My partner Dave and I started a YouTube channel devoted to cave diving a few years ago. It became pretty successful, due to some of our more dangerous and creative videos. But our new subscribers were dwindling. Our view count had plateaued and was even beginning to dip into quadruple digits on some of our content. We were trying to think of something interesting for a video. Something that would go viral, to put us back on top.
That’s when Dave suggested something.
He said he could find an underwater cave for us to explore that no one had ever been inside of. We could document our journey into the cave and that would surely get us a bunch of views and new subscribers.
Using Google Earth, Dave found a spot on the map which he said was definitely a cave. There was a way to tell by looking for a specific pattern in the sand, when viewed from overhead.
Our channel is already pretty successful, so the travel expenses were no issue, and we live streamed the whole journey for our viewers, getting some buzz going for when we actually explored the new cave.
We had already begun promoting the video, telling people what we were going to do, even though we hadn’t officially been to the cave yet, and I didn’t even know for sure if it existed. We were still basing everything on Dave’s topographical skills - something which I was beginning to grow increasingly uneasy about.
“Are you sure about this,” I asked when we were on the boat, heading out towards the site. “This is a helluva lot of overhead for a little blue spot on a map.”
“Trust me,” Dave told me. “I know what I’m doing. This is gonna be incredible. A virgin cave for us to explore. Hell, we could even name it after ourselves.”
I nodded, feeling no better. Something in my gut was telling me this plan was foolhardy, and maybe even a little dangerous.
*
When we finally arrived at the place, there was no longer any doubt what we were looking at. Peering down into the crystal blue water, it was obvious.
“Man, I don’t know how you did it… But I like it!” I yelled, giving Dave a high five. My thoughts of danger and worry for our lives had vanished at the sight of the place, as I remembered the exhilaration of cave dives we had done in the past.
We both laughed and toasted each other with a bottle of sprite we’d brought along for the occasion. Neither one of us were drinkers, but it was nice to have something cold, bubbly, and sweet, right before we started putting on our gear and getting the cameras ready.
There was only so much light in the day, so we didn’t waste any more time than we had to, and we were in the water shortly after arriving on site. The B-roll footage we would film afterwards - the two of us were way too excited to see what was lying down below the waves.
“One, two, three, dive!”
The two of us dropped backwards over the side of the boat, plunging down into the depths of the calm blue ocean. Our weights allowed us to sink down easily to the sea floor. Going back up would be another matter - from this depth we would have to decompress slowly, rising to the surface gradually to avoid the bends. Like over-shaken soda cans - I always imagined - picturing myself opening a bottle of Coca-Cola which has been knocked around too much. If you open it slowly, it won’t explode all over you. The same was true of the nitrogen bubbles in your bloodstream while diving at depths.
Dave unspooled his tether, giving himself some slack, and then drove a stake into the ocean floor near the mouth of the cave. He spun it deeper and deeper into the ground to secure it, like an outdoor peg which will hold the leash of a rowdy dog - we didn’t want it to come loose.
He pulled on it to test its strength, then gave me the thumbs up signal and began to swim forward, into the darker blue water of the cave, leading straight down. The string on his tether unwound slowly from a spool he was carrying, like a giant fishing reel.
It was like we were swimming deeper and deeper into an underwater sinkhole - an abscess in the ocean’s smooth, sandy skin. A pocket created by an infection, or a tumor which must be excised.
I shook my head, wondering where these strange, horrible thoughts were coming from.
Once we reached the edge of the entrance chamber of the cave, we had a moment to take in our surroundings. The most important thing was to check the current, so I tried to focus on that, rather than the paranoid, delusional thoughts floating around in my brain.
The water was flowing OUT of the cave, making it safe to go inside. If it was flowing inwards that would mean a very short video and a quick exit. But it was clear to go in, by the looks of it. At least for now. We would have to continually check the direction of the water flow, and we would need to get out immediately if the direction of the current changed.
We gave each other the thumbs up and swam forward, heading into the mouth of the cave where it was much darker. So far we had been swimming straight down, but now we were going forward, into a tunnel which began to gradually slope downwards. It was lined with pockmarked stone walls just wide enough for us to fit comfortably through. If it was any narrower I would have insisted we turn back, but it was just big enough for us and our equipment.
The light from above was blocked out and we turned on our lamps, as I continued to record our surroundings and Dave swam ahead, letting out a line from his giant spool of string.
There were gaps in the craggy rock - black, empty places for creatures to hide inside. I tried not to imagine an electric eel or a shark emerging from those side tunnels, and found myself picturing even worse things instead.
For some reason, I kept sensing movement from inside the holes which lined the edges of the cave as we swam deeper. There were things living inside the nooks and crannies of this underwater cavern, and they were beginning to notice our presence.
The movement picked up, and I saw more and more flashes of what looked like fingers poking out from the crags in the rock. But I imagined they were the typical flora and fauna of an underwater reef, simply hidden by shadow, which gave them a more otherworldly appearance.
And then I saw it.
A hand reached out from one of the holes, groping and feeling in the air, seeming to sense us as we swam past. It was pale and bizarre, looking impossible in this place far down beneath the waves.
Dave was too far ahead to notice it but I actually screamed, dropping the regulator out of my mouth and sucking in salt water.
Desperately I struggled to get the mouthpiece back in, finally managing to do so with a panicky few moments of forgetting how to breathe. It’s not as easy underwater as above, let me tell you. Especially when you start seeing things like that.
I raised my camera up to get a shot of the hand - thinking I would need proof of this or nobody would believe me - but when I found the thing in my viewfinder I saw it was just a pale, flesh toned starfish.
But I had been so sure a moment before.
I let the camera drop back down and hurried to swim and catch up to Dave. He was far up ahead now, and I saw the cave was getting more and more narrow, almost too tight for us to traverse.
Dave seemed not to notice this, as he swam casually deeper and deeper into the blackness ahead.
Kicking hard with my flippers, I went as fast as I could, kicking up too much sand and dirt in the water but not caring. At this point I was too desperate to care. The mountain of rock sitting atop us was weighing heavily on me, and I needed to get out.
My partner was finally getting close up ahead, and I realized he was slowing down to begin another spool of rope. The first tether was getting to the end of its length, and he was about to attach a second lead to it, so that we could go in even deeper.
He paused and began to work on a new stake, twisting a short length of steel into the sand by our feet.
I tapped his shoulder and tried my best to get the point across that I wanted to leave. Now.
Desperately, I began to point towards the exit, making a symbol for choking that I associated with panic and fear.
He looked at me like I was insane. He pointed at the camera in my hands and the implied message was obvious.
“What about the viewers? Do you think they’ll be interested in what we’ve recorded so far?”
The simple answer was no. Despite my fear and the hallucination I had obviously experienced, there was nothing down here of any interest so far. This place was just another cave. The only interesting part about it was that it was unexplored, and thus, dangerous.
We needed to go deeper, to push ourselves to our limits. That was always Dave’s way of thinking.
I pointed at the second spool of tethering rope, making a hand gesture to indicate we would go to the end of that spool and no further. He nodded, attaching the line to the stake and continuing forward.
Taking a deep, shuddering breath, I continued after him, eyeing the pock-marked stone walls suspiciously.
After the next section of the cave, I began to see things that didn’t make sense once again. There were man-made items strewn here and there around the edges of the tunnel - a few cracked pieces of pottery were laying around, almost perfectly preserved in the water, away from oxygen and light.
This made me take a pause, and I reached down to examine what I had found.
That was when I began to notice the change in the current.
But by that point, it was already too late.
Dust and debris in the water could be seen whizzing past my face at an increasingly fast rate. And not only that, but the dust from the tunnel of the floor was blowing around, making it difficult to see.
I flashed my light rapidly on and off, hoping that would catch my partner’s attention. Dave noticed and began to turn around.
His eyes widened at the sight of the tunnel behind him, as the dust was now creating a hazy fog which made it difficult to see.
He started swimming back towards me, when multiple hands appeared from the dark holes in the cave walls. Dozens of hands reached out like prisoners from behind jail cell bars, their arms not long enough to grab hold of him in some places - but others managed to snare him and wrapped him up tightly, snatching him and pulling him towards the wall of the cave until he was pressed up against it like a mussel attached to the hull of a ship.
And then more hands appeared and began to pull him deeper and deeper into the cave - a conveyor belt made of disembodied limbs.
A second later he was gone, vanished into the cloudy, dim water. His flashlight lay pointing up towards the ceiling on the floor of the cave, and I saw more hands reaching out from the ceiling, groping the air and inching towards me.
I darted my eyes around and saw the hands were everywhere, reaching out and attempting to pull me in, like they had with Dave.
I was about to go after him, when the stake suddenly snapped as if under tremendous force, pulling our lifeline from its anchor and sending the rope flying off into the cave at a thousand feet per second. Both steel anchors whizzed past my face in quick succession, barely missing me.
In an instant, the entire rope was gone, and I was left alone in the increasingly cloudy cave, hands reaching out to grab me from all angles.
Unsure what else to do, and completely terrified now, I took a deep, shuddering breath, and started swimming out of that place. My mind felt like it was about to snap like a dry twig, my sanity on the verge of collapsing due to the circumstances, but I tried to ignore those feelings.
I stuck to the inside of the tunnel, keeping a safe distance from the reaching hands, looking desperate as they clawed at the air.
My friend was gone - probably dead or worse - but I didn’t have time to think about that now. The current was getting stronger, making every inch a battle pressing forward, and I knew it would only get worse as time went on.
Kicking my legs with every ounce of strength I had, I pressed forward, the tunnel’s visibility down to almost zero in some places. I had to go based on memory and feel - which was the worst part since every time I set my hand on the stone wall I imagined a hand reaching out to grab me, clutching my wrist in its icy grip and pulling me deeper into the darkness.
Luckily the hands seemed to have retreated for a little while, as if satisfied by our first offering. But soon they would be done with the appetizer and would want a main course.
I came to a split in the cave, which I didn’t remember seeing on the way in.
This gave me pause, since I had no idea which way to go. That was the reason why we brought the tether, to show us the way out.
A hundred different scenarios came to mind, including stories I’d heard of people trapped in caves just like this one, wandering a maze of unending turns with no way out as they slowly ran out of air.
I checked my tank and saw I had some time left, but if I took the wrong tunnel and got lost that reserve would be gone very quickly.
Examining the two options for a while, I thought I caught sight of the faintest glow of light reflecting off the wall of one of the tunnels.
That had to be it, I thought, and swam forward.
This tunnel didn’t look familiar, I realized, but then again none of them did. It was the first time I had been to this place, and I was starting to realize how dangerous that made my situation.
I swam further along, seeing that the tunnel narrowed considerably up ahead.
No, this wasn’t right. It wasn’t this tight getting in, was it?
Hands began to reach and crawl from the pockets like pus escaping from infected sores, moving and crawling along the stone walls.
The hands were stark, bone-white, and I realized they could be mistaken from a distance as a shimmering reflection of light.
Damn, they tricked me, I thought. This place is trying to keep me down here. To lure me in deeper.
I spun around and left the probing, desperate hands behind, heading back towards the turn I had taken wrong. When I reached it I didn’t hesitate, going down the other tunnel quickly, checking my air levels on the way.
The detour had taken up too much of my precious air - and I realized I was using it up too quickly, breathing heavily like I was. I tried to slow down my respirations, and tried to focus on it as a way of distracting myself from the otherworldly arms and hands which were now desperately clawing at me, hooking their fingers into my suit occasionally as I wrenched myself away.
And then the worst possible thing happened.
Just as I thought I saw a glimpse of actual light from up ahead, one of the hands reached out and managed to grab the hose from my regulator.
It fell from my mouth as I was taking in air, and I was left with a mouthful of water instead.
For a few moments I tried to fight with the thing grabbing my equipment, but then saw there were more of them now too - at least three sets of hands had reached out from one large dark pocket in the stone and now held my air tanks and equipment firmly in their grasp.
Twisting out of the backpack attached to the air tank, I managed to pry myself free from them, then began to swim through the cave in a mad dash.
My life was flashing in front of me as the light up ahead grew brighter. I knew I could hold my breath for a few minutes, but these were not optimum conditions by any means. Already I could feel my lungs screaming for air.
Luckily I had chosen the right tunnel this time, and came out into the blue shaft of ocean water which led upwards from the cave.
The hands were gone now and I would have been relieved if not for the fact that they had my equipment, and I now had a fairly long ascent ahead of me.
And I was not allowed to rush it.
I had to take my time, or I would die from the bends, instead of lack of oxygen.
Swimming upwards in intervals, I paused for as long as I thought I could, every ten meters or so. I just hoped it would be for long enough.
But as my head began to feel light and my vision started to turn black, I knew I couldn’t wait any longer.
I made a mad dash for the surface, the white light of the sun blooming tantalizingly closer, but always just a little bit further away than I thought.
My lungs were screaming for air as my joints began to ache and then exploded with agony - the nitrogen in my blood forcing its way out any way possible. Pockets of gas bloomed on my skin like painful, swelling pimples about to burst.
I felt dizzy and nauseated and desperate for air, thinking I was about to pass out any second, when my head burst through the surface of the waves and I was suddenly in the open air once again, gasping in each breath with desperation.
The crew looked at me with initial shock, but then started screaming for assistance and medical to be called in. I guess I looked even worse than I felt.
All I remember after that is being lifted out of the water and laying panting on the deck of the boat, our production manager asking over and over again:
“Where’s Dave? What happened to Dave? Was he still with you when you started coming back up?”
He wanted a rescue team to go down looking for him. He wanted me to show them where I’d seen him last.
“I’ve got it all on videotape,” I told him. “They can look at that for reference. But tell them I’m not going down there, and they shouldn’t either. There’s a reason why that cave was uncharted. It’s cursed. Anyone who goes down there isn’t coming back up alive.”
I’m done with cave diving for good.
I think I’ll start a cooking channel instead. Or maybe I’ll give TikTok a try.