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Realizing one has free will can be so much fun. If you want cake for dinner, you can just get up and get it. But some folks decide that a good use of their time is to don diving equipment and go explore waterlogged caves for, presumably, fun.
So we’ve put together a list of some of the scariest caving stories out there, together with some netizens' personal tales. Be warned, some of these are both terrifying and may be unpleasant to read about. If you’re still here, settle in as you read through, upvote the most interesting ones and share your own thoughts in the comments down below (no pun intended.)
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
Nutty Putty Cave Incident
Medical student John Jones entered a narrow passage inside Nutty Putty Cave in Utah in 2009. He thought he was entering a known tunnel called “The Birth Canal,” but accidentally crawled into an unmapped dead-end fissure instead.
The tunnel narrowed so tightly that he became wedged upside down, unable to move forward or backward. Rescuers worked for over 27 hours trying to pull him out with ropes and pulley systems. At one point they nearly freed him, but a pulley anchor failed, dropping him deeper into the crack.
Being inverted for that long caused immense pressure on his heart and lungs. He eventually died from cardiac arrest while trapped head-down in complete darkness. His body was never recovered, and the cave was permanently sealed with him inside.
Fat Harry (Oi / You) 3 hours ago
There's a VR recreation of this (first person) on YouTube somewhere. It's both scary and interesting.
RELATED:
#2
Thai Cave Rescue
Twelve boys and their soccer coach entered Thailand’s Tham Luang cave system in 2018. Heavy monsoon flooding trapped them deep underground.
Divers searching for them had to navigate completely flooded tunnels with zero visibility, squeezing through razor-thin gaps while carrying extra oxygen tanks. Some passages were so tight divers had to remove tanks to fit through.
The boys survived for over a week in darkness before being discovered alive on a muddy ledge. The rescue itself became insanely dangerous: the children were sedated and individually guided underwater by expert cave divers through flooded tunnels.
A former Thai Navy SEAL died during the operation from lack of oxygen. Despite everything, all 13 trapped people survived.
Upstaged75 11 hours ago
If you haven't seen the documentary about this event I highly recommend it. There are so many amazing details. It's incredible they got everyone out alive.
#3
The Disappearance Of Ben McDaniel
In 2010, Ben McDaniel entered the underwater cave system at Vortex Spring in Florida alone. Staff later found his truck, gear, and tanks — but Ben himself was gone.
The weird part? The cave had restrictions so tight that many expert divers believed it would’ve been nearly impossible for him to enter certain sections with scuba tanks. Some divers claimed they saw evidence he made it deep inside. Others believed he never entered the cave at all.
Massive search operations followed. Divers risked their own lives exploring narrow tunnels and unstable passages trying to recover him. Nothing definitive was ever found.
To this day, people debate whether:
He died deep in the cave,
Someone covered up an accident,
Or something else happened entirely.
Upstaged75 11 hours ago
Sorry, but the guy was an idiot. The cave was closed with a locked gate and he kept trying to break in. I'm sure he's still down there - probably in a small crevice or something and they just haven't found the body yet. There's really no other explanation.
#4
Mount Gambier Cave Diving Accident
A group of divers explored “The Shaft,” a deep underwater cave system in Australia. They agreed beforehand not to descend too deep into the tunnel system.
They ignored the plan.
As they descended further, natural light disappeared completely. Silt filled the water, visibility vanished, and several divers became disoriented. Some smashed into cave ceilings trying to find the exit. Others swam deeper by mistake.
Four divers died after running out of air in total darkness. Recovery crews took months to retrieve all the bodies. Investigators later concluded that the divers were inexperienced and unprepared for cave conditions.
Upstaged75 10 hours ago
Which is often the case with cave diving accidents. As proved by the recent tragedy in the Maldives. Even if you're an experienced open water diver it doesn't mean you're qualified to enter a cave. It takes special training, and even then it's very risky. There's no margin for error. You couldn't pay me enough to try it!
#5
Sheck Exley Death
Sheck Exley was considered one of the greatest cave divers in history and helped create many of the safety rules modern divers use today.
In 1994 he attempted an ultra-deep dive in Mexico’s Zacatón sinkhole. The dive pushed beyond normal human limits. Somewhere in the darkness at extreme depth, something went wrong — likely nitrogen narcosis, oxygen toxicity, equipment failure, or simple human limitation.
His body was later found over 260 meters deep.
What makes the story eerie is that Exley himself had written extensively about cave diving deaths and the “accident chain” that leads divers toward disaster. In the end, even he could not escape it.
#6
I was exploring a system with /u/buckeyediver that was pretty significant siphon from start to EOL. All line laid in that cave was on the downstream side of a large cavern and we were convinced there had to be an upstream, given the significant flow. This cavern was basically formed by a collapse directly in the middle of a pretty large room. The cavern is huge, but the entrance side of it is essentially a giant breakdown pile with water flowing through/around it. Well, we found a backmount sized way around it. But the problem with breakdown is that it isn't tunnel. It's just piles of rock. So we're happily dumping line through this "tunnel". /u/buckeyediver is in the lead, I'm following and tucking the line away/making cleaner placements. This system is bad for percolation and I figured we'd probably be on the line or referencing it very carefully on exit, so I wanted it to be tucked away and not an entanglement hazard. We're about 50-60ft into this tunnel and he goes around a corner about a body length ahead of me. Right about that time, I see a rock the size of a basketball come tumbling down from above me. Almost immediately afterwards, I see his fins start to back around the corner. The area I was in was big enough for one person to turn around, so I turned around and moved out so he would have room to back in and do the same. At this point, it's zero viz and I've seen at least one large rock fall. So I'm on the line, feeling pretty uncomfortable, but I know I'm close to the exit. And that's when I run straight into a rock wall. The line just ends. I'm feeling up and down and it's rock. I'm convinced that the ceiling has come down on us and this is how it ends. 30ft deep with near full 104s. Plenty of time to think about dying. Then I realized that I'd placed the line in a little crack in the floor where it made a 90 degree bend and I was able to work my way around and out without issue. /u/buckeyediver was about 10 ft behind me and came out of the cloud with both thumbs up after running into the exact same situation. Nobody has been back there since.
#7
I was two staging with a guy in downstream Emerald. Two man team, two stages apiece of 18/45, and a tow scooter for the team.
We're on the way back, maybe 1000ft from the door at roughly 150' and coming up on the first stage drop. He signals me and I turn back to see that he's braced himself against the wall and seems to be having trouble breathing/coughing. I wait, he eventually signals ok, we continue on. We get to the stage drop to pick up our second stage. I've stowed away my empty and I've clipped off my second.
Getting ready to look to him for gas switch when I notice he's struggling with buoyancy and using his hands. Not a great sign. He's swimming down to the line and attempting to pick up his stage then floating up and flailing a lot. I try to get his attention, but no dice. Eventually, he clips his empty stage to the line, reg dangling free, and floats back up.
At this point, I'm worried. He finally manages to get his second stage clipped off while hanging on a rock on the floor. Normal gas switch procedure involves buddy verification, but he just starts going for the switch. I'm watching and realize he never opened the stage valve, so I open it for him as he's putting the reg in his mouth. Right about then, I noticed just how fast he was breathing, so I'm fairly positive he CO2'd himself struggling with buoyancy earlier, which explains why he's acting super narced on trimix and breathing hard. His light is off his hand and in the dirt and he's clinging to this rock for dear life and refusing to get moving. Just keeps signaling hold, keeps breathing at an elevated rate. It's worth mentioning that right now we have about 90 minutes of deco and about 10 minutes to the door/first deco bottles.
After a few minutes, he switches off his stage and back to backgas (I'm still on backgas, half empty stage on my side). But he's hoovering through it and still won't move. I'm trying to calm him down, reassure him that I'm there, but I'm also looking at his SPG and really starting to get worried. It's getting close to the point where I need to decide if I'm going to stay. So I'm doing math, trying to come up with no kidding how much longer I can stay before it becomes the difference between one or two bodies. Which is about the worst feeling you can imagine.
Thankfully, he caught his breath and we started scootering out. He was still way positive and about 50ft later, his tanks hit the ceiling hard. I watched like slow motion as a chunk of rock fell from the ceiling and straight through his spinning prop, which immediately separated and flew into the silt. Now he's in a silt cloud with a broken scooter looking totally confused.
I took his scooter and handed him the tow while I stowed his away on my b**t d ring and we kept going. I never switched to my stage. I wanted no part of a gas sharing scooter ride the way things were going and I wanted to be able to hand that off. The ride out was ugly, but we made it.
Unfortunately, now we were in essentially open water with 100 minutes of deco and his positive buoyancy was so bad that he was hanging onto the 70ft rock with both hands. His light head was on an EO cord and had disconnected and fallen into the silt. I was seriously worried that he was going feet first to the surface with a scary amount of omitted deco/rapid ascent. That's when I noticed that he looked like the michelin man.
I checked his shoulder dump valve and realized it was fully closed. I opened it up and he sank down to the rock, but was still mentally out of it, so I clipped his 70 bottle to a shoulder d ring and worked his gas switch for him just to be safe. His head started to clear around the 40ft stop and he was fine by the time we surfaced. I
don't know if he started the dive with his shoulder dump closed or if it happened approaching the second stage drop when he apparently sucked some water during the switch to backgas and had to brace himself on the wall. Either way, it's the closest I've ever come to thinking
Bartlet for world domination 2 hours ago
... I was about to see someone d*e and the closest I've come to actually having to make the decision to leave someone. Another 5-10 minutes at 150' and he would've been pulling a vacuum in his doubles approaching the 70 bottles. It was a few minutes from being a nightmare situation and I'm thankful it didn't come to that.
#8
A couple months ago a guide took his friends to Dos Ojos, in Tulum. and took them off the cavern line. One got lost, swam farther into the cave, and luckily found a small (probably not too fresh) air pocket in the ceiling, where he survived, floating, for quite some time before being found and rescued. Moral of the story: don’t always blindly trust your guide. Keep an awareness of the line you’re following, and ideally don’t swim beyond reach of it.
#9
My instructor told me a story about a couple on a honeymoon diving grand cenote outside of Tulum. I don’t remember all the details exactly but the instructor was leading, turned around and only one of the 2 divers was with him. He instructed the husband to stay put and wait for him to go locate the other diver (wife). The instructor never returned and the husband drowned in the spot he was left. The wife and the instructor were found not far off, but both ran out of air and died. It was reported that their nails were peeled back (or at least the wife) from scratching on the cavern ceiling. My instructor says there is go pro footage, not sure which diver had it though. He watched the footage as a training (I guess local Mexican dive better learn from this training) and he said it’s pretty gnarly. After writing this, I’m remembering he said they weren’t supposed to go into this specific area and totally ignored the signs. I don’t think any diving is allowed at gran cenote because of these deaths.
#10
My shop has a case where we have gear taken off some bodies we recovered from Jacob's Well. I always show it to my Open Water students.
Upstaged75 10 hours ago
The Jacob's Well cave has a scary history of people trying to dive there and never making it back. Even after locking it up people still break in to try. 🤷♀️
#11
I was cave diving solo, second dive of the day, and had recalculated my thirds to do one last little jump on a line near the exit. My thirds of gas, but not of the battery life on my primary light. I was 15 minutes swim from the exit when the light went out. Luckily I was close to the line and was able to grab it while I took out my backup light. But I had put the battery in upside and didn’t test it—-it didn’t come on.
So I fished out my second backup from my pouch, but it didn’t come on, maybe it turned on in the pouch and drained the battery without me realizing. So I’m in the blackest black darkness I’ve ever experienced, quite a ways from daylight, completely alone.
Luckily I had a ton of gas left as I was carrying a 3rd tank I hadn’t breathed from at all—i was planning on hanging onto it for the dive the next day. Anyway, in that moment it was like a wall came down between my mind and any doubt in myself or fear of d***h—not even for a millisecond did I let myself dwell on the gravity of the situation.
I calmly made my way out by touch, along the line the whole way. My eyes eventually adjusted so that the dim light from my computer lit the two inches in front of me, i used it to navigate tie offs. The rays of light in the entrance were the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. Forever grateful for Xibalba (the Mayan mythical underworld in the cenotes) letting me out of there that time. Moral of the story: always check your backup lights!
#12
Neil Moss Incident
In 1959, British student Neil Moss descended into a newly explored shaft inside Peak Cavern in England.
Deep underground, he became stuck in an impossibly narrow section around 300 meters from the entrance. Rescue teams spent days trying to free him. Oxygen was pumped down to him while cavers desperately widened the passage with explosives.
But the blasting created carbon monoxide underground.
Rescuers eventually realized Moss had died before they could reach him. His body was left inside because retrieving him was too dangerous. For years afterward, cavers passing the area reportedly described the atmosphere as deeply unsettling.
#13
Pluragrotta Disaster
Pluragrotta in Norway is one of the most dangerous cave systems in the world: freezing water, tight passages, deep tunnels, and powerful currents.
Multiple divers have died there over the years, but one of the most infamous accidents involved experienced Finnish cave divers trapped underwater after equipment failures and navigation issues.
What makes the story terrifying is that surviving divers later returned into the same deadly cave to recover their friends’ bodies. The dives lasted hours in near-freezing darkness beneath mountains.
BBC later described it as divers “going back for their friends.”
Upstaged75 10 hours ago
If you're interested in this story the Mr. Ballen channel on YouTube does a good job of explaining it. I believe he posted it a few years ago.
#14
Dave Shaw Bushman's Hole Diving Accident
Dave Shaw was one of the best cave divers in the world. During a record-setting dive into Bushman’s Hole in South Africa, he discovered the body of another diver, Deon Dreyer, who had died there ten years earlier.
Shaw decided to return and recover the body.
The dive was nearly 270 meters deep — absurdly dangerous territory where a tiny mistake becomes fatal. During the recovery attempt, Dreyer’s remains unexpectedly floated upward because the body had chemically transformed underwater into a waxy substance called adipocere.
Lines tangled. Shaw’s equipment snagged. His own camera recorded the final moments as he struggled in darkness and silt before losing consciousness. When rescuers later recovered the footage, it became one of the most chilling diving recordings ever analyzed.
Upstaged75 11 hours ago
Dave went in there specifically to retrieve Deon's body. He didn't just randomly find him during a dive. They knew the guy was in there. Sadly he lost his life doing it. Deon's parents were waiting above ground too. 😥 I doubt they expected another tragedy.
#15
The “Cave That K**led 28 Divers”
Eagle’s Nest is considered one of the deadliest dive sites on Earth.
At the entrance sits a famous warning sign nicknamed the “Grim Reaper sign” warning divers that the cave can k*ll them. Many ignored it anyway.
The cave descends incredibly deep through narrow underwater shafts nicknamed things like:
The Coffin
The Bone Room
Untrained or overconfident divers enter, stir up silt, lose visibility, panic, and never find the exit again.
One of the most horrifying aspects of cave diving is this:
if visibility goes to zero, you can accidentally swim deeper into the cave thinking you’re escaping.
That has happened repeatedly at Eagle’s Nest.
Upstaged75 10 hours ago
The worst story I've heard about Eagle's Nest is the one where a step-dad got his step-son scuba gear for Xmas and decided the best place to test it would be a super dangerous underwater cave. 🙄 You literally have to swim past a sign with the Grim Reaper on it warning you to go back. Neither of them had been cave diving before, but they went past that sign anyway. And they both drowned.
#16
So many horror stories in cave diving was doing a little dive in a cave, small squeeze to get in and out, diver in front of me went a little too much to the left of a sideways teardrop cave, they became stuck. Only way for me to get out, sat there for 30 minutes behind them as they struggled to get unstuck. Deco was F*^king brutal.
I continued to dive, that person was an emotional wreck and I am not sure if they ever dove again. I was so angry with them at that moment, I handled it incorrectly at the time. I was full of adrenalin. So close to dying.
I wouldn't have given up cave diving for anything. The things I saw and did were beautiful and amazing to me. Even with that scare I would do it all over again.
#17
Small accident but my caving society in uni trusted one guy to as a guide, he ended up being super controlling and egotistical and when they suggested another way he would get offended and mad, anyway they ended up stuck in a cave for 20 hours cause of him not admitting they were lost, a bunch of people got hypothermia and they had to be rescued, it’s only for the rescue team and a few people who stood their ground that they didn’t go further into the cave, but it could of gotten a lot worse, the scariest part was it was a person they entrusted to guide them into the cave and out safely but his insecurity got the best of him.
#18
Kenny Veach And The “M Cave”
Kenny Veach was a hiker and YouTuber who claimed he found a bizarre cave in the Nevada desert shaped like a giant “M.”
According to him, the cave gave off strange vibrations that filled him with terror. After posting online about it, people challenged him to go back and film it.
He went alone.
His phone was later found near an abandoned mine shaft, but Kenny disappeared completely. No body was ever recovered.
The internet turned the story into a full-blown horror mystery involving hidden caves, government theories, and paranormal speculation. Realistically, he likely died in the harsh desert terrain — but the mystery exploded online because of the eerie “M cave” story beforehand.
Upstaged75 10 hours ago
Kenny had a history of mental illness and his girlfriend thinks he committed sui.cide. That or he had some sort of accident and has never been found. The area he went is just remote desert.
#19
Mr. Ballen (podcaster/YouTuber/short story teller) has a couple of underwater caving stories that make most people a little uncomfortable haha.
This isn’t the worst caving story ever but I use to lead my cave trips with my buddies. Always took it seriously, always had a pre-cave talk about being safe, don’t do dumb s**t, three points of contacts, be the guardian angel for the person behind you and in front of you at all times, tell me immediately if you become uncomfortable, and don’t do anything you don’t want to do.
Anyways we explored a new cave we hadn’t been to. This cave immediately set the tone because it was the first cave that had a big ole corrugated metal pipe with a ladder in it that you had to climb down in to get into the cave.
Not bad right? Well the creepy part was we had to stop at the cave owners house first and pick up the key.
See the corrugated pipe with the ladder had a metal gate on the front side of it so no one could just enter the cave at any given time.
That was an eerie feeling. Locking that gate and locking ourselves in that cave…
Anyways once we got past that mental obstacle we had a load of fun. Cool cave. Cool formations. Cool routes/squeezes. Everyone was having a blast.
Then we decided it was time to head out.
This cave was a little different than a lot of the muddier caves I’d been in. This one was a lot more “rockier” and not as easy to pick out little spots one could remember. There weren’t a lot of obvious “oh we turned down this way” type of clues for us to remember. I always take my time and look back at where we came from because going in and coming out look completely different.
If you ever want to change the mood of your caving group real fast all you have to say is “alright… I’m pretty sure I know where we’re at… but I’m not 100%”
That ended up being the case on the way back out of this cave. We got turned around for probably 20 minutes and I could cut the tension with a butter knife. I had nothing but confidence on my face but I was absolutely unsure on the inside. I knew we’d find out route back out because it wasn’t that large of a cave but at the same time… there was a slight question mark haha.
Fortunately, and since I’m typing this up, we all made it out and we didn’t lose the key to unlock the gate to release ourselves from the cave depths.
Second story from my caving days…
This time we were in a cave we knew particularly well. We’d entered, got pretty far back, and decided to take a break. I only wanted a sip of water but my buddies wanted a 10-15 minute break to just chill out.
So I had my water and threw my helmet back on and said “I’m gonna explore over here for a couple minutes while y’all hang” - that was my first mistake.
Like I said I’ve been in this cave a lot and still know it well years later. But there’s sections (off chutes) I hadn’t explored entirely yet. We were close to one so that’s where I headed off.
This cave was muddy. Thick mud. I walked up a big old mud hill, and then walked down the other side of it. I could barely hear laughter/conversation from my group at the top of the hill and by the time I made it down the mud hill I couldn’t hear them.
The bottom of this muddy hill led me to a giant mud wall. Except the bottom right corner of this mud wall had been dug out. The dug out section wasn’t very large. It also acted like a bad slide. Inside the dug out hole was a dip kind of like a slide.
I looked at it, saw that there was a room on the other side and said to myself “alright let’s do it” - second mistake.
Well we all know gravity helps take you down but it doesn’t help you go up. So I wiggle myself down this little rabbit hole of a muddy a*s slide. It’s probably 4-5’ long so not incredibly long or hard to do. Once again it’s easy to slide down mud to some extent. This was thick grabby mud. Clay more so than anything.
I get through the rabbit hole and the moment I get through I’m in a room where I can’t stand up, the room itself was no more than 4ft wide, 5 ft long and maybe 3 feet high. But there’s another little dug out rabbit hole on the other side of this small room.
Side note - I’m in a caving suit which isn’t the most breathable material and you can work up a sweat pretty quickly.
So I’m in the small a*s room where I don’t have a lot breathing room (mentally semi suffocating) and it’s getting stuffy in there.
I look at the 2nd rabbit hole and go “nah… I’m too far away… my friends can’t hear me… I can’t hear them… they’re probably ready to pack up and carry on. Time to get out”
So I turn my attention to getting out of this little muddy room I’m in and the only way out is back up this grabby muddy rabbit hole I shimmied down in.
When I entered this hole I came down feet first. I absolutely cannot go feet first going out. I had to go up an incline this time not a decline. Im faced with a trying to go up this muddy a*s backwards slide.
So I go head first, belly down, and start to creep up. Half way through I realize this ain’t going to work because of the dip in the middle of this chute. The dip was making me flex my back way too much upwards. I couldn’t make it work and I need my hands for leverage which I couldn’t use because I went head first.
So here I am trying to force myself up this muddy incline with a dip head first hands by my side and trying to use my feet to force myself out.
Well after a couple minutes of breathing heavy, moving a lot, and getting NO WHERE I stopped.
Fear hit me. I’m stuck. F**k. F**k. F**k.
I’d only mentally gotten freaked out once before and here I am going on my 2nd freak out potentially.
I stop. Take a deep breath, and wiggle myself backwards back into the small room.
By this time I’m sweating hard. I take my helmet off, rip open my caving suit, and lie there for a minute. Collect my thoughts “I got done here I can get out”
After a couple minutes of trying not to p**s myself I knew what I needed to do. So I strapped the helmet back to my head and collected myself.
I had to go on my back, arms first through the hole, head next, and shimmy myself up this muddy slide.
It took a lot of effort (once again I’m going against gravity, in this sticky a*s clay/mud) but I slowly but surely worked my way out of this little muddy rabbit hole.
The moment I got through I stood up, walked back to my group, said “give me a minute” and told them how dumb I’d just been. Everyone got a little laugh in but it wasn’t lost on them that I looked mentally drained for a minute.
Ahhhhhh good times.
Couple other stories in there but I’ve typed out way too much.
#20
Getting stuck in a tight squeeze while underwater while your two buddies try to desperately pull you out only to have your body stuck.
#21
Pluragrotta Disaster
Pluragrotta in Norway is one of the most dangerous cave systems in the world: freezing water, tight passages, deep tunnels, and powerful currents.
Multiple divers have died there over the years, but one of the most infamous accidents involved experienced Finnish cave divers trapped underwater after equipment failures and navigation issues.
What makes the story terrifying is that surviving divers later returned into the same deadly cave to recover their friends’ bodies. The dives lasted hours in near-freezing darkness beneath mountains.
BBC later described it as divers “going back for their friends.”
What do you think ?
Upstaged75 10 hours ago (edited)
Mr. Ballen on YouTube has LOTS of cave diving stories on his channel. The most awful one is called Swiss Cheese. A guy in a group of cave divers kept breaking away from the other divers to look at the many side tunnels in the cave. (There were so many holes it looked like Swiss cheese) They told him to cut it out, but then they turn around at some point and he's gone. They didn't find him until a few years later. He had swum up a side tunnel and came out in a small cavern. He didn't have any air left to swim back to the main cave so he sat there until he d.ied. Years later cavers in a nearby dry cave broke through a wall and found his skeleton in the cavern. He had written goodbye notes to his family in the mud. 😥
Upstaged75 10 hours ago (edited)
Mr. Ballen on YouTube has LOTS of cave diving stories on his channel. The most awful one is called Swiss Cheese. A guy in a group of cave divers kept breaking away from the other divers to look at the many side tunnels in the cave. (There were so many holes it looked like Swiss cheese) They told him to cut it out, but then they turn around at some point and he's gone. They didn't find him until a few years later. He had swum up a side tunnel and came out in a small cavern. He didn't have any air left to swim back to the main cave so he sat there until he d.ied. Years later cavers in a nearby dry cave broke through a wall and found his skeleton in the cavern. He had written goodbye notes to his family in the mud. 😥
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