Ghost Cave

From: Anonymous
Story type: Ghost
Location: A cave in Minnasota
Source: Form Submission

It happened about twelve years ago, when I was about thirteen years old. Intense, strange experience. The kind of experience that you remember so vividly, it's like watching a movie. It's true too. I'll try to describe to you the scenes the best way I can remember them. I'll also try to describe the voices that I heard. Let me explain.

I'll briefly set the scene. I am from the South suburbs of Chicago. A friend of mine and I went with a group other boys (and some chaperone fathers) to a cave in Wisconsin.. This cave hosts several groups to come in for three or four days at a time to 'camp' inside the cave. Our group consisted of 6 or so young teens (like me) and their fathers. It was supposed to be a good solid bonding experience. Quality time. The cave itself was huge. It could be that I was seeing the cave though a child's eyes, or that it really was the endless maze that I remember. I guess that it does not really matter. When I first looked at it, though, the cave's entrance gave me the impression of a monster's mouth, complete with stalactite teeth and endless, dark cavities.

That was cool. I was a brave little kid, and three days inside the cave sounded like paradise. Explore. Find new places. I had a skinny little body, and I was invincible. I'd like to go where others would fear to squeeze. The proprietor's brief orientation session included cave do's and don'ts, and a quick story about some ghost (with a stupid name like Caveman Bob or something) was told to be in the cave. Standard campout propaganda, I presumed. Caveman Bob would 'get you' if you tried to ruin anything. Yeah, yeah. I barely thought twice about it. I did not scare easily. The first two days my friend John and I explored the cave. Way cool. Like the worlds biggest Habitrail or Fun Zone. But we got bored with the places that 'everyone' went to. We wanted more. John came up with a great idea. The proprietor's son would sometimes hang around the snack shop. He was about our age. We'd ask him about the coolest places to go.

He told us that at the bottom of the stairs leading into the cave, if you would turn left instead of going straight, you could find a hole in the shadows. This hole led to a series of tunnels that led to a 'room' in the opposite direction of the rest of the cave. He and his friends liked to go down there sometimes to escape the rest of the cave dwellers. It was a cool room, he said.

Perfect. This was just what we were looking for. So sometime that night (we kind of lost track of time), John and I decided to sneak off to find this hole. We could brag about it to the others later. Both of our bright flashlights quickly found the shadowed hole with no problem. John went first, I followed. We both had to hold our breath to slip into this first hole. We found ourselves in a small chamber with a tight passage to the rear. Then the passage widened, and led downward, opposite the rest of the cave, at a sharp angle. We had to proceed very slowly, as sharp turns and loose rocks warranted caution.

Somewhere down there must be a room, we said, big enough to fit several people. It was so narrow, and the rocks were more slippery than others in the rest of the cave. I guess not many other people had found this place. This was the deepest path we had yet been on, it seemed to keep descending farther and farther down with no end. More than once we had to suck in our guts to squeeze past tight spots. We just had to find the 'room'.

John held up the palm of his hand, signaling me to stop and shut up. Yes! Voices. Murmurs really. Right down below us. We must be near the room. And that kid must be there with his friends. Cool. John shouted "Hey!" The voices shut up. Could be that they just did not want us to come by. The kid did say that he went there to 'get away'. Or were the voices coming from another part of the cave? Caverns did sometimes play tricks with acoustics. No. We were so far away from the rest of the cave, and so much farther down, that could not be an explanation. We proceeded down another fifteen feet or so. The voices grew louder. They were the voices of older men. We could not quite understand what was being said, as if they were speaking another language, but we were determined to find out where they were coming from.

"Hey, the room is right below my feet." John said stepping into an area just wide enough for me to see past him for the first time in a while. Just then his flashlight dimmed, as if about to go out. It suddenly splashed a weak, yellow glow against the cave wall. Looked like it could only last a few more minutes. I had mine, though. If we stuck together, we could get by. John knocked the flashlight with the palm of his head to increase the electric flow. It worked for a second, then became dim again. Just past John's feet was the tightest opening so far. "Can you make it?" I asked him, pointing to the hole. "That room is right in here, hear them? They are right in there!" John said loudly. "Hey!" The murmuring voices shut up again. Then once again began to speak, even louder than before. There must be five or so different voices I was hearing. That must be a pretty big room. I could almost hear these voices as loudly as I could hear John's voice. The voices spoke calmly but loudly. But for some confusing reason I still could not make out what the hell they were saying.

"I'm going in," John said, and stuck himself feet first into the unknown hole. "Can you make it?" I asked him. That was a small hole. He inhaled to make more room for himself, and squeezed down farther. "No! I can't fit." He tried to pull himself out of the hole, but could not. He screamed. His flashlight grew dimmer, it was only seconds now before it would be completely out. "Gimme a hand! I'm stuck!" I climbed down as close to his side as I could, and grabbed his hand, precariously leveraging myself against adjacent rocks. I tugged with all my might, but it was no use. He was stuck in there like a cork in a bottle. "There is no room down here! My feet are hitting the wall. What the hell? There is no room! Where are the voices coming from?" As if on queue, his flashlight died completely. I knew that if I were to go and get help, I would be leaving John stuck down in the hole with no light, with the unintelligible voices. They almost seemed like they were chanting now, I swear I could sometimes hear them laughing. John would call out, "Hey!" The voices would quiet, then start up again. I knew that I had no choice but to get help. I did not know what to else to do.

"I'm going to go get help. Wait here." Kind of a dumb thing to say, but I could think of nothing else. "No *%?@ way! Don't leave me down here! Can't you hear them?" He meant the voices. He knew I could hear them. But I scrambled back up the passageway anyway, taking away the only light that John had, leaving him and the voices alone. He screamed loud and long. The rocks and stones that I jarred loose as I ascended hit him in the face, and his scream was silenced.

When I finally made it to the cave's mouth, I ran as fast as I could to his father, and led him back to the hole, offering a brief explanation of what was happening. His father was too big to fit down the small hole. All of the adults there were. So, I returned with an extra flashlight to figure a way to jar him loose. Also to keep him company. When I finally returned to John, his face was plaster-white. He no longer screamed.

As per his father's instructions, I told John to remove his shirt. He complied. I grabbed his wrist again, and tugged with all my might. Removing his shirt did the trick, and he finally popped out of the small hole, his stomach scratched and bleeding. Quickly, he grabbed the extra flashlight, and yelled at me to get the hell out of there. But I had to see what was below the hole. I stuck my head in past the spot where John was stuck. There was nothing there. No room. Just black shadows and rock about three feet deep. Weird. And the voices had stopped.

Quickly, we exited the cave. Later, after we had a chance to relax, we asked the owner's son about the voices. He said that he very seldom goes down that far. The room that he talked about was right there at the beginning. The rest of the path was much too narrow. We never should have gone down there. It was so far removed from the rest of the cave. Our fathers explained about the nature of acoustics, and how sound traveled in caves so strangely, but we know that this was not the case here. Something else was making the sounds of those voices. Something else caused John's flashlight to go out. And something else, (I found out later when John and I talked alone) that felt like a finger touched John's legs as they dangled down the dark hole there deep in the recesses of the cave as the voices shouted at him.

True story.