National Park After Dark - Mammoth Mysteries: Mammoth Cave National Park

Episode Date: February 1, 2021

Grab your flashlight and stick with the group as we enter Mammoth Cave National Park. With hundreds of miles of caves and thousands of years of history, it's easy to get lost in here. Come listen as Danielle guides us through the park's colorful and at times, dark, past. Hear the stories of those who have explored, lived and died in these caves, and perhaps never left.   For the latest NPAD updates, group travel details, merch and more, follow us on npadpodcast.com and our socials at:Instagram: @‌nationalparkafterdarkTikTok: @‌nationalparkafterdarkSupport the show by becoming an Outsider and receive ad free listening, bonus content and more on Patreon or Apple Podcasts. Want to see our faces? Catch full episodes on our YouTube Page!Sources: National Geographic. Oh Ranger. How Stuff Works. Smithsonian. National Parks Traveler.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We have some really, really exciting news. Big news. Huge news. Do you want to tell them? Let the people know. We are doing a digital live event on December 9th at 730 with Moment House. So we are going to have our very own moment with them. Tickets are going on sale today.

You can get them. We put a little link in our bio. But we're so excited because we have a very special episode planned that you will all get to watch live and Danielle and I will be together for it. The first time in National Park After Dark recording history that Cassie and I will be in the same room recording an episode. So not only is that going to be happening, we're going to be in Southern California. We will be fresh off a visit from Joshua Tree National Park. And those are the stories that we are going to be covering for the live event. So not only are we going to be together, it's going to be happening live. And

Moment House has a very interactive platform. So not only can you choose to do meet and greets with Cassie and I, but you can also do chat functions with other attendees. So you guys can all hang out, talk to one another, get to know one another. It's going to be a really special event and one that Cassie and I have been really, really looking forward to. And we've been trying to keep our mouth shut for a little while about it. But cats out of the bag, you can find the link to the tickets in our episode description on all of our socials, and it is momenthouse.com slash NPAD. Hi, everybody. Welcome back to our second episode of National Park After Dark. I am Cassie. And I am Danielle. Thank you so very much for coming back after the first episode. We've received a lot of

love and we are so happy, so excited. We have a lot planned for the show. Yeah, we really appreciate all the love that you guys all gave us. We kind of went into this thinking maybe just our moms would listen. And they did. Hi, Mom. But we didn't expect all the love from all of you guys. So we're really excited to get this going. And I know that Danielle did a lot of research for the story she's telling today as well. So I'm really excited to get into it. So I chose somewhere that I don't think either of us has been before in our travels. And that is Mammoth Cave National Park. I haven't been there. No, that's in Kentucky, right? Yeah. And I know you're not a big fan of caves, so maybe it's not. I'm claustrophobic. Perfect. Perfect. I love this already. Great.

Lovely. So before we get into the main part of the story today, with every episode, we're going to want to preface the actual story with a little bit of information about the national park that we are headed to. So just for a little bit of background information, this park is located in Kentucky, and it was established in July of 1941. The surface of the park is about 80 square miles or so, but the real treasure is what lies beneath the surface. Most visitors that come to Mammoth Cave come for the cave system, even though the surface of the park has some hiking trails and beautiful landscape as well. So Mammoth Cave is the world's largest cave system. There's over 400 miles of the cave system that has been mapped and it has five levels, which is about 30 stories. So this cave is huge,

deep, expansive. And what's super interesting is with all of that being mapped already, more miles are being added every single year. So we have no idea just how expansive the cave system truly is. Wow, that's wild to think that that's all underground. Right now, there are 10 miles of passages available for public tours. And Mammoth Cave is crowned the most haunted natural wonder in the world. It has a rich history to back that claim up as well. With 150 recorded paranormal events, many by rangers themselves, at 10 million years old, this cave system has seen its fair share of stories. The first evidence of human beings exploring the cave system dates back to over 4,000 years ago, when prehistoric indigenous peoples wandered into the cave system using torches made of cane.

Charred remains of these torches have been found miles and miles inside of the cave system in chambers lined with thousands upon thousands of crystals. The cave also holds ancient footprints, clothing, sandals, pieces of gourds, and drawings. There is evidence that they even practiced intentional burials in the cave, as at least four bodies have been excavated since the 1800s. The dry mineral-rich environment of the cave turned each into a perfectly preserved mummy. One exception of the intentional burial practice is the story of Lost John. Three miles from the cave entrance, the mummified body of a presumed gypsum miner who died some

2,000 years ago was discovered in 1925. He was crushed to death by a 5-ton boulder, as it was thought he disturbed some rubble supporting the huge boulder while he was mining, and it collapsed on him. Why I don't like caves? Because of loose rock. Being crushed underground in a tiny area and dying like that. There's a couple more stories that involved that in this particular episode. So buckle in. So Lost John's clothing was perfectly preserved and he was actually put on display well into the 1970s. After that, he was placed in an undisclosed location within the cave for preservation and for the sake of, you know, respect out of respect. So his mummified body was put on display for people to see? Yeah, as like a tourist attraction. Wow. As interesting as that is, that must have been like

kind of scary to come there and see that. Researchers conducted a technique called experimental archaeology where they would be sent into the cave with only what ancient cultures had. So what they were wearing for footwear as well as their clothes and instead of flashlights and modern day tools they only use torches and that was done to gain a better insight into the problems that ancient peoples faced with that type of exploration in that time period better way to explore than to put yourselves literally in their shoes right it also gives a better insight of what were their limitations when they were exploring the cave system because you have to think I don't know how deep into the cave systems evidence of early humans have been found, but I wouldn't think that it would be too, too far in because I don't foresee them packing huge

bags of gear and food and water and things like that and heading days worth into the cave. But you never know. Yeah. The presence of native people stops abruptly after about 2,000 years, which is something that a lot of researchers have questioned up into this day. Like, why is that? Why were they so present in the cave system for so many thousands of years? And then 2,000 years ago, it's like, bam, they were done with it. Fast forward to the 1700s and the cave is quote unquote discovered. It was discovered by a man who was out bear hunting. He was part of a hunting party. He shot the bear and he was following the

tracks of the injured animal. And that led him to one of the cave's entrances. And right now, there are currently 25 known entrances to the cave. Because remember, it's a huge and expansive, so he just happened to stumble upon one of the known entrances. In 1812, the cave was purchased and used to mine calcium nitrate at an industrial scale, which created saltpetre used in gunpowder, which was a hot commodity at the time as we were fighting a war. Close to 100 enslaved people were used to man the operation. Once the war was over, the cave was sold, to a man named Franklin Goren, who wanted to use it as a tourist attraction. At this point, artifacts had already been discovered within the cave system, and he saw the huge potential

that this area had to offer. And he started up tours in 1816. So Franklin Goren was unfortunately an enslaver, and he, although had big ideas for the cave system, part of that idea was to use enslaved people as tour guides for early tourists. One of them is said to still show up from time to time. Stephen Bishop was an African-American enslaved man and a guide to the cave during the 1840s and 1850s. He has become one of the most famous and celebrated people in this cave's history as he explored, mapped, and named many of the cave's features that you see today. In 1838, Bishop, who was then only 17 years old, was brought to the cave by his enslaver, Franklin Gorin. Using ropes and flickering lanterns,

Bishop traversed the unknown caverns, discovering tunnels, crossing black pits, and sailing on mammoths underground rivers. It was really dangerous and unprecedented work. While today much of the cave is lit by electrical lights and cleared of rubble, Bishop faced a complex honeycomb filled with sinkholes, cracks, fissures, boulders, domes, and underwater springs. A blown-out lantern meant isolation and profound darkness and silence.

With no sensory input, the threat of becoming permanently lost was very, very real. Yet it's hard to overstate Bishop's influence. Some of the branches he explored weren't found again until modern equipment was invented, and the map he made by memory of the cave was used for decades. So he was one of the pioneer cave explorers for mammoth caves, and he ended up really, really loving his use. job when we spoke about if your lantern went out and it was profound darkness. That reminds me, I took a lantern tour of Cave of the Winds in Colorado when I used to live there. And that was the

first time I've ever been in complete, complete darkness. And it is unbelievable. It is something that is so just what you think you've been in the dark before. Like you're out at night, moonless night, or you're in your house, you shut off all the lights. Like you literally can't even see your hand almost touching your face in the cave system. And I can't even imagine exploring something that expansive and that dangerous with a light source that could so easily be blown out. And then you're just totally screwed. Yeah, I mean, with your lantern tour, I'm sure everyone had them. If one person's went out, you were fine. Right. And our tour guides had electrical back, like flashlights is backup.

Like we would never be going in there with just like, oh, well, your flame went out. I guess that's it, you know. But back to Bishop. So he quickly became an expert on Mammoth Cave and went on to find Lake Leith, River sticks, and Echo Rivers on the cave's bottom level, 360 feet below the surface. There he encountered eyeless fish and cave crayfish, which are both blind and bone white. He dragged boatmaking materials. into the cave and actually sailed on those rivers, which was later included in the tours.

I think that's all underground. And the fish and crayfish to be evolutionarily blind, like there's no need for eyes. You can't see. So just over time, evolution just nixing that altogether. While working at Mammoth Cave, Bishop met Charlotte, who was another enslaved worker. They fell in love and they married. and Charlotte went to live with him in the designated housing for enslaved people near Mammoth Cave, where she worked at the hotel.

Bishop took her to a fairy-like section of the cave, filled with gyps and flowers, and named it Charlotte's Grotto. Stephen Bishop, M. Cave Guide, Mrs. Charlotte Bishop, 1843. And then beside that, he wrote Mrs. Charlotte Bishop, Flower of Mammoth Cave. While the heart can still be seen, it's actually not part of the tour today. But it's so sweet that that's still there. That is really cute that that's still there. So you can see it, it's just not part of the tour. Yeah, so it's still visually, it's still there.

It's just not on the public tour. In 1856, Charlotte and Stephen were emancipated, and in July of 1857, they sold 112 acres that they ended up owning near the cave. It's unknown how they acquired that land initially, although as a guide, Bishop received lots of tips from visitors, and very well could have purchased it from that. A few months later, Bishop died at the age of only 37. He led a tour shortly before his death, and the previous August, he discovered a brand new section of the cave, which extended the explored passages another 11 miles. Wow. How'd he die? In my research, it says mysterious causes, so I'm not too sure how he

He passed away, but he was very young. So he was buried in an unmarked grave in front of Mammoth Cave. And in 1878, a millionaire came along named James Mellon, and he told Charlotte that he would send her a headstone for him. And three years later, it finally arrived. She had to wait several years, but there's something else about this. So not only did she wait three years to receive a headstone for her husband, the headstone that ended up coming was an unclaimed Civil War headstone and the original name

was scratched out on it. So it was already, it was somebody else's gravestone. Oh my God, that's horrible. That's so disrespectful. So they just scratch it out and then sent it to her. A thrifted headstone. Well, there's another thing. So the date of death was wrong by two years. But, But it still says Stephen Bishop first guide an explorer of mammoth cave. Wow. So in 1839, a man named Dr. John Krogan purchased the cave after the previous owner died, and he purchased it for $10,000. And that's $10,000 in 1839.

So here we go. What do you think that is today? $200,000. Oh, very close. Really? It's about $246,000. Which is not cheap, but it's also for what it is, for what the cave system is and the potential it has. I feel like that's a really good deal.

Yeah, I agree. And he had different plans for part of the cave. He turned part of it into a tuberculosis sanitarium. He observed the difference in the air quality and how it made people feel after visiting it and how there was just little decay inside. So think back to earlier in the episode when we talked about the mummies and artifacts. being perfectly preserved. It's due to the environment that's within the cave system. So he hoped that this same environment that preserved the mummies and kept artifacts in really good condition would cure,

or at the very least be therapeutic, for his TB patients. In 1842, he invited 15 of his patients to spend the winter in the caves within a series of buildings. The buildings were both timber and stone, and two of the stone buildings are still actually visible today. They're still standing, and I'll post some of those on our Instagram. The timber ones are long gone. Just imagine having tuberculosis and your doctor's like, I have a really good idea. We're going to have you move into this cave hundreds of feet underground, and you're going to live here for six months, and you're going to get cured. Just imagine. I mean, if that's the golden ticket, that would be hard for me, I'd be like, I'm cautious.

How big is it? How long can I come out for light? I'd have a lot of questions. Well, for them, I think they were desperate for a cure or any sort of treatment that would alleviate their symptoms. So they were all on board. So everyone involved, sink their watches with the outside world and attempted to live their lives 100% underground. So no coming up for sun or little breaks like you would want. They attempted to live their entire life. underground for those few months. At first, things seemed to improve, and Dr. Krogan got really excited about this. He planned more treatment centers and even a hotel. He had visions of this being the magic cure and that his business and treatment options would explode. But the patients

took a turn for the worse and became even more ill. Smoke and ash from the lanterns and fires used to constantly light the caves, coupled with the damp air, damaged their already damaged lungs. An enslaved man named Alfred recalled cooking meals off-site and then bringing back into the cave so they could be served. He would stand on top of a rock and blow a horn to signal dinner. And he said when he did that and the people would come out of their huts and into the light of the lanterns and fires, they looked more like skeletons than they did people. That's really sad. But what's even more creepy is tours. I don't know if you remember the exact year, but I told you that tours of the caves started back in 1816. And this experiment was happening in 1842. So that means that

visitors coming to see the caves would encounter these patients in hospital gowns shuffling around in the dark passageways. And they would hear their coughing in the distance, like as they were there for a tour. That sounds terrifying. You're there for a tour and there's a bunch of sick people around you. And you said they look like skeletons. So there's literally skeletons coming out of the darkness while you're on a tour. That doesn't sound like a great tour. Wildly different than anything we would experience today. So sadly, five patients died and their bodies were laid out on what is now known as corpse rock. The doctor called the experiment after five months. months and abandoned the project altogether. And unsurprisingly, he actually died himself of tuberculosis in

1849. And just another little side note. So we talked about how there was overlapping tours, public tours, and the TB experimental treatment situation going on. There was also another overlap. So the American Civil War happened between 1861 and 1865. And the cave, remained open for tours and to the public during that entire time. So there were soldiers stationed nearby in the area of what is now Mammoth Cave. And there's actually been 41 confirmed Civil War Soldier signatures in the cave system itself all over the walls. And someone even scratched a portrait of Abraham Lincoln down there. So let's skip forward a bit. We're going now to the 1920s. Remember this cave is huge and it has a ton of different entrances to it. The problem was most of the caves at this point were privately owned. And that brings us to the Kentucky Cave Wars. And it's a really lengthy and involved history, but it is really interesting. So I kind of tried to condense it into a SparkNodes version. So at the time, the Krogan family owned and controlled most of the land on the ridge where Mammoth Cave was located. So tour operators began to be.

and to focus on different properties on a neighboring area called Flint Ridge. And that was separated by Mammoth Cave Ridge by a narrow valley. Entrances to the cave were starting to be forced open, and different tour guides started to advertise by saying, new entrance to Mammoth Cave, like putting them on billboards and trying to attract tourists. And before long, the fight was on among eight separate caves that were privately owned and considered mammoth's rivals. Yet we know now that they're interconnected underground.

But at the surface, back then, they were all just separate entrances, kind of dotted around the landscape, and they were advertised as separate caves. That's so interesting. They just thought that there were tons of cave systems in that area, and they're like, my cave is better than your cave, come see my version, kind of thing.

Right. And they started to get dirty about it. So they would place misleading signs along the roads leading from the main mammoth cave. And they diverted tourists with fake policemen. They employed different people to harass other people's tour guides. They burned down ticket huts to competing tour guide operations. And they put out forged advertisements. So they're just trying to thwart all their competition. That is dirty. That's not even like, oh, their cave sucks. It's like, I'm going to burn stuff down and I'm going to really, really deter people from coming to you. Yeah. One of the typical strategies, actually, during the early days of this whole

thing, involved a representative of a private cave, nicknamed Cappers, and they would hop aboard the running board of a tourist car, leading passengers to believe that Mammoth Cave was closed or quarantined or it was caved in or somehow inaccessible. So these people were hired to jump onto automobiles, headed to Mammoth Cave and tell them like, sorry, Mammoth Cave is actually, you know, there was a rock side and you can't go in. So come over here instead. Like, we have a cave. Come on over. Did Taurus kind of catch on to this? I mean, if every cave entrance they go to, there's someone being like, no, come to this one. I feel like they must have caught on that something was going on between the caves. I think eventually, yeah, there's actually a couple books about the Kentucky Cave Wars.

like it is very involved and very lengthy, so I don't know the full answer to that, but I would imagine so eventually that there was some sort of people caught wind. It almost feels like when you're walking down like in Mexico or something, and like I went to Cancun and there's all these different shops. And in one, someone's like, I have the best jewelry. And then the next one's like, no, I have it. Or I have all the goods you need. And someone's like, no, I have it for cheaper.

And you're like walking down the street and you're overwhelmed because everyone is competing with my prices are better. I have better stuff. And you're just like, oh my God, I'm so, I'm so last tier. I don't want any of it. Right. I can totally relate to that too because I've also been to Cancun. It was a while ago. I was in like eighth grade. Yeah. But I can totally imagine what you're talking about. It's like, oh, it's so overwhelming. There are so many vendors and just people on the beach, like people come up to you with like trench coats on and open their jackets and be like, what do you want? I got it. You're like, I don't want anything. I'm just, tanning. So now enter another character to our stories and his name was Floyd Collins. He was 37 at the time

and he owned a section of the area called Crystal Cave. But he was losing out in this whole cave war. He wasn't doing as great as his competitors. His cave was a little hard to get to and it didn't have lodging nearby. So it was kind of off the beaten path and he was losing money. So he began excavating an entrance to Sand Cave, another one, which he hoped would steal some visitors from the privately owned Mammoth Cave at the time. While excavating in 1925, a boulder shifted and pinned him by the leg 55 feet beneath the surface in a narrow crawl space. So you're a nightmare. Boulder. He was found a day later and what followed was one of the nation's first and most morbid media francies. Radio and newspapers carried regular updates on Collins' predicament and people from all over the

world were flocking into the area to follow the drama because he's alive. That's so scary. So down in the cave, he was living a nightmare. But on the surface, things were going nuts. A hamburger and hot dog stands popped up and there were souvenir shops that ended up. And, up popping up as well and there were souvenirs being sold. So him being trapped in this cave became a tourist attraction. Oh yeah. A real time live as it's unfolding tourist attraction. Wow. So Colin's story is actually considered one of the three biggest news stories in the U.S. at the time and it was between the war going on along with the Charles Lindbergh solo flight across the Atlantic and the kidnapping of his baby. So there's a lot of big. So there's a lot of big.

headline stuff going on and he made it on top of those lists. Meanwhile, while everyone was chomping down on their hot dogs and hanging out, rescuers were at a total loss in regards to how to move the boulder. Eventually another cave-in occurred and it blocked off Collins from all help. Now he couldn't even be saved by amputation because at first that was kind of what they thought they would have to resort to because they couldn't move the boulder, they couldn't figure out what to do, they were thinking that they would have to amputate his leg to save his life. But due to this second cave-in, he's now blocked off from every rescue worker and any hope of being taken out alive. So unfortunately, he died of thirst, hunger, and exposure, hypothermia, after 14 days. He was down there for 14 days

suffering. While there's a party above him. That's awful. That's really, really upsetting and sad. I couldn't imagine being in his shoes under there. Yeah. And he made it quite a long time, but when he died, it was three days before rescue parties eventually reached him. So he was so close. He was really close, but his body ended up being recovered two months later and was buried in a family cemetery. But that's not the end of his story. Floyd's father sold the cave and property to a local dentist who somehow obtained permission to exhume Floyd's body and put it on display in a glass-lid coffin in the entrance to sand cave, where hundreds of tourists could gawk at his decaying corpse. And even though that's really weird, it gets a little stranger. Eventually, his body was stolen. And presumably by a rival cave owner who were

getting really angry at the fact that there were so many tourists all of a sudden going to Sand Cave because they were being attracted to see his body in a glass-lid coffin. Imagine being his family during all this? Terrible. Terrible. That was short-lived, him being taken. A few days later, his body was discovered in a nearby field. One of his legs was missing, and that was never recovered.

So someone stole his body and then took his leg? That's how it seems. I mean, maybe during transport, his body was decomposing, so maybe his leg just fell off somewhere. I don't know. That's so strange. If someone just took his leg and was like, I just want this part. Yeah, I don't know if that's the case because I feel like the motivation behind that

would be incentive for like another weird tourist thing. But it was never recovered. no one, there's no word of whatever happened to it. So I feel like it wasn't taken intentionally unless someone's just hoarding it somewhere. I don't know. So strange. So he was put back into his coffin in Sand Cave, you know, with minus that leg. And the coffin also was changed up a bit. There was no glass cover, so you couldn't look inside it, although some people still tried to look inside. The National Park System actually bought Sand Cave in 1961 and closed the cave to Taurus. But surprisingly, Floyd didn't get a proper burial until 1989.

That's so long. That's such a long time after. I know. His story after, I mean, the story of his death and what happened to him after is really sad, but a huge part of Mammoth Cave history. Now that the Park Service owns Mammoth Cave, they keep it fully operational for tours and things like that, although they are altering different things with the private entrances and things like that.

They're not doing any of that. there's one entrance that people use when they go to Sea Mammoth Cave now. And within the cave system itself, there are abandoned shoes, there's broken water bottles and bits of torn woolen clothing that still are actually in the cave system and on a lot of well-traveled roots within the cave system today. And right now, obviously, if you were to go down there and drop your water bottle, that's removed right away. that's considered trash, but all that older stuff is considered part of the cave's history, and park managers actually have intentionally left that in place since the park opened in 1941, because it's part of its history. That makes sense. And if you were to visit Mammoth Cave today,

one of the historic sites that you can visit is the Old Guide Cemetery. 21 graves fill the Old Guide Cemetery. Three are known to be patients from that experiment by Dr. Krogan. and another grave is that of Stephen Bishop, that famous cave explorer and guide that mapped so much of the cave system that we know and love today. And I know I mentioned in the beginning that Mammoth Cave is a very spooky place as well. And we're going to just briefly talk about some of the encounters that people have had well down there. Oh, we have some ghost stories. Yes, we do. Very cool.

So there are a couple different tours that you can take of the caves, but one of them is called the, Violet City Tour. And during this particular tour, guides will do what's called a blackout. And during the blackout, one of the guides will turn off, will request that everyone turns off their lights that they have, while another one, another guide will speak to the tour just by the light of an oil lantern. So there's just one light on. And during this period of blackout, a lot of people report strange happenings. And many of the people, reporting them are actually park rangers themselves. People have been shoved playfully by an unseen force. They have heard footsteps and turned to see no one there. They have been grabbed or touched in the

darkness when there were no other people nearby. And in one particular instance, during one of these blackouts, there was a guide named Larry Purcell and he noticed an African American family standing behind the rest of his group. And he was a little surprised to see them since he had didn't notice them before during their tour was going throughout the caves and when they first met up. But he didn't really think too, too much of it. And he did note that the father of this family was wearing a white Panama hat and was watching the other ranger speak. When Ranger Purcell turned the electric lights back on, he looked for that family, but couldn't find a single African American on the entire tour. And even though that's spooky in and of itself, what's crazier,

is the room that this all took place in is called the Methodist Church because minors once held religious services there. And in those days, if a African American guide and his family attended the services there, it was customary for the times for African Americans to stand segregated behind the rest of the group. So how spooky is that? Like you don't notice this group at all. And then you see them just for a brief moment wearing kind of odd attire. And then as soon as the lights are turned on, they're gone. And they're standing in a very odd place, especially given the location. It's just very scary. That would be very spooky. Especially once you put it all together, what was happening. Like at first, I might just be like, what's going on? And then you're like, oh, my God, are those ghosts?

Am I in a cave with? Yeah, that would be super spooky. Another tour guide reports that one day, while leading a group tour throughout the cave, she paused. to point out a particular passage. And while she was waiting for her group to catch up, she looked back to count everyone in the group, which is very, very common in cave tours. They're constantly counting people, make sure that everyone is properly accounted for, no one's gotten lost or separated or anything like that. And when she was doing that, she saw lingering far behind the group a man that she didn't notice when they first set off. He was wearing what appeared to be minors work clothing, which,

included denim pants, suspenders, and a striped shirt. And then he disappeared. And last one, just another one more little tidbit for you. This comes from a caver. So like I mentioned in the beginning, this cave is being constantly explored. They're constantly adding more and more miles to the cave system every year. So there's a lot of exploration going on all the time. And one of the people involved in that was exploring a part of the cave where Floyd Collins actually frequented a lot when he was alive. And she tripped and started to fall. And she felt someone grab her and pull her back, like grab the back of her shirt and pulled her back up. And she thought that it was her caving partner, Richard. So she was about to say, thanks Richard. But before she said that,

she noticed Richard was on the other side of the cave. So when she realized that it wasn't Richard, there's nobody else physically with them. She knew the story of the cave well, and she knew who Floyd Collins was. So she just said, thanks Floyd. I don't know if I would have done that, but I've been so nonchalant about it. So while there have been quite a few deaths, historically speaking, in Mammoth Cave, there have also been some frequent ones as well. So just running through them really quick.

In 2014, a man from Florida was on one of the tours when he passed away. In 2015, another man died in the cottages on the park property following one of the tours he went on. In 2015, a couple drove off the ferry into the Green River, which is located inside of the park and drowned. Um, that one's horrible. And in 2019, a 23 year old woman was found in Zion Hill Cemetery, which is located within the park. And she was deceased. Her name was Mariah Amber Decker. And police initially suspected that there was foul play going on, but categorized it as undetermined as a cause of death was ruled as an acute diphonhydramine intoxication. Wait, how do you have a diphonhydramine?

intoxication. I don't know. She just took too much benadryl? Yeah, I mean, I don't know. That's, I mean, Benadryl is diphenhydramine. I don't know if she had some sort of adverse reaction. It's just odd because when you take diphthyanine or Benadryl, you're doing it to counteract an allergic reaction. Yeah. So I'm not too sure, but that's the information that I have on that. And then I want to end all of this with a surprise cryptid story. What? Yeah. Bigfoot.

In the park? Bigfoot. Bigfoot's here? Allegedly. So this is recent. This is in July of 2019. Okay. So in 2019 summer, federal officials were investigating an incident involving at least one gunshot that was fired at Mammoth Cave National Park.

And this gunshot was prompted by an alleged sighting of Bigfoot. A spokesman for the National Park. said that law enforcement rangers responded around 2 a.m. in the morning to an incident involving a person with a firearm at one of the park's backcountry campsites. And the park didn't release any more information other than this. A camper named Brad Ginn and his girlfriend were there at the time. They said they went to sleep around 11 o'clock at night and woke up at around 1 a.m. to people shining flashlights on their tent. The couple exited their tent to find a man and his son approaching his young son. According to Brad, the man explained that something had destroyed his

campsite and that he kept hearing really, really strange sounds nearby and that he wanted to go back because this was quote unquote bigfoot country. And Brad's girlfriend actually claimed to hear the same sounds as that man did. The man reportedly showed the couple his gun and told them that if they heard gunshots, that they should run. So Brad and his girlfriend returned into their 10 and said about five to ten minutes later, they heard at least one gunshot. That sounds like Bigfoot to me. I believe. Well, you're not alone.

So the man and his son came back. After they left, there was gunshots heard. They returned back to Brad and his girlfriend. And they said that Bigfoot himself had emerged from the woods, approached them, and they got frightened. So he fired his weapon. And due to the really odd and frankly very creepy circumstances, Brad said that him and his girlfriend just packed up and left their campsite altogether.

Yeah, I probably won't want to stick around either. I'm not sure if they did that because they were scared of Bigfoot or scared of this guy. But either way, they were out of there. So I'm not sure if there is any more recent sightings of Bigfoot, but that is one of the most notable within Mammoth Cave. And that's how I wanted to see on the episode today. I know a lot of it was very history-based, and that was just a little. I hesitate to say the word fun story, but I thought it was interesting because I'm a huge

bigfoot fanatic. I'm stoked you put in Bigfoot in this story. That was an unsuspected twist. Who knew? Mammoth Caves had all this stuff going on there. Bigfoot, paranormal, history. Wars. Yeah. Cave wars. Yeah. It's a place that I now really, really want to visit. And I hadn't known too much about it before I started researching it. So I think we're going to find a lot of that. in our upcoming stories. You think you know a place and there's just so much more to them. And I hope that we find a lot of that on our journey through the podcast. And I hope that everyone joins us in that journey. Speaking of joining us, we do have a couple of social media things. You can join us on. We have Instagram. It's National Park After Dark. We have a Twitter. It's N-P-A-D podcast. You can find us on there.

We also have a Facebook page, National Park After Dark. And we also have a Patreon where we upload monthly new exclusive episodes to Patreon and you can catch up with us on there. We also post show notes and polls and different articles and we post a lot of stuff on there. So if you'd like to join us on there, you can find us on our website, NPADPodcast.com. You click our Patreon link or you can find us on Instagram. If you go to National Park After Dark and click the link in our bio, you can go straight to our Patreon from there. Yeah.

And last, but not least, we do want to start doing. I say start. We're two episodes in. We have big dreams. We would like to do some listener stories. So if you have any, you can certainly forward them along, stories of creepy, odd, scary, weird, unexplained things that have happened to you either within a national park or national forest out hiking, things like that. And you can email those stories to us directly through our website or just shoot us an email at NPAD podcast. at gmail.com. Thank you everyone so much for joining us on our second episode. Again, we have so much in mind and big dreams for the show. So we're really excited that you're here with us. We'll see you every Monday for a new story. In the meantime, enjoy the view. But watch you're back.

Bye, everyone. Bye. You're listening to this podcast, so I know you've got a curious mind. Here's a helpful fact you may not know yet. Drivers who switch and save with progressive, Save over $900 on average. Pop over to progressive.com, answer some questions, and you'll get a quick quote with discounts that are easy to come by. In fact, 99% of their auto customers earn at least one discount. Visit progressive.com and see if you can enjoy a little cash back.

Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. National average 12-month savings of $946 by new customers surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2024 and May 2025. Potential savings will vary.