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T'Owd Man & Other Caving / Potholing / Spelunking Ghosts

blessmycottonsocks

blessmycottonsocks

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I couldn't find any other thread covering spooky experiences of those insane folk who get their kicks exploring caves and mines.
Feel free to move this into an extant thread if need be.

To anyone even slightly claustrophobic (I can get a bit twitchy in lifts and tube trains), this hobby sounds like the stuff of nightmares.
Reading about it though is strangely compelling. Even fictional accounts, like the legendary Creepypasta "Ted the Caver" are delightfully chilling.

I did a little Googling, in the expectation that cavers would have some spooky tales to tell and wasn't disappointed.

Let's start with some anecdotes from The Peak District, where something of a common theme emerges - namely that the last of the team to exit the cave system seems to be prone to hear or see things and even feel a ghostly hand touching them. I liked the matter-of-fact acceptance that it was probably just "T'Owd Man" messing with them.

Here's one to get you started and the link to the rest of the archive:

"Some years ago several of our club had a trip into Water Icicle, needless to say before we went down we discussed in some detail "odd" experiences" various members had reported on previous trips.
One of our group was particularly disturbed by these stories, as a child he had briefly occupied a house the had to be exorcised.
Needless to say he was the last person out, as he sat at the bottom of shaft in the entrance chamber his imagination began to get the better of him and he was most unhappy (scared stiff). A call came from above "rope free", thankfully he stood up but as he walked towards the rope he heard something (someone?) shuffling towards him along the passage. He turned round but there was nothing there. Imagination?
He clipped onto the rope and began to climb. Suddenly he felt a tug from below, not daring to look down he climbed as fast as he could. Once inside the narrow part of the shaft he felt a little less "exposed",he paused for a brief rest and plucked up the courage to look down. Below him he could see the glow of what appeared to be a miner's candle!
He immediately set off at high speed but no matter how fast he climbed the "candle" followed him, when he stopped it stopped! When he climbed it too began to climb. By now he was petrified, an understatement if ever there was one.
I was sitting at the top of the shaft and as he hauled himself unceremoniously over the lip I .......

( to be continued-maybe)"

https://ukcaving.com/board/index.php?topic=14495.0
 
Just as an aside, T'Owd Man ("the old man" in Derbyshire dialect) is named after a Saxon or medieval era carving of an ancient miner at Wirksworth St Mary's Church in the Peak District:

man.JPG
 
Interesting selection here of (mostly American) cave systems you can visit - but probably shouldn't.

Read on if you want to know about the underground hotel, inexplicable moaning and Native American chanting, poltergeist activity and even the reported ghost of a sabre-toothed cat, complete with chipped tooth:

https://www.ranker.com/list/haunted-caves/lyra-radford
 
In 2018, a researcher at the University of Durham posted a request to the UK Caving blog for anecdotes about a mysterious presence.
A few comments suggesting this could refer to the "third man syndrome", where explorers in times of extreme distress or exhaustion, have reported the comforting presence of an invisible companion. This has previously been mentioned in the thread about mountaineers and reported ghosts and may well have been experienced by cavers in similar extreme conditions.

https://ukcaving.com/board/index.php?topic=23072.0

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Man_factor
 
Kondoru said:
Something to do with oxygen starvation?
Click to expand...

Where mountaineers have reported it, hypoxia is very likely a contributing factor. With Ernest Shackleton's account, hypothermia and sheer exhaustion were certainly at play. With cavers, I would guess that a combination of hypothermia, stress and claustrophobia could bring this on.
 
blessmycottonsocks said:
In 2018, a researcher at the University of Durham posted a request to the UK Caving blog for anecdotes about a mysterious presence.
A few comments suggesting this could refer to the "third man syndrome", where explorers in times of extreme distress or exhaustion, have reported the comforting presence of an invisible companion. This has previously been mentioned in the thread about mountaineers and reported ghosts and may well have been experienced by cavers in similar extreme conditions.

https://ukcaving.com/board/index.php?topic=23072.0

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Man_factor
Click to expand...
Mr Smythe described the feeling of the phantom companion on the '33 Everest attempt, before observing two UFOs over the north ridge (amazing):
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/159645557?searchTerm=strange AND
 
feinman said:
Mr Smythe described the feeling of the phantom companion on the '33 Everest attempt, before observing two UFOs over the north ridge (amazing):
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/159645557?searchTerm=strange AND
Click to expand...
Yeah, it's pretty amazing. I love that they were pulsating and one seemed to have morphed a digging protuberance (perhaps). They apparently took the cigar-shaped or spindle-shaped "airship" form. The MOST extreme example of a flash and dash I know of.
 
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I recently watched this account of one of Britain's worst potholing disasters.

The date was 1967 and the place was the Mossdale Cavern system in the Yorkshire Dales.

The case must have had a lot of coverage at the time but I don't recall it.

Since the date of the incident, the system has been closed, a tomb for the unrecovered bodies.

A few have ignored the warnings and ventured back inside, reporting some uncanny sounds . . . :cskull:
 
During location scouting in late 1974 for the Doctor Who story "Revenge of the Cybermen", the director Michael E.Briant arranged for he and his wife to be locked in Wookey Hole at night once the caves had closed to visitors. I can't remember if they had the key and would let themselves out or they would telephone to be released when they got back to the entrance area. At any rate, they were closed in with no one else in the caverns.

During their walk, Briant and his wife were aware that there was indeed someone in the caves with them, but he seemed a distance away. At some point, they did actually meet. The other man was a tall Irishman, wearing old fashioned pot holing gear. Briant asked how he got in as they had been sealed in. The potholer said something like "I have my ways" and asked if he could use the director's lamp but he refused. "Right you are," said the potholer and he wandered off, whistling an Irish tune. This really unnerved Briant and his wife.

When they had finished with their location work, Michael privately took the cave's owner to task for breaking his word and letting someone else in. The owner denied he had done so and when he was given a description of the potholer, he said that an Irishman drowned in the caves many years back. Briant didn't tell his wife this so as to not to frighten her.

I emailed Michael Briant about 10 years ago approx and asked him about this story and he confirmed that it did indeed happen.
 
JamesWhitehead said:
I recently watched this account of one of Britain's worst potholing disasters.

The date was 1967 and the place was the Mossdale Cavern system in the Yorkshire Dales.

The case must have had a lot of coverage at the time but I don't recall it.

Since the date of the incident, the system has been closed, a tomb for the unrecovered bodies.

A few have ignored the warnings and ventured back inside, reporting some uncanny sounds . . . :cskull:
Click to expand...

I remember this well. Gory details were listed in the Sunday tab my parents took. Scared me rigid.
 
escargot said:
I remember this well. Gory details were listed in the Sunday tab my parents took. Scared me rigid.
Click to expand...

In this UK Caving forum from 2005, someone naively asked if anyone had explored Mossdale recently. He was quickly told that that was not a suitable topic for a public forum. Further down the page though, someone admits that unofficial trips to the caverns have taken place.

https://ukcaving.com/board/index.php?topic=881.0
 
blessmycottonsocks said:
In this UK Caving forum from 2005, someone naively asked if anyone had explored Mossdale recently. He was quickly told that that was not a suitable topic for a public forum. Further down the page though, someone admits that unofficial trips to the caverns have taken place.

https://ukcaving.com/board/index.php?topic=881.0
Click to expand...
Fascinating read, that, thanks for the link. The naive poster you mention is also cited in this Independent article on the tragedy. Not only is his name kind of deterministic, I suspect that googling him will lead me, appropriately enough, down a rabbit hole.
 
Krepostnoi said:
Fascinating read, that, thanks for the link. The naive poster you mention is also cited in this Independent article on the tragedy. Not only is his name kind of deterministic, I suspect that googling him will lead me, appropriately enough, down a rabbit hole.
Click to expand...

The Indie's account is a long read, but truly excellent, capturing the bravado and ultimate despair behind "Mossdale mania" perfectly.
 
blessmycottonsocks said:
To anyone even slightly claustrophobic (I can get a bit twitchy in lifts and tube trains), this hobby sounds like the stuff of nightmares.
Reading about it though is strangely compelling.
Click to expand...

I am very much the same but tunnels fascinate me. I was probably just about eight years old, when I was able to join the local library.

My first choice was some huge tome about mummies in Egypt, which they politely told me to take back to the Reference Only section.

I did succeed in borrowing The Lost Pothole, by Showell Styles.

It dates, I think from 1961, but it is set in the Yorkshire Dales. I hope to read it again some day.

I was so taken by the notion of tunnels that I set about my own project: the Tunnel of You. The title was a bold step into metaphor but the reality was just an excuse to draw a lot of maps or mazes of imagined tunnels. Lots of dead ends. Gothic Literature in a nutshell, without the need for too much writing! :)
 
Nutty putty caves USA. A man died. There's footage online of some nutter crawling through the most claustrophobic space possible, literally only 2inch move room either side, In a passage called the birth canal.

Same caves, nutty putty. It's gotta be haunted by the man who got stuck. Died stuck, upside down, in the dark.


 
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