This hole has killed 16 people

There is a small

hole

in the ground in Australia that has claimed the lives of at least 16

people

today. I'll tell you what's inside that

hole

, but before we get into today's story, if you're a fan of the strange darkness. and mysterious delivered in story format, then you come to the right place because that's all we do and we upload videos three or four times a week, so if that's of interest to you, offer to take the like button to a beautiful restaurant on the outskirts of town and when they get out of the car, tell them that you just said you'll take them there and then leave.

Also subscribe to our channel and turn on all notifications so you don't miss any of our weekly uploads. Okay, let's get into today's. story In 1938, a farmer in southeastern Australia decided to take his horses to a watering hole on the other side of his large property while leading the horses across

this

large open field, one of his horses suddenly collapsed to the ground, The farmer ran. He approached to see what was happening, but as soon as he arrived, the horse was up again and seemed totally unharmed. The farmer was puzzled because he had no idea why the horse fell in the first place, so he looked down. to see if maybe he tripped over something and he saw in the ground, right under the horse, a little hole, so he moved his horse out of the way and then when he came back to look at

this

thing, he saw that it only had maybe one foot. wide, but when he looked down he saw that it was very deep, so he got down on his knees to get a closer look and when his eyes adjusted he couldn't believe what he was seeing 10 or 15 feet below the surface.

In this huge pool of clear water, the horse had just climbed onto the roof of an underground cave and the farmer was very excited to see how big this cave was, so he grabbed all his horses and brought them back to the stable and got this long measuring rope with a weight on the end, so you run back to the hole, put the weight in the hole and start letting go of this rope and so it goes down 10 feet 20 feet 30 feet and it just keeps going and so on until finally the weight It hits solid ground at 120 feet and then the farmer says, wow, this is a huge cave, so he lifts it up thinking it's the bottom, but actually it wasn't, it actually extended down almost 300 additional feet.

The farmer and his horse had just accidentally found one of the most beautiful and deadly freshwater caves in the world called Shaft. The reason it's called Shaft is because the only way to enter or exit this underwater cave is through this hole in the middle. This field that this horse created and it is literally a well that goes down 18 feet to the surface of this huge underground body of water. The opening of this shaft is so narrow that cave divers cannot enter with their equipment on. their backs, so they literally need to be lowered into this cave by themselves and then their gear is lowered behind them and they put it on while they're floating in the water, the solid ground that the farmer's weighted line had touched at 120 feet.

When he thought he had reached the bottom of the cave, what he had actually touched was the top of something called a pile of rocks. The rock pile is basically this huge underwater pyramid that looks like a pile of rocks that sits at the bottom in the middle of this huge underwater cave. and from the top of this pile of rocks you can go down in different directions, but once you reach the bottom, there are only two tunnels to choose from. There's one that goes west, basically, down at an angle that ends at 260 feet and then continues.

The other side of this underwater pyramid is the eastern tunnel and is much more treacherous, descending at a steeper angle to 400 feet. The few elite divers who have explored the deepest corners of this cave say that there are three distinct stages in stage one. It's from the surface to 120 feet, the top of the rock pile. During this stage, the diver swims unhindered in beautiful clear water with sunlight peeking through the hole. It is a very easy section of the cave and there is a safety line that is anchored directly from the surface. to the top of the rock pile so you have something to hold on to as you go down and back up.

Stage two is where things get a little dicey. Stage two begins at the top of the rock pile and extends to the top of the rock pile. bottom of the west tunnel at 260 feet where it dead ends or up to the 200 foot mark of the east tunnel where you come to something called the drop ledge and it's literally a ledge in the middle of this tunnel where beyond there is a Un quite steep gradient and leads to an area that is so treacherous that it has its own stage, starting with stage two and then stage three, there is no safety line to guide you in the direction you need to go so you are on your own .

As soon as you reach the top of the rock pile, go down in any direction you want until you reach any of these tunnels and as soon as you enter them, you will immediately start to lose visibility due to sunlight. They cannot fully penetrate these tunnels, so the diver becomes increasingly reliant on their flashlight, so they must be very careful while navigating stage two to not crash into the walls because doing so will remove sediment from the tunnels. limestone walls. it will create a cloud in their face, it will blind them, it's like being in fog where a flashlight can't get through it, so the diver has to wait for the sediment to clear which could take a long time, or they have to swim to blind and anyone who enters stages two and three cannot breathe normal air from their tanks, there is too much nitrogen in normal air, the deeper you dive the more nitrogen your body will absorb and if you have too much nitrogen in your system it can cause something called nitrogen narcosis, which is like being very drunk, and in extreme cases,

people

have been known to remove their mouthpiece and inhale water believing they are at the surface or confuse the upward direction with the downward direction. and to reach the surface they will swim down until it is too late and they cannot go back up, so the divers who will be in stage 2 or 3 of this cave will breathe a special mixture of gases that are low in nitrogen, the final stage of the shaft, stage 3 is right from the 200 foot mark of the eastern cave, so the drop ledge reaches to the bottom at 400 feet.

This stage is incredibly dangerous as soon as you leave that ledge. all the sunlight disappears, it is completely dark and the tunnel narrows considerably and remains incredibly narrow; In fact, many times divers have to pass sections where the rocks are too close together, because you're inherently crashing into walls throughout the entire stage. Three, you will almost certainly be covered in sediment all the time at this depth. Nitrogen narcosis is virtually guaranteed even if you are breathing a special mixture of low-nitrogen gases, so divers should be prepared to abort the dive at any time if they feel symptoms appear once the diver has turned around and is making their return journey, but they are still in the third stage section of the cave.

They should be careful with fake stones. These are stems on the roof only in this third stage. It looks like the exit and especially when things are silted up and it's dark, you're low on oxygen, you can panic, it would be very easy to mistake them for the exit, but in fact these fake domes are exactly what their name implies. they are fake they are dead ends they go nowhere stage 3 is reserved exclusively for extremely experienced cave divers who obtain a special permit in 1973 eight divers obtained permission to dive in the first and second stages of the well cave did not obtain permission To dive the third stage of the cave on May 28 of that year, the eight divers arrived at that large open field near the opening of the cape and began preparing their equipment.

Their plan was to dive to the edge of the drop ledge to look toward the third stage and then once they got there, they looked around for a minute and then turned around and returned to the surface. These eight divers were experienced divers, but all their experience was in open water environments, none of them had ever dived in a cave, so they were confident divers, but they were a little naive, they believed that diving to the edge of the The third stage was going to be pretty routine and would be simple and fun, but before any of them had entered the water, they had already done it. a critical error instead of jamming their bottle with the special low nitrogen mixed gas that they would need since they were going to stage two and that is a requirement instead of doing that they just jammed their bottles with normal air so they were basically guaranteeing that they would contract nitrogen narcosis, but once they had all their equipment prepared, they went to the entrance of the well and one by one they lowered them into the water and their team followed them and then, once everyone was up, they grabbed the line of security and began their descent.

It only took them about two minutes to get to the top of the rock pile and they spent about five minutes there taking pictures before heading down the east tunnel. Three of the divers were Glenn brothers. Stephen and Christine, who were 25, 22 and 19 years old respectively, and Glenn remembers that after going all the way through the east tunnel and reaching the drop ledge, he remembers seeing his sister, his brother and all other divers. Everyone seemed fine. just looking over this ledge, they take turns looking down into this black abyss that is stage three and then after about five minutes, Glenn looked at his meter and saw that his air was getting pretty low, it wasn't a emergency situation, but it was time. to leave and everyone else had the same amount of air as him, so everyone else was running out of air, so Glenn was about to grab his sister, who was several meters right in front of him and still I was looking over the ledge down. stage three, but when he reached out to grab her, she and all the other divers suddenly jumped forward and dove straight into the abyss out of sight, they dove into the stage three section, this was not something Glenn was following. something that someone said they were going to do this was not part of the dive, it was very dangerous and they were not allowed to go down there, so Glenn immediately swam behind them to try to grab her sister and stop her or grab her. her brother or grab any of them, but as soon as he went over that ledge he saw that it was completely dark and it was completely salty because of all these divers that suddenly jumped over the edge and then Glenn knows that he won't find them in the muck. .

It's very dangerous for him to just dive down there, so he figures you know what I'm sure they're okay, they probably plan this and they'll go down a little bit and come back up and So I'll go to the pile of rocks and wait for them, then Glenn turns around and goes back up the ledge, heads to the pile of rocks and sits there in front of the east tunnel waiting for his brother, sister and the other divers to come out again, but they don't and finally his indicator The air gets so low that you literally have to go to the surface and you think to yourself if my air is that low, what are they doing down there?

Larry Reynolds, 24, was one of the divers who went with Glenn's sister and brother and the other two divers to this forbidden section of the third stage of the cave, although he does not say this, it sounded as if he and the others others just wanted to go. A little bit further into this forbidden section, check it out and then turn around and go back to the surface, and Larry would say that as soon as they crossed the ledge and were on this third stage, it became completely dark and the tunnel immediately contracted dramatically. and, as they go down this very narrow, black tunnel, they come to a section that is so narrow that they are literally upside down, pulling themselves up, and so, after a few minutes, the group forces themselves into this.

An incredibly dangerous place, it's like everyone collectively realized that this is a terrible idea, we have to go back, and as everyone started to turn around, they realized that their trip back up the drop ledge, which was only about 25 feet, was completely filled with sediment. Outside, Larry is at the end of this return line and right in front of him is Christine, so as soon as everyone gets into the muck, the only thing Larry can see with his flashlight is Christine's fins, so what remains just above her and keeping her light on that fin to make sure she's going in the right direction and after a few moments Christine's fins suddenly disappear and Larry thinks I don't know where she went but I don't have enough time I barely have enough time.

I have air, so he keeps swimming, thinking he's on the right path, and sure enough, he comes out of the muck and up and back over the ledge and shines his light toward the east. tunnel back towards the pile of rocks hoping to see Christine and the other divers he finished offto be, but he's looking and there's no one there, there's no sediment, it's totally clear and there's no diver in front of him, so he looks at his gauge again and he has a little bit of enough air to maybe go down and make sure he doesn't There's no one down there because he's thinking I don't think it's possible that they could have swum through this tunnel in this amount of time, so he turns around.

He crosses the drop edge back into the silt and, as he moves very slowly and cautiously forward, he sees the lanterns moving on the roof of the tunnel and then he goes down towards this flashing light and realizes that the light is coming from inside the tunnel. a false dome right above him, then he looked up and saw that there were Christine and another man named Roberts. who was 28 years old swimming frantically shining his lights looking for the exit without realizing that they were in this dead end and then larry was about to shine his light to get their attention when larry's flashlight went out and now larry is in complete darkness.

It's completely full of sediment, you don't even know how much air you have left because you can't shine the light on it and so you start to panic, you start hitting your flashlight and finally the light comes back on and when it does it shines it upwards. again to try to shine it towards Christine and Roberts, but he had moved further down the tunnel, so when he turned on his light he was not under the falling stone, but when he shined his light in the other direction, he saw that he was in the farthest end from where the group had gone and, further down, in stage three, it was clear that there was no sediment, so he focused his light towards the tunnel of stage three and, in the tunnel, barely visible, he sees that there is a diver with his flashlight swimming in the wrong direction towards oblivion his name was john he was 20 years old and almost certainly had nitrogen narcosis larry knew he couldn't save him so larry turned around and went back into the muck in the direction of the pile of rocks touching the ceiling looking for that entrance to the false dome to try to help Christine and Roberts but he can't find it and he's looking at his air gauge and he's getting critically low and he knows if he doesn't go soon he's going to die and in At some point, after not finding the entrance to this false dome, he decides that he just has to get out and save himself and so he manages to get out of the mud, climb up and go over the drop ledge. towards the pile of rocks he grabs the safety line and slims down to the surface and when he reaches the surface he looks around and there are only three other divers up there one of which is Glenn and Glenn looks visibly scared and screams : Larry, hey, have you seen my brother and sister?

Have you seen the others? They come after you and Larry looks at him and just shakes his head. He didn't know what to say. He knew they were gone, but to Glenn this was his. little brother his little sister had to go back down so with the little bit of air he had left he put on the mouthpiece he turned around and dove down as fast as he could looking towards the opening of the eastern tunnel praying that his relatives They were told that their friends were going to get out of there, but as he swam down and was running out of air, no one was coming out of that tunnel and finally, when his air was basically empty, he had to turn around and go back.

On the return trip to the surface he realized that his brothers and his two friends were gone. It would take him 11 months and 11 days to finally locate and recover the four bodies inside the cave. John, the 20-year-old, who Larry saw swimming in the wrong direction. he was found quite far down the east tunnel, on a rock outcropping. Glenn's 22-year-old brother, Stephen, was found just 50 feet from the shaft entrance, but it is believed that he died at a much shallower depth and then floated to that position when Glenn was 19. Older sister Christine and the 28-year-old man, Roberts, who he was with inside the fake dome were found hugging just under the fake dome inside the tunnel.

Investigators believe that when they were there they couldn't find the exit and then they realized it. that they had so little air that even if they found the exit they would not get out in time and so knowing that they were just minutes away from death they abandoned the search for the exit and instead simply hugged each other as they died and then floated away. After this tragedy, the well was permanently closed to all divers, but years later they would reopen it, so that will be it guys, if you found the secret in today's episode, let us know in the comments section what it is and where you found it, so give us the timestamp and if you're the first to do it, we'll put you at the top of the comments section.

If you got something from today's episode and haven't already, please offer to take the like button to a really nice restaurant on the outskirts of town and when they get out of the car, tell them you just offered to take them there and proceed. to leave Also subscribe to our channel and turn on all notifications so you don't miss any of our three or four weekly videos. If you want to contact me, you can send me a direct message on Instagram or Twitter. My username for both platforms is the same. I'm John Ballen416. I also have a lot of content. on tick tock where my username is mr ballen.

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