Mammoth Cave: Ghosts below

The shuffle of feet on packed earth echoes through the long and winding limestone chambers, carrying sounds of your egress into the shadows beyond your meager lantern light. Behind you are miles of twisting cave, ahead of is you more of the same. Along this path are side passages which tempt you into alternative courses which might carry you to unknown dead ends, pits so deep that they may as well be endless, dusty ruined equipment left by miners two centuries gone, eerie unidentifiable noises, and the shattered remnants of stones which have fallen from the roof drawing glances upwards to look for new cracks making you wonder if one of those stones may fall upon you. This last has happened before, long ago a man was harvesting the walls of the cave for gypsum, when he was struck dead by a falling stone. He was recovered thousands of years later, and is reburied somewhere in cave parts unknown to provide him privacy and peace.

Stopping at a slight bend, where a tall room opens in a hollow, you focus your light to the left. Gray walls curve upward into a narrow higher nook beneath a low ceiling stained black by soot from lanterns long lost. At one time a preacher gave sermons from up there, his audience standing down here with you. They, the workers of the mine, would listen to him preach while standing down here, in the dark.

You get the feeling that you are not alone. Perhaps it’s the persistent tick of unseen water falling into a pool out of sight. Strangely reminiscent of a clock, the noise could be reminding you of the world and people above. Perhaps it’s memory of the once silent audience etched into the shadows behind you, miners long gone waiting to see if you have your own sermon for them. Perhaps the spirit of guide our guests from the past are tagging along on your hike. There are stories of these visitors acting as ephemeral tourists who accompany groups through the cave, sticking to the periphery and vanishing before the end. You continue on with silent, unseen, company.

You come upon something you knew was down here, but is surprising none-the-less. It’s out of place in this subterranean world: a stone wall. There are several of them, in fact. Crude homes have been fashioned with slabs which have fallen from the brittle ceiling. These squat shelters are simple, and would not function outside, for while they offer some small amount of privacy, they lack one of the most important necessities of above ground shelter: a roof.

This silent city is abandoned now, but was built to house desperately ill people. They came here hoping the cave environment would nurse them back from the brink of death by Tuberculosis. It did not. People died down here in the dark. There is a rock nearby named because those dead were stored atop it, before they were carried back into the light. As you explore these structures, shadows cast themselves in odd formations through the uneven windows, and across the narrowing walls.

There’s a choice here. You can continue past this deep and abandoned village, and walk for miles and miles. Or backtrack a bit, and traverse to a lower level where water flows freely along two rivers, one named for an audible phenomenon, and the other named for the river which carries souls to realms beyond. Before you can decide, you hear something, it sounds like a haggard cough.

But you head back today. This is a shorter visit. So you pass Corpse Rock, and step down into passages named for Grecian Myths. The passages narrow and angle downward, the ceiling is lower now. Here in one of these under-rooms you find a bottomless pit. Fortunately for you, there’s no need to cross it as Steven Bishop first did, balanced across wooden ladder. There’s a metal bridge. From it’s center, you can stare into the blackness below and wonder how long it lasts, how far you would fall before reaching the bottom. Perhaps forever.

You continue down, and the atmosphere grows more humid. In a larger room with sloped floors, the park service has installed metal benches, an impromptu underground amphitheater. It’s a safe reminder of the outside world, but mud splattered across the walls shows you that this room isn’t always a respite, and water has flooded these passages before.

Fortunately, today, the water is much lower, and you head further down to explore its depths. Your shoes track footprints along in mud, but they are not alone. Impressions left by previous tours, show that you are in the company of people here before. You reach the first river, and see in clouded water the remains of a sunken boat. Once there were tours along this underground river, but there will be no tours today.

You keep walking until you find yourselves along the banks of cold water, flowing slowly through the cave. Something ghostly swims through the current. It’s a fish, so pale that it looks sickly, but it is at home here, and unperturbed by your presence. Fatty deposits where once there were eyes don’t even register your intrusive light. You kneel down to get a closer look, or see if you can find one of it’s crayfish companions, who despite their similarly subterranean complexion, sometimes traverse to the surface world to hunt for more nutrients. And it’s while you search for them that you hear something.

This is Echo River, so an echoed sound shouldn’t be too surprising. But the sounds themselves raise goosebumps. The swish of clothing, a low whisper, footsteps retreating into the dark. You spin around, but there is no one you can see, and the echo makes it impossible to trace the sounds source. If you put out your light, perhaps you’d see another one, exposing any potential stalker. But if you put out your light, perhaps you wont. Perhaps they, like the fish, are accustomed to the dark, and will use the opportunity to come closer, so much closer, until their face is pressed up, right next to yours. Perhaps if you put out your light, it simply will not come back on.

This is as far as you go anyway. Without a boat, there is no easy way to continue. So you turn around. Ignoring any more echoes which come to your ears. There are stories of man who was trapped down here, lured by just such whispers. His own lantern doused, and he is said to wander these passages still, alone and in the dark. His temptress was a living girl, a woman who lived with the guilt of his disappearance for years before consigning herself to the dark in a last act of remorse? Repentance? Irony?

These potential ghosts, it turns out, were invented in a story written for a literary magazine, and they are widely considered fiction, but in these depths it’s so hard to tell. Perhaps Melissa is down here anyway, figment or phantom, looking to find someone to forgive her or accompany her into eternity. Perhaps that someone could be you.

Or not. You leave the way you had come, climbing back up to the amphitheater, but this time you go left, instead of returning the route you had come. With hairs raised, you are less interested in passing corpse rock again, and there is a swifter exit. You follow lower passages for a time. Suddenly, the tallest room you have seen yet opens up ahead of you. The ceiling unseen above.

There is sign of life here. Not living things, but water, and ‘living ‘cave formations. Some of the few you have seen in this section of the cave. Stalactites, stalagmites, and flowstones on the walls. Fed, and growing, these formations are spread about the open space. Holding your lantern aloft you get a better view of tall pillars named for Egyptian Temples.

Beyond the ruins of Karnak, there’s a tall structure put here by man: a staircase which will carry you to the upper floors of Mammoth Cave, near where you had entered. Dripping water carries trails along the path leading to the stairway. You jump them trying not to slip. As you climb the steps, reflections from these trails of water are washed out, colored by shadows. These mineralized flows call to mind darker, more viscous, fluids.

You pause on the stairway, resting about halfway up, and reach out over the railing into the darkness. A drop of something cold, wet, and a little too viscous, hits the palm of your hands. It’s probably just water. You’ve interupted its fall.

After the stairway, the rest of your trip is hurried and uneventful. At one point your eyes trail upward to a room above you. Once, a mummy rested there, taken from her burial in another cave, she was used here to promote the cave in it’s early legacy. But there’s nothing to see now, she was taken from this place long ago, and it was never her home.

You are soon back at the entrance, and ready to return to the light of another day. This was but a small trip into the cave, and only a fraction of the history you have come to investigate. But everything else will have to wait. You leave the ghosts behind, and step back into the light. . .

END

Cover of the upcoming book!

(Author Here) - I don’t know why I chose to write this in 2nd person. This short trip encompasses mostly things you can see, or not see along the River Styx Tour in Mammoth Cave. I’ve tried to hint at most of the common ghost stories I have heard. I’ve included one of the second hand experiences I’ve spoken with someone about, and also hinted at something which will occur in my upcomming book: The Specters of Mammoth Cave.

A book, which now has a release date!!!

oh yeah. This will serve as one of the multitudinous ways that I will announce it’s upcoming release!

Look out for the spook adventures of the Junior Rangers Investigative Club in Mammoth Cave, and thier hunt for The Specters of Mammoth Cave, Available September 14th, 2023. On Amazon, and hopefully soon thereafter at other locations as well!!!

Next week, I will break down some of the ghost stories in this piece and talk about them without the narrative.