| With Halloween just around the corner, I was reminiscing on a scary underground moment- a true one at that! I’m not talking about life threatening or dangerous, but just “scary” You know, like “BOO!” Hey, it’s kind of like campfire tales but underground versions- and no campfires inside the cave, OK?! Of course, there are some cavers I’ve met who will tell you they’ve never had any scary moments, or that nothing has ever unnerved them. There are also cavers who will tell you they won the Powerball three times last month. Well, Hell, (hey that rhymes..) I’ll tell you about a scary moment. In fact, to this day I don’t know how it happened, but I’ll let you be the judge. I had about three caving trips under my harness…uh, belt- I didn’t yet own a harness. But I digress! Two to Peppersauce Cave and one to…Peppersauce Cave. In fact, this WAS the third trip! I had started to really like this new experience in my life. Yes, I was greener than Ventana Golf Course after the Monsoons, but I was starting to feel like a real caver. I had talked two coworkers into exploring Peppersauce on a rainy, chilly fall night after work. Our route was the familiar one- through the “Rabbit Hole” (which was scary itself the first time, but by the third trip I was “seasoned” and could enjoy seeing others freak out at that endless, foreboding abyss that stretched for an ungodly18 inches, give or take a half foot). Once through the hole, we made our way down the spiral path to the lower part of the cave and a very makeshift register that was just a pad hanging from the wall. It was break time and the three of us sat down and shut off our lights. A second later I heard it- a low moaning sort of sound. It was about a second in duration, and though surprised at first I knew when I turned my light back on that one of the two guys would be there beyond me at the end of the narrow passage. He would have made the sound, either unknowingly or as a lark. I switched on my light about three seconds after hearing it and was face to face with my two buddies, one of whom was looking very perturbed. “What was that?” he asked nobody in particular. It was at that moment that I realized three things, none of which I liked. One- there was nobody more than three feet from me in this passage. Two- that sound had come from at least ten feet away and definitely behind me where the passage ended. Three- I wasn’t the only one who had heard it. One of my coworkers was a bit religious in a superstitious sort of way and he was on the verge of being freaked. I said something like, “Maybe a rock slid and rubbed against something “ or “Maybe it was a bat” but I was just trying to avoid the obvious answer that none of us could explain that sound, none of us could have made it from where we were seated unless one of us was the winner of The National Ventriloquist Awards, and this was my third caving trip with two first timers and I’d rather think about the route back than what the conversation was gravitating towards. Anyway, we never heard it again, and I have never heard an unexplainable sound in a cave ever since. True story folks. |