Ghost Stories of Mammoth Cave and Other National Parks pt. 2
The Mammoth Cave Part
The Mammoth Cave part.
Last week, I mentioned the reason(s) I believe National Parks attract a lot of ghost stories. Namely: 1. They are distinct places, outside our day to day, forcing us to be more observant. 2. They are places with a lot of history and nature intertwined and well documented, so there’s a plethora of material to pull from. 3. They are places full of spooky potential, with all the right attractors: abandoned buildings, the chance to be alone, scary sounds in the woods, darkness underground, etc… 4. There are talented story tellers in national parks to both tell haunted stories and to pass them along.
Now I want to focus, specifically on the reasons I believe Mammoth Cave, specifically attracts a lot of ghost stories.
This is less of a collective hypothesis, and more of a general outline of the park’s spook factor. So, I won’t really use this blog as in opportunity to cite things, more, just as an opportunity to write about them. (I’m on vacation right now, for my sisters wedding!!!!) so I’m too lazy for sources.
Ok, I just really like using this picture from Bailey’s great illustrations.
Spook factor #1. The Cave(s)
Did you know that there are many caves in and around Mammoth Cave. A lot have been connected to Mammoth, but many have not. And caves can be spooky. Especially long, twisting, winding, caves with ever increasing depths to discover. What’s down there? Who may be down there? What is that whispering out of the darkness below? I don’t want to spend too much time discussing the spook factor of caves in general, because that would deprive me of future articles on the subject. Sufficive to say, that whatever spooky feelings we get from caves, Mammoth Cave, by virtue of being perhaps the most famous, and definitely the longest known, cave has all of them in spades. Dark passages, deep enough and twisting enough to get lost in. Echoey sounds through hollow caverns. Eerie noises from the creatures which make the place their home. Spooky critters. Darkness.
Mammoth Cave Historic Entrance
Spook factor #2. The history/tragedy.
Mammoth Cave, and the surrounding caves have seen their fair share of tragedy. As long as humans have known about the caves, people were exploring them. Or, at least, we have evidence of Exploration going back to the Woodlands Period, and I would speculate that Human curiosity would have sent people into the cave the first time they laid eyes upon the entrance. Even if they didn’t wander too far. But while humans have been venturing into the cave for more than 2,000 years, not all of them have made it out. A man harvesting gypsum ~2k years ago was killed, probably when a rock fell and hit him. There was a time when his people, or another group, used parts of Mammoth Cave, or other caves in the regions for burial. Several mummies have been discovered in caves in the outlying area. I’ll write more about these at another time. But it’s sufficive, for now, to say that throughout the human history of Mammoth Cave, the area has been linked to loss and tragedy. (And as a memorial for those who died and were buried there respectfully.)
Progressing to a time with more written history. Tales of tragedy and human danger continued. A Dr. Croghan bought Mammoth Cave and turned part of the main passage into a ward for Tuberculosis patients, with the hope that the dry, cool, cave air would cure their ailments. The remnants of this settlement still exist within the cave. Unfortunately, this was a time before germ theory, and before an understanding of the psychological and physiological stress that comes from going for long periods without sunlight. The cave did not cure anyone of the disease, and several of the patients died in the cave, left upon the now titled Corpse Rock until they were recovered. Some of these former patients are buried in the Old Guides Cemetery. There have been other tragedies in Mammoth Cave in the age of cave explorers. The most famous of which is the story of Floyd Collins, who was trapped in Sand Cave looking to expand upon his already massive cave discoveries. The story of him being stuck in Mammoth Cave and subsequent rescue efforts became National News, and that attention helped usher in the founding of Mammoth Cave National Park. However, unfortunately, Floyd did not survive, and the story of how he was treated after his death is full of both the noble and heroic, (as his brothers toured the country for funds to retrieve his body and give him a proper burial,) to the outright odd, as he was disinterred and placed inside Crystal Caverns as part of the tour. (This was not his sibling’s doing.)
Stories of love, loss and memorial resonate throughout the park. There are abandoned homesteads, abandoned cemeteries, the names of people long gone written on the ceiling of the cave in smoke and soot. There’s a wide history to pull from.
Abandoned Church, but active Cemetery in Mammoth Cave N.P.
#3. It stands out. As the longest cave in the world, as- I would interpret it- the most famous cave in the world, people have talked about it for a long time. As the cave grows in literal length, it has grown even more in literary potential. As early as the mid 1800’s the mere existence of something as exotic as depths of Mammoth Cave inspired haunting tales. Even having never visited H.P. Lovecraft, probably terrified of the idea of massive underground twisting passages (it seems he was scared of lots of things,) wrote a story about it. Another article, submitted to a literary magazine in the 1890’s inspired one of the longest running ghost stories in the cave. (read my upcoming book, other blog entries, or more ghost focused books by other authors to learn more.) There have been many more ghostly stories written about the park since, and that’s because…,
Mammoth Dome
#4. The lure and appeal of Mammoth Cave is nurtured by story tellers. Guides in Mammoth Cave had to entertain their guests. People trying to sell tours had to convince tourists to come, and they did so in many ways, appealing to the marvel of cavernous vistas, the splendor of the cave formations, the sense of adventure, and, of course, also a desire to explore the dark and macabre. We can see this reflected in the names given to formations in the cave. The River Styx speaks directly to our perception that this underground passage is linked to the underworld. Names like “Giant’s Coffin,” or “The Devil’s Looking Glass” call to the eerie feeling some get while exploring caves. Thus stories about those 400+ miles of passage grow, and some of those stories are ghost related.
River to the Underworld. Charon is on break.
We fill empty shadows with our endless imagination, and Mammoth Cave has hundreds of miles of darkness to fill. There are stories there, based in truth, and there might be specters there as well. Even if there are not, we would still find ghost stories to tell about something so distinctive, something so vast and empty and something so historied as Mammoth Cave
At the end of the day Mammoth Cave has an infinite number of stories to tell. But when you look into the dark mouth at the Historic Entrance, when you try and peer past the lit pathway of your guided tour into the shadows beyond, even when you roam above ground only to stumble across a memorial marker to someone long gone, or chance upon an abandoned church in the middle of the woods, then it will be easy to find a ghost story about it, or make one up yourself. If you don’t find a ghost, or a ghost doesn’t find you first.