Stuff You Should Know - The Tragic Tale of Floyd Collins

Episode Date: March 21, 2023

Floyd Collins was a natural-born caver who met a terrible fate, becoming stuck underground where no one could get him loose. His unlucky, slowly unfolding plight also turned out to be one of the first national media sensations of the 20th century.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you, hey, let's start a coup? Back in the 1930s, a Marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the U.S. and fascism. I'm Ben Bullitt. I'm Alex French. And I'm Smedley Butler. Join us for this sordid tale of ambition, treason, and what happens when evil tycoons have too much time on their hands. Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. MySpace was the first major social media company. They made the internet feel like a nightclub. And it was the first major social media company to collapse. My name is Joanne McNeil. On my new podcast, Main Accounts, the story of MySpace.

I'm revisiting the early days of social media through the people who lived it. Listen to Main Accounts, the story of MySpace on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. I just told Josh's trumpet bit to announce that we are continuing our 2023 tour this spring by going to DC, the Boston area, and Toronto, Canada. Yep. In that same order, May 4th, 5th, and 6th, and you can get tickets at linktree.sysklive for all three shows. We'll see you guys soon. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here, too, and that makes this Stuff You Should Know part of our continuing sad Kentucky tragic history

era that we seem to be in right now. Are we going to point out where this is 15 times? No, this is in the Kentucky that you'd expect it to be in. Okay. We had some funny Instagram comments on that. I don't know what you're talking about. About half the people when the supper club fire thing went to Instagram said, where was this again, Josh? No, I know. I'm just kidding. Oh, okay. I'm just kidding. I'm aware of what goes on on Instagram. As you know, as I don't know, you're one of those lurkers. Yeah, totally. I totally am. So speaking of lurking, Chuck, if you go to Barron County, Kentucky, one of the things that you might do as a past time is lurk in a cave. Hey, look at that transition. It was okay. But the reason why you

might do that is because Barron County and neighboring, I think Edmonton or Edmondson County are home to the largest cave system in the world, mammoth caves. Yeah, we talked about mammoth and I guess it had to be our caving episode. Certainly. There's no way you can. I mean, again, it's enormous. Like as far as we know, I think something like 400 miles have been mapped. Yeah. And I was reading, we have an enslaved man back in the 1820s up to the 40s to thank for a lot of that because he was the only one brave enough to crawl over the bottomless pit and keep exploring. So that definitely extended it. But they think also that there's another 600 miles. By the way, his name was Stephen Bishop, sorry I meant to say. But they think there's another 600

miles left to be mapped. So that's a giant old cave system. Yeah, potentially a thousand miles of cave system stuff. Yes. Now, I have a desire to go in almost none of it. Yeah, I know. You know, but I have to say like Ruby Falls is definitely worth the visit for sure. Yeah. I mean, my deal is I did it once and it was really cool. I would go back, but I'm not, you know, dying to, I'm kind of like, you know, I know what it's like now and that's all I really wanted to know. Yes. I was looking for a new hobby. The thing is, though, is if you're into caves, caving, even if you're not like a caver, but you're, you know, in the touring caves, you know, that you can stand up in and there's walkways and everything. Sure. Mammoth Cave is an absolute

must. It's just like geological wonder after geological wonder. It's pretty neat. Yeah. You like your caves to have an energy drink fridge at the bottom of it. That's right. And a moving sidewalk. It is a national park now since 1941, Mammoth is. And it was a big like and remains a big tourist attraction, but all the way dating back to the civil war. And as a result, that whole area became cave central, not just because Mammoth Caves, but there's so many other cave systems around there. And it became like a legitimate sort of roadside, not only stop, but destination for people and the people that, you know, was like, Hey, I'll pay me a dollar or 50 cents or whatever. And I'll take you down in these caves. They started battling each other more and more

of these locals trying to drum up business for caves they had the rights to explore. And that was known as the Kentucky Cave Wars. Yes. And it was basically just entrepreneurs run a muck in Kentucky. They would burn one another's cars. They would put boulders on the road to keep tourists from being able to make it to the other cave locations. They would pose as tourists and talk about how terrible one cave was. It was pre-yelp. So that was their live live yelping. And then another thing they would do is tell the tourists that they were all the same caves. They were just different entrances. So it's all the same. Just come to mind. Well, which is sort of true in a way kind of, but I think not really. Yeah. I mean, it doesn't mean they're all connected, but

Oh, they are. Well, what I mean is that you can access. It's like you can't get there from here kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. And also, I think each entrance is like this is a, for all intents and purposes, it's just a completely separate cave system. Right. This is my hole. Which I told you that was. I thought you were using hole as an adjective. No, that was the weirdest thing about when I went caving. And I'll just quickly say it again, is that I expected some big cartoon like thing that you just walk into and start exploring. Um, I did not realize you could literally walk by a cave entrance in the woods and not notice it because it's a two by two foot hole in the ground. And that makes caves exponentially scarier.

For sure. You know. Oh yeah. When I saw that thing, I was like, that's where we're going. Because that means the people coming to help you could walk right past it too. And it's just, I mean, it's just tampering with the pits of hell. I don't, I don't agree with that. So our story moves on now to one of the great cavers of the region. There were a lot of great cavers, but one was a gentleman named Floyd Collins who, if you look him up, he looks a bit like Crispin Glover in sort of the same way that almost all rural white men in Kentucky in the early 1900s look like Crispin Glover. He just sort of had that generic Kentucky guy look. Well, the butt cut hairdo, the shemp he had definitely helps a lot too.

So he was born in 1887, had a bunch of brothers and sisters from his mom and then a previous marriage that his father had. Lee. Yeah. And they were really close to the mammoth caves, about four years old. So from the time he was a little kid, like six years old, he was out there caving and doing his thing like you would when you're six and, you know, 1907 or whatever. Yeah. Plus there was not a lot else to do. Like if you were a farmer, you were eking out a really hard living in this area. Apparently the soil wasn't very helpful because again, it's on the limestone cave system, right? So it's kind of tough to grow things on bare limestone. And so what Floyd Collins figured out very quickly is that there were a lot of

Native American indigenous artifacts, including remains in these caves, and that he could take these things out of the caves and go to the mammoth cave hotel, this huge hotel that was built expressly for the tourists and sell them to those tourists. And he was so profitable that he dropped out of school at age 10 to pursue his looting activities full-time. Yeah, which, you know, I'm not going to judge the guy from here in 2023 for being a 10-year-old trying to make living. Yeah, me either. I just use looting as a surprising word. No, of course. You'd surprise me. I want to keep everybody on their toes. So fast forward a bit. It's 1917 now. And Floyd Collins is still doing his his caving. He's still one of the foremost experts in the region. And he found

a new system, or at least no one had discovered this system as far as he knew. Right. And it was really beautiful. It had these almost marble-like walls is how Dave Roos put it. Dave helped us with this. And it was just one of the more gorgeous caves on the inside. And so he named it the Great Crystal Cave and told his family, he said, hey, we need to scrape together what money we have so we can lease this land because this thing is going to be our meal ticket. It's prettier than any of the other caves around. Yeah, he went in halfers with his dad, Lee, and another man by the last name of Gerard. And they basically developed this Great Crystal Cave, which was a wonderful find. He was incredibly lucky to have come upon this cave and be able to get the rights

to it. There was a huge problem with it, though. It never became really financially successful because it was at the other end of the cave system. So you really had to know that it was there and want to go there. If you were just a tourist wandering around visiting caves, there was very little chance you're going to end up there accidentally. And then what with this being the cave wars and everybody who was a competitor of his, but also were probably neighbors and second cousins, by the way, they were doing everything they could to keep those tourists from making their way back to Great Crystal Cave. So as great a cave as it was, it just wasn't viable. Yeah, the big city guy came in and said, son, you never learned the first rule of business,

location, location, location. And Floyd went, why are you saying location three times? Yeah. Yeah, it's sad, but true. That's a direct quote, everybody. It really is. So now they're in a situation where Floyd says, all right, this didn't quite work out. But now they're in a situation where they're kind of even more desperate than before to find some means of revenue. So he set out to find another amazing cave and a better location. And he found one that wasn't quite so amazing as far as aesthetics go. But it was on Cave City Road before you even got to Mammoth. So that's the location, location, location that he didn't understand that he needed. But you got it. That's how important it was that you could have a so-so

cave. But if the entrance was on the way to the bigger caves, then you had a gem mine, even if there were no gems in the cave. Because you could lie and say there are. Right. Say it's the same entrance or the different entrance to the same thing, right? So he went into business with a different guy, a man named B. Doyle, Beasley Doyle, and another man named Ed Estes. And Doyle and Estes went half on their half, and they said that they would give Floyd the other half if he would explore and develop this cave so that they could start taking tourists down in it. And so Floyd Collins is being, I haven't seen it expressly written out, but he spent so much time in caves from such a young age,

and he had been at it for so long and had become such a respected caver that I suspect this is the one, like when he woke up, the one thing he wanted to do was go into caves. Like he just loved what he was doing. So this is probably like a dream gig for him too. But he started exploring this cave and started to develop it, but he ran into a problem very early. You mentioned that this cave was not so great as far as caves go, right? Yeah. And we didn't mention it was called Sand Cave. And it was called Sand Cave for a reason because it was not solid limestone, like most of the rest of these caves, which made it pretty tourist friendly to walk around, kind of like

a ruby falls, let's say. The smooth limestone. Yeah, the good stuff. This is actually loose rock and muddy sand. So Sand Cave is an apt name. And Floyd was like, I've got to make this work though. Like I'm even more desperate than I was before because now I've signed onto this thing. And so I'm going to, like there's good stuff down there that's deeper. I just have to carve out a passageway that's safe enough to get tourists in here. And so he did that for weeks and weeks and weeks, working 12 hour days, clearing out, and it was really cold at the time, clearing out this mud and ice and water and rock and trying to build what looked like a legitimate entrance way. Yeah. Which I mean, I think his premise was that he would, if he dug

enough of this stuff out, he would reach those smooth limestone walls eventually. It was just going to take some extra work, right? Yeah. And he was down to work. He was DTW. And you keep making mention like he really needed this. I mean, he was able to like make ends meet here or there. I think he and his brother like chopped timber for the railroad ties for the local lines that were built. Like again, Mammoth Caves was such an enormous attraction. There was a special railroad line that was established and built just to take people to this, right? So there was some money to be made. But to say that Floyd Collins and his eight siblings were poor is an understatement. I saw a picture of the house that the siblings all lived in with

their parents and the ticket booth for Great Crystal Cave and the ticket booth is slightly bigger than the house. I saw that. Like it is. Like they were, yeah, they lived basically hand to mouth to say the least. Yeah. So this needed to work. That's why I put in all this work, painstakingly digging this passage. And eventually on January 30, 1925, he said, all right, I've got an opening here and I believe I can get down to the depths that I so desire. And he did. He got down about 50 feet deep and then came to a 10 foot drop that's shaped like a chimney. So it's a 10 foot chute that he can go down. And at the bottom of this chute, it kind of makes not the hardest L, but it would like a soft L shape to where it goes

horizontal. But that horizontal opening was not very big. It was just enough for Floyd to get down there on his back and go in kind of feet first with the top of the chute inches above his face. Yeah. He was in this crack. So the chimney itself was not like exactly like a drop. He had to kind of shimmy down it. But with that crack was like a whole other thing altogether. He couldn't take a full breath in there. He had issued a warning, a trigger warning for people that suffer from claustrophobia because I don't even, and a lot of this felt like I was about to have a panic attack. Yeah. I have a vague sense of claustrophobia. It takes a lot to trigger it. Like just hearing about this stuff, I'm like, oh my gosh, but I can handle it. But I'll bet there's people out there who

sure couldn't even hear this. So, so a way to go Chuck. Yeah. So that COA and another one, which is when you're dealing with old stories like this, we found that there are a lot of facts that get mixed up depending on what source you're using. So yeah, we're doing our best moving forward. Well, also like we're, we're in the age where we've really just woken up to the fact that back in the 20s, say newspapers would print whatever. Right. And we've long been like, well, it was in the newspaper. So probably well researched. Not true necessarily. Not true at all. So he's sliding through this crack. And you're probably getting pretty nervous. But hold on to that because he makes it through the crack. And on the other side, he finds a big, I think

like 50 foot deep room, a big chamber. And this is what he's been looking for. This is the kind of stuff tourists want to see. And he starts exploring it. He's repelling down. And I think it's, I don't even know if he made it to the bottom or not, but his lanterns started flickering. And that is a sign if you are exploring a cave for the first time to go to get out of the cave. Yeah. So that's what he did. He was a smart guy. He wasn't dumb. He was, he was very gutsy, but he didn't like just, you know, he wasn't, he didn't gamble with his life for no reason. Yeah. He knew what he was doing. Yes. So he crawled back up the rope, took his lamp with him and started to make his way back through the crack. He was

oriented the same way that he was going in. So he went in feet first. This time he went in head first. Yeah. And he made it, I believe his head made it out when he kind of kicked into the ground to kind of give himself purchase, to push himself the rest of the way through the crack. When he did that, he moved some, some dirt, some sand. And I've seen up to a seven time boulder came down from the ceiling and lodged his, his foot in place firmly. It was not, he was not moving anymore. And he was stuck in this crack, uh, hopelessly. Yeah. And that's, uh, one great example. I saw seven ton and then everywhere else I saw 26 pounds. Big, big difference. Could you really not like shimmy a 27 pound? Maybe not in a crack like that. I mean, 26

pounds on a foot in a crack. Uh, and we should mention too that his lamp went out while he was in there. Um, and again, I saw various things, uh, from that it finally flickered out to he accidentally kicked it out, uh, kicked it over and made it go out. So now he is, uh, laying there with his arms by his side stuck in this crevice in the complete blackness. And, uh, and Dave pointed out, and I can verify, and if you've ever been caving, it is a blackness like you've never understood before in your life. I don't want to understand that. It is the blackest of black. You literally cannot see your hand in front of your face. So he's, you know, literally laying there in pitch blackness, which he's sort of used to because he's, I'm sure he's been without a light

before in a cave and gotten out of it, but, uh, he was in a bad way. He was, and he wasn't panicking because he knew that he was right almost at the base of that chimney and that if he could get to the chimney, not only could he relight his lamp, he could shimmy up the chimney pretty easily. So he was almost there, but the problem was again, he, that, that rock, whether it was 27 pounds or seven tons wasn't letting him go. And so Floyd Collins was alone in the dark, trapped in a crack, and no one knew he was down there. Yeah. And before we go to break, because I know this wherever we're headed, uh, the final little cherry on top of danger, danger cherry is, it's 16 degrees. Very nice, Chuck. All right. We'll be right back.

What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you, hey, let's start a coup. Back in the 1930s, a Marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the U S and fascism. I'm Ben Bullock and I'm Alex French. In our newest show, we take a darkly comedic and occasionally ridiculous deep dive into a story that has been buried for nearly a century. We've tracked down exclusive historical records. We've interviewed the world's foremost experts. We're also bringing you cinematic historical recreations of moments left out of your history books. I'm Smedley Butler and I got a lot to say for one, my personal history is raw, inspiring and mind blowing. And for another, do we get the mattresses after we do the ads or do

we just have to do the ads from my heart podcast and school of humans? This is let's start a coup. Listen to let's start a coup on the I heart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. My Space was the first major social media company. They made the internet, which up until then had been kind of like a nerdy space, feel like a nightclub and also slightly dangerous. And it was the first major social media company to collapse. Rupert Murdoch lost lots and lots of money on My Space because it turned out it was actually not a good business. My name is Joanne McNeil on my new podcast, main accounts, the story of My Space. I'm revisiting the early days of social media through the people who lived it, the users,

because what happened in the My Space era would have sweeping implications for all the platforms to follow. Listen to main accounts, the story of My Space on the I heart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. I'm Dr. Romany, and I am back with season two of my podcast, Navigating Narcissism. Narcissists are everywhere, and their toxic behavior and words can cause serious harm to your mental health. In our first season, we heard from Eileen Charlotte, who was love bombed by the Tinder swindler. The worst part is that he can only be guilty for stealing the money from me, but he cannot be guilty for the mental part he did. And that's even way worse than the money you took. But I am here to help. As a licensed psychologist and

survivor of narcissistic abuse myself, I know how to identify the narcissist in your life. Each week, you will hear stories from survivors who have navigated through toxic relationships, gaslighting, love bombing, and the process of their healing from these relationships. Listen to Navigating Narcissism on the I heart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. So Chuck, before we get started again, I want to shout out a source. There's an article from 1976 in American Heritage magazine, a great history source by Michael Leasy, LESY. And he actually was the guy who wrote or compiled Wisconsin death trip a few years before he wrote that article. And it's called Dark Carnival, and it

is really worth a read. But he got all of his sources directly from newspapers. So basically every word he wrote had been reported in the newspaper somehow or some way. So that is probably why that's the only source for the seven ton. It was probably misreported. But he's still a pretty good source for facts. He's a professional historian. So he knew what he was doing. But he was also really fascinating too. All right. So he's down there. No one knows he's there for a while. He was known to disappear for, you know, many hours and days exploring these caves. So it's not like the people got too concerned at first. It would be 25 hours before anyone even knew anything was going on with him. And that was when the son of Estes, his name was Jewel,

pretty cool name, 17 year old, went to go check. He had kind of been hanging out with Floyd and caving with him. And I think Floyd even said, like, you know, I could die in here to the guy the day or two before. And he's the one who went down there, called out for Floyd and heard Floyd call back that he was hung up and needed help. Right. So this is good. I mean, it's been a full day, but at least now somebody knows he's down there. So Jewel Estes runs back and starts getting help. And I think in very short order, word got to his brother Homer, who has, I guess, younger brother, because I think Floyd was 30 at the time. And I think Homer was 22 or 14, depending on where you get. Oh, really? I hadn't

seen 14. So Homer either way, he rushed, I get the impression that he was a man by then. So I'm going to say 22. Okay. But he rushed to the site and basically became the first person who was willing to actually go in and try to rescue Floyd. There are other people who had given it a shot before Homer arrived, but they apparently that chimney scared every single one of them off. They were like, I'm sorry. I like Floyd a lot, but that's I'm not going through that chimney. Yeah. So he shows up, says Floyd's like, can I get some food first and foremost? So his brother said, sure, here's the worst thing possible you could eat when you're pinned in a cave. Here's some sausage and coffee. Yeah. So let's get that heart rate up. Ensure that you're going to have

to urinate and then just the sausage is just a bonus. Yeah. Just to fill you up. Yeah. And to make that poop really flow. But he had food. I'm kind of kidding around here. This is what people ate back then. So he just needed some, some calories in his body. And Homer was down there working hard, trying everything he could do to get him loose. Every time he dug, rubble out, more rubble would fall down where that rubble was. He brought a crowbar back to try and dislodge some bigger stones. Nothing was working. He's exhausted and cold at this point. He's offering up like advice is coming in from around the country by this point, like word had gotten out of like how to do it. He's offering to pay surgeons $500 to go down there and cut his foot off. And I think

one surgeon was actually debating whether or not to do it. Yeah. I think he was sent by the heiress to the international harvester fortune. He got sent to the scene. She paid for him to go there. It's nice. Yeah, it was. It was very nice. I mean, she was very concerned and apparently he was one of the best surgeons in America and he ended up becoming one of the medical advisors during this time. But he did not go down and cut his foot off because he couldn't reach his foot anyway. There's no way. But they were saying, well, we could also put ropes around him and pull him out and just cut his foot off like that. Yeah. Not a good idea. And they didn't actually do it. But that was definitely on the table for a while. Yeah. And they were also,

you know, this is a really sort of sad part of this is there were people that were volunteering to go down and bring him blankets and food and stuff. And they would go down and come back and say he's in good spirits. He's got the food and blankets. And then later when other people would go down to check things out, they would find that food and blankets just sort of cast aside and stuffed in cracks. And people were too scared to go down there and I guess too scared to admit it. Yeah. So there you go. There's a couple of things that we've just hit upon, I think, Bear pointing out. One is that people are taking blankets down and they're not actually doing it. So we don't actually have any like professional rescuers right now. And then secondly, like his

brother is the first person who's willing to get down there and give him some food. And if you take a step back, you realize like this is a it's a big problem for Floyd Collins. But at this point and for a really shockingly long time, it was basically a local problem. The people who were in charge of rescuing Floyd were the same people who were his competitors in the cave tourism business. It was just locals trying to figure out what to do. Yeah. And didn't the, I'm sorry, the son of one of the former partners who was a good trusted friend, he got involved as well, right? Was it Jewel Estes? Was the son? No, not Jewel C. Burnett. I didn't see him. Yeah, Johnny Burnett put, he factored in pretty heavily as far as because

he was a trusted person to Floyd. So Floyd told him, like, you're the only person I like trust to get me out of here. Oh, okay. Wow. So yeah. So there were people who were like really trying to do this. They had the best intentions. They just didn't necessarily know what to do. And the upshot of it is there was a distinct lack of expertise in that kind of thing for a very long time for the first several days of Floyd's encounter. Right. And I guess we should introduce Skeets, huh? Yes. Now, this is the first time somebody comes outside with no expertise, but has the guts to be like, this man needs to get out of there and I'm going to do what I can, right? Yeah, this is Skeets Miller. This is three days into this debacle. He was a young kid. He

was, well, he was 20, young to me. That was like 60 back then, I guess. Probably. So he was a reporter, came down to Cave City on assignment from the Louisville Courier Journal to cover this story. He was a little guy. The joke was that he looked like a mosquito. He was 5'5", weighed barely over 110 pounds. So he was a little guy, like you said, that had a lot of guts and also, which is key, small enough to get into some of these places that some of the larger dudes could not get into. But he was a reporter and he was going after the story at least as at first. So when he first went down there, he was going down there to interview Floyd. And the reason why he decided to do that was because he had tried to interview Homer, who said something like,

if you want information, there's the hole right over there. You can go down and find out for yourself. And so Skeet said, I'll take that as permission. And he went down and interviewed Floyd Collins himself. And in very short order, over the course of the time Floyd was in this hole or in this cave, Skeet just kept writing more and more stories, interviewing him multiple times and ended up winning a Pulitzer for his reporting. He became as much a star as Floyd Collins did in this saga because of his writing and because he was basically doing Gonzo journalism with a trapped man in a cave. Yeah. And he also was the one saying like, he's in bad shape down there. Right. Like these reports of him being in good spirits aren't super accurate because he's,

he looks like a guy that's been trapped in a cave for three days. Right. That's what I wanted to say. Like he started out going after the story, but once he encountered Floyd in real life, he became an actual rescuer as well. Yeah. He wanted to get him out of there. He did things like developed a bucket brigade system to get stuff out of there. He brought a light down. Well, he lit a lot of the cave just so they could see better, but he brought a light down to Floyd to keep him warm, like a light bulb, like legit electricity to help keep him warm a little bit. Because remember, it's freezing cold down there. And I can't imagine 16 degrees. Yeah. And this, it was over now a couple of weeks,

like 17 days. Little Skeet's Miller is getting down in that cave and trying to rescue along with Homer and along with some other people, like really dedicated to getting him out of there. Right. So the thing is, is Skeet's writing these dispatches for the Louisville Courier Journal. And it's starting to get picked up by the Associated Press and the Associated Press is sending these out to newspapers all over the country. And all of a sudden, Floyd Collins went from, as Dave puts it, like this poor schmuck who is like trapped in a cave to a national like interest story, human interest story that just gripped the nation. And one of the reasons why it was able to grip the nation was not just because of the AP picking

up Skeet's writing, but also because radio was becoming a thing at the time. Not everybody had a radio this early on, but enough people did that there were like radio broadcasts done from the cave site that were reaching people's homes all over the country. So between the newspapers and the radio, it was just the whole nation was enthralled with Floyd Collins' plight. Yeah, it became, it became a not only immediate sensation, but a local sort of carnival atmosphere. Like there were thousands of people there that came to through the town, at least to see what was going on. I think there were at least 2000 people at the cave site. There's this website, this guy that had pictures of the scene at the cave entrance,

of the grounds, of the people in the cars, of people selling hot dogs and hamburgers and balloons that said sand cave. And it's crazy to see these old black and white photos of just how crowded it got in rural Kentucky by this cave entrance. Yeah, by all estimates, tens of thousands of people ended up showing up over the course of this, these couple weeks that Floyd Collins ended up being stuck in the, in the ground. I saw 10,000, I saw 60,000. There was just a ton of people and they came from all over at a time when it wasn't that easy to travel, but they were coming from out of state. And I say, Chuck, we take a little break and come back to this carnival that's growing up around Floyd's

hapless situation. Let's do it. What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you, hey, let's start a coup? Back in the 1930s, a marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the US and fascism. I'm Ben Bullitt and I'm Alex French. In our newest show, we take a darkly comedic and occasionally ridiculous deep dive into a story that has been buried for nearly a century. We've tracked down exclusive historical records. We've interviewed the world's foremost experts. We're also bringing you cinematic, historical recreations of moments left out of your history books. I'm Smedley Butler and I got a lot to say. For one, my personal history is raw,

inspiring and mind blowing. And for another, do we get the mattresses after we do the ads or do we just have to do the ads? From iHeart Podcast and School of Humans, this is Let's Start a Coup. Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. MySpace was the first major social media company. They made the Internet, which up until then had been kind of like a nerdy space, feel like a nightclub and also slightly dangerous. And it was the first major social media company to collapse. Rupert Murdoch lost lots and lots of money on MySpace because it turned out it was actually not a good business. My name is Joanne McNeil. On my new podcast, Main Accounts, The Story of MySpace,

I'm revisiting the early days of social media through the people who lived it, the users. Because what happened in the MySpace era would have sweeping implications for all the platforms to follow. Listen to Main Accounts, The Story of MySpace on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. I'm Dr. Romany and I am back with season two of my podcast, Navigating Narcissism. Narcissists are everywhere and their toxic behavior and words can cause serious harm to your mental health. In our first season, we heard from Eileen Charlotte, who was love bombed by the Tinder swindler. The worst part is that he can only be guilty for stealing the money from me, but he cannot be guilty

for the mental part he did. And that's even way worse than the money he took. But I am here to help. As a licensed psychologist and survivor of narcissistic abuse myself, I know how to identify the narcissist in your life. Each week, you will hear stories from survivors who have navigated through toxic relationships, gaslighting, love bombing, and the process of their healing from these relationships. Listen to navigating narcissism on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, so Floyd is still trapped. They're getting some food down to him. He is not doing well. There's a carnival atmosphere, like we mentioned, kind of all over the place.

And eventually, they did make a little bit of progress with this bucket brigade, and they cleared out enough for him to be able to move a little bit for the first time. It cleared his arms, it cleared his legs, because stuff had collapsed beyond just that either 26 pound or seven ton boulder that was on his foot. So he was fully trapped for a long time. And then finally, he was able to move around a little bit. He said that he was freed at one point, like that his foot was even. I guess he was delirious or miscommunicating, because that foot was definitely not free. And the last guy to bring him food was a minor named Maddox, who brought him food that he ate. And Floyd is delirious at this point and said,

Maddox, get me out. Why don't you take me out? Kiss me goodbye. I'm going. And apparently Maddox kissed him goodbye, which was a very empathetic, sweet thing to do. And heat from all this work had thawed this frozen mud that basically was acting like a mortar. And he got more entangled and trapped than he was before. And Maddox came out saying like, he's dying like very, very soon. Imagine being Maddox and waking up in the middle of the night for the next 50 years to Floyd Collins's voice saying Maddox, why don't you get me out? Yeah. That's awful, man, especially to somebody that empathetic too, you know, sure, he kissed him. So right. So as as after Maddox makes it out, I don't believe anybody was anywhere near the inside of Sand Cave with Floyd at the time,

but the cave finally just collapsed in. The way to get to Floyd was now cut off hopelessly. And they had no idea what had happened to Floyd. Was he covered up in the cave in? Was it just cutting off their, you know, their passage between them and him? Right. They just didn't know. And now finally, this is about day five of poor Floyd Collins already being a national American media sensation. Finally, the governor of Kentucky is like, maybe we should do something. And now the experts start to show up, but they show up like just hopelessly too late. Despite that, despite him being in there for five days and him being totally cut off now with no access to food or water or anything, they decided that they were still going to do

everything they could to get him out. And the idea that was put forth that everybody agreed on was to construct a shaft directly down to him, I think to his feet, and to get him out that way, to get the boulder off of his foot and to pull him back through the crack one way or another. But the problem was, Chuck, this was solid limestone and they couldn't use dynamite, right? Right. Yeah, they couldn't use dynamite. Dave said they couldn't use heavy machinery at all, but I saw something that said that they brought in two steam shovels, like $10,000 steam shovels. And at one point, someone said, I think in a not too happy way, it's going to cost $100,000 to dig out a dead body. Because I think the writing was on the

wall at that point. But at any rate, they did dig a team of 75 experts this time, built a five-story shaft into the ground. And, you know, these guys weren't in great shape either doing this hard work. Right. But they eventually get down there and what they find is a dead Floyd Collins. Yeah, sadly. This was, I think, day 15, maybe, when they finally reached him. I think 18 days later is what it says. Okay. And he had gotten caved in on day four or five. So there was a lot of people out there who were like, yes, he's already dead, but we should get him anyway. And some people were like, there's a chance, you know? But there weren't high hopes for reaching him. And those hopes were not fulfilled anyway when they found him.

The coroner, I believe, said that he had died just three days before they reached him. But that esteemed doctor that the heiress to the international harvester fortune sent calculated more like five based on the condition of Floyd's body. But they had the same problem that they had before, even in death. They couldn't get that boulder off of his leg. And apparently, it was enough of a problem to get him out that they all agreed that they should basically leave him down there, that this shaft or this crevice that he was stuck in was now his grave. We bury people in the ground anyway. This was the ground burying him prematurely, essentially, is I guess what the Kentucky reasoning was. So everybody basically left. The media circus was over.

The news reports kind of moved on to some other stuff. And the world just kind of, they didn't forget about Floyd Collins, but they had other things that suddenly grabbed their immediate interest, right? Yeah. And, you know, as a sort of a sidebar before they found his dead body, there were rumors that started to circulate because, again, people were printing things that weren't quite accurate. And rumors started to circulate that, why am I saying circulate weird? That's so weird. Circulate? I was saying circulate. I like it. That's a new way to say it. I think you're just evolving the English language, Charles. Anyway, the rumors were that this was all a stunt to get people there to go to his cave that Floyd was not trapped at all. It was sort of the main

rumor and that he was orchestrating a hoax to drive people there to pay money to go into the caves. There were other rumors that abounded that maybe people blocked access to the tunnel to delay the rescue, to kill him so that they could get that real estate for the cave, because his cave wars were still going on. And this all culminated in eventually a court, a military tribunal, even convene to see if this was in fact a hoax. And I think this is all going on before they finished the rescue. Yeah, I think this was happening while they were digging that limestone shaft by hand, essentially. And they had plenty of time to do it and no new news, right? There was nobody talking to Floyd anymore, so the newspapers were just printing whatever they could get their

hands on. They had anything to do with it, whether it was factual or not, which has made our efforts that much harder. Thank you, old-timey newspapers, right? Yeah, so B. Doyle, who was the guy that he went into business with, put up a roadside sign that said 200 yards away is the body of Floyd Collins, imprisoned in Sand Cave, and he would charge people 50 cents just to go down and stand at the mouth of the cave above the tomb and I guess either pay their respects or just gawk or whatever, draw a picture of it, whatever you did back then as a tourist, right? Homer, and this was admirable and sad, he hit the road on the vaudeville stage to tell this story, and like when I first saw that, I was like, that doesn't sound like a Homer

Collins move. Right, that's not the Homer I know. Yeah, he seems like a stand-up, either 14 or 22-year-old, and he was doing it to raise money to get him out of there. He was like, I don't think that should be his final resting place, so I'm gonna do whatever I can to make enough money to fund a dig. Yeah, the way I saw it put was that he had vowed to Floyd that he would get him out of there, and even though Floyd died, that didn't release him from that vow in his mind, so that is pretty neat, especially because I think that the public idea or the later idea of him was that he had been doing it for just money and fame or whatever. Right, but it worked, right? It did work. A couple months later, he was able to pay for his brother to be removed from that

crevice, and so as people do, they put Floyd back in the ground, but at this time, they put Floyd back in the ground in a much more appropriate place, the family cemetery, and they actually used a stalactite or mite, I can't remember, as a headstone for him, which is super neat and appropriate for Floyd Collins headstone. I couldn't figure that out because I saw the headstone. Did they just crush it and make it into a headstone? I don't think that's the original headstone that you saw. Oh, really? If it was a color photo, I think that was the one that came later. Okay, but how would they make a headstone out of a stalactite anyway? Hey, those Kentucky people are industrious. They can do anything they put their minds to,

except for get Floyd Collins out of the ground. Oh boy. So tourists kind of stopped coming around because a lot of the reason was because of this story. They were like this champion cave or died down there. Like maybe we shouldn't spend our spring break caving in Kentucky anymore. And so they sold the great, his family sold the great crystal cave, that initial cave that was gorgeous, to a dentist named Harry Thomas, who said throwing an extra 10 grand, and that's a lot of money back then. Yeah, especially if like your ticket booth is bigger than your house. Yeah, so just keep that in mind before you prejudge the family for what they agreed to. He said for an extra 10 grand, if you'll let me exhume his body and put it on display

in a glass coffin in that cave in a respectful way, then we got a deal and they needed the money and they said yes. Yeah, so for more than 60 years, Floyd Collins was in a glass coffin in the great crystal cave beneath, I believe, that stalactite or stalagmite headstone with the engraving Greatest Cave Explorer ever known. And for the first at least 15 years, I think, if you're a tourist and you went to the mammoth caves, you probably made an extra trip to the Great Crystal Cave to go see Floyd Collins' super embalmed corpse through the glass window in his casket, right? Just laying there in the, I think, a chamber of the Great Crystal Cave. And actually, slight in-show correction, the body did not stay there for that long,

uninterrupted. Okay, fair enough. In March of 1929, his body was stolen by grave robbers. Apparently, their intent was to toss it in the East River, or I'm sorry, the Green River. They were going to drive to New York, toss it in the East River. Yeah, they were going to hit Kramer swimming. But it got caught in some underbrush and they couldn't get the body out. Dr. Thomas recovered the body in a field, Saul's leg. So the leg that was trapped was no longer there. And I don't think anyone knows where that leg ended up. But then he, Dr. Thomas reinterred it. This time in a chain, locked up casket back in that cave. Okay. Yeah, and that's where he stayed for decades. The thing is, the National Park Service came in

and bought the place in 1961. So yeah, for about 30 years, you could go visit Floyd Collins' body in the Great Crystal Cave. But once the NPS took over, they honored the family's wishes, not by removing him from the cave, but by closing off public access to the cave. So for all intents and purposes, he was no longer something for tourists to gawk at, even though he was still down in this cave and the family didn't want him in there anymore. So it wasn't until 1989 that I believe a court ordered his body to be removed and finally interred, once again, in the ground topside. And that's where he remains today. And I believe, Chuck, that they put him in the ground on March 24th, 1989, which is right around the anniversary

of that, that internment when this episode's coming out, I think. And right after my 18th birthday, senior year of high school. Awesome, man. I'm surprised I didn't hear the news. Oh, yeah, your birthday is coming up, isn't it? Idle of March. It is. I'll never forget, Chuck. So that's the story. They ended up Billy Wilder, famous film director and writer. Made a film called Ace in the Hole that basically was an indictment on the media surrounding this

event, starring a youngish Kirk Douglas as the, as not Skeeter, as a bad newspaper reporter. Two things. Have you ever seen Witness for the Prosecution written by Billy Wilder? I think I have, but it's been a long time. I just saw it for the first time the other day. It's one of the best movies I've ever seen. He's, I mean, he's one of the best. You ever seen The Apartment? I haven't. I have seen Sunset Boulevard plenty of times. That's a great movie, too. The Apartment's amazing. And that was Scott Ackerman's movie crush pick. Oh, okay. And then the second thing, Chuck, is that there is actually a musical that was made.

I think it first was put on in 1996. It's called Floyd Collins. I'm surprised to see that. I have an impression it was in the same vein as that musical that the, how the South Park creators came up with about the cannibal in Colorado. The Book of Mormon? No. This was a different one. It was before Book of Mormon, I think anyway. I thought this was like a respectful thing. I didn't know it was a comedic. It was. That's what I was going to say. It was much more respectful, but it was,

there was a lot of, I think the basis of it was a comedy musical. Oh, interesting. What's funny about this? I don't know, but the cool thing is, is the guy who wrote the words and lyrics, I think the whole thing basically, he got an hour in the cave. It was, it was opened up for him specially and he did a lot of research and actually an analysis of the play by Scott Miller informed some of this episode. It was one of the sources we used. He did that much research on it. I think they were the ones that said his brother was 14. So I take issue. Oh, really? Now I'm conflicted.

Who knows? I mean, but back then the difference between 14 and 22 is, well, it's half your life, actually. I guess. You got anything else? I got nothing else. RIP, Floyd Collins, we're sorry that that happened to you, Floyd. And since Chuck says he's got nothing else, that means it's time for a listener mail. I'm going to call this great naming convention. Hey guys, long time listener of the show. I'm finishing my masters in a couple of months and I want to say thank you for keeping me entertained through a move to a new state, long hours of tedious work, and my commute to campus every day. I had to stop listening in the library because I laughed out

loud every episode. I really enjoyed your nap episode. My brother has been an advocate for coffee naps for years and coined a term that I think is pretty great. Did you see this? You ready for this? No, I haven't seen that one yet. I'm not ready. No. The napachino. Oh, that is good. How great is that? Not a nap for myself, but I think everyone should use this term. That is from Madison. Madison, whoever your brother is, you didn't name your brother, but just tell him that that's a pretty great title. It is. It definitely beats the two I was working on, the flat nap or the napate. Neither one of those is nearly as good as napachino. I'll tell you that. No, never mind. You know, what would happen? What would happen, Chuck,

if Al Pacino took a napachino? He would say that was a great nap. Okay. If you want to get in touch with us like who? Madison. Madison did with some great information about your sibling. We want to hear it. You can email to us at stuffpodcastsatihartradio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you, hey, let's start a coup? Back in the 1930s, a Marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the U.S. and fascism. I'm Ben Boland. I'm Alex French. And I'm Smedley Butler. Join us for

this sordid tale of ambition, treason, and what happens when evil tycoons have too much time on their hands. Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. I'm Dr. Romany, and I am back with season two of my podcast, Navigating Narcissism. This season, we dive deeper into highlighting red flags and spotting a narcissist before they spot you. Each week, you'll hear stories from survivors who have navigated through toxic relationships, gaslighting, love bombing, and their process of healing. Listen to Navigating Narcissism on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. MySpace was the first major social media company. They made the internet feel like a night

club. And it was the first major social media company to collapse. My name is Joanne McNeil. On my new podcast, Main Accounts, the story of MySpace, I'm revisiting the early days of social media through the people who lived it. Listen to Main Accounts, the story of MySpace on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows.