can tell that he is thoroughly wedged into

this one little section. And the lead diver would say that what he thought happened is the trap diver must have been going too quickly with his scooter and basically motorized himself into this wedge like it wouldn't have been humanly possible to swim fast or hard enough to get stuck as badly as he did the lead diver could tell that he was totally stuck there was probably no way he was going to get out of this and so he tried taking some of his gear off, but they have such little space to work with. And the trap diver is starting to sense that this isn't going very well. And in a panic, he accidentally knocks his mouthpiece out of his mouth and can't find it again and ends up inhaling a bunch of water and he dies. The lead diver knows that he can't panic because he will end up burning through his oxygen. He'll probably get hypercapnia. He won't be able to get to the surface and he'll

die too. So he tries to free his friend's body and he can't and he's now realizing that the second set of divers that are coming in the tunnel, they're gonna get to this point in the dive which is very far into the dive and they won't be able to get past his dead body and they'll have to turn around but they don't have enough oxygen he didn't think to make it back to the surface and so almost certainly those three divers are going to get here and be trapped and are going to die too and so terrified and devastated and saddened by what's ultimately going to happen he turns and starts heading for the surface and he had to stop at each of those decompression stops and you can only imagine what it was like to be sitting inside of this tight tunnel,

waiting for 30 minutes and 45 minutes at the different decompression stops, just thinking about what's inevitably going to happen beyond the dead body. They're going to get trapped. They're going to die. He's going to be the only one that gets out of here alive. And at some point, he makes it up to the surface and he just sits there and waits. Meanwhile, the second set of divers did enter the water two hours later. They go down to the tunnel, they're making their way out,

and they were farther spread out than the pair was. And so the first diver, the lead diver of the second group, he reached the dead body first before the other two had even seen it or knew about it, and he began to panic. And as the second and third diver come up and realize what's happening, they see the lead diver lose his mouthpiece and in a panic, he's moving around like this and he inhales water and also drowns. And so now the second and third diver are dealing with the fact that they just watched their friend die right in front of them. Their

other friend from the first group is dead and blocking their way. And the second and third diver, they also begin to panic. They don't communicate and one of them just immediately turns and starts kicking it out back towards the entrance knowing full well they probably don't have enough oxygen to get there. The other diver decided they were going to find a way to get past the dead body that was wedged in the only way up to the surface. And so on their own over a kilometer underwater in this tight little tunnel where they're totally trapped, they're relying on a flashlight for light. There's two dead bodies. This second diver begins removing pieces of their gear and pushing it through the

little space between the dead body and the clearing that he wanted to get to, to make his way up to the surface. And after pushing through all of his gear, including his tank, which is a big commitment because once it was through, he would have to go to the other side. He couldn't get it back through. And push himself through painstakingly with his hands, all the way through this tiny little space that he could just barely get through. And then he puts his gear back on, and then knowing he had almost no oxygen left, he had to basically rocket to the surface and just hope decompression sickness didn't kill him.

The other diver who had turned around and gone all the way back to the entrance, they skipped all of their decompression stops as well. They got to the entrance just barely, but when they got there, the entrance was frozen over, and they had to punch their way through the ice, which they were able to do, and they too got on surface once again. The three survivors linked up. They called authorities. They went to the hospital, they would make a full recovery. They told authorities where their friends were in this cave, but no one had the ability to get down and retrieve their body.

So they sealed off both entrances to this cave and called it a gravesite and said no one can go down there. But months later, the three survivors had such intense survivor's guilt that they would actually illegally go back to Pleura Cave and retrieve their bodies. 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 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. In May of 1980, near Anaheim, California, Dorothy Jane Scott noticed her friend had an inflamed red

wound on his arm and he seemed really unwell. So she wound up taking him to the hospital right away so he could get treatment. While Dorothy's friend waited for his prescription, Dorothy went to grab her car to pick him up at the exit. But she would never be seen alive again, leaving us to wonder decades later, what really happened to Dorothy Jane Scott? From Wondery, Generation Y is a podcast that covers notable true crime cases like this one and so many more. Every week, hosts Aaron and Justin sit down to discuss a new case covering every angle and theory, walking through the forensic evidence, and interviewing those close to the case to try and discover what really happened. And with over 450 episodes, there's a case for every

true crime listener. Follow the Generation Y podcast on Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts. The next and final story, which is the top story of today's list, is called The Third Stage. the top story of today's list is called The Third Stage. In 1938, a farmer in southeastern Australia decided to bring his horses to a watering hole on the other side of his large property. As he was leading the horses across this big, wide-open field, one of his horses suddenly just collapsed to the ground. The farmer ran over to see what was going on, but as soon as he got over to it, the horse had stood back up again and seemed totally unhurt. The farmer was puzzled because he had no idea why the horse fell in the first place, and so he looked down to see if maybe it tripped on something, and he saw on the ground right beneath the horse was this small hole. And so he moved his horse out of the way,

and then when he came back to look at this thing he saw it was only maybe a foot across but when he peered down into it he saw it was very deep. And so he got down on his hands and knees to get a closer look and when his eyes adjusted he could not believe what he was seeing. 10 or 15 feet below the surface was this huge pool of clear water. The horse had just stepped into the roof of an underground cave. And so the farmer was really excited to see how big this cave was, and so he grabbed all his horses and he brought them back to the stable, and he got this long measuring rope with a weight at the end of it. So he runs back out to the hole, he puts the weight into the hole,

and he begins paying out this rope. And so down it goes 10 feet, 20 feet, 30 feet. It just keeps on going and going until finally the weight hits solid land at 120 feet. And so the farmer is like, wow, this is a huge cave. So he pulls it back up thinking that's the bottom. But in reality, it wasn't. It actually extended down almost 300 additional feet. The farmer and his horse had just accidentally found one of the most beautiful and deadly freshwater caves in the world called The Shaft. The reason it's called The Shaft is because the only way in or out of this underwater cave is through this hole in the middle of this

field that this horse created, and it's literally a shaft that goes down 18 feet until it reaches the surface of this massive underground body of water. The opening to this shaft is so narrow that cave divers, they can't get into it with their gear on their backs. So they literally need to be lowered into this cave by themselves, and then their gear is lowered down after them, and they put it on while they're treading water. The solid ground that the farmer's weighted line had touched at 120 feet when he believed he had reached the bottom of the cave, what he had actually touched was the top of something called the rock pile. The rock pile is basically this huge underwater

pyramid that looks like a rock pile that sits at the bottom in the middle of this huge underwater cave. And from the top of this rock pile, you can go down it in all different directions, but once you get to the bottom, there's only two tunnels to choose from. There's one that goes west, basically down at an angle, that dead ends at 260 feet. And then on the other side of this underwater pyramid is the eastern tunnel, and that's much more treacherous. It goes down at a more steep angle to 400 feet. The few elite divers that have explored the deepest recesses of this cave say there are three distinct stages to it. Stage one is from the surface down to 120 feet, the top of the rock

pile. During this stage, the diver swims unobstructed in beautiful clear water with sunlight poking through the hole. It's a very easy section of the cave. And there's a safety line that's anchored from the surface straight down to the top of the rock pile, so you have something to hold on to as you go down and back up. Stage two is where things get a bit dicey. Stage two begins at the top of the rock pile and extends down all the way to the bottom of the westerly tunnel at 260 feet where it dead ends or down to the 200 foot mark of the easterly tunnel where you come to something called the drop-off ledge and it's quite literally a ledge in the middle of this tunnel

where beyond it there's a fairly steep drop-off and it leads down to an area that's so treacherous it's got its own stage. Starting with stage two and then with stage three, there is no safety line to guide you in the direction you need to go. So you're on your own as soon as you reach the top of the rock pile. And so you make your way down any direction you want down the rock pile until you reach either of these tunnels.

And as soon as you go into them, you immediately start to lose visibility because the sunlight cannot penetrate all the way into these tunnels. And so the diver becomes increasingly reliant on their flashlight. As such, they have to be very careful as they navigate down stage two to not bump into the walls because doing so will knock the limestone silt off of the walls. It will create a cloud of it in their face. It will blind them. It's like being in fog where a flashlight can't push through it. And so the diver has to either wait for the silt to clear, which could take a very long time, or they have to swim blind. Also, anyone entering stage two and stage three, they can't breathe regular air out of

their tanks. There's too much nitrogen in regular air. The deeper you dive, the more nitrogen your body will absorb. And if you have too much nitrogen in your system it can give you something called nitrogen narcosis which is like being really drunk. And in extreme cases people have been known to take their mouthpiece out and inhale water believing they're on the surface or they'll confuse the direction up with the direction down and to get to the surface they will swim straight down until it's too late and they can't get back up again. And so divers that are going to be in stage two or stage three of this cave will breathe a special mix of gases that are low in nitrogen. The final stage of the shaft, stage three, is just from the 200 foot mark of the easterly cave, so that drop-off ledge, all the way down to the bottom at 400 feet. This stage is unbelievably dangerous. As soon as you drop off that ledge,

all the sunlight goes away. It is pitch black and the tunnel narrows considerably and stays incredibly narrow. In fact, many times divers have to squeeze themselves past sections where the rocks are too close together. And so because you're inherently bumping into the walls all through stage three, you're pretty much guaranteed to be silted out the entire time. At this depth, nitrogen narcosis is virtually guaranteed, even if you're breathing a special low nitrogen mix of gases. And so divers need to be ready to abort the dive at any moment if they feel symptoms coming on. Once the diver has turned around and is making their return trip,

but they're still in the third stage section of the cave, they need to be careful of false domes. These are offshoots on the ceiling only in this third stage that look like the way out. And especially when things are silted out and it's dark, you're low on oxygen, you might be panicking, it'd be very easy to confuse these with the way out. But in fact, these false domes are exactly what their name implies. They are false. They are dead ends. They go nowhere. Stage three is reserved exclusively for extremely experienced cave divers who get special permission. In 1973, eight divers got permission to dive the first and second stages of the shaft cave. They did not get permission to dive the third stage of the cave. On May 28th of that year, the eight divers arrived in that big open field near the cave opening and

began prepping their gear. Their plan was to dive down all the way to the edge of the drop-off ledge, so looking into the third stage, and then once they got there look around for a minute and then turn around and head back up to the surface. These eight divers were experienced divers but their experience was all in open water environments. None of them had dove in a cave and so they were confident divers but they were a little bit naive. They believed the dive down to the edge of the third stage was going to be fairly routine and would just be simple and fun. But before any of them had even gotten into the water, they had already made a critical mistake. Instead of jamming their bottle with the special low nitrogen mixed gas that they would need since they were going into stage two,

and so that's a requirement, instead of doing that, they just jammed their bottles with regular air. So they were basically guaranteeing that they would get nitrogen narcosis. But once they had all their gear prepped, they made their way over to the entrance to the shaft, and one by one they were lowered down into the water and their gear would follow, and then once all of them were all jocked up, they grabbed the safety line and they began their descent. It only took about two minutes to get down to the top of the rock pile, and there they spent about five minutes taking pictures of each other before heading down the eastern tunnel. Three of the divers were siblings Glenn, Steven, and Christine who were 25, 22, and 19 respectively. And Glenn remembers after they made their way all the way down the eastern tunnel and they reached the drop-off ledge,

he remembers seeing his sister, his brother, and all the other divers. Everyone seemed just fine. Everyone's just looking over this ledge. They're taking turns, kind of peering down into this black abyss that is stage three. And then after five minutes or so, Glenn looked at his gauge and he saw his air was getting fairly low. Not emergency situation, but it was time to leave. And everybody else had the same amount of air as he did. And so everybody else was running low on air. And so Glenn was about to grab his sister, who was several feet right in front of him. She was still looking over the ledge down into stage three, but when he reached out to grab her, she and all the other divers just suddenly jumped forward and dove straight down into the abyss out of sight. They dove into the

stage three section. This was not something that Glenn was tracking anybody doing. This was not something anyone said they were going to do. This was not part of the dive. This was very dangerous and they weren't allowed to go down there. And so Glenn immediately swam down after them to try to grab his sister and stop her or grab his brother or grab any of them. But as soon as he went over that ledge, he saw it was totally pitch black and it was completely silted out from all these divers suddenly launching over the edge. And so Glenn knows he's not going to find them in the silt. It's also very dangerous for him alone to just dive down there. And so he figures, you know what, I'm sure they're fine. They probably planned this out and they're just

going to go down a little ways and they'll come back up again. And so I'll just go to the rock pile and wait for them. And so Glenn turns around and he goes up back over the drop-off ledge. He makes his way to the rock pile and he just sits there facing the eastern tunnel waiting for his brother, his sister, and the other divers to come back out again. But they don't. And finally his air gauge gets so low that he literally has to go to the surface. And he's thinking to himself, if my air is this low what are they doing down there 24 year old larry reynolds was one of the divers that went with glenn's sister and brother and the other two divers into this forbidden third stage section of the cave although he doesn't say this it sounded like he and the others just wanted to go a little ways into this off-limits section

check it out and then turn around and go back to the surface. And so Larry would say as soon as they went over the ledge and they're in this third stage, it went completely pitch black and the tunnel immediately constricted dramatically. And so as they're going down this very tight and pitch black tunnel, they reach a section that's so tight they're down on their stomachs, literally pulling themselves through. And so after a few minutes of the group forcing themselves into this unbelievably dangerous place, it's like they all collectively realized this is a terrible idea. We need to turn back. And so as they all began turning around, they realized their return trip just back up to the drop-off ledge, which was only maybe 25 feet, was completely silted out.

And so Larry is in the back of this return trip line, and right in front of him is Christine. And so as soon as they all make their way into the silt, the only thing Larry can see with his flashlight is Christine's fins. And so he's staying right up on her and keeping his light on that fin to make sure he's going in the right direction. And so after only a few moments, Christine's fins just suddenly disappear. And so Larry's thinking, I don't know where she went, but I don't have enough time. I have almost no air. And so he just keeps on swimming, believing he's going the right way. And sure enough, he clears out of the silt and he goes up and back over the drop off ledge and he shines his light back up the eastern tunnel, back up towards the rock pile

expecting to see Christine and the other divers he was just with but he's looking and there's no one there there's no silt it's totally clear and there's not one diver in front of him so he looks at his gauge again and he's got a little bit of air enough to maybe go down and make sure nobody is still down there because he's thinking I don't think it's possible they could have swam all the way through this tunnel in this space of time. So he turns around, he goes back over the drop-off ledge, back into the silt, and as he's moving very slowly and cautiously, up ahead he sees flashlights moving around on the ceiling of the tunnel. And so he moves down towards this flashing light and he realizes the light is coming from inside of a false dome right above him. And so he looks up and he saw there was Christine and another man named Roberts

who was 28 frantically swimming around shining their lights looking for the way out not realizing they're in this dead end. And so Larry was about to shine his light to get their attention when Larry's flashlight went out. And so now Larry is in complete darkness. He is completely silted out. He doesn't even know how much air he has left because he can't shine the light on it. And so he's starting to panic. He starts banging on his flashlight and finally the light comes back on. And when it does, he shines it straight up again to try to shine it towards Christine and Roberts, but he had drifted farther down the tunnel. And so by the time he shined his light, he wasn't underneath the false dome. But when he shined his light in the other direction, he saw he was at the very far end of where the group had

gone. And so farther down into stage three was clear, there was no silt. And so he shined his light down into the stage three tunnel. And way down the tunnel, barely visible, he sees there is one diver with his flashlight out swimming the wrong direction down into oblivion. His name was John, he was 20 years old, and he almost certainly had nitrogen narcosis. Larry knew he could not save him. And so Larry turned around and went back into the silt, back up in the direction of the rock pile, touching the ceiling, looking for that entrance into the false dome to try to help Christine and Roberts. But he's not finding it, and he's looking at his air gauge, and it's getting critically low, and he knows if he doesn't go soon, he's going to die. And so at some point, after not finding

the entrance to this false dome, he decides he just has to go out and save himself. And so he manages to get out of the silt, he goes up and over the drop-off ledge, he gets to the rock pile, he grabs the safety line, and he fins himself up to the surface. And when he gets to the surface, he looks around, and there's only three other divers up there, one of which is Glenn. And Glenn, he looks visibly panicked, and he yells to Larry, hey, have you seen my brother and my sister? Have you seen the others? Are they coming up after you? And Larry looks at him and just shakes his head. He didn't know what to say. He knew they were gone.

But for Glenn, this was his baby brother, his baby sister. He had to go back down. And so with the little bit of air he had left, he put his mouthpiece in, he turned around, and he dove straight down as fast as he could, staring towards the opening of the eastern tunnel, praying that his family members, that his friends are going to come out of there. But as he's swimming down and the opening of the eastern tunnel, praying that his family members, that his friends are going to come out of there. But as he's swimming down and he's running out

of air, no one was coming out of that tunnel. And so finally, when his air was basically empty, he had to turn around. And on that return trip back to the surface, he realized his siblings and his two friends were gone. It would take 11 months and 11 days to finally locate and recover all four of the bodies inside of the cave. John, the 20-year-old who Larry saw swimming in the wrong direction, was found fairly far down the eastern tunnel laying on a rocky outcropping. Glenn's 22-year-old brother, Steven, was found just 50 feet from the entrance of the shaft, but it's believed he died at a much lower depth

and then floated up to that position. Glenn's 19-year-old sister, Christine, and the 28-year-old man, Roberts, that she was with inside of the false dome were found embracing each other just under the false dome inside of the tunnel. Investigators believe when they were in there, they couldn't find the exit and then realized that they had so little air that even if they found the exit, they would not get out in time. And so knowing they were just minutes away from death, they abandoned looking for the exit and instead just embraced each other while they died. And then afterwards, they floated down and out of the false dome. After this tragedy, the shaft was permanently closed to all divers, but years later they would reopen it. Thank you for listening to the Mr. Ballin Podcast.

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